New Media M.A. Research Blog | Media Studies, University of Amsterdam

qwiki – can linear narratives still be relevant in hyperlinked contexts?

Some time has passed since the official launch of qwiki (see the Masters of Media Blog initial impressions). Although still in alpha, a more profound critique can be put forward as the platform evolved and opened itself to users.

By Daniel Luiz dos Santos on 10/22/11 Comments Off

App Review: Wikitude

With the introduction of AR (augmented reality) software and its implementation into mobile devices there has been a considerable rise in apps that use such geo-location and AR features. One of these apps is ‘Wikitude‘ developed by the Austrian...

By Philip Breek on 10/09/11 Comments Off

6000 years of world conflicts online

Enjoy history and modern technology? Then prepare to get yourself time-sucked into the virtual world of wars and conflicts. Recently I have discover a website that clearly illustrates how isolated battles overlap and entwine into a never-ending strand of...

By Natalia Miszczak on 09/12/11 1

Notes from Visualizing Europe: the power and potential of data visualization

Last week I attended Visualizing Europe, a one-day conference where a very interesting and diverse group of data visualization experts and designers talked about the power and potential of data visualization. Below are some notes and comments on some points...

By Liliana Bounegru on 06/24/11 Comments Off

How to make beautiful music (audibly & visually) without being a musician

Composing and representing music visually has traditionally been through music notation. Using a 5 lined “staff” or “stave” as a framework, black circles with lines are drawn to represent pitch and length of notes with other markings such as...

By Janice Wong on 05/10/11 1

Show me the Data 2011

Show me the Data 2011 A presentations of six multidisciplinary data visualization projects developed by Master students of the University of Amsterdam (Media Studies and Computer Science) and the Utrecht Graduate School of Visual Art and Design.

By Bernhard Rieder on 05/09/11 3

Getting data, sharing data and raising political awareness.

Using vision to amplify cognition. According to the Light Switch Theory, vision appeared on Earth around 543 million years ago and triggered the Cambrian explosion (evolution’s Big Bang). Before that none of the living entities could see and relied to...

By olga paraskevopoulou on 05/07/11 Comments Off

Data visualization and story telling

For as long as people have been around, the have used stories to share information, cultural values and experience. Most of the times this is done orally, but even in ancient times, mankind created drawings to visualize their information....

By Joris Pekel on 05/06/11 Comments Off

Interactivity in the Online Graphics of The New York Times and The Guardian

Almost every story a journalist writes contains the five W’s: who, what, where, why, when. However, in the last two decades the journalistic profession and it’s employer were forced to make some new transformations. These changes have been caused...

By Marije Rooze on 05/06/11 2

A Question of Data/Art

A question of data/art* *delete as necessary A well known problem of data visualization is according to Lev Manovich that “people intuitively identify visualizations as infovis even though they consist not from vector elements but from media text or...

By Fenneke Mink on 05/04/11 2

Sciencemappr: Trying to unleash the hypertextual potential of the Web

Last week I already pointed out the amazing significance and potential of the Internet to organize, structure and index all knowledge gathered across the globe. Rather than an indirect library of indexes and references, the web is equipped with...

By Frank Molenaar on 05/04/11 Comments Off

Visualizing Political Chatter

With regards to political campaigns, the Internet has attracted the attention of politicians, researchers and the general public. During the last years the medium has developed into one of the most important – if not the most important –...

By Marte Lindstrom on 05/03/11 Comments Off

Narrative Structures in Data Visualizations to Improve Storytelling

Interactive data visualization has emerged as a complete new field within journalism. Large editorials like The New York Times, The Guardian, the Economist, the Washington Post all have special teams dedicated to data visualizations only. However, in the recent...

By Philip Man on 05/03/11 1

Why Twitter can be the Next Big Thing in Scientific Collaboration

Introduction Imagine yourself in the following situation: You, a scientist pur sang, are busy researching and analyzing A and you are having doubts about the values in the model, suspecting a technical error. Without hesitation, you compose a tweet...

By Sander Jansma on 05/02/11 8

Biomapping

In my last blog post I explored the notion that information visualization is not merely a tool, or art, or an agent of clarity but also has the capacity to generate emotion in users and arguably, become a player...

By Natalie Dixon on 04/29/11 1

Visualising music: the problems with genre classification

Want to listen to new music but sick of staring at your old MP3 collection? Streaming applications like Spotify, Last.fm and Pandora (US only) recommend related artists. Sites like The Hype Machine and Elbows aggregate music blogs for instant...

By Janice Wong on 04/26/11 1

Graphical Primitives versus Direct Visualization

A rectangle walks in a bar and orders a drink. An attractive circle sits on a bar stool next to the rectangle. ‘Hey Circle, want to get primitive?’ The Circle looks the rectangle slowly up and down and says:...

By Marije Rooze on 04/22/11 Comments Off

What’s that on the map? Problems with geo-visualization

The last couple of weeks, my data-visualization team and I, have been working on our Europeana project. Europeana is a big heritage-digitization project funded by the European Union. Their goal is to digitize all of Europe’s heritage objects and...

By Joris Pekel on 04/21/11 2

Visualizing what is happening

Going through an older post in the MoM’s blog referring to Walter’s Ong book “Orality and Literacy”, I discovered a term referring to a new “hybrid form” of culture that has spread on the internet: The Secondary Orality. The term is emphasizing...

By olga paraskevopoulou on 04/21/11 Comments Off

Mondrian in the age of Information Visualization.

Dutch painter Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) started painting his artworks in the style of the Amsterdam Academy. He made dark realistic landscapes and later in his carer he painted more lighter paintings when he evolved towards De Stijl. From the...

By Fenneke Mink on 04/20/11 Comments Off

What Data Visualization Can Learn from Game Design

When reading articles and books on data visualization, the focus is often on ampiflying cognition by using external (visual) aids. In this blogpost I attempt to conduct a kind of meta-analysis on data visualization by looking beyond the content...

By Philip Man on 04/19/11 2

The Simple Ways of Information Visualization

There is no doubt that the human brain is an amazing and complex bodily organ, perhaps even the most amazing of them all. Personally, I do not think I will ever cease to be amazing by it. But, despite...

By Marte Lindstrom on 04/18/11 Comments Off

Decision Making 2.0 With Data Visualization?

Can visualization influence people? I mean can we prove it? This core dilemma pondered at the heart of Enrico Bertini’s latest post on FILWD was incidentally triggered by a question from an audience member at his latest talk on data visualization....

By Ekaterina Yudin on 04/18/11 5

The Fuzzy Edges

Emotion has long since been a fraught with subjectivity and complex interpretations for as long as scholars have sought to understand it. When scientists became interested in emotion in the late 19th century it suffered under labels like “feminine”,...

By Natalie Dixon on 04/15/11 4