andres lombana-bermudez

My name is Andres Lombana Bermudez (aka VvVA) and I am an interdisciplinary designer/researcher working at the intersection of youth, digital technology, and learning. From 2009 to 2015 I was a PhD student in Media Studies at the department of Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas at Austin and succesfully defended my dissertation on May, 2015.

In this website you can see the projects I developed while being a doctoral student. The site functions as an archive.

Research

I am a researcher with The Digital Edge team at the Connected Learnign Research Network .
My dissertation project is an ethnographic study of Latino youth everyday uses of digital media. I mantain a
wiki with the developments of this project.

For the first three years of the Digital Edge project (2011-2014), we conducted an ethnography in a low-income, minority-majority, public high school in the Austin metropolitan area. We wrote "The Digital Edge: An Ethnographic Inquiry Into the Evolving Worlds of Social, Digital, and Educational Inequality" (New York University Press, forthcoming, 2017), a book where we explore the themes of digital inequalities, STEM education, access to opportunity, after-school programming, and the new media ecologies of minority youths. For my dissertation I also drew from the qualitative data we collected during this period of time.

Doing Innovation is the name that we used to refer to the second phase of the Digital Edge (2014-2017). During this phase our team focused on the theme of alternative pathways to opportunity. That is, understanding how young people is navigating the new economy and creating innovation ecosystems where they can thrive. I worked on ethnographic case studies of two innovation communities in Austin: hip hop practitioners (AMX), and indie game designers (Juegos Rancheros).

Design

I design learning experiences based on the principles of participation, interconnectedness, constant challenge, and hands-on learning. I especialize on workshops about new media literacies, interactive mapping, game design, connected learning, and information quality. In this video you can see an ignite walk where I explain DGZiN, on of the learning experiences I helped to design and implement in a public school in Central Texas.

I am interested in game design, both for screens and for physical spaces, both digital and analogue. I am particularly interested in designing games that mix virtual and physical spaces, and take place in public spaces such as parks, squares, and other open urban and rural spaces. Marfauria is an example of this kind of hybrid big games that take advantage of geo-locative media technologies to enable a game play that mixes virtual and physical spaces. Besides this type of games I have experimented with mobile gaming and have helped to run workshops and camps in which youth (middle and high schoolers) can learn game design and fast prototyping of mobile games.

Sound design is one of my passions and one of the reasons I initially moved to Austin and choose the Radio-Television-Film deparment. I have collaborated with several MFA students at the RTF department doing sound design (pre- and post-production). Some of those films are: Frente Noreste ; Dark Matters ; and Just us Chickens . In my freetime I sometimes also enjoy DJing and jamming with friends from Latin America with the TropiSoul Big band.

Teaching

I have assisted with the teaching of RTF 319-Introduction to Digital Media and RTF305-Introduction to Media Studies. Some of the projects our students were able to make in RTF-319 can be seen here.

Act Lab Works

Three creative projects in the ACT LAB experimental laboratory.

Students for Free Culture

Together with a group of coleagues I started the SFC chapter at UT.

Wikipedia Campus Ambassador

I am always looking for projects that implement Wikipedia in the classroom. I can assist with tutorials and curriculum development. This is my wikipedia page.

Publications

* Lombana Bermudez, A. (2015) “Re-Thinking Youth Participation and Civic Engagement in the Digital Age.” In Cortesi, S. et al. Digitally Connected: Global Perspectives on Youth and Digital Media (March 26, 2015). Berkman Center Research Publication No. 2015-6.
* Lombana Bermudez, A. & Murphy, J. (2014) Pole Position: Walking Formula One in East Austin. In The End of Austin, Issue 5, May.
* Lombana Bermudez, A. (2013) “Urban Labyrinths, Ariadne’s Threads, and GPS Data: Logging and Drawing Trajectories with a GPS Personal Navigation Device.” Media Fields Journal. Issue 6 – Data/Space. University of California : Santa Barbara.
* Lombana Bermudez, A. (2013) “Gamification and Learning Environments: Designing for Engagement and Fun.” MediaCommons: A Digital Scholarly Network. New York University: New York.
* Lombana Bermudez, A. (2010) ‘Lunacy at Termite Terrace: The Slapstick Style of Warner Bros. Animation’ Cinephile. Sound on Screen (Vol. 6, No. 1: Spring 2010) University of British Columbia’s film journal : Vancouver.
* Lombana Bermudez, A. (2008) The “New” Sounds of the Slap-of-the-Stick. MSc. Thesis. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Cambridge.