Category Archives: UT Austin LATINX POPLAB

Spring 2024 Write Up

CMC & MGL Member Highlights, CMC and MGL Documentation, News, Texas A&M Media & Gaming Lab, Texas A&M Media & Gaming Lab Conferences, Texas A&M Media & Gaming Lab Semester Write Up, Texas A&M PVFA, UT Austin LATINX POPLAB
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Introduction

This Spring 2024 is one for the books.  The Media & Gaming Lab hosted 3 conferences, multiple weekly workshops, meetings and helped other organizations with media production.  We onboarded a new social media crew.  Multiple Media & Gaming Lab students, faculty and community members hit personal goals as well.  Below you will find our documentation of this semester and all the cool happenings.  We hope you enjoy!  We will be around this summer as well, so if you want to get involved feel free to reach out to joey (jtlopez123@tamu.edu).

Hosted Conferences

The Media & Gaming Lab officially hosted three conferences this semester.  Through the help of so many (students, faculty, alumni & friends of the MGL), all three conferences were amazing and were great successes with more planned for the future.  

Synthposium (2/4)

On February 4th, 2024, the Texas A&M Media & Gaming Lab, along with faculty from the School of Performance Visualization and Fine Arts hosted Synthposium, an event which brought together local synthesizer enthusiasts, musicians, engineers and academics to discuss and explore the cultural and technical aspects of the art form. (Full Article)

Music & Movie Making in Texas Conference (2/24)

The 2nd annual Music and Movie Making in Texas Conference was a success this year.  With around 60 people in attendance on Saturday and over (get amount from Zayno) at the School of Performance Visualization and Fine Arts Friday concert at the Grand Stafford Theatre.  (Full Article)

Organized by the Texas A&M Media & Gaming Lab, the three main organizers were student Zayno Rayne, Professor Jonathan Guajardo and joey lopez phd.  We would like to thank them for all their hard work.

Storytelling in the 21st Century – Our Academic Selves – Conference, Spring 2024

Storytelling in the 21st Century – Our Academic Selves was a smash success. With roughly 70 attendees from all over central Texas, it was an amazing crowd of film makers, artists and academics showcasing their approaches to both teaching and practicing storytelling in the 21st century. The stories and lived realities shared by those about experiences inside and outside the classroom was inspiring and set an amazing tone for the conference. Below you will find a short summary of each presentation, along with photos and video that document them, we hope you enjoy them and can join us at next years conference. (Full Article)

Co-Hosted and Documented Conferences

LatinX BIPOC POP UT Austin (March 7th-10th)

BIPOC Pop 2024 was definitely a new perspective for me (joey phd).  Both times I came in the past I was highly involved with panels or workshops and definitely working on producing photos and video as primary content to document the event.  This time I attended as a co workshop leader and then just as an attendee.  It was much more of my “anthropologist hat on,” kinda attendance where I get to just sit and absorb what’s going on around me.  I spoke with a lot of different attendees, artists, academics, students, people from the community in general.  I went to some dinners and in general just took it all in.  This year’s blog post is definitely a reflective one. (Full Article)

Guadalupe Pop Up (March 25th)

Wheelz Studio and Dreamonoid’s HiFi hosted Guadalupe Pop Shop to celebrate the opening of Wheelz Studio, a barber shop located in co-owner of Dreamonoid’s Christian Rios’ 1711 Guadalupe building in San Antonio, TX.  Media & Gaming Lab director joey lopez is co-owner of the Dreamonoid’s HiFi and provided a full PA and lined up performers for the event.  (Full Article)

Afro Latinx Writing Symposium (2/29)

Hosted by the Glasscock Center, the Afro Latinx Writing Symposium was a continuation of programing from Fall 2024:

