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

Book Review: ‘Voice: Vocal Aesthetics in Digital Arts and Media’ by Norie Neumark, Ross Gibson and Theo van Leeuwen (Editors)

I am sitting in a room, different from the one you are in now. I am trying to find my voice. (Maybe I should just steal it). “Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.” (Polonius’ advice Laertes...

By Liam Voice on 09/20/11 Comments Off

Masters thesis: Virtualized Subjectivity in Contemporary Art Practice

A few weeks ago I completed and submitted my Masters thesis, ending my yearlong study at the University of Amsterdam’s New Media MA program. Our cohort will officially graduate this Tuesday, 20 Sept, 2011. Here it is, if anybody’s...

By Ashiq Khondker on 09/19/11 1

Book Review: The Book of Ice, by Paul D. Miller (DJ Spooky)

In December 2007, composer and artist and writer Paul D. Miller a.ka. DJ Spooky a.k.a That Subliminal Kid boarded a decommissioned naval ship and traveled to Antarctica. The book that resulted from this journey is The Book of Ice,...

By Autumn Hand on 09/18/11 Comments Off

BOOK REVIEW The Murmuring of the Artistic Multitude: Global Art, Memory and Post-Fordism

BOOK REVIEW Title: The Murmuring of the Artistic Multitude: Global Art, Memory and Post-Fordism Author: Pascal Gielen Year: 2009 Publisher: Valiz In The Murmuring of the Artistic multitude, art-sociologist Pascal Gielen reflects on the increasing co-incidence of, and structural...

By Daniel de Zeeuw on 09/18/11 Comments Off

‘Mapping E-Culture’ book review

The book is recommended for people who start their new media education and/or want to get introduced to some pioneering digital artists in the Netherlands, Brazil, China, Egypt, Lebanon and Palestine.

By Andrian Georgiev on 09/17/11 Comments Off

Eagerness to share our lives with the others — where are the online boundaries?

More and more often I find on Facebook things which I would rather never want to find. Sonograms of unborn children of people who I know from high school and didn’t talk to them since then, tomographies of their...

By Urszula Jurgiel on 09/17/11 Comments Off

The Naked Eye: Toward an Object-Oriented Ontology in the Literature of Tao Lin

On being seen naked in the bathroom by his pet cat, Derrida likens the feline’s stare to “… the gaze of a seer, visionary, or extra-lucid blind person,” (372). I am compelled to thwart such clairvoyance by putting my...

By Kendall Grady on 09/15/11 8

Web and Pop Art: Systaime – the trashy net.artist.

Making art out of spam, pop-up X, adverts and bugs is the daily work of the French artist Michaël Borras aka Systaime. This video designer and graphic artist is a real enthusiast of e-junkfood and spends all of his...

By Aurelie Ghalim on 09/13/11 1

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

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

Interacticipation: Ten Artworks Reflecting the Status of Contemporary Participation in New Media Art

Interactive art is a genre of art in which the viewers participate in a way by providing an input in order to determine the outcome (Wikipedia, 2011a). In other words, it allows a dialogue between the artwork and the...

By Lotte Woerde on 02/24/11 6

Ai Weiwei: How a Chinese Artist Uses the Internet To Protest

Reading an interview with the famous Chinese artist Ai Weiwei in the weekend magazine of the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad, I was instantly drawn to his faith in the democratizing power of the Internet. More than once Weiwei, who...

By Erik van Bemmelen on 10/31/10 2

Free For $8

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...

By Natalie Dixon on 10/31/10 Comments Off

Online to Offline: review of TS2AS party in Amsterdam

Three weeks ago I blogged about Justus Bruns and the concept behind Times Square to Art Square (TS2AS). Last night was the first offline event, held in MuzyQ, Amsterdam, where Justus explained the story behind his idea, “to turn...

By Janice Wong on 10/19/10 Comments Off

The Diegetic Desktop in a New Media Film: “Skydiver AKA Instructional Video #4 – Preparation for Mission by Eugene Kotlyarenko”

A couple of weeks ago, during my routine deletion of facebook notices and invitations ("fpam"?), I fortunately bothered to open one headlined, "The Groundbreaking Last Movie from Eugene...

By Ashiq Khondker on 10/04/10 3

Wikipedia: Propaganda or Contribution?

In 1945 Vannevar Bush already predicted an innovative new way of structuring information, a new library. Wikipedia was launched in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger and was indeed a new initiative to...

By Elias van Hees on 10/04/10 Comments Off

Art: E-Waste

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

By Natalie Dixon on 10/04/10 Comments Off

New Media drives project: Times Square to Art Square

Times Square to Art Square is a project to turn all billboards on Times Square into art. At the opening party of Dutchproblogger’s book Sex, Blogs & Rock ‘n’ Roll I was fortunate to meet Justus Bruns, one...

By Janice Wong on 10/03/10 1

Is Crowd Funding Viable? Best and Worst Practices

During PICNIC 2010 last week I attended the session Crowdfunding: The Financial Solution for the Creative Industry, it was an interesting presentation/discussion with crowdfunding experts who shared their best practices and visions of the future. Discussions emerged on how...

By Jidi Guo on 09/27/10 Comments Off

Book review: Public Netbase: Non Stop Future/ New practices in Art and Media

“New information technologies have become ubiquitous and thoroughly established in our everyday life. This marks the end of a period of intense experimentations and speculations related to the introduction of global communication systems more than a decade ago. Artists...

By Ourania on 09/22/10 Comments Off

Book review: Repair – Ready to pull the lifeline

Repair is an art and technology festival organized by ARS Electronica, an Austrian platform for digital art and media culture based in Linz. The festival was held this year from September 2 until September 11. The message of Repair...

By Cendy Calis on 09/20/10 1

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

Book Review – De Digitale Kunstkammer

Book Review – De Digitale Kunstkammer Cultureel Erfgoed & Crossmedia Harry van Vliet In the City of Utrecht Archive a film is shown of last century’s street life. All visitors of the archive are scanned by entering and projected...

By Fenneke Mink on 09/20/10 1

Book review: Uncorporate Identitity

Welcome to Europe shows us a picture of a painted sun in red, yellow and black colors. This logo was created by the Spanish artist Joan Miró in 1980. This logo, or brand had as main purpose to...

By Hanneke Mertens on 09/19/10 Comments Off