Masters of Media

Future Reflections: An interview with Bruce Sterling

Today I have the pleasure of presenting you with a short interview with Bruce Sterling. Bruce was kind enough to say "we'll give it a shot" to an e-mail interview when I cornered him at the bar after the...

By John Haltiwanger on 01/12/10 4

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

“I know culture, and You certainly don’t!”

Last Saturday, 19th of December, the venue of Paradiso was dedicated to the symposium of “Me you and everyone we know is a curator.” This symposium addresses questions about quality in an age of visual overload. With an impressive...

By Thomas Fonville on 12/25/09 Comments Off

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

Andrew Keen – video snippets of the lecture he gave at the “me, you and everyone we know is a curator” conference

Although video is crappy and not all was recorded, I managed to save some stuff of the lecture by Andrew Keen. Following his words, I should not be doing this, because archiving something digitally is not archiving something at...

By Tjerk Timan on 12/22/09 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

Rethinking Googlization

In current search engine research the importance of Google as object of study seems to be inevitable. Google seems to be indexing parts of the physical and digital world, which we first thought to be unsearchable. Googlization, the term...

By Harro Heijboer on 12/21/09 2

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

Augmented Reality: A new way of learning?

Augmented Reality (AR) is no longer science fiction. The usage of AR is rising in our society. What is AR aiming on? On the enrichment of physical spaces with computer generated images and the availability of location based content....

By Denise Pires on 12/11/09 12

Nanna Verhoeff at Urban Screens: Mobile Digital Cartography from Representation to Performance of Space

Nanna Verhoeff, associate professor in the department of Media and Culture studies at Utrecht University, had one of the very few yet very welcomed theoretical presentations at the Urban Screens conference which took place on the 4th of December...

By Liliana Bounegru on 12/10/09 Comments Off

Martijn de Waal, Improving Cultural Public Space

What is Urban Culture? How do we shape and express our own identify in the city? How do we relate to others? At the Institute of Network Culture's Urban Screens conference Martijn de Waal discussed these issues as well...

By Chris Castiglione on 12/10/09 2

Media Playgrounds Program announced!

Media Playgrounds presents creative ways of dealing with broadcast media by community media practitioners, professional and emergent artists. Media Playgrounds takes place in Amsterdam, London, Vienna, Budapest and Sofia. At each location, during two days, a variety of workshops...

By Rosa Menkman on 12/08/09 1

Book Launch at the Institute of Network Cultures: ‘Urban Screens Reader’

In the final session of the Urban Screens conference which took place in Amsterdam last Friday, Sabine Niederer announced the launch of the first book dedicated entirely to the urban screens theme, Urban Screens Reader.

By Liliana Bounegru on 12/08/09 1

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

Siva Vaidhyanathan on Googlization, “Only the elite and proficient get to opt out”

The term Googlization, according to Siva Vaidhyanathan, is the process of being processed, rendered, and represented by Google. His upcoming book The Googlization of Everything investigates the actions and intentions behind Google. At The Society of the Query Vaidhyanathan...

By Chris Castiglione on 11/30/09 3

Google’s Global Dissociative Identity Disorder

A lot has been written already about the local and global. Comparing this to other local Google websites and the general Global Google (google.com). But how global is this Global Google actually? Is google.com really global? Is the result...

By Harro Heijboer on 11/30/09 Comments Off

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

What Real Time Strategy game must I play?

So you like Real Time Strategy games and want to find new games previously unknown to you, but potentially worth playing?

By Kai Henriquez on 11/24/09 Comments Off

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