“In collaboration with faculty and graduate students from English, Africana Studies, GLAC, and Communications, this Spring the HLSS Initiative is organizing a 1-day symposium called “AfroLatinx Life and Writing” to bring together AfroLatinx artists and AfroLatinx studies scholars at both the senior and early-career phase. This event follows up the Fall event we supported, “Landscapes of Belonging” which provided poetry workshops from Raina J. León and Janel Pineda and a recital and open mic poetry space for TAMU faculty, students, and community members. This Spring symposium will go beyond scholarly panels. We plan to create a space for scholars and artists to be in conversation. Many of our invitees refuse the rigid division between scholarship and creativity. The event will include a conversation between scholars and artists about the art/scholarship divide, a recital/public reading, a panel on “The State of AfroLatinx Life and Writing,” and a discussion of Regina Mills’ forthcoming book, Invisibility and Influence: A Literary History of AfroLatinidades (Spring 2024 from University of Texas Press). For more information and a list of cosponsors, visit tx.ag/HLSS.”

Connor and Dr. Joey Lopez were able to take photos and document the events that took place. 

 

Silent Disco

Media & Gaming Lab student Connor McKormick attend the College of Performance, Visualization and Fine Art’s Silent Disco where we captured the events moments and enjoyed some tunes himself.  We love supporting our colleagues and their ventures!

Initiatives/Workshops/Meetups

New Social Media Team Development

We are proud to announce we have a newly formed Social Media Duo (plus more joining) of Sasha and Connor!  At the beginning of the semester they teamed up at a meeting and began the back end work to develop a social media team for the Media & Gaming Lab.  Previous to this joey phd and then student Dr. Ramirez headed up the social media accounts.  It’s been amazing to watch our IG grow and coverage of our events and collaborator events show up all over social media.  Stay tuned for further initiatives from the Media & Gaming Lab Social Media Group.

Synth Workshop

joey phd and Kang hosted an audio and video synth workshop and got to give demos and have Media & Gaming Lab workshop attendees interact with the audio and video synth setup.  It was a great hands-on workshop, we hope to have more and also to journey over to PVFA’s Will Connor Ph.D. ‘s synth lab.

Gaming Analysis Meetup

Ph.D. student David Dockery has developed a Gaming Analysis Meetup.  This spring it was hosted on Wednesdays from 5-7pm.  David would provide snacks and Media & Gaming Lab attendees would come and play through videos games.  The titles they cover this spring was:

  • In Stars & Time
  • Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2
  • LA Noir
  • Mass Effect
  • Halo:  Combat Evolved
  • Star Wars: Jedi Outcast
  • Journey

We will continue to build interest in the Gaming Analysis Meet Up and we will also be developing more Gaming meetups in the fall so stay tuned!

Virtual Reality Initiative 

Thanks for Leo Garza for the push to start a Virtual Reality Initiative, Leo Garza and Connor McCormick have worked together, Leo securing 4 Meta Quest 2 head sets from engineering for the Media & Gaming Lab and Connor setting them up and preparing them to be used in the lab for testing and exploration of research topics and initiatives.  We are still working with IT to get the IOT (internet of things) wifi setup and are hopeful that by the end of the summer we will be full operational.

Skateboard Deck Art Project (cont.)

The Skateboard Deck Art Project is still in full swing with multiple Skateboards coming in this past semester and a few still out for the summer.  While this project has taken longer than anticipated to come together, we are excited to put a full gallery installation together for Fall of 2024.  Here are some sneak peeks of some of the boards we have so far.  

A special thanks to our artists submissions so far:

  • Clayton Bever
  • Duvalin
  • Grace Barr
  • Gabrien “Gabe” Deutsch
  • Jose M
  • Drew Tiritilli

Aggie Robotics Documentation

This semester we were approached by Evert of the Aggie Robotics team.  He asked if we could with their social media content and covering their world competition with them in Dallas, TX.  Connor McCormick volunteered and what has transpired is truly what our lab is all about.  Developing bonds with other organizations at a personal level and elevating each other’s profiles through experiential learning.  Check out some of the photos and videos on IG.  We look forward to seeing where this collaboration goes.

