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

From art to ethical design; Studio Roosegaarde’s quest for a sustainable and aesthetic future

The clock is ticking: sea levels and temperatures are rising, plastic is building up, and animals face extinction. What if art can be the activator for change?

By Victor Loye on 10/20/20 Comments Off

Cross media learning: from a book to an online tribe – Miracle Morning

How the book “Miracle Morning” can be the driver of a social movement on the web 2.0? Prosumers are combining traditional and new medias to foster innovative ways of learning. Welcome to our online tribe!

By on 09/22/19 Comments Off

Financial superpowers? Cryptocurrency and the next generation

Pigzbe, a digital piggy-bank has just appeared on the market, with one goal: introducing children to the world of cryptocurrency. Filippo Yacob, CEO of the company, claims that this device will give a new generation of children “financial superpowers”....

By Anastasia Pelini on 09/23/18 Comments Off

AI Algorithm as Personal Style Tracker

Design specifically with a GAN, to overcome fast-fashion and overconsumption What will happen when designers can exactly produce what consumers want and need? The generative adversarial network (GAN) founded by online shopping company Amazon can actually do this by...

By Vera Seegers on 09/24/17 Comments Off

Painting your password on your face: Apple´s new Face ID and its implications on the security of its users.

On the 12th of September, Apple launched their new flagship model, the iPhone X. As usual, it was either met with oohs and aahs, or it was met with cynicism. This article will not focus on the price, design...

By Jimi Cornelisse on 09/24/17 Comments Off

Microsoft HoloLens: A jump into Augmented Reality

Sci-Fi movies have teased the public for years with their in-movie holographic technology, which seemed, in our time, so far away. Think of holograms in the Star Wars movies and Tom Cruise’s home videos in Minority Report (2002). But...

By Sabina B. on 09/19/16 Comments Off

PeerRevYOU: A Tool for Media Students

Presenting to you: PeerRevYOU, a peer review platform for Media students. Thanks to this tool, students are able to review each other’s work before they hand it in to their teacher. We argue that this process could improve...

By Lisanne Buijze on 10/16/15 Comments Off

Is Apple News what the newsroom of the future would look like?

Last month, Apple introduced an app named News. This newsreader gives Apple users the opportunity to collect all the news items that might be interesting for them. On their website, Apple states the following: News collects all the stories you...

By Anne Zwaan on 09/17/15 Comments Off

Spotify the Data Sage.

Is Discover Weekly a step forward or a step back? In the good ol’ days people discovered music by listening to the radio and recording the music on audio tapes. The disk jockeys were the opinion leaders that could...

By Daniël Landman on 09/15/15 Comments Off

Get Water! Have fun and make a difference

What if someone told you that by playing a fun digital game you could raise awareness to a current global issue, promote learning and education, or perhaps even help solving relevant problems at a local, national and/or international level?...

By Giovanna Salazar Ojeda on 09/18/14 Comments Off

The posthuman cyborg: Technological telepathy

Researches have recently published an article where they have done an experiment with some kind of technological telepathy. A man in India wearing a BCI (Brain-Computer Interface), has successfully transmitted different kind of words through thoughts to a man’s...

By Chaïm Wijnberg on 09/18/14 Comments Off

Your taxi 2.0 has arrived?

Amsterdam. Capitol of the Netherlands, known for cultural highlights as the Rijksmuseum, the Anne Frank House, the canals, fleamarket on Waterloosquare and an infinite number of bikes. The last twenty years the number of bikes has grown so much...

By Kyrsha Verweij on 09/18/14 Comments Off

Forget glasses… the future is smart contacts!

Eyeware devices have been around for some time with gadgets like Google Glass or BT-200; what they do is to enhance reality by projecting images into our field of vision and this can be films, videogames or the screen...

By Ana Mireles on 09/17/14 Comments Off

Google Spreads Its Wings: Will Flutter Soar or Burn?

Flutter. The name implies flight, but it is actually described as to wave or fly rapidly in an irregular manner or to flap the wings without flying. However, a third way to describe flutter is that it’s the name...

By Vincent Sloof on 11/18/13 1

Apps evolution

I’m referring to the mobile applications specifically, because people tend to use them all the time in everyday life. We use the terms apps and app phones to describe applications and smartphones. Applications are designed to work...

By Alexandra Kontou on 09/10/13 Comments Off

The Digitization of DJing: From Analog Vinyl Records to Time-code Systems and Video Plug-ins

“The personal and social consequences of any medium -that is, of any extension of ourselves- result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology” (McLuhan, 1964, p.203)....

By Sotirios Sideris on 09/09/13 Comments Off

School is Cool: iPad’s in classrooms

“It was absurd (…) that American classrooms were still based on teachers standing at a board and using textbooks. All books, learning materials, and assessments should be digital and interactive (…).” (Isaacson,2011, p. 264) This is a quote from...

By Jeroen Rademakers on 10/17/12 5

Wanted: skilled volunteers to change the world

New media has been offering many possibilities for non-profit and social enterprises to find volunteers online, but an initiative called Catchafire is taking the center of attentions within the web. The purpose of the website is simple: provide a...

By Juliana Marques on 10/14/12 Comments Off

Forgotten Realms: Revisiting the Classics

The revisiting of favourite films and novels is a common practice, in fact for many, the notion of ‘re-reading the classics’ can be even more enjoyable and enlightening than their initial interpretation. Yet for gaming, which has always and...

By Joseph Jackson on 10/03/12 1

Towards openness – A study about open design and its translation from theory into practice

For anyone interested in design, open source and open design, my recently finished (june 2012) MA Thesis is available for download here. Below is the thesis’ abstract: Following the course of web 2.0, user-generated content and open source software; design...

By Juliana Paiva on 07/12/12 72

Paola Antonelli – “Talk to Me” at “I don’t know where I’m going but I want to be there”

Last Saturday was the third edition of the symposium ‘I don’t know where I’m going but I want to be there’ initiated by MOTI. The topic of this year symposium was about visual culture and how these effect us....

By Marije Rooze on 12/21/11 Comments Off

Interview with Arkadiy Kukarkin, developer at the Hype Machine

How about an introduction: *Scroll down for the interview! The Hype Machine is a website that keeps track of what music bloggers post on their blogs. A selection of blogs are selected by the makers of the website. The...

By Clément Adam on 11/02/11 Comments Off

iPhone Art : This Century’s Modern Art Movement

Smartphone technology established its omnipresence at the arrival of the 21st century. For better or for worse, digital handheld technology has become a defining element of this millennium. The gadget’s pervasiveness combined with its seemingly limitless assortment of program...

By Autumn Hand on 10/31/11 Comments Off

Jeroen Krouwels: “The educational system must keep up with time”

With a rich history in education and ICT as a teacher, involvement in a governmental educational ICT project ‘Teleleren’, the establishing of an ICT institute for business education, being manager at an educative publisher and a management trainer, Jeroen...

By Stijnie Thuijs on 10/17/11 Comments Off