REVIEW: PressPausePlay
PressPausePlay discusses how digital technology has affected the creative industries including music, film art and even literature.
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,...
De-Funkification? The Fight For The Right Of The Funkeiro
As a result of the “pacification” project through the implementation of a “peace police” (UPP) in Rio de Janeiro, which is intended to combat (armed) drugs trafficking and decrease violence in the favelas, the Baile Funk (Funk party) has...
How to make beautiful music (audibly & visually) without being a musician
Composing and representing music visually has traditionally been through music notation. Using a 5 lined “staff” or “stave” as a framework, black circles with lines are drawn to represent pitch and length of notes with other markings such as...
Imogen Heap is crowdsourcing your sounds for new album
Imogen Heap, two-time grammy award winner and known for her innovative online practices... 
Twitter brings New Media student on stage with Imogen Heap
Thanks to Twitter, I (Janice Wong - cellist and New Media student at the UvA) was given a great opportunity... 
E-books – The Black Market. Can We Stop It?
Along with the growth of the popularity of e-books as well as iPad, e-reader and other devices that allow for reading digital publications on the screen there is a huge increase in books piracy, what causes enormous losses for...
Will Wikipedia end the disregarding of Swedish artist?
Swedish singers are often disregarded. They won’t make it out side the Swedish borders. What happened there? Did publicity fall short? Didn’t MTV pick it up? Or is there some other reason why Swedish musicians mostly don’t appear on...
MUSIC: Is MySpace more important than an Official Website?
MySpace Music has become an easy way for musicians (solo artists and bands) to get exposure. Through Web 2.0 and the MySpace community means fans can connect to comment, put your song on their personal profile, and add you...
Paradiso – The Night of the Unexpected
Paradiso is a church building on Weteringschans that serves as a concert hall, club and cultural center since 1968. The “Night of the unexpected” is an one-day music festival which Paradiso hosts for the last 8 years in Amsterdam....
The Leonard Cohen Files: bridging the gap between artist and fans
In 1993, legendary poet, singer and songwriter Leonard Cohen stopped performing and writing. He planned not to perform anymore. In 2008 an official announcement told the world he would return. At Leonard Cohen's personal request, the announcement was not...
Kanye West on Twitter: promotion and PR
A couple of weeks ago, producer and rapper Kanye West joined Twitter. Although this fact alone is not all too remarkable, as Kanye West has been a fervent blogger for some years now, he has found remarkable ways to...
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...
The Wilderness Downtown: When New Media and Music Reinforce Each Other
Musicians are struggling, as they have always been. It seems to have to be part of the deal in one way or another. In the past decade or so however, things have gotten increasingly difficult for artists as the...
Information Visualization & Charting The Beatles
Since I am a huge Beatles fan and I’m currently enrolled in the Information Visualization course I want to give this project some attention; Charting The Beatles, lead by graphic designer Michael Deal. This projects attempts visual analysis of...
RjDj and the rise of ‘reactive’ music.
As our daily interactions are increasingly affected by the use of mobile wireless devices and technologies, new media seems to become more reactive to our actual environment. Is there an attributable value of our environment to the means of...
#Picnic09: STEIM, Music, and Training Our Intuition
“Say goodbye to control. Say hello to improvisation,” these were a few of the opening remarks made by STEIM director Dick Rijken. He stressed that in a world of less control we need to concentrate on training our intuition.
How to ‘Blog’!?
For my first post here I did a little research on the ‘MofM way to blog’. And my general opinion is that a lot of posts are of interesting academic value, but at the same time often relatively dull....
Musicians and the Upside of Downloading
The recording industry has indeed suffered from declining sales over the past ten years and it may be tempting to point the blame at file sharing, yet a mistake that is commonly made is to claim that the recording...
What are the ‘Music Industries’?
The term ‘music industry’ is a misnomer. In reality the ‘music industry’ is not one industry, it is several independent industries. This is an important distinction because if we say that there is a “crisis in the music industry”...
Digital Music Becomes (more) Rhizomatic
As digital audio files continue to flow freely on the Internet, music itself mimics certain inherent characteristics of the web best understood through Gilles Deleuze...