Podcasting Check In

Media & Gaming Lab podcast producer Professor Jonathan Guajardo has been working with students and facilitating multiple shows:

  • 12 Woman Podcast
  • The Passback
  • Climbing Zion, Catholic Podcast
  • Aggie SAMA, SAMA- cast

LSU Field Trip, Electric LaTex Student Music Conference 2024 (1/26-27)

Media & Gaming Lab collaborator Professor Will Connor of the College of Performance, Visualization and Fine Arts led students on a trip to LSU for a music conference:

“Over the weekend of January 26-27, 2024, students from the School of Performance, Visualization, and Fine Arts at Texas A&M University attended Electric LaTex, a student electronic and experimental music conference in Baton Rouge, LA, on the Louisiana State University campus. The event focuses on university students from Texas and Louisiana, and is hosted by those same universities on a rotating basis. The event gives the students in music and/or music technology schools or departments the opportunity to exhibit their new works and installations, perform improvised pieces, and present discussions on their compositional and creative processes.”

–Electric LaTex Student Music Conference 2024

Media & Gaming Lab Member Accomplishments

  • Rick Pulos – Rick Pulos – Ph.D. Candidate Rick Pulos completed his comprehensive exams this spring and is now headed to dissertating. We are very proud of all of Rick’s accomplishments. At the start of the year Rick collaborated with Will Connor on a short video for the Performance Studies faculty and Assistant Directed Sister Act: A Divine Musical Comedy at The Theatre Company of Bryan-College Station (TTC). At TTC, he started TTC Teaches, a low cost series of workshops aimed to inspire the BCS community to be creative and collaborate at the theatre. Not one to slow down, Rick joined Valentina Aduen’s documentary team on location in Texas during spring break. After completing his exam, Rick auditioned and was cast in the musical The Prom and went straight into rehearsals in April. And somehow he still managed to attend multiple Madonna concerts across the US! Rick’s dissertation will be on the Star Trek fandom and is tentatively titled “Gaaays in Spaaace: Queering, Diversifying, and Transforming the Fan Convention.” Live long and prosper and don’t let them assimilate you! 
  • Nathan Carr – We would like to congratulate Nathan Carr on his completion of his masters degree.  His final project was based around video games and mental health, which he presented at the spring Storytelling in the 21st Century – Our Academic Selves – Conference.  Nathan Carr has been an active member of the Media & Gaming Lab and is someone who has always offered ideas and feedback on projects and someone we have valued as a member.  Congratulations Nate!  
  • Valentina Aduen – Valentia Aduen has been hard at work this spring beginning  production on her documentary and research for her dissertation.  Valentina assembled a film crew and shot on location for her dissertation in east Texas; flying in participants for her documentary from around the U.S.  Here are some behind the scene photos of the production!  We are very proud of Valentina’s work, she had two opportunities this spring to present her work in progress.  Seeing her work come to life has been inspiring for us in the Media & Gaming Lab.
  • Jonathan Guajardo – In addition to teaching full time, professor Guajardo has been diligently working away on his Ph.D. at Texas Tech in Higher Education.  He is currently finishing up his course work and will be dissertating in the fall.  We are very proud of his accomplishments.  Additionally he has been producing multiple podcasts as mentioned above, he taught a hullabaloo course this year and has continually supported all the lab initiatives.  
  • Zayno Rayne – Congratulations to Zayno Rayne for completing his degree in Public Health Administration and graduating this spring!  Zayno joined our lab interested in music and as documented (click here), he has dove knee deep in it while also interning with MD Anderson.  We are so proud of Zayno and all his accomplishments! 

Media & Gaming Lab Award Announced

The inaugural Joey Lopez Award for Community building was awarded to joey lopez phd. In conversation and collaboration with current and former students, the annual award was created to recognize students, faculty, and staff who take the time to create community in the Department of Communication & Journalism through compassion and leadership. Joey’s award this year came with a booklet with quotes from current and former students that celebrated him as mentor, colleague, friend, and teacher.

Conclusion

This semester has been one of the busiest as of yet. The goal of the lab has been to facilitate creativity and community collaboration. As we have grown, it has been amazing to see so many diverse projects come to fruition. We are excited about next academic year, we have plans to host more conferences, workshops and reach out to local community organizations and university orgs and departments to collaborate on new projects and initiatives, so stay tune!

