Berkeley Center for New Media

Berkeley Center for New Media Learn more about BCNM at bcnm.berkeley.edu
See Upcoming Events:
https://linktr.ee/bcnm

The Berkeley Center for New Media is an interdisciplinary research center that studies and shapes media transition and emergence from diverse perspectives. Through critical thinking and making, we cultivate technological equity and fairness in our classrooms, in our communities, and on the internet.

Join us on Wednesday, April 8, at 5pm, for Hitting Walls: Bounce and the Performance of limits, with Carlin Wing, Associ...
04/03/2026

Join us on Wednesday, April 8, at 5pm, for Hitting Walls: Bounce and the Performance of limits, with Carlin Wing, Associate Professor of Media Studies at Scripps College. This event is an Art, Technology, & Culture Colloquium lecture, and our final public event of the spring semester!

Media scholar and artist, Carlin Wing introduces her newly published book, Bounce, which follows an array of bouncing balls through the histories of electronic and nonelectronic games, across the spectrum of play, game, and sport, and into the domains of physics, material science, animation, and computing. Of the countless physical and digital games and sports that revolve around bounce, the book tracks the shift from ricochet in ancient tennis to the true bounce in the modern game; spotlights squash and stretch in animation as a mirror of ping and Pong in computing; and contrasts the bounce feel in the global blockbuster EA Sports FC (formerly FIFA) to the pok ta pok in the three thousand year old Mesoamerican ballgame. With these cases, Wing shows how bounce has been taken up in different historical moments and contexts as a technique for containing uncertainty, testing for truth, confirming identity, constructing character, coordinating interaction, and modeling physical motion.

Bounce emerged out of Hitting Walls, an iterative project consisting of works of photography, video, sound, performance, participatory workshops, and writing that all take ball-wall games as a point of departure for calling up the interweavings of global histories and everyday gestures. For this talk, Wing will situate the book in relation to the works in Hitting Walls and describe how her theorizing of bounce evolved over decades of playing, making, and writing about and around ball games.

More info, including RSVP link, at bcnm.berkeley.edu. Hope to see you there!

Tom McEnaney, director of the Berkeley Center for New Media for the past three years, is launching the book he co-edited...
03/30/2026

Tom McEnaney, director of the Berkeley Center for New Media for the past three years, is launching the book he co-edited with Judith Peraino, We’re Having Much More Fun: Punk Archives for the Present from CBGB to Gilman and Beyond, with two Bay Area events this week!

Tonight (Monday, March 30, at 6pm), join him and Judith, along with special guests, at Moe’s Books in Berkeley. Tomorrow (Tuesday, March 31, at 7pm), they’ll be at City Lights in San Francisco.

Come celebrate the ways punks have built and documented their own misfit collectives since the mid-1970s, assembling alternative worlds of riotous music, art, fashion, and writing. Tom and Judith’s book ranges across the United States and over multiple generations, highlighting the diverse people who make punk happen. Over four hundred color images of rare flyers, photos, zines, letters, and more showcase the creative and political energy that has fueled punk from the start.

Hope to see you at one or both events, please spread the word to friends and colleagues!

Join us on Thursday, March 19, 5pm, at the Latinx Research Center, 2547 Channing Way in Berkeley, for A Virtual Tour of ...
03/16/2026

Join us on Thursday, March 19, 5pm, at the Latinx Research Center, 2547 Channing Way in Berkeley, for A Virtual Tour of Surveillance Technology at the U.S.-Mexico Border, an interactive presentation from Dave Maass, Director of Investigations at Electronic Frontier Foundation.

In pursuing its agenda of security theater, the U.S. government has turned the border into the main stage for debuting its new and invasive surveillance technologies. These technologies are ineffective and wasteful, but borderland communities ultimately pay the highest price with their civil liberties and human rights. In this interactive session, EFF’s Dave Maass will introduce the wide varieties of border technologies that surround us, from spy blimps in our skies to the surveillance towers above our parks, from the license plate readers on our roads to the footstep sensors buried in the ground. You will not only learn how to identify this technology, you will also practice spotting it using Google Streetview using your laptops or smart phones.

Dave Maass is Director of Investigations at the non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation, leading research into police surveillance and technology at the U.S.-Mexico border. He also is a scholar in residence at the University of Nevada, Reno, Reynolds School of Journalism, where he manages the AtlasofSurveillance.org project. Prior to joining EFF, Dave worked as a reporter for alternative news weeklies across the Southwest.

This talk is co-sponsored by the Latinx Research Center and the Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry. RSVP at bcnm.berkeley.edu.

Following last night’s keynote lecture in the Grimes Engineering Center’s Jarvis Auditorium, our Native Seas program co...
03/12/2026

Following last night’s keynote lecture in the Grimes Engineering Center’s Jarvis Auditorium, our Native Seas program continues today, Thursday, March 12, at 1pm, with a traditional boat-making workshop at Waterside Workshops’ Berkeley Boathouse. We’ll unveil two five-foot model canoes commissioned especially for this weeklong celebration: one constructed using traditional methods and materials, and one with 3-D printed thermoplastics! The two expert makers of the canoes will present their techniques, dive into the rich and enduring history of Carolinian and Chamorro boat-building, and explore what Indigenous and new technologies can learn from one another.

