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

From Cartography to Digital Mapping: Do you know the truth?

An online exhibition called ‘Bending Reality’ reflects on how the history of persuasive cartography is relevant for a contemporary society consumed by an overabundance of visual data that doesn’t always show what it claims to

By on 09/27/20 Comments Off

Mapping Shelter

Mapping Shelter proposes a critical new media intervention in the way we think of public space in regards to homeless people. The currently prevalent hostile architecture produces a virulent, toxic environment for marginalized communities. Our concept aims to break...

By Tiede Bart on 10/24/19 Comments Off

GIS: An Exploration of Non-Existent Maps

Introduction I’m reminded of the short story On Exactitude in Science by Jorge Luis Borges. He presents an encyclopedia excerpt from a nameless empire of cartographers who, in their pursuit of the perfect map and blinded by their hubris...

By Jonathan Murthy on 09/25/17 Comments Off

‘Consider it a safety Tool.’ – App Review: Glympse

Glympse is a groundbreaking new way to share your location with anyone for a specified period of time using patent-pending GlymseWatch timer. This app enables you to immediately share your location with friends and allows them to track your...

By Roos van Tongerloo on 10/11/11 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

Augmented reality: the first steps to a society of control?

Layla van Daalen, Chris Hoogeveen, Hanneke Mertens Every aspect of the world has an extra layer of information. It may not always be obvious, but these extra layers are most certainly present. Marc Tuters and Kazys Varnelis describe these...

By Chris Hoogeveen on 03/13/11 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

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

Our need for track and trace

When we think of Maps, we are prone to think of a visual, detailed and accurate representation of an area. Our most common idea of maps is that they serve the purpose of depicting geography, we may think particularly...

By Margarida Fonseca on 05/10/10 1

Mapping politics through art. Is it effective?

When the french philosopher Alain Badiou presented his essay “Fifteen Thesis on Contemporary Art” published in 2004, he took an artwork by Mark Lombardi, as an illustration of his talk. This artwork was a map. It was more exactly...

By Susana Zaragoza on 10/31/09 Comments Off

New Network Theory – Katy Börner

Katy Börner, with her presentation Global Brain Pressures: Towards Scholarly Marketplaces, asks what the relationship is between knowledge and the individual, and knowledge and networks. Over a long enough timeline, one sees increasing specialization, and thus a changing perception...

By Michael Stevenson on 06/29/07 Comments Off

Streetview Aesthetics?

In 1965, Ed Ruscha photographed Every Building on the Sunset Strip, in a way that may sound familiar to those following the Google Streetview release: Ed Ruscha took the photographs contained in this leporello with a motorized Nikon camera...

By Michael Stevenson on 06/11/07 6