LATINX POP BOPIC 2024

CMC and MGL Documentation, News, UT Austin LATINX POPLAB
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BIPOC Pop 2024 was definitely a new perspective for me.  Both times I came in the past I was highly involved with panels or workshops and definitely working on producing photos and video as primary content to document the event.  This time I attended as a co workshop leader and then just as an attendee.  It was much more of my “anthropologist hat on,” kinda attendance where I get to just sit and absorb what’s going on around me.  I spoke with a lot of different attendees, artists, academics, students, people from the community in general.  I went to some dinners and in general just took it all in.  This year’s blog post is definitely a reflective one.

I carpooled with Dr. Ramirez from Bryan, TX.  Dr. Ramirez is an assistant professor at the University of Houston Downtown and helps run the Center for Latino Studies.   We would have good discussions on the drives to and from the conference, getting to discuss theory, our jobs and on the way back, deep reflections on the conference.  It was amazing.  We also hosted a workshop together about multimodal academic works and pedagogical approaches.  Dr. Ramirez did an amazing job leading the workshop and the interactions were great.

At the conference itself I just kinda sat around and would “graze” the panels, workshops and artist market.  I attended some great workshops, my personal favorites that I attended were Mary Cantu’s and Ernesto Cuevas’.  Both approached their workshops in a very inclusive community oriented way that encouraged everyone to participate and interact, yet also time for self reflection and growth.  

Anel Flores

I was able to capture some video of Anel Flores’ Zine workshop, it was amazing. Anel is a poet, visual artist and in general a public figure in San Antonio who represents the “other,” in so many spaces. While I was not able to attend the full workshop, I was so inspired by her reading of her zine and the imagery used. I was personally touched by her use of Jovita Idar, my great great Aunt.

Mary’s Workshop

Mary’s workshop focused on comics and the panels themselves, she had us choose comics that we would then color the panels and create a “basic” meaning of shapes and colors that give meaning to the panels. I created my own using a comic and when finished took a side by side of a similar page and my work, it was definitely a good process for both the mind and creativity.

Ernesto’s Workshop

Ernesto led a workshop where he had people pair up and develop what I am calling “miniature murals” based on text, art and thinking about stories.  I worked with Dukes comic’s co-creator Dr. E.C. Dukes, along with my son jojo on creating a mini mural.  What is so awesome to me about this kinds of workshops is that it is so much more than learning to create a mini mural, it is the journey, the conversations and intermodal art approach to creating, creating bonds, memories and lessons.

Dr. González’s Workshop

I also attended Dr. Christopher González’s  workshop, Latinx Life Tales: Writing Workshop From Memory to Memoir.  His talk explored his journey to creating Big Scary Brown Guy – A memoir.  My personal reason for going to this was very open ended.  I just had a feeling to go and that I would figure out why when I was there. Dr. González was a great presenter and fielded questions of all types. 

My Reflection On Dr. González’s Workshop

What I took away personally was that I should create a memoir at some point and if I were to do one soon I think a title might be “A academic degenerates life – part one.”  It made me think about a list of articles I have already written that might culminate into something.  Here are a few:

Artist & Book Market

The artist and book market is one of my favorite parts of BIPOC. It is where I get to meet so many creative people, learn about publishing opportunities and purchase from and support artists directly. This year did not disappoint. I got the pleasure of meeting the Dukes after many years of hearing about their amazing work. It was definitely a para-social relationship moment where I have followed their work for so long on social media that I felt like I knew them. The cool part was that I got to know them very quickly. They are definitely people I want to stay in touch with.

I also met Sarah Rafael García of the LibroMobile Arts Cooperative and learned about their efforts in Santa Ana, California to celebrate Latinx heritage through community oriented art works and shows. I am hoping we are able to collaborate on some sort of project soon.

