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

“I believe” an one-to-one experience to go alone to an unknown world.

Even though it was just a simple interactive installation with video, music, the artist and a few special effects, in 15 minutes you will get an impressive one-to-one experience. Beyond the impressive meeting with a stranger and all the...

By Layla Van Daalen on 09/12/10 Comments Off

Augmented Reality through the appearance of a little green man

Meet Proto. This little green man appeared on my hand today when I was about to write this blog post. Off course he didn’t ‘just’ appear to me like the virgin Mary. His arrival was caused by an almost...

By Lotte Woerde on 09/12/10 3

Burning Questions

Is Google the always-on, silent recorder of global zeitgeist? There’s Google Trends, which lists most searched-for sites and topics in the last week, month or year around the globe. This has been a useful tool for digital publishers to...

By Natalie Dixon on 09/11/10 Comments Off

tech celebrities vs. “real” celebrities and other deep thoughts

As I’m reading Vanity Fair online this morning I realize that I have two separate articles pulled up next to each other on my browser that are essentially telling the same story only with different characters. Yes, it happens...

By Megan Adams on 09/11/10 1

Behold the bloggers….

Well, although this might not be the first blog I ever wrote (my third this is to be exact), it is the first time I’m writing it for the sake of blogging without personal goals. The thing is that...

By Hans Terpstra on 09/11/10 Comments Off

Who wants to be a DJ?

When just a few months ago the iPad was revealed, it seemed only a matter of when not if the first DJ applications for the newest Apple gadget would hit the market. Now it looks like the Austrian energy...

By Agathe Wiedemair on 09/11/10 3

Bye Bye, Islam! How the Virtual Space Enhances Anti-Muslim Campaigning

Shoot a mosque and you will earn 2000 points, shoot a Muslim calling for prayer and you are another 1000 points ahead! What sounds like a mere disaster in terms of religious intolerance can now be seen online with...

By Caroline Goralczyk on 09/10/10 2

The Whole Truth and Nothing But……Or Not?

I keep hearing that consumers demand transparency in advertising campaigns. We don’t want advertising companies to promise us one thing, and end up doing another. What else is new? Especially with the rise of online advertising and the popularity...

By Mares Kahrel on 09/09/10 3

Fellow Sorcerers: Rhizomatic Animality in New Media Art

Here’s my thesis, relevant for any fan of cyborg studies: Fellow Sorcerers PDF Abstract Beginning in the industrial revolution and possibly before, the balance of animal life has tipped away from a state of autonomy to a state of...

By Allison Guy on 09/06/10 Comments Off

Automated Ontology Structure In Folksonomy

My master thesis is finished! I’ve made it available for download for everyone interested in hybrid folksonomy/ontology Web organization. Download Automated Ontology Structure in Folksonomy (.pdf, 3100 kb) Abstract The purpose of this research is to evaluate automated folksonomy...

By Maarten Hoogvliet on 09/05/10 1

Angst About the Future of the Book at Edinburgh’s Book Fest

It’s always a pleasure to hear publishers hash out their anxieties about the future. You get passionate, articulate types – fanatic bibliophilia often attracts peoples to the business to begin with – who pounce on issues with impressive granularity....

By Morgan Currie on 09/02/10 Comments Off

Web culture circa 1995 – some first thoughts on the history of HotWired and Suck.com

"Early histories of 'the digital content revolution' will center around one area, San Francisco's South Park." (Justin Hall talking about San Francisco's multimedia gulch) I'm in the bay area researching HotWired - Wired's ambitious website created in 1994 -...

By Michael Stevenson on 08/31/10 Comments Off

Publishing In Convergence on -empyre-

This month on -empyre-, a forum that facilitates critical perspectives on contemporary cross-disciplinary issues, practices and events in networked media, you’ll find a collaborative discussion unfolding about seismic shifts shaking up the publishing industry. Conversations so far have spanned...

By Morgan Currie on 06/10/10 Comments Off

Google, Buzz off! A reflection..

While many technology and media journalists are now focusing their attention on Facebook’s recent privacy moves, I’d like to shed some light on an earlier privacy issue: the implementation of Google Buzz. Some of you might be are aware...

By Marc Stumpel on 06/06/10 2

Information Visualization and Conflict

The visualization of information has long been a tool for generals and historians alike to go over military strategy and to materialize the concomitants of battle. As military operations continue within an increasingly data-rich environment, we must ask if...

By Thomas Wielemaker on 05/25/10 2

Performative practices of mapping

“Perhaps one of the most important characteristics of . . . map has multiple entryways as opposed to the tracing, which always goes back “to the same.” The map has to do with performance”. (Deleuze...

By Radmila Radojevic on 05/19/10 1

Social Activism in the Amazon

Social activism is strong in Santarém, a city of nearly 300.000 habitants in the North of Brazil, the Amazon region. Mainly driven by a group of media activists, they aim at the appropriation of alternative technology throughout the Amazon.

By ellen sluis on 05/18/10 1

Visualizing for America

On the 8th of this March, the Sunlight foundation launched the Design for America contest. This non-profit organization aims to make government data more accessible for citizens. The development of information visualizations from governmental data is becoming a fruitful...

By Heleen Kerkman on 05/11/10 Comments Off

Data Choreography

Information visualization field is lately becoming more and more manisfested in the physical space; in some cases as an everyday life practice and more often in the form of an ambient object . We can observe projects in which...

By Susana Zaragoza on 05/10/10 2

Google Books to Pay Scholars to Dig into its Digital Stacks

Google has “quietly” decided to pay humanities researchers $50,000 a year to dig into all the rich metadata accruing from its 12 million and counting library. Franco Moretti, whose “distant reading” analyzes literary trends from statistical data rather than...

By Morgan Currie on 04/25/10 Comments Off

INFORMATION VISUALISATION, SHARING THE STORY

No one knows everything, but everyone knows something, all knowledge resides in humanity While the notion of collective intelligence –as coined by Pierre Lévy- has already been extensively discussed in regards to the collective phenomenon of Wikipedia, the current rise...

By Heleen Kerkman on 04/20/10 1

Towards a methodology for Web-based investigative reporting

This article discusses the implementation of new online methods in the field of investigative journalism. The development and nature of investigative reporting are shortly discussed before turning to the ways Internet research is conducted in the field of new...

By Jelle Kamsma on 04/03/10 3

E-mobility versus Immobility at Electrosmog

De Balie’s Electrosmog festival this week argues that in the age of hypermobility, staying put can be a tactic of sustainability in itself. The festival self-consciously explores the ways we might reduce our carbon footprint by substituting technology for...

By Morgan Currie on 03/20/10 8

Master of Media spin-off selected for EU blogging competition TH!NK3

www.ICT4Accountability.wordpress.com , one of the blogs started by a former New Media student of the UvA, is officially selected to compete in the internationally renowned blogging competition’ TH!NK3’. This blogging competition, set up by the European Journalism Centre, will...

By Wouter Dijkstra on 03/17/10 1