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

Play and learn

In this post I will try to describe the way videogames have helped pave the way for information visualization as a tool for digital native learners by consistently tracking and visualizing achievements. I will also try to show how...

By Bram van der Kruk on 05/20/10 3

Information Visualization and the Public Sphere

Democratization of Data Open Data is a practice (and philosophy) of making data freely available to everyone. Advocates of Open Data argue that restrictions, licenses, copyright, patents, or other mechanisms of control are against the communal good and that...

By Jan Bajec on 05/19/10 1

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

Visualizing for different purposes

In my previous blogpost, I finished with the statement that there are many other authors (besides Manuel Lima) that talk about artistic ways of information visualization and the distinctions these cultural practices have from traditional (conventional academic) information visualization....

By Sander Leegwater on 05/18/10 Comments Off

The New Cartographers #1, Pedro M Cruz

Pedro M Cruz created recently a Project related with the visualization of Traffic in Lisbon. His project lets you see the city waking up through the motion of traffic on its main arteries and fading away towards the end...

By Margarida Fonseca on 05/16/10 Comments Off

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

Interactive information visualization for disaster/crisis awareness

Natural disasters always have threatened man’s existence. However, as the report ‘New Technologies in Emergencies and Conflicts’ by the United Nations cites; “the number of humanitarian crises has been rising in recent years. Moreover, disasters strike more frequently, and...

By Maarten Hoogvliet on 05/04/10 Comments Off

Casual InfoViz – Beneficial or Banal?

Although most information graphics and information visualizations to date have strived to deal with vast amounts of important, albeit often unintelligible, data in new and meaningful ways in the hopes of educating or effecting change, some recent forays into...

By Thomas Wielemaker on 05/04/10 1

Social data analysis – Information visualization and participatory culture

Researchers in all areas of human knowledge are overwhelmed with data. Through the process of sensemaking, in which information is collected, organized, and analyzed, new knowledge is formed and further action is informed. We must make sense of data...

By Jan Bajec on 04/27/10 4

Cartography of migration flows

It has been acknowledged today that geography and cartography are not neutral or objective scientific practices but are ultimately about relationship between power, space and place. Yet, it was only at the end of 80s /early 90s, with development...

By Radmila Radojevic on 04/27/10 7

Information visualization, not only an academic practice?

The definition by Card et. al. of information visualization as “the use of computer-supported, interactive, visual representations of abstract data to amplify cognition (1999),” is the basis for many. But there are also parties involved from outside the academic...

By Sander Leegwater on 04/27/10 2

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

Visualizing the ‘invisible space’

We live in a constant struggle to steer through the big and varied torrent of data which is unleashed everyday. And “data” can cover many different things. By following the Concise Lexicon for the Digital Commons created in 2001...

By Susana Zaragoza on 04/20/10 1

Information visualization, going public

2010 has great potential in being the year that Information Visualization (InfoVis) went public and moved from being a term only used by enthusiasts, to an interest shared by a broader audience. I am not saying this just because...

By Margarida Fonseca on 04/19/10 2

Charles M. Blow at the infographics 2010

Charles M. Blow was the opening presenter at the Infographics 2010 Conference in Zeist last Friday (March 5th) and in my opinion, one of the best presentations of the day along with the always inspiring work of Catalog Tree....

By Margarida Fonseca on 03/08/10 3

(Accelerated) World at Work

The Accelerated Living was a theme of the 20th edition of the Impakt Festival (Utrecht 2009) that was focused on changing notions of time. It explored the ways in which we experience time and speed, and the ways in...

By Jan Bajec on 11/02/09 2

ElasticMapping: a locative media project

On Tuesday October 6th, in the Nederlands Instituut voor Mediakunst in Amsterdam, there was an interesting and envisioning lecture and performance by Amsterdam visual artist Esther Polak (http://realtime.waag.org/). Her main interest in the field of locative media is to...

By Jan Bajec on 10/12/09 Comments Off

MA students present projects ‘Visualizing our World of Data’

Students from the MA New Media (UvA), MA Information Science (UvA) and MA Editorial Design (MaHKU) presented their interactive visualization projects at Crea. The Visualizing our World of Data program contained eight presentations (not all of them are described...

By Anne Helmond on 05/15/09 5

The Building Blocks of Information Visualization

Thursday Christian Behrens and Yuri Engelhardt did a workshop on the Universiteit van Amsterdam on the building blocks of information visualization. Christian Behrens created out of his master thesis on designing pattern taxonomy for the field of data visualization and information design,...

By Marijn de Vries Hoogerwerff on 10/03/08 Comments Off

Visualizing the network

As a result of the course information visualization, a public screening was organized where all project teams involved got a chance to present their work at the Waag Society venue. Within a tight 6 minutes, concept explanation and implementation...

By Tjerk Timan on 05/22/08 9

Updated Hyves Pulls Plug on Student Projects After Waag Society Event

((Looks like a possible false alarm, please see update below)) Online social network Hyves has blocked access to the profiles pages for unregistered users. Now one has to be registered and logged in to view a Hyver's full profile,...

By Michael Stevenson on 05/22/08 3

The University of Amsterdam’s ‘Great Man Theory’ on Wikipedia

Together with Erik, I’m working on a Digital Methods project called ‘Repurposing the Wikiscanner‘, where we try to adopt the infamous tool for uses other than scandal hunting. We’re still working on it, but here’s a nice preview. So...

By Michael Stevenson on 10/04/07 Comments Off

www.visualcomplexity.com

“VisualComplexity.com intends to be a unified resource space for anyone interested in the visualization of complex networks. The project’s main goal is to leverage a critical understanding of different visualization methods, across a series of disciplines, as diverse as...

By Paulien Dresscher on 09/23/07 Comments Off