BCNM is honored to be hosting Native Seas, a week-long educational program, from March 9 to 12, curated by Sophia Perez, Indigenous Technologies coordinator and UC Berkeley PhD. The program will bring several traditional navigators, including students and relatives of Papa Mai Piailug, from the Northern Mariana Islands to the Bay Area. These distinguished navigation teachers will be traveling from across the Pacific, representing the only two remaining schools of traditional Pacific navigation and carrying forward ancient knowledge systems that have guided oceanic travel for centuries without modern instruments. As teachers, their work is foundational to keeping the ancient art of traditional navigation alive, and they will be visiting UC Berkeley to foster intellectual exchange and create visibility for Pacific Islander and Indigenous communities.

Visit bcnm.berkeley.edu for more info!

A few shots from our Native Seas events on Monday and Wednesday evening, at the California Academy of Sciences’ Morrison...
03/12/2026

A few shots from our Native Seas events on Monday and Wednesday evening, at the California Academy of Sciences’ Morrison Planetarium and the Grimes Engineering Center’s Jarvis Auditorium, respectively.

Native Seas continues today (Thursday, March 12) with a traditional boat-building workshop in Waterside Workshops’ Berkeley Boathouse at 1pm.

Visit bcnm.berkeley.edu for more info.

Building off Monday’s stellar, sold-out presentation at the California Academy of Sciences’ Morrison Planetarium, our Na...
03/11/2026

Building off Monday’s stellar, sold-out presentation at the California Academy of Sciences’ Morrison Planetarium, our Native Seas program continues this evening with The Last Schools of Traditional Pacific Navigation, a keynote lecture on the UC Berkeley campus. Join us today, Wednesday, March 11, at 5pm, in the Grimes Engineering Center’s Jarvis Auditorium, as our visiting navigators from Micronesia bridge history, arts, and oceanic wisdom, presenting their ancient knowledge systems and cosmology, sharing incredible firsthand accounts of seafaring voyages, and discussing their collective efforts to preserve their cultural heritage. This event is free and open to the public.

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BCNM is honored to be hosting Native Seas, a week-long educational program, from March 9 to 12, curated by Sophia Perez, Indigenous Technologies coordinator and UC Berkeley PhD. The program will bring several traditional navigators, including students and relatives of Papa Mai Piailug, from the Northern Mariana Islands to the Bay Area. These distinguished navigation teachers will be traveling from across the Pacific, representing the only two remaining schools of traditional Pacific navigation and carrying forward ancient knowledge systems that have guided oceanic travel for centuries without modern instruments. As teachers, their work is foundational to keeping the ancient art of traditional navigation alive, and they will be visiting UC Berkeley to foster intellectual exchange and create visibility for Pacific Islander and Indigenous communities.

Visit bcnm.berkeley.edu for more info!

Join us tonight (Monday, March 8, at 7pm) for The Ancient Art of Voyaging: A Night with Traditional Master Navigators of...
03/09/2026

Join us tonight (Monday, March 8, at 7pm) for The Ancient Art of Voyaging: A Night with Traditional Master Navigators of Micronesia, at the California Academy of Science’s Morrison Planetarium in San Francisco. Experience a glimpse into the realm of traditional master navigators of Micronesia, as they share stories of stars, voyages, navigation, and the enduring quest to keep their ancient knowledge, practices, and legacy alive. Witness the planetarium transformed into an immersive celestial map, as the presenters share traditional seafaring methods, star and constellation identification, and Indigenous scientific knowledge systems, offering a rare opportunity to learn about the Pacific region outside of a colonial perspective. Tickets available at calacademy.org

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BCNM is honored to be hosting Native Seas, a week-long educational program, from March 9 to 12, curated by Sophia Perez, Indigenous Technologies coordinator and UC Berkeley PhD. The program will bring several traditional navigators, including students and relatives of Papa Mai Piailug, from the Northern Mariana Islands to the Bay Area. These distinguished navigation teachers will be traveling from across the Pacific, representing the only two remaining schools of traditional Pacific navigation and carrying forward ancient knowledge systems that have guided oceanic travel for centuries without modern instruments. As teachers, their work is foundational to keeping the ancient art of traditional navigation alive, and they will be visiting UC Berkeley to foster intellectual exchange and create visibility for Pacific Islander and Indigenous communities.

Visit bcnm.berkeley.edu for more info!

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Berkeley Center For New Media, 426 Sutardja Dai Hall, University Of
Berkeley, CA
94720

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Monday 9am - 3pm
Tuesday 9am - 3pm
Wednesday 9am - 3pm
Thursday 9am - 3pm

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