In general I got lots of good art work, here are some of my “finds”

Summary

Overall BIPOC 2024 was great. I will say it exhausted me. Ultimately I am an anthropologist and I take in a lot of the energy of people around me and it was overwhelming. The overarching feeling was one of optimism. That said, I do want to recognized the feeling of internal and external struggle by the artists and academics who presented. Many stories and pieces and presentations are based around painful experiences, past and present. This overtone definitely kept things “real.” I saw many academics who are currently struggling to find themselves and representations of themselves in academia. Yearning to learn how to navigate Academia at all levels. I did publish an article on my personal website about it:

Mentee Cheat Sheet For Professors

I encourage anyone who has the smallest amount of interest to attend BIPOC 2025, it is free and something that Fredrick Luis Aldama and Samantha Ceballos produce at a level of sincerity that shows and attendees like me appreciate and value.

LatinX Critical Creative Consortium

CMC and MGL Documentation, News, UT Austin LATINX POPLAB
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The LatinX Critical Creative Consortium was founded 2 years ago by University of Texas Professor Fredrick Luis Aldama at the University of Texas at Austin in 2021. Professor joey did a full write up about that event and the impact is had on the CMC and the MGL. Professor Regina Mills of the English Department at Texas A&M and Media & Gaming Lab hosted it at Texas A&M University in 2022 (write up here). This year (2023), the event was once again held at the University of Texas at Austin, specifically in the now fully remodeled and activated LatinX Pop Lab on the 4th floor in the Patton Hall building.

“Every Fall, the Latinx Creative Critical Consortium Symposium offers students from a variety of Texas university campuses the opportunity to share, workshop, and engage with the cutting edge Latinx creative and scholarly work being done today. The day’s program includes student panels, roundtables, workshops and breakout sessions led by faculty and featured professional creatives.”

FRIDAY OPEN MIC NIGHT

The programing started on Friday night at Professor Latinx’s home with a poetry event that set a nice relaxed mood. Multiple attendees shared their works and fun was had by all. Here are some excerpts of various poets performances.

SATURDAY CONSORTIUM

The Latinx CCC’s consortium took place Saturday at UT Austin in Patton Hall in the Latinx Pop Lab. There were two tracks, a presentation track and workshop track. The opening remarks by the Latinx Pop Lab and Aldama was inspiring and set a very positive tone. Attendees introduced themselves and quickly became aquatinted. And as always, some great morning treats and coffee were provided! You can’t have platicas without treats and coffee! Here is the schedule:

Presentation Highlights

Texas A&M faculty and students were very proud to host 3 panels. The Texas A&M Media & Gaming Lab was hosted an undergraduate panel moderated by joey featuring 2 students and their works and one community presenter from Bryan, TX, Victor of the Vortex. The Communication & Journalism graduate program hosted a panel moderated by Dr. Villanueva about Multimodal Scholarship. The third panel was moderated by Dr. Mills featuring graduate students presenting their multimodal works.

We were also very excited that Professor Elena Foulis from Texas A&M San Antonio brought undergraduate students to present their multimodal projects, it was very inspiring.

Overall the there were many great panels and a lot to reflect on. The energy and positivity shared by the presenters were uplifting and facilitative.

Workshop Highlights

The Latinx Creative Critical Consortium workshops were a big hit as well and ranged from academic publishing workshops all the way to comic book making and reuse art facilitation. Carlos Kelly presented about how to publish an academic work as he has just released “Ready Player Juan,” a book about latinx and gaming culture. Cristina Casas did a zine workshop where attendees created their own works. Mary Cantu of San Antonio led a unique reuse workshop where people create saints and super heros from old donated photos and reuse materials.

Testimonials

“This is my second year attending the Latinx CCC Symposium and it just keeps getting better. The dialogues that are shared and stories that are expanded on are always ones that are beyond inspiring. The symposium allows us to connect with our community and find ways to collaborate beyond the walls of our universities.”

-Sophie Villarreal

“This was a great consortium meeting that brought together creatives who are on the forefront of making inclusive space in media, universities, and Texas.”

-Professor George Villanueva

“Bringing students, faculty, creatives together Latinx/e/a/o for Open Mic Night followed by a Latinx Critical Creative Day of sharing, learning, exploring, making was exhilarating–rejuvenating!!!!”

-Professor Latinx