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!!!!”
This is joey lopez reporting about the Latinx Pop Lab – BIPOC 2023. As previously posted, UT Austin’s LatinX Pop Lab hosted a BIPOC Conference in 2022, it was a huge success.
This year was no different. Conceived by Dr. Fredrick Luis Aldama and facilitated by the stellar LatinX Pop Lab staff and volunteers, the event grew in size and content. Instead of two days, it was a three day affair this year with panels, lectures, workshops and an animation expo.
BIPOC 2023 POSTER
My role this year was to garner interviews of as many participants as possible. Artists, presenters, volunteers, organizers and anyone that Anthony Ramirez and I could track down was asked for an interview. Which reminds me, THANK YOU Anthony, aka Dr. Ramirez, for all your help! For those who do not know, Anthony is no longer a student a Texas A&M University. Dr. Ramirez is now an Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Houston-Downtown in the Arts and Communication Department.
A/V Nerd Time (Skip if you are not interested in nerdy A/V stuff)
For the nerds out there, I decided not to use a big camera setup for the interviews, instead I used my iphone 14pro, a tripod and Rode Wireless ToGo lavalier microphone.
For the super nerds, I used Filmic v7, shooting in 10bit HLG. The app give full manual control over your audio and video settings which is super nice and shooting in 10bit color depth gives you the ability to color grade at a prosumer/professional level that has traditionally been reserved for mirrorless and dslr style cameras and of course cinema cameras.
I hope to host a workshop on this topic soon. For now, check out this short video:
Back to our regular programing.
The scope of BIPOC 2023 really opened up avenues of discussions LatinX Comics and Gaming. The schedule shows more depth into more topics than last years. Panels critically explored comics, video games and popular culture through representation, semiotics, semantics, rhetoric, race, gender and many other lenses. I was able to record two great panels:
BiPOC POP 2023 – “I as We Comics” – Panel
BIPOC POP 2023 – “Queering BIPOC POP” – Panel
In addition to panels there were multiple workshops, here are just a few titles:
“Cosmic Memory Making For Visual Storytelling”
“Creating Your First Comic”
“Making BIPOC Boardgames”
“Learning the Manga Way”
It was amazing to see artists, students, academics and community attendees taking part in the workshops and literally find new ways to express themselves.
Vender Space
The vendor space was twice as big as last years, giving more floor space to multiple artists to show their works. I was able to meet and talk with so almost all the artists at length and of course I walked away with some great art! Here is a short video I took after the first day of attending and what I picked up from the creators and artists.
Anthony’s Reflections
What’s up, everyone? Anthony here! Thank you for the shoutout earlier, joey. I really appreciate it.
As joey previously mentioned, I had the opportunity of helping him conduct interviews and help Dr. Aldama and Samantha Ceballos-Sosa (Latinx Pop Lab assistant, graduate student extraordinaire, and co-founder of the Capirotada Collective) with their social media posts. Much like joey, besides being a professor of media and popular culture, I also like to dabble with new media.
This year’s BiPOC Pop was my first as a professor, which felt very weird for me. I constantly felt like I was in a weird state of in-betweenness or for those who study Gloria Anzaldúa or Latinx related work, I was in a state of nepantla (the Nahuatl word which means “in the middle of it” or “in-between”). To be completely transparent, I was very anxious due to this in-betweenness and other personal factors, but what helped calm these nerves of mine down was the amazing sense of community that was around me.
Similar to BiPOC Pop 2022, this year featured an amazing cast of creatives and scholars whose work centers around popular culture in some capacity. For each of these two BiPOC POP conferences, the highlights for me is always centered around the community building aspect of things. I got to network with so many artists, creatives, and scholars whose work is incredible. On top of that, I was able to reunite with la familia Lopez and the Capirotada Collective. Being able to spend time with these amazing group of people helped center me in ways that I needed.
I also got to see Dr. Aldama again and I am always in a constant awe of his presence and sheer community building attributes. This is something that inspires me as a young professor to help build community for individuals like the attendees and presenters of BiPOC Pop. Being able to intersect critical and creative work together into an amazing event is something that blows my mind in the best possible way, and it drives me to want to be a better presence for this community and for my own community.
