Monthly Archives: March 2011

The Online Love Search: A legitimate profile picture

So following the 48hrs of eagerly anticipating to see my profile picture set up on my new eDarling.se profile, which should ‘guarantee me up to an 80 percent greater chance in meeting a potential partner’ I have  been sent an email, stating my picture has been rejected. REJECTED! The dating site I am registered with refuses to recognize…


Intimacy: Version 4.0

Plenty has been written about our loss of social cohesion due to the Internet (see James Katz) and how mobile phone technology has contributed to blunting our social competencies (see Hans Geser). Like it or not we are often rendered limp at the DVD rental shop or supermarket isle calling our husbands or girlfriends asking: “So what did you say you felt like eating for dinner? Or “Have you seen the latest Woody Allen?”


On the Political Value of TED

The Technology Entertainment and Design conference, better known as TED, has spread its worthy ideas annually since 1990. The last couple of years the TED-virus has spread the world as TED became globally known by letting their talks be viewed online for free. As a result the wide range of topics within the research and practice of science and culture of TED are also being addressed here in Amsterdam under the label of TEDx events. Its popularity seems undeniable, but what is the value of TED to us?


treading on digital divides

The revolution will not be tweeted

The networked structure of digital communication channels was illuminated when internet and digital communication networks were shut down in Egypt. It was also at this moment that the nation-state aspect of networked communication (the physicality of the square and of analog forms of communication) and its relationship to the digital networks was complicated.

The current situation in Egypt, where…


The Search Engine That Talks Back to You

With the mission of defining ‘the future of information consumption’, the founders of Qwiki, a self-proclaimed multimedia alternative to the text-based search provided by Google state to have launched the ‘next big thing’: a narrative search-tool based on the computer ‘telling you a story’ accompanied by videos and pictures about the term you are looking for. “Whether you’re planning a vacation on the web, evaluating restaurants on your phone, or helping with homework in front of the family Google TV, Qwiki is working to deliver information in a format that’s quintessentially human – via storytelling instead of search.”


TOP: Climategate IPCC and the legitimacy of public concerns

In this session we focus on the contemporary connections between science, technology, and politics. The connections between these three domains are often neglected or unjust presented as complete seperated area’s. Bruno Latour speaks of matters that matter, by which a public around an issue (that matters) is created. Without a concern, there is nobody interested in a debate logically spoken.…


*Choose Life*

Ourania Dalalaki, Ashiq Khondker, Maritje Onjering, Hans Terpstra

mini-exhibition curated for the Critical Media Art seminar.

Disengage from the fear of technology, engage living forms through technicity, transform life, choose life.

Living, Semi-living, bio-creations that tactically aim to shape life.


Online Video Art: Ashiq Khondker and Eugene Kotlyarenko Play with the Diegetic Desktop

Originally published on the Video Vortex #6 conference blog.

Ashiq Khondker and Eugene Kotlyarenko’s presentation was the most entertaining and confusing of the first day of Video Vortex #6. To begin with, their collaboration took place exclusively on the internet, after Ashiq contacted the artist to interview him about a series of videos he shot entirely with screen capture software and published online as a sort of mini-series entitled ‘Instructional Video #4: Preparation for Mission‘.


Video Vortex #6: In Coversation with Natalie Bookchin (part 2)

[originally published on Video Vortex #6 website. The original text can be found here]

(Part 2 of 2 – In conversation with Natalie Bookchin)

Mass Ornament

http://www.vimeo.com/5403546

G: I see you’ve really chosen the audio track and it is leading you through the work. The image itself


Video Vortex #6: In conversation with Natalie Bookchin (part 1)

[originally published on Video Vortex #6 website. The original text can be found here]

Video Vortex 6

Natalie Bookchin with Geert Lovink. Photo: Anne Helmond

Artist Natalie Bookchin took time to talk to Geert Lovink about online video and her artistic practice at the Video Vortex #6…