ENERGIZING MEDIA

This is a new research initiative that will bring together scholars and students for brainstorming and collaboration at UCSB. It builds upon past symposia at UCSB including, Energy Challenges in the Developing World (2015), and Solar Array (2018), as well as fieldwork conducted by the GMTaC Lab in Tanzania in 2018-19. The project will investigate how people without grid access in developing contexts energize their media devices in order to participate in the global media economy. It will also set out to develop a system for identifying the energy sources of film and media products and analyzing resulting aesthetics that emerge in different parts of the world. The project will also engage with recent research on the energizing of media distribution systems, and discuss alternatives to fossil fuel and energy intensive systems.