In May we are bringing you video games, videodiscs, and The Boss. It’s Video Killed the Radio Star. Come meet in our abandoned studio (well, Maceli’s) for presentations that will begin at 8. Doors open at 7. Dollar cover.
Our presentations:
“Exploring Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town,'” by Conor Taft
A crash course on one of the rock icon’s greatest and most under-appreciated albums.
“StarCraft: The Last Bonjwa,” by Jon Lane
Jon will explore the ways in which media has shaped StarCraft from a video game into an entire subculture that has revolutionized the way video games were perceived and played.
“Movies Are Better on Vinyl: A Brief History of the RCA VideoDisc,” by Ben Gross
For most of the 20th century, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) was synonymous with consumer electronics. RCA established the first radio network and pioneered the development of both black-and-white and color television. But not all of the company’s innovations were commercially successful. This presentation will consider RCA’s short-lived campaign to dominate the 1980s home video market with a system that allowed consumers to watch movies encoded in the grooves of vinyl records.
Our presenters:
Born and raised in the Chicago area, Conor Taft came to LFK for school and loved it so much that he stuck around. Aside from his day job at KU Endowment, he enjoys going to concerts, reading, running, and occasionally competing in air guitar competitions under his stage name “Rockward Silence.” Yes, he IS related to President Taft, and no, we aren’t forgetting an “n” in his name.
Collegiate StarCraft competition and high school computer science teacher, Jon Lane founded KU’s StarCraft 2 team and competed against some of the best college StarCraft players during the height of StarCraft 2.
Ben Gross is the Vice President for Research and Scholarship at the Linda Hall Library, the world’s foremost independent research library devoted to science, engineering, and technology. He moved to the Midwest in 2016 and regularly attends Nerd Nites in Lawrence and Kansas City. His first book, “The TVs of Tomorrow: How RCA’s Flat-Screen Dreams Led to the First LCDs,” was published in March by the University of Chicago Press.