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

Online Video Art at Video Vortex 6: Conditional Design

In his presentation at the Video Vortex #6 conference in Amsterdam, graphic designer and project director Roel Wouters introduced the audience to interactive projects which include dynamic media such as web video and animation to install crowdsourced performances. With...

By Caroline Goralczyk on 03/13/11 Comments Off

Michael Strangelove @ Video Vortex 6: “Any Moment Will be a Youtube Moment”

In his talk on the cultural value of amateur video at the Video Vortex #6 conference in Amsterdam, the author, scholar and artist Michael Strangelove explained how amateur productions will gain greater value due to their potential of challenging...

By Caroline Goralczyk on 03/13/11 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

Technion Society of the Future

A nation that fascinates me enormous in many aspects is one of the smallest countries in the world. Despite that, this nation has four climatic zones and is the only democracy in the Middle East. Israel – that’s...

By Elias van Hees on 02/20/11 Comments Off

Call for Applications: International M.A. in New Media University of Amsterdam

International M.A. in New Media University of Amsterdam. Call for Applications Fall 2011 admission deadline: 1 April 2011 Overview The International M.A. in New Media & Digital Culture (NMMA) at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) is accepting applications for...

By Anne Helmond on 02/15/11 2

26 Days of Peace – a collection of tactical media projects

Since the end of the Second World War, the world has only known twenty-six cumulated days of peace. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Gulf War gave rise to a hope that we could...

By Stefania Bercu on 02/13/11 4

FOSDEM 2011: MilkyMist Open VJ Platform

The field of VJ (visual jockey) is an increasingly prominent aspect of live performance, especially in the relatively “quiet” physical performance of electronic music. Clubs such as Winston Kingdom in Amsterdam run commercial Windows based VJ software in undynamic...

By John Haltiwanger on 02/05/11 1

Let’s become Architects

Let's think about Facebook, websites in general and possibilities. Could they be better? When was the last time you cried because of a website? And not because you looked at a LOL cat video or a drunk friend. Let's...

By Marije Rooze on 01/24/11 4

Funware _playing with software art

November 12, 2010 until January 16, 2011 | Conference on saturday november 27 On saturday november 27 MU and Baltan Laboratories in collaboration with STRP Festival organise a Funware conference. Provocative views on humor, software, playing and art will...

By Rosa Menkman on 11/23/10 Comments Off

Economies of the Commons 2: Death Knell for Open Politics

Open source, open government, open culture - as Nate Tkacz, PhD at the University of Melbourne points out in his talk at the Economies of the Commons Conference, the ubiquity of 'openness' as a master category of politics in...

By Caroline Goralczyk on 11/14/10 1

Economies of the Commons 2: Yann Moulier Boutang on Sustaining the Free and Open

In his talk at the Economies of the Commons Conference on November 12th at De Balie in Amsterdam, Yann Moulier-Boutang, editor of the Quarterly French Review MULTITUDES and professor at the University of Technology of Compiègne, discussed the fate...

By Caroline Goralczyk on 11/14/10 Comments Off

Government Works in the Public Domain – All Your Tax-paid Content are Belong to Us

The Free Culture Research Conference last month 8-10 October (2010) devoted one of its panels to the notion that governments should explicitly release public materials – data, photographs, film – to the public domain. The moderator was Mathias Schindler...

By Morgan Currie on 11/10/10 3

Geert Lovink: ‘Critique of the Free and Open’ Keynote

Here’s my long-due report on Geert Lovink‘s keynote speech at the Free Culture Research Conference that took place in Berlin 8-10 October (2010). You can also read more on the conference website. As Lovink described it in his keynote,...

By Morgan Currie on 11/10/10 4

Online Piracy, The Ancient Art Of Digital Publishing

Digital piracy is a common aspect on the web, and Internet users are sometimes or even often part of it because an act of piracy is easily done. There are several sharing activities where piracy is involved such as...

By Pim van Bree on 10/31/10 4

Puzzling Infinity

In memory of this month deceased Benoît Mandelbrot – mathematician, godfather of fractals and the most well-known fractal the Mandelbrot set – I would like to pay respects to the Mandelbrot, in 3D! The phenomenon of fractals itself is...

By Pim van Bree on 10/31/10 Comments Off

Vampire energy

In the spirit of Halloween, I’ve dug up the worn down topic of Vampire energy. Vampire energy? Does that have something to do with people that wear you down and drain you from energy? No, that’s Energy Vampires. Vampire...

By Anouka Slemmer on 10/31/10 1

Music and Bits and Marketing

As a follow up to my previous post about the Music and Bits conference, I wanted to cover off on the other topic of the day, marketing. Out of the five companies who presented two of those, Top Notch...

By Megan Adams on 10/31/10 5

Music and Bits and Startups

Last week I attended the Music and Bits conference, which is the pre-conference for Amsterdam Dance Event. The conference touts itself as “an exploration of music and technology” and by all accounts I would say that was accurate. Of...

By Megan Adams on 10/31/10 1

Be afraid of Google?

A week ago I went to a lecture about The Googlization of the Global street by Siva Vaidhyanathan. The lecture was at “de Balie” and organized by Open. With Googlization Siva mean the process of being processed rendered and...

By Mathijs Voordenberg on 10/31/10 Comments Off

What is in your bag or what have you wore today?

A very popular group on Flickr is the “What is in your bag group”, where 10722 photo’s are placed of bags and its content and around 19500 flickr- users are a member of this group. When you are...

By Hanneke Mertens on 10/30/10 Comments Off

Professional use of e-readers: a whole different e-game

Take off your shoes, kick back and relax: cuddling up on the couch with your e-reader. Or forget about the couch and lay before the crackling open fire, maybe with a cup of hot coco like you might have...

By Anouka Slemmer on 10/30/10 2

Facebook: open minded panopticon?

Something caught my eye this week that seemed so contradictory that I want to share it with you. In the course New Media Theories, and actually in every other new media course, the principles of Michel Foucault are relevant....

By Jorien De Wandeler on 10/30/10 Comments Off

Dark blog

As the first half of this semester draws to an end, and we all wrap up our compulsory blogging and prepare for the next hurdles of our MA course, I was surprised at not hearing a single word about...

By Hans Terpstra on 10/29/10 11

Pleasure and Desire in The Matrix

The Matrix is often used as an example of several phenomena when it comes to new media analysis. The following fragment for example, the one of the blue and red pill, is...

By Elias van Hees on 10/28/10 Comments Off