Author Profile

  • Natalie Dixon
  • Url: http://www.nataliedixon.info
  • Posts: 23
  • About the user: I’m a new media thinker, strategist and writer. My current research focus is on the ‘affective bandwidth’ of mobile-mediated communication. My research interests include affective computing, HCI, biomapping, emotion, the impact of mobile phones on social behaviour, analytical design and information visualization. I graduated from the new media track of the Media and Culture masters programme in 2011.

Author Archive

Free For $8

Natalie Dixon | 31 October 2010, 2:18 am | tags: , , , , ,

The New Museum of Art in New York City is currently hosting an exhibition carrying work from 23 artists titled “Free”. The show explores: “how the internet has fundamentally changed our landscape of information and our notion of public space.” Perhaps with a firm tongue-in-cheek approach the only other exhibition running at the museum right now is called “The Last Newspaper”.

Romancing The Book

Natalie Dixon | 17 October 2010, 7:37 pm | 3 comments | tags: , , ,

We shuffle into the queue of people leaving the plane and I notice my neighbour’s Jonathan Franzen paperback peeking out of the seat back. “Hey, you left your book behind,” I say. She winks, “That’s the idea”. In 20 minutes or so 150 new passengers will stumble on the airbus and maybe the one person who sits in seat 3B will pick up The Corrections and fall in love with it. My neighbour will never know what happens to her book but she liked the story. And now perhaps the next person will too. The book becomes an unconscious player in a game of tag that may or may not leave some impression behind on its readers. Sadly, this version of tag is not supported by iPad.

Love in the Time of Twitter

Natalie Dixon | 10 October 2010, 8:25 pm | tags: , , , , , , , ,

Malcolm Gladwell wrote in The New Yorker recently: “…This is what drives me crazy about the digerati. They refuse to accept the fact that there is a class of social problems for which there is no technological solution. Look. Technology is going to solve the energy problem. I’m convinced of it. Technology is going to give me a computer in 10 years time that will fly me to the moon. But technology does not and cannot change the underlying dynamics of ‘human’ problems: it doesn’t make it easier to love or motivate or dream or convince.”

Art: E-Waste

Natalie Dixon | 04 October 2010, 8:40 am | tags: , , ,

Renowned South African photographer Pieter Hugo’s latest work Permanent Error features a haunting documentary of an e-waste(land) in Ghana.

Rage Against the Machine

Natalie Dixon | 03 October 2010, 5:05 pm | 1 comment | tags: , ,

Can you only make a Wikipedia entry if your subject has been covered in the mainstream press a gazillion times? How do underground, guerilla, new subcultures or artists get exposure on Wiki? Short answer: they don’t. I referenced the Het Parool and the Dutch entry for this graffiti artist is hardly different to mine. Laser been published for Pete’s sake. His book is available in the American Book Centre and yet I can’t keep a Wiki entry on him alive for longer than 5 minutes and 35 seconds.

Adopted Teen Traced on Social Network

Natalie Dixon | 29 September 2010, 7:59 am | tags: , , , ,

A great example of how the privacy issues we face on social networks are not just limited to our data being sold to marketers. This BBC interview tells how a British girl was traced by her natural sister on a social networking site before her adopted mother had the chance to tell her she had an extended birth family.

Y this Generation?

Natalie Dixon | 26 September 2010, 7:15 pm | tags: , , , , , , ,

To start understanding social networks and their ceaseless popularity it’s important to understand the people who use them most. Although it’s a mistake to generalize about an entire generation there are unquestionably some central themes that apply to Generation Y, the most active participants in social media that give us clues to why sites like Facebook and Myspace are so popular.

Living In AppLand

Natalie Dixon | 24 September 2010, 8:22 am | tags: , , , , , ,

Chris Anderson headlined his latest feature in Wired magazine: The Web is Dead, Long Live the Internet. He maintains that with the ubiquitous iPhone comes app addiction; so while most of us spend the whole day on the internet (using applications like Spotify and Google Maps) we’re no longer browsing the web as much as we used to. The browser is THEN and the app is NOW. In Africa the opposite is true.

Book Review: El Proceso Como Paradigma (Process as Paradigm)

Natalie Dixon | 19 September 2010, 12:01 pm | tags: , , , ,

It’s a hollow exercise publishing a book about new media art. Giving the work the representation it deserves in one picture and a 500-word description leaves readers sampling only a small hint of the original experience and runs the risk of often-laborious descriptions (“and then it lights up when the user mouses over the block!”). But as a necessary archive of this burgeoning scene comes the eponymous hard-back catalogue of the exhibition El Proceso Como Paradigma (Process as Paradigm), curated by Dr Susanne Jaschko and Lucas Evers at the LABoral Art and Industrial Creation Centre in Gijón (23 April – August 2010).

Craigslist Follow Up

Natalie Dixon | 16 September 2010, 9:06 pm

This week Craigslist officially shut down its adult service section of the site in the United States. This follows a short period of censorship. While some are celebrating the decision, blogger Dannah Boyd raises some interesting points on The Huffington Post titled: How Censoring Craigslist Helps Pimps, Child Traffickers and Other Abusive Scumbags. Meanwhile, Craigslist only…