Dissertation & Co
It has been a while that I was not able to write anything, here, but it was for a good reason: I had to put up on paper my dissertation. I did my best, in the past year, to keep my research coherent, so to have a good map of the areas I wanted to touch in the final step of my PhD, but nonetheless it was an overwhelming work. It probably does not make much sense when someone else says it - many colleagues warned me, and I though I got it - but it is certainly the hardest piece of work I have done so far. Writing it in English wasn't much of a problem (even if here in Italy is still rather rare), what I struggled with the most was coherence.

I had several moment of wondering, where I was just trying to remember exactly what I wrote 150 pages before on a related topic. Thankfully technology is very helpful from this perspective: being able to search the whole text, to copy paste paragraphs in new positions, too look for keyword or systematically change some terminology are life savers. And with a good backup system you do not fear to lose all your writing if your PC breaks down (I know, it's 2017, but I still have colleagues that suffered this atrocious fate).

Anyway, my dissertation now is close to completion: I'm implementing the final changes thanks to the observations of several, wonderfully helpful, colleagues to whom I owe my gratitude. I will soon publish an abstract and the table of contents on these pages for anyone interested.

In the meantime, I linked in the video section my last lecture at Turin University (for Italian speakers only, I'm afraid) in which I bore the audience with an etymological map of aspectuality (am I the only one that find etymologies great?) and some considerations on the aspectual features of play. I also analyse some comics for one of the best strips ever: Calvin & Hobbes. I'll try to write a few lines on this on the blog one day.

By the way, this year Meeting on Meaning are particularly interesting: you can check all the full conference videos in HD on Lexia.

 Other than that, I updated the "papers" section with a few more articles available online. You will find my most complete overview on Lotman's semiotic of culture applied to games, a framework to analyse the implementation of history in digital games (written with Vincenzo Idone Cassone), some notes on narratology and board games, a paper on the semiotics of toys and an article dedicated to post-digital graphic regimes.

 It's all, for now, but I'll be back soon!

Media Mutations 7 Videos
 
The videos of all the papers and keyword speeches of MM7 are available here.
You can see many presentations, among which Geoffrey Long's, Tanya Krzywinska's, Ivan Veturi's and, of course, mine ;) .
The registration confers to all of us a very funny "s", which may be distracting 'cause it's kind of funny. The contents are really interesting thought.
 

Media Mutations 7 in Bologna.

Tomorrow I'll be in Bologna for Media Mutation 7 annual international meeting dedicated to communicative evolution. This year edition, entitled "Space Invaders. The impact of digital games in contemporary media ecosystems" seems to be perfect for my Lotmanian, semiotic approach! I prepared a bunch of colorful slides to make my semiotics more sexy and I'm ready to go! :)

I'll be glad to visit again the city of Towers (how is it possible that there is no Assassin's Creed set in Bologna? It would have been perfect! Well, in the meantime we have this, currently in kickstarter!).

I've to admit that I'm also quite exited to hear our keynote speakers, Tanya Krzywinska and Geoffrey Long (Peppino Ortoleva, in charge of the final remarks, is also very good, but I have the chance to see him quite often!).
I'm looking forward also to meet Gabriele Ferri - possibly the first "semiotician of video games" in the world - which since now I've only met on Skype...

Anyway, here you can find the program of the conference. My presentation (and my colorful slides) will wait you here in a couple of days!