I was also able to participate in a panel discussion centered around Latinx representation and identity in video games. Within this panel, I was with some of the best and up-coming scholars within Latinx video game scholarship including: Dr. Regina Mills and her student, Caroline Shee, Dr. Carlos Gabriel Gonzalez Kelly, and moderated by the legend himself, joey lopez, phd. While I have not done a lot of research on video games, I was able to share my experience of playing video games and the influence of having video games in my life. I also had the opportunity to share with the community that joey, Dr. Arthur Soto-Vasquez of Texas A&M-International, and I will be contributing a chapter to an upcoming collected volume curated by Dr. Mills and Dr. Kelly. Stay tuned for that!
Again, I just want to thank Dr. Aldama, Samantha, and everyone from the Latinx Pop Lab for such a wonderful event. I look forward to next year’s BiPOC POP 2024!
As stated we were able to collective over 30 interviews from attendees. In these interviews you learn about their work and their thoughts on attending BIPOC 2023.
This semester proved to be a busy one with a lot of projects, collaborations, media & gaming lab participant personal accomplishments and we even hosted a conference! This was our first semester going full steam, with full in person and online meet ups plus hosting events.
As many know, our goal at the Media & Gaming Lab and the Convergent Media Collective is to facilitate others’ ideas and help bring them into reality. Rather than being a directive lab the Media & Gaming Lab focuses on maintaining a space and group of creatives that can help each other build out innovative ideas, concepts, prototyping and artistic endeavors.
This semester we had an array group and personal achievements and in this post we will be sharing and celebrating those as well as giving you a preview of what is in store for the Spring of 2023.
Fall 2023 Latinx Critical Creative Consortium
On October 15th the Texas A&M Communication and Journalism Department’s Media & Gaming hosted the Latinx Critical Creative Consortium. Texas A&M Professor Regina Mills Ph.D. of English also helped plan and implement the conference. The results were amazing and are fully documented in its separate write up here on the site. The consortium inspired the students so much that we have a spring 2023 Consortium on the books (see below).
The semester proved very active in terms of guest speakers. We had people from all over Texas giving lectures to our students in our courses, both joey and Professor Jonathan Guajardo hosted many guest lectures. The aim of our in-class guest speakers is to provide students with highly engaging workshops and lectures where students feel enabled to speak up and dialog with the guest. Another intention is for the students to have direct connections with the professional industries we study and creatively develop work for, as well as academia.
Kaye Cruz is an international freelance media producer based out of Central Texas. He has regularly given guest lectures at A&M since 2018. His experiences shared have had a huge impact on the students. This semester he spoke about his work in Uvalde covering Robb Elementary, coverage of the Queens passing in London as well as his work locally with storm coverage for national agencies.
Rebecca Macias & Luis Vazquez from the Express News & MySA.com, a Hurst news agency based out of San Antonio, Texas. Rebecca is the social media editor and Luis Vazquez is a multimedia producer for the Express news. They presented on current trends and issues in social media and news reporting.
Andrew Valdez is the Director of Creative Communications for the Alamo Colleges District in San Antonio, TX. Andrew presented to COMM 476, Advanced Social Media about higher education and social media from both an institutional perspective and also sharing his own trajectory in the field.
Rick Pulos visited Joey’s Popular Culture class and delivered a lecture on Fan Studies. He focused on fan culture and community across music and sports. He also introduced students to the psychology of fanaticism. Ever wonder why you love your favorite sports team even when they lose? Rick was able to slip in a few references to the object of his fanaticism: Madonna!
Anthony Ramirez Ph.D. is a professor of Communication at the University of Houston Downtown and alumni of the Media & Gaming Lab here at Texas A&M. He gave a guest a lecture about Fandom and Comics to joey’s COMM 340 Popular Culture. His talk always spurs students interest in the topics to the point of creating mid term and final projects based around his lecture.
Elena Foulis is an Associate Professor at Texas A&M San Antonio, she gave a guest lecture to joey’s COMM 250 New Media and Narrative Voice. Her lecture was about performing oral histories and the work that goes into it. The students loved the lecture and the next class we did mini oral history projects.
Kali Johnson a Communication senior and longtime member of the Media & Gaming Lab gave 4 class lectures to Jonathan Guajardo discussing Narrative approaches and other media making topics.
