Mirko Tobias Schäfer / Assistant Professor
University of Utrecht Department for Media and Culture Studies
Mirko Tobias Schäfer / Assistant Professor
University of Utrecht Department for Media and Culture Studies
While other newspapers have recently decided to lock their content behind paid-access gates or even exclude it from search engines, the Guardian chooses a timely approach for its archive. With the Guardian Open Platform, the British newspaper makes its archive accessible for users who can integrate the content into all kinds of mash-up sites and web applications. The benefits are mutual, of course: while users gain access to a large archive of newspaper content, the Guardian turns dead data into a dynamic resource that will thrive on the labour of others and simultaneously reach audiences for advertising.
Date April 2010 / Category News
SetUp is an initiative that aims at establishing a permanent medialab in Utrecht. For the next three month the abandoned ABN Amro building at the Neude serves as playground, work space and meeting place for the various stakeholders and participants in new media development in Utrecht.
Date November 2009 / Category News
Rumour has it that Charles Babbage, a very self confident inventor, exclaimed in 1821 when recognizing many calculation errors in a set of mathematical tables: “I wish to God these calculations had been executed by steam!”
Date August 2009 / Category News
Urban space is characterized by a large numbers of signs, displaying information, channelling traffic, attracting our attention for a variety of means: Memorial tablets, brand logos, billboards, traffic guidance systems, information boards, graffiti, road signs, prohibition signs, and instruction plates constitute an inseparable part of everyday life and shape cultural identity as well as urban environment. With some help of his family Markus Hanzer documented a vast number of signs in urban space, displayed at the Vienna Museumsquartier in an exhibition entitled: Krieg der Zeichen. Spurenlese im urbanen Raum.
Tags Review
After more than a decade of the World Wide Web, the binary concept of a real and virtual worlds is finally obsolete, and global networked computers are recognized as common aspects of everyday life. Furthermore, networks and software applications constitute ecosystems intrinsically intertwined with their users' social contexts. As heterogeneous as the plurality of users and as vast as their cultural production, the Web calls for interdisciplinary approaches to tackle the many issues emerging through using and simultaneously expanding the web.
Tags conference
Date April 2010 / Category News
Hosted by the Institute for Network Cultures a conference focused on Wikipedia from a critical point of view. Core issues were the politics behind the collective encyclopaedia, the processes of collaboration, the unfolding power structures and the creation of knowledge. A group of students affiliated with Utrecht's New Media and Digital Culture covered talks and interviewed speakers.
Report on the conference Wikipedia. A Critical Point of View (pdf; in Dutch)
Conference summary, resources and videos at the Institute for Network Cultures
Date January 2010 / Category News
Upstreams & Downstreams (Piracy, Data Retention & Surveillance) is the first Skip Intro Session, a lecture series on politics and citizenship in the 21-century. The meeting will take place on Wednesday January 20 from 19.30-21.30 in Studio T (Kromme Nieuwegracht 20, 3512 HH Utrecht). Controversial media practises and politics are discussed by the following speakers:
- Jaromil (dyne.org, http://www.rastasoft.org)
- Ilpo Koskinen (University of Arts & Design Helsinki, http://www2.uiah.fi/~ikoskine)
- Joris van Hoboken (Bits of Freedom, https://www.bof.nl/)
Date October 2009 / Category News
For 20 years now, the crew around Arjon Dunnewind has brought together artists and scholars from all over the world to present and discuss in an annual festival the latest in media development, reflect on trends and aesthetics in media art and everyday life. This year's edition of the Impakt festival in Utrecht, "Accelerated Living" is revolving around the experience of time.
Tags conference
YouTube made a profound impact on digital culture owing to its vast number of users, and enormous and continuous repository of on-demand-video. Commentators praised it as democratizing media use, facilitating the revolution that turns the user into the producer and changes everything, or condemned it for the same or many other reasons. The popular discourse has often simultaneously overestimated and underestimated YouTube in the many often hasty and superficial statements. Few attempts have been made so far to approach YouTube critically and analytically. A first collection of articles has been provided by Geert Lovink and Sabine Niederer in their 2008 publication Video Vortext Reader: