Melanie Swalwell

BA (Hons) (Macquarie), PhD (University of Technology, Sydney)

Senior Lecturer, Screen and Media
Course coordinator, B. Media

 A scholar of digital media arts, cultures and histories, Melanie’s research centres on newer media with particular attention to media arts, digital games, and the intersections of these.  She has authored numerous chapters and articles, in both traditional and interactive formats.  Melanie’s anthology The Pleasures of Computer Gaming: Essays on Cultural History, Theory and Aesthetics (co-edited with Jason Wilson) was published in 2008 (McFarland).

Currently, Melanie is completing a suite of projects on the history of digital games in 1980s New Zealand, and is commencing research into the Australian history of digital games during this period.  She is the 2009 recipient of the State Library of New South Wales’ Nancy Keesing Fellowship.  Prior to joining Flinders, Melanie taught at Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand). 

Teaching:

MDIA1002 Inter-Media
MDIA2003 From VR to Web 2.0: Digital Media Pasts and Futures

Links:

Games for Art’s Sake http://www.archive.org/details/game-art
NZTronix blog and site www.nztronix.org.nz
Personal site

Supervisory interests

social and cultural aspects of digital media technologies
the senses and aesthetics
audience experience, reception, and engagement
cultures of use / productive users
computer gaming cultures
digital media art, including game art
Walter Benjamin as a theorist of media and technology
histories of technology / the digital as cultural heritage

Selected publications

Swalwell, Melanie & Michael Davidson (forthcoming) “Malzak”, Ludologica Retro: Volume 1: Vintage Arcade (1971-1984), Matteo Bittanti and Ian Bogost (eds).   Online at http://nztronix.org.nz/malzak.php

Swalwell, Melanie (forthcoming) “Lan Gaming Groups: Snapshots from an Australasian case study, 1999-2008”, Gaming Cultures and Place in the Asia–Pacific Region, Larissa Hjorth & Dean Chan, eds, Routledge.

Swalwell, Melanie (forthcoming 2009) “Preserving Local Computer Game Software: A multi-dimensional yet achievable challenge”, Convergence: The Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, (special issue on cultural memory and digital preservation, ed. Will Straw and Jessica Santone).

Swalwell, Melanie & Jason Wilson (eds) (2008) The Pleasures of Computer Games: Essays on Cultural History, Theory and Aesthetics, Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co.

Swalwell, Melanie (2008) “Kinaesthetic Responsiveness: A Neglected Pleasure”, The Pleasures of Computer Games: Essays on Cultural History, Theory and Aesthetics, Swalwell & Wilson (eds), Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co, pp. 72-93.

Swalwell, Melanie (2008) “1980s Home Coding: the art of amateur programming”, Aotearoa Digital Arts Reader, Stella Brennan and Su Ballard (eds), Auckland: Clouds/ADA, pp. 193-201.

Swalwell, Melanie (2007- ) “Early New Zealand Software Database”,  http://nztronix.org.nz/main.php

Swalwell, Melanie (2007) “The Remembering and the Forgetting of Early Digital Games: From novelty to detritus and back again” Journal of Visual Culture, special issue, Detritus & the Moving Image, Amelie Hastie, ed., vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 255-273.

Swalwell, Melanie (2007) “Independent Game Development: Two views from Australia,” (an interview with Julian Oliver and Kipper), Videogames and Art, Andy Clarke and Grethe Mitchell (eds), Bristol, Intellect Books, pp. 160-180.

Swalwell, Melanie & Erik Loyer (2006) “Castoffs from the Golden Age”, Vectors: Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular, issue 3, April, http://www.vectorsjournal.org  Exhibited: Electrofringe Online, Sept 28 - Oct 2, Newcastle, NSW, Australia (coordinated by Sumugan Sivanesan, Ben Byrne, Cat Jones), www.electrofringe.net

Swalwell, Melanie (2005) “Early Games Production in New Zealand”, DiGRA Conference: “Changing Views: Worlds in Play”, 17-20 June 2005, DiGRA Proceedings, Available online http://www.digra.org/dl/

Swalwell, Melanie (2005) “Introduction” and “Contact Zones: Edge in ‘Portable Cities’ and ‘FragMental Storm’”, New Zealand Journal of Media Studies, special issue on ‘Asian’ media arts practice in/and Aotearoa New Zealand, Tony Schirato, Melanie Swalwell, Verica Rupar (eds), vol. 9, no. 1, http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-Sch091JMS.html.

Swalwell, Melanie (2003) “Multi-Player Computer Gaming: ‘Better than playing (PC Games) with yourself’, Reconstruction, an interdisciplinary cultural studies community, vol. 3, no. 4, October, http://reconstruction.eserver.org/034/swalwell.htm

Swalwell, Melanie (2003) “‘This isn’t a computer game you know!’: revisiting the computer games / televised war analogy”,  Level Up: Digital Games Research Conference, Marinka Copier and Joost Raessens (eds), conference proceedings, Universiteit Utrecht/DIGRA, Netherlands. Online at www.digra.org/dl

Swalwell, Melanie (2003) “Ethics and Aesthetics: Defamiliarization and the Virtual”, Consciousness Reframed: non-local, non-linear, non-ordinary (Fourth International CAiiA-STAR Research Conference – CD of Proceedings), Perth: John Curtin Gallery, Curtin University of Technology.

Swalwell, Melanie (2003) “The meme game: Escape from Woomera”, RealTime, 55, June/July, http://www.realtimearts.net/rt55/swallwell.html

Swalwell, Melanie (2002) “New/Inter/Media”, Convergence: The Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, (special Intermedia issue, Jűrgen Heinrichs and Yvonne Spielmann, eds), Winter, vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 46-56.

Swalwell, Melanie (2002) “The Senses and Memory in Intercultural Cinema” (a review of Laura U. Marks’ (2000) The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses), Film-Philosophy, vol. 6 no. 32, October http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol6-2002/n32swalwell

Swalwell, Melanie (2000) “‘Outing’ TV in the Olympic City”, M/C Reviews, 18 Oct.

Editorial boards

Convergence: The journal of research into new media technologies (Sage)
Reconstruction: An interdisciplinary cultural studies community http://reconstruction.eserver.org
Historical Studies of Digital Entertainment Media (Stanford)
Second Nature (RMIT)