In Person Meet Ups
Durning the fall of 2022 we were able to host multiple workshops durning our in person meet ups. Some were professor led and some student lead. It was amazing to see so many talented people lend their time to train and teach others.
Interview Skills and Lighting Tutorial
Many of us who create content often find ourselves conducting interviews. This tutorial was a collaborative effort with multiple Media & Gaming Lab members. We used Lab equipment to successfully light and capture audio of members talking about their lives and passions. Joey expertly demonstrated the Q&A process while Rick and Leo collaborated on the technical aspects.
Screen Printing Workshop
In a fun switch from digital to analog, the Lab supported a workshop on Screen Printing. We learned a lot about how to work with the tools of this artistic medium and what sorts of tricks were important to successfully producing a beautiful image on various items including shirts and canvas tote bags. Later, we offered Screen Printing at the Latinx Critical Creative Consortium as a family friendly activity for our younger attendees.
Audio Production Workshop
Maxwell Burgess, lead singer of the band Small Talk, a former Aggie, visited the Lab and offered a tutorial session on audio production. Several students got the chance to sit with him and learn more about creating music. One of the highlights was when Joey asked him to grab one of our guitars and sing us a song which he did with amazing skill and talent!
Small Talk Concert
A team of Media & Gaming Lab members (Zayno, Nate, Rick, and Joey) got together to capture video and photos of Small Talk’s live concert at the Grand Stafford Theater in downtown Bryan. Zayno expertly operated our gimbal to capture smooth footage and Nate took amazing photos using one of our Sony cameras with a new telephoto lens. The venue gave us a backstage tour of their recording studio which was amazing to see. Small Talk played an impressive set to a crowded theater.
Media & Gaming Lab Personal Project Highlights
Rhett Brady, an undergraduate Communication & Journalism Major in the New Media and Gaming Lab wrote and published an academic paper entitled Ang Lee’s Hulk: Unique and Overlooked Colorful Cinema Amongst Superhero Homogeny for an independent study course with Professor Jonathan Guajardo. In this paper, he analyzed the movie from three perspectives: color theory, video-editing techniques, and 35mm filmmaking. Rhett argued that, even though the film received mixed reviews upon its release, it deserves revisiting in the age of commercially sucessful superhero movies due to its unique stylistic nature and its dedication to storytelling. Rhett published his paper in the Bryan-College Station Chronicle and will be presenting it at the 2023 Pop Culture Association Conference in April in San Antonio, Texas. He also graduated in December 2022 and has his sights set upon continuing his education in a Master’s program as well as working in the media industry.
Grace Barr is multimodal artist and for her COMM 250 New Media course created an animation called “Permanence” which explores existential themes.
Kali Johnson Legally Blonde Paper
Nathan Carr “Racial Stereotype Perpetuation in Grand Theft Auto V”
Professor joey lopez developed a short youtube series about Tavo Coffee, a local coffee shop in Bryan Texas who’s coffee is sourced through the owners family in Guatemala.
Rick Pulos began to develop a documentary on volunteer community theatre. He plans to buy some equipment and also utilize Media & Gaming equipment to capture the story of the Theatre Company of Brian College Station. He will go into production in January.
Media & Gaming Lab Personal Announcements
Alazar Asrat was one of the first Media & Gaming Lab members, his participation with the lab has played a large role in terms of recruiting new members and participation. He graduated this past Fall 2022 with a degree from Texas A&M’s Department of Communication & Journalism. He has taken on a full time job working for KAMU the local public television station in Brazos county.
Anthony Ramirez Ph.D. graduated from the Texas A&M department Communication & Journalism this fall. He also started his job at the University of Houston Downtown this past fall as an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies in their Department of Arts & Communication.
Jonathan Guajardo, a lecturer in the Communication & Journalism department and faculty of the Media & Gaming Lab began his Ph.D. journey with Texas Tech University working towards a degree in Leadership and Higher Education.
Rhett Brady graduated this Fall 2022 from Texas A&M’s Department of Communication & Journalism and is now applying to graduate programs for the Fall. He has seen great success throughout his application process and is already fielding multiple offers.
