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

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

Visualizing Political Chatter

With regards to political campaigns, the Internet has attracted the attention of politicians, researchers and the general public. During the last years the medium has developed into one of the most important – if not the most important –...

By Marte Lindstrom on 05/03/11 Comments Off

Why Twitter can be the Next Big Thing in Scientific Collaboration

Introduction Imagine yourself in the following situation: You, a scientist pur sang, are busy researching and analyzing A and you are having doubts about the values in the model, suspecting a technical error. Without hesitation, you compose a tweet...

By Sander Jansma on 05/02/11 8

History of electro, metal and jazz through visualization

This idea of mapping music visualizations as a means of discovery is something that I have previously touched on. In looking at examples of music visualizations that have bore applications, something that I find particularly interesting is that some...

By Megan Adams on 04/29/11 Comments Off

Visualising music: the problems with genre classification

Want to listen to new music but sick of staring at your old MP3 collection? Streaming applications like Spotify, Last.fm and Pandora (US only) recommend related artists. Sites like The Hype Machine and Elbows aggregate music blogs for instant...

By Janice Wong on 04/26/11 1

Politwittic

Politics in the age of new media have different characteristics than the politics before the year 2000. Since its launch, the World Wide Web revealed itself as a powerful tool to reach a large part of the (wealthy) population....

By Jorien De Wandeler on 04/26/11 Comments Off

Visualizing Academic Interest

The internet has been heralded and praised for bringing democracy. It is stated since the advent of the internet that knowledge is no longer bound to limitations, as it goes freely over the web disseminating to all possible directions....

By Xander Stolwijk on 04/25/11 1

Graphical Primitives versus Direct Visualization

A rectangle walks in a bar and orders a drink. An attractive circle sits on a bar stool next to the rectangle. ‘Hey Circle, want to get primitive?’ The Circle looks the rectangle slowly up and down and says:...

By Marije Rooze on 04/22/11 Comments Off

What’s that on the map? Problems with geo-visualization

The last couple of weeks, my data-visualization team and I, have been working on our Europeana project. Europeana is a big heritage-digitization project funded by the European Union. Their goal is to digitize all of Europe’s heritage objects and...

By Joris Pekel on 04/21/11 2

Visualizing what is happening

Going through an older post in the MoM’s blog referring to Walter’s Ong book “Orality and Literacy”, I discovered a term referring to a new “hybrid form” of culture that has spread on the internet: The Secondary Orality. The term is emphasizing...

By olga paraskevopoulou on 04/21/11 Comments Off

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

What Data Visualization Can Learn from Game Design

When reading articles and books on data visualization, the focus is often on ampiflying cognition by using external (visual) aids. In this blogpost I attempt to conduct a kind of meta-analysis on data visualization by looking beyond the content...

By Philip Man on 04/19/11 2

The Simple Ways of Information Visualization

There is no doubt that the human brain is an amazing and complex bodily organ, perhaps even the most amazing of them all. Personally, I do not think I will ever cease to be amazing by it. But, despite...

By Marte Lindstrom on 04/18/11 Comments Off

Decision Making 2.0 With Data Visualization?

Can visualization influence people? I mean can we prove it? This core dilemma pondered at the heart of Enrico Bertini’s latest post on FILWD was incidentally triggered by a question from an audience member at his latest talk on data visualization....

By Ekaterina Yudin on 04/18/11 5

Music visualizations as a means for discovery

The basic idea behind information visualization (InfoVis) is that it takes an otherwise stagnant data set of facts and numbers and transforms into an imagery filled with visual patterns and elements. While this idea is certainly not new it...

By Megan Adams on 04/15/11 4

The Fuzzy Edges

Emotion has long since been a fraught with subjectivity and complex interpretations for as long as scholars have sought to understand it. When scientists became interested in emotion in the late 19th century it suffered under labels like “feminine”,...

By Natalie Dixon on 04/15/11 4

Visualizing Scientific Research Collaboration: A Review of the Beauchesne-Map

Introduction In recent years there has been an increase in interest for international scientific collaboration (Luukkonen, 1993, Ponds, 2008), but the phenomenon is anything but recent: the first signs of it where seen in the nineteenth century (Luukkonen, 1993:...

By Sander Jansma on 04/14/11 2

Impure: a user-friendly visual programming language from Bestiario

Last week, Barcelona/ Lisboa –based company Bestiario presented the audience of VisWeek 2010 with their latest information visualization programming language, Impure, an initiative to help democratize the Web by presenting Internet citizens with a flexible, easy to use tool...

By Stefania Bercu on 10/30/10 3

Truthy: Policing Misinformation, One Meme-ing Tweet At a Time

“Swiftboaters beware!” The battle to control Congress is on and this election year the truth is about to get Truthier. Twitter – the social media network, twenty-four-hour news site, conversation and blogging platform, wedding and death announcement site, gossip...

By Ekaterina Yudin on 10/18/10 2

Twitter Research Supported by Info Visualisation

Everyday users of Twitter users provide the world with us with of tweets on topics differing from what they ate, how they feel to what music they listen to. This is a great source for researchers who want to...

By Jidi Guo on 10/07/10 1

‘Masters of Media’ on the Web

According to the 2010 call for New Media MA applications, the Masters of Media blog has been nominated for a best education blog award and enjoys a broad, global readership. Masters of Media‘s international prestige and academic acclaim undoubtedly...

By Catalina Iorga on 09/13/10 Comments Off

INFODECODATA and Manuel Lima about the rise of the info-visualisation research field

First off, I’d first like mention that there’s an upcoming symposium as a part of the INFODECODATA exhibition on Sunday 13 June at the Graphic Design Museum Breda. There’ll be plenty of interesting speakers including Lev Manovich, Jack van Wijck and...

By Sjoerd Tuinema on 06/04/10 Comments Off

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

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...

By Maarten Hoogvliet on 05/24/10 1