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

A New Kind of Pop-up Book

Early pop-up books are made out of pure paper. Each time the kid opens a page, an architectural piece of art jumps out of the book. In 2014, it looks much different. Bridging Book established a new mixed-media book for children and presents...

By Janina Sommerlad on 09/18/14 2

3D printing: a tool in revolutionizing the books for visually impaired children

From clothes, jewelry, food, accessories and furniture to aircraft engine parts and even artificial limbs, almost everything can be created nowadays with a 3D printer. But let’s see what happens when this technology is used to offer a new...

By Andreea Mironiuc on 09/17/14 Comments Off

Are We Living in the Brave New World?

Recently I have read the book “Brave New World“, written by Aldous Huxley. Although the book was published in 1932, it made me wonder how the ideas of a future society that Aldous Huxley brought forward are now applicable...

By Suzanne Tromp on 09/11/14 Comments Off

Book as a reflexive medium : the materiality in post-digital print

Introduction The term ‘post-digital’ was introduced by Kim Cascone in 2000 to describe the rapidly changing relationship between humans and technology and the resulting aesthetics of digital failures and errors, like what has become to be known as ‘glitch...

By Jakub Dutka on 05/19/14 1

The Issues of Winning The Ecosystem War

“WE ARE IN THE MIDST OF A COLD WAR BETWEEN THE LARGEST TECHNOLOGY COMPANIES IN THE INDUSTRY*”, boldly states tech journalist Dieter Bohn in his overview of Apple’s, Google’s and Microsoft’s battling ecosystems . This “war” won’t be won...

By Bozhan Chipev on 03/27/13 Comments Off

EPUB – A Book Pirate’s Go-To Format

EPUB, short for “electronic publication”, is a free and open e-book standard by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF). It was initially developed in 2007 as a way to streamline digital publishing. What the IDPF didn’t consider back then, is the...

By Bozhan Chipev on 03/03/13 Comments Off

Please, let’s take book out of e-book

The e-book, threat or treasure, is definitely a hot topic within the book industry . As we all know, there is still quite some room for improvement and innovation. But how to approach the e-book? That remains the central...

By Doris Zevenbergen on 03/03/13 Comments Off

Book Review: KINGPIN by Kevin Poulsen

If you like police stories with persecution, infiltration and investigation KINGPIN may be just the right book for you. Written by Kevin Poulsen, it is an exciting story of the rise of one hacker to the control of the...

By Mario Gesteira on 09/21/11 1

Hacking the Bogota Book Fair

I knew that especially Camilo was up to something, though I wasn’t quite sure what it was yet; something with tiles and hacking the Bogota book fair, but the how or what remained in the dark. So driven by...

By Fei An Tjan on 05/12/11 8

The Unbound Book Conference, May 19-21

Reading and publishing in the digital age The conventional notion of the book, based on centuries of print, is rapidly growing outdated. The book is coming unbound in a double sense: both freed from the bindings of the printed...

By Elias van Hees on 04/12/11 Comments Off

Nicholas Carr in Amsterdam: “The Net Bombards Us With Distractions”

Last Wednesday, author and journalist Nicholas Carr presented his new book "The Shallows: How the Internet is changing the way we think, read and remember" at the Universiteit van Amsterdam. After his famous 2008 essay "Is Google Making Us...

By Caroline Goralczyk on 03/06/11 3

A Clay Tablet Is Not a Book

Mcluhan believed the medium to be the message. When we are trying to understand the effects of the medium, we ought to analyze the medium. And when the medium changes, the message is bound to transform. Who’s utopian vision...

By Mareline Heijman on 10/19/10 Comments Off

E-books Should Take a Page Out of The Internet

Being a student of New Media, people I know who are less involved in the world of new media sometimes turn to me with questions on the latest technological developments that are being covered in the news. As if...

By Erik van Bemmelen on 10/18/10 4

If it Looks Like a Book, and Reads Like a Book, is it a Book?

The death of the book has been foreseen: Several sources have predicted the demise of the book as we know it, like a modern Nostradamus. However, this is not the first time in history that we have heard this...

By Marte Lindstrom on 10/17/10 2

E = Media Combinations2: The survival of the fittest

Every old medium was once new. And when something gets old we’ve got to search for a way to give it its old glance back. The printed book was once a new medium. It was revolutionary, groundbreaking. But today...

By Chris Hoogeveen on 10/13/10 3

Book Review: “Pirate Modernity: Delhi’s Media Urbanism” – Ravi Sundaram

In Pirate Modernity: Delhi's Media Urbanism, Ravi Sundaram clearly explains the way the new media have affected post colonial Delhi's urban landscape from the 50's onwards....

By Fei An Tjan on 09/20/10 Comments Off

Book review: Rethinking Curating – Art after New Media by Beryl Graham and Sarah Cook

Rethinking Curating explores the characteristics distinctive to new media art, including its immateriality and its questioning of time and space, and relates them to such contemporary art forms as video art, conceptual art, socially engaged art, and performance art....

By Jidi Guo on 09/20/10 1

Facebook the Movie

July this year Facebook achieved a big milestone, their 500 million member-mark. If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest one in the world. This success story started with Mark Zuckerberg who created Thefacebook at the...

By Jidi Guo on 09/10/10 4

Review of Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet

Lisa Nakamura’s book Digitizing Race and Culture: Visual Cultures of the Internet covers a range of issues involving race and gender on the internet. Nakamura is an associate professor in the Institute of Communication Research with a joint appointment...

By Sarah Moore on 09/17/09 Comments Off

Book review of “Against The Machine – Being Human In The Age Of The Electronic Mob” by Lee Siegel

Lee Siegel was born in New York in 1957 and has Bachelor, Master and Master of Philosophy degrees from Columbia University. While working as a staff writer at The New Republic, an American magazine on politics and the arts,...

By Maarten Hoogvliet on 09/17/09 Comments Off

The Multilingual Internet, or Where the Green Ants Dream

In one of the last scenes of Werner Herzog‘s Where the Green Ants Dream (1984) an Aborigine stands up in a court room to speak up against some mineral excavations happening in a sacred tribal ground. The judge asks...

By Nicola Bozzi on 09/14/09 Comments Off

Book Review of: (In)visible – Learning to Act in the Metaverse

In his book: (In)visible: Learning to Act in the Metaverse, the author, Stefan Sonvilla-Weiss, deals with the challenges and difficulties of the global data culture. By exploring the constituents of today’s network culture, he tries to map out new...

By Niels de Hoog on 09/13/09 Comments Off

A Review of: Self-Organisation/Counter Economic Strategies – Superflex

This book is an initiative by the Danish artists group: Superflex. Superflex has been working on a series of projects related to economic forces, democratic production conditions and Self-organisation since 1993. Most of their initiatives seem to question the...

By Rutger van den Berg on 09/13/09 Comments Off

Software Takes Command

6 days ago Lev Manovich released his softbook Software Takes Command. He described his book as a software, as it will have its patches in the same way as a new installments requires its bug (big?) -fixes: One of...

By Rosa Menkman on 11/27/08 4