Freyermuth to Talk on 'Audio Visions of Utopia' to Offer Clarity on Nature of the Metaverse

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Gundolf S. Freyermuth will give a lecture from 5-6 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 16, at the Giffels Auditorium on "Audio Visions of Utopia in the Future's Modern History: From the Total Work of Art to the Metaverse." 

Freyermuth is the co-director and co-founder of the Cologne Game Lab, located in Cologne, Germany. He is currently co-director and full professor of media and game studies at the Cologne Game Lab, an institute of the Technical University Cologne that he co-founded in 2010 with professor Bjoern Bartholdy. In addition, he is an associate professor for comparative media studies at the ifs international film school köln, where — from 2004 to 2014 — he was a professor for aesthetic and communication, later full professor for comparative media studies. From 2020 to 2021, he served as a visiting professor at Manchester Metropolitan University.

In his presentation, Freyermuth will situate the metaverse and its constitutive components in the modern process of inventing, within media, the future in general, as well as future forms of media. Special attention will be paid to the metaverse's relationship to two other digital media utopias, namely "cyberspace" and the "holodeck." This lecture is for a broad audience and will bring some clarity to the confusing and topical issue of what exactly the metaverse is.

The lecture is from 5-6 p.m. in Giffels Auditorium on Wednesday, Nov. 16, and is free and open to all U of A students and faculty.

Additionally, Freyermuth will lead the Weekly Digital Humanities Meet-Up from 12:30-1:30 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 17, in the World Languages & Digital Humanities Studio in J.B. Hunt Hall 207. He will speak on founding the Cologne Game Lab. This event is free and open to all U of A students and faculty as well.

For any questions or for more information, contact Curtis Maughan at cmaughan@uark.edu.