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

Katherine Hayles Keynote Address at the Computational Turn

How many books can a person to read in a lifetime? In her keynote address at Swansea University’s Computational Turn workshop, Katherine Hayles surmised that if we read a book a day till we’re 85, it would amount to...

By Morgan Currie on 03/13/10 1

Call for Applications for UvA New Media Int’l MA 2010-2011

The International M.A. in New Media & Digital Culture (NMMA) at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) is accepting applications for 2010-2011 academic year. Applications are due 1 April. Please help spread the word by sharing the Call for Applications...

By Edward Shanken on 03/04/10 2

Google Buzz adoption in Amsterdam

Amsterdam is picking up the new Google Buzz social networking tool that was announced last week. Google has linked Buzz to Latitude as well (depending on the privacy settings). This means that people can see where their friends and...

By Bas Bisseling on 02/13/10 6

Useful Materials to Consult When Critically Investigating the Concept of Smart House in Media and Cultural Studies

In doing research for my master thesis on smart houses as technologies of government ‘at a distance’ last year (which you can read here), I found it very difficult to find materials which treated this topic from a media...

By Liliana Bounegru on 01/06/10 1

Small is Beautiful: a discussion with AAAARG architect Sean Dockray

One of my favorite websites is the semi-obscure digital library known as AAAARG (don’t even try googling. You just get pirate-themed sites). The site is a sundry collection of critical documents – many of them highly treasured theoretical classics,...

By Morgan Currie on 01/05/10 16

The elitist in Andrew Keen, the elitist in me

Who doesn’t like to listen to Andrew Keen talk? Perhaps his most famous appearance was made on the Colbert Report, where he had an interesting exchange of opinions with Colbert about whether or not the Internet is worse than...

By Hania Piotrowska on 01/04/10 3

Call for Applications for UvA New Media Int’l MA 2010-2011

The International M.A. in New Media & Digital Culture (NMMA) at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) is accepting applications for 2010-2011 academic year. The NMMA is a one-year residence program undertaken in English at UvA in the heart of...

By Edward Shanken on 12/23/09 1

Quality and Cultural Artifacts in the Digital Stream

You Me and Everyone We Know is a Curator was a one-day conference on December 19 about curatorial standards in the digital age. The clunky title, a nod to Miranda July’s similarly named feature film, gets to the core...

By Morgan Currie on 12/23/09 1

Bruce Sterling: Gothic Chic in the Future Favela

Bruce Sterling delivered the futurist goods at this weekend’s lean but excellent conference You Me and Everyone We Know is a Curator. Here’s a transcription of the entire delivery typed up as best I could, but it still doesn’t...

By Morgan Currie on 12/21/09 18

Consumentenbond goes Twitter (and hopefully learns from it)

The Dutch consumers union, the ‘Consumentenbond’, wants to reach new audiences. With their monthly magazine, readers can figure out which broom or coffee machine is the best buy, often leaving out impurities of production methods (well, not always). This time,...

By Sjoerd Tuinema on 12/13/09 2

IDFA: Doc Lab Live Screenings or the Googlization of Cinema?

Doc Lab programmer Caspar Sonnen explains he is focused on “finding ways to reach an audience bigger than just new-media experts… the point is that there are great stories emerging online and we have to show them!” This seems...

By Paulien Dresscher on 12/01/09 1

Web Words: a Vocabulary of the Web Interface

The Web is 'Search' and 'More.' We already know this intuitively: online content, and our experience of it, is mediated by the range of views and actions made available by the interface and, increasingly, the engine. Web Words is...

By Michael Stevenson on 11/25/09 Comments Off

Super 90s Hacker Video Mash-up

New York based curator Laurel Ptak strung together this mash-up of Hollywood films from the 90s and early 2000s depicting the moment of the hack, that roller coaster ride through the computer's dark neon tubes in pursuit of some...

By Morgan Currie on 11/25/09 3

IDFA: Media Fonds lecture Ira Glass & Media Mix Master Julien Temple

On this very memorable Saturday afternoon the Red Bull drinking special Doc Lab guest and master storyteller Ira Glass, and the British wine-sipping documentary, clip, and fiction filmmaker Julien Temple were present at the Escape Club to talk about...

By Paulien Dresscher on 11/23/09 4

IDFA: ABOUT VERTOV 2.0 AND SHAW’S ARCHIVAL EXPLORATIONS

The next few days I will do some blogging on the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam with the focus on those events in which new media practices are visible in traditional forms of filmmaking or are influencing form, context, and...

By Paulien Dresscher on 11/22/09 2

Ingmar Weber: Free the Query Logs

With Google seeping into every nook of the Society of the Query conference – the subject, direct or indirect, of most presentations and discussions – you might ask why Google isn’t here to speak for itself. Unfortunately and unsurprisingly,...

By Morgan Currie on 11/17/09 Comments Off

The Digital Revolution vs. the Cuban Revolution?

‘ since information wants to be free, then so do the people who have it - setting the stage for a titanic political struggle between the last Soviet-style dictatorship in the world and the first Internet insurgency. Call it...

By ellen sluis on 11/11/09 Comments Off

VideoSongs: a Cottage (Remix Culture) Industry

The YouTube account stats under my profile badge now boast over 13,000 videos watched, but besides the occasional surfing squirrel, dramatic chipmunk (technically a prairie dog) or Dawkins diatribe, I spend most of my time on YouTube listening to...

By Thomas Wielemaker on 11/05/09 Comments Off

The culture of speed

The “Accelerated Living conference” took place in Utrecht, last month, and it was part of the Impakt Festival 2009. As the name may unveil, the conference theme was about the way we experience and how we approach time, speed...

By Margarida Fonseca on 11/04/09 4

eComm conference 2009

Last week I participated in the eComm conference (The Emerging Communications (eComm) Conference & Awards) in Amsterdam. Impressions? I’m impressed. For two reasons. Firstly, I was impressed by the conference itself. Reason 1 The organization was excellent. Moderation by...

By Hania Piotrowska on 11/04/09 Comments Off

If it’s not on Wikipedia, it doesn’t exist

Florian Brody is an internationally acclaimed digital media specialist with more than twenty years experience in electronic publishing in Europe and the U.S. He is the President of Brody Inc., a publishing company based in Los Angeles and Vienna...

By Hania Piotrowska on 11/03/09 Comments Off

Democracy of the Algorithm

Working on the Society of the Query conference, I often find myself confronted with an unquestioned believe in what are believed to be the empowering or even emancipating qualities of universally accessible open and free information. Michael Stevenson once...

By Marijn de Vries Hoogerwerff on 11/03/09 2

Food Blogs as a Surrogate for Action

Well-known champion of sustainable food and a commonsense approach to eating Michael Pollan recently ran a piece in the New York Times called Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch. In this article, he argues that cooking shows, with...

By Allison Guy on 11/03/09 2

Locative media: mapping movement trough the city

Locative media genre can evoke uneasy feelings due to its military origin and ties to corporate power trough funding. There is a significant difference between subversive appropriation of the locative media tools such as in art practices and their...

By Radmila Radojevic on 11/02/09 1