Experiencing the media mix
This year’s edition of Concordia’s President’s Conference Series explores the unique and fascinating world of the Japanese media mix. The term “media mix” refers to the convergence of different media platforms in Japan — comic books (manga), animated television shows and films (anime), novels, video games and soundtracks.
The three-day international conference, entitled Experiencing the Media Mix: Anime, Manga, Video Games, examines the synergy between the different media forms. It also provides an opportunity to showcase the work of Concordia scholars in the research, creation and teaching on the subject of Japanese media and its global reach. The conference is open to the Concordia community as well as the public.
On Saturday, February 4, the conference kicks off with a keynote address by Eiji Otsuka, a pioneer in Japan’s media world. His lecture, The Unholy Alliance of Disney and Eisenstein: The Wartime Origins of Manga, Animation and Otaku Culture, will begin at 5 p.m. in the auditorium of the Grande Bibliothèque (475 De Maisonneuve Blvd. E.).
A one-day symposium on Sunday, February 5 at Concordia University features four panel discussions led by renowned scholars from the United States, Japan and Concordia.
From 4 to 10 p.m., attendees and members of the public can participate in a game arcade experience put on by Concordia’s innovative research centre in Technoculture, Art and Games (TAG) and The Mount Royal Games Society, and held in the atrium of the Engineering, Computer Science and Visual Arts Integrated Complex (1515 Ste-Catherine St. W.). This distinctive arcade promises to break gaming out of its traditional boundaries ... and maybe even outside the building.
The final day of the conference features a series of master classes for graduate students in related fields who want to deepen their understanding of the media mix phenomenon and its implications. Participants include graduate students from Montreal, the United States and Japan.
Concordia’s five-year partnership with the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ) was the catalyst behind the conference. BAnQ is currently holding an exhibition on Japanese comic books, entitled Manga – the Art of Movement. The exhibition represented a golden opportunity for Concordia to host a complementary event.
“Our idea was to broaden its perspective,” says Marc Steinberg, an assistant professor at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. “Manga exists within a wider media ecology, and two main elements of that ecology are video games and animation (anime). It was actually [Concordia professor] Bart Simon who said, ‘Why don’t we do something on the media mix? Why don’t we shed light on the wider nexus of media forms that manga is just one part of?’”
Steinberg is hosting the first panel discussion on Sunday, February 5, Media Mix as Experience. He will explore the meaning of the term “media mix,” and its evolution from marketing lingo to the popular term for Japanese media franchising.
“The media mix is what is known in the West as media convergence,” he says. “We want to look at how this phenomenon works, and how we can understand it. How do anime and comics and games relate to each other? But also, what kind of approaches should we take as scholars who are inherently open to tracking the movement of stories or media across different media platforms? How can we understand the experience of this movement?”
Steinberg will be joined by Ian Condry, a cultural anthropologist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who will discuss the unique case of Hatsune Miku, Japan’s popular virtual idol.
“Her community of users has created something new in the world of popular culture: a crowd-sourced celebrity,” Condry writes in the introduction to his presentation. “This talk will explore the dynamics of the social in media through Miku and other examples in the aftermath of the 3/11 (March 2011) earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear crisis.”
The other three panel discussions will use different well-known examples of Japanese anime or manga as starting points for examinations of broader topics within the media mix. Steinberg insists, however, that visitors to the conference don’t have to be well-schooled in Japanese culture.
“We’ll be talking specifically about the Japanese context, but with the aim of exploding it outwards and thinking about how some of the concepts and trends being developed there are applicable to our everyday experience. In everything from social media to television to blockbuster films, we experience the effects of the media mix, and the principles of franchising and synergy on which it depends,” says Steinberg.
Each panel will include a brief introductory talk of about 15 minutes, followed by an open discussion with the audience. “We really want it to be an open environment,” he says. “People present some of their research on or around issues related to manga, anime video games, or the media mix more broadly, and then engage in dialogue with each other, and with the general public whom we look forward to seeing!”
Related links:
• President’s Conference Series
• “Manga mania coming” — NOW, November 15, 2011
• BAnQ Manga Exhibit