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

Visualizing Our Global Mood 140 Characters at a Time

“We need a new way to convey information, a method which is simple to teach and to learn, and at the same time comprehensive and exact. What I might call ‘consistent visualization’ is such a way.“ These are the...

By Robert Silvis on 03/13/13 1

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

Data visualizations in popular Dutch media

EVERY TWO DAYS WE CREATE as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization up until 2003, according to Google CEO Eric Schmidt. That is something like five exabytes of data: 5.000.000.000.000.000.000 bytes. It is no surprise...

By M. van Helvert on 04/17/14 1

Data visualizations: a global matter

Two levels of information processing Our world is saturated with information. Images, objects, texts, numbers, audio, moving visuals, and everything in between. There’s a reason some call the present the Information Age and invent terms like informatization. All...

By Stijnie Thuijs on 03/26/12 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

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

qwiki – can linear narratives still be relevant in hyperlinked contexts?

Some time has passed since the official launch of qwiki (see the Masters of Media Blog initial impressions). Although still in alpha, a more profound critique can be put forward as the platform evolved and opened itself to users.

By Daniel Luiz dos Santos on 10/22/11 Comments Off

Data Visualization Templates

Templates are ready-made project files that can be customized and used as the basis for various types of media content. In the world of graphic design, web design and motion graphic design, the use of templates is widely spread....

By Jorrit Schaap on 07/03/12 Comments Off

Making Visible the Invisible: Information Visualization Through a Fine Art Lens

“Big Data will replace ideas, paradigms, organizations and ways of thinking about the world.” –Steve Lohr It is difficult to mention the present-day ubiquity of data without resorting to clichés. We are frequently reminded that data is in use...

By Maya Livio on 03/14/13 Comments Off

Interview with James Robinson: Mapping the World’s Signal

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blogpost about Open Signal Maps, an application for android that maps the world’s signal. I used the application myself for several days and it worked pretty fine and gave me better...

By Daan Fliervoet on 10/29/11 Comments Off

Mapping the Web

By zooming in and out, you navigate through the digital Pompeii of millions of abandoned homepages. While you pass the neighbourhood called ‘Pentagon’, you see military images and short stories about the army. By entering another district named ‘Vienna’,...

By Katía Truijen on 03/20/13 Comments Off

City Vibes Project – A heartbeat of the city based on its BPM

We choose our music to best fit our mood, our spirit or our activities. We use it to celebrate our victories, to soothe our pain or to give us energy when we are feeling down. This is why ensuring...

By Andrei Florian on 11/01/11 Comments Off

Data visualization: New professionals in demand

Data is the biggest change in the digital society that appeared during the era of the Internet and technologies. Information is exploding: 90% of the world’s data was generated over last two years. Data visualization and analytic view makes possible...

By Indre Lauciute on 04/16/14 Comments Off

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

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

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

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

Seminar: CBS Datavisualization – Bas Broekhuizen

Last Friday the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) held an interactive data visualization day “Datavisualisatie in beweging” initiated by web designer Eugene Tjoa and Bas Broekhuizen. With this seminar statistic data supplier CBS invited several data visualization professionals, to present their...

By Fenneke Mink on 02/06/12 Comments Off

#IC14NL: Selfiecity

The 7th Infographic Conference took place last month on March 7th and featured Selfiecity, a collaborative project led by Lev Manovich and the Software Studies Initiative that was presented to the audience by fellow team member Mortiz Stefaner. Launched in...

By Nicholas Vieira on 04/11/14 Comments Off

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

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

Sciencemappr: Some dataset related implications

In my previous blogpost I posed some questions concerning the visualization project I am currently working on. The purpose of the project is to visualize global scientific interest for human rights issues and the emergence and disappearance of scientific...

By Xander Stolwijk on 05/09/11 Comments Off

Visual (for) thought: why data visualization should be used more in the classroom?

“Data is the new oil? No: Data is the new soil.”- David McCandless, TEDGlobal, 2010 Whatever data is, one thing is sure: we cannot overlook them. Since we live in the Big Data era,as Jaimy and Ana analyze in...

By Eva Anagnostaki on 03/20/13 Comments Off

Twingly: Mapping the Global Blogosphere in Real-Time

I was kind of amazed to see this real-time visualization of the a selected portion of the blogosphere. It is ‘marketed’ as a screensaver, but has much more potential than just a screenfiller when you’re away from your screen....

By Twan Eikelenboom on 04/05/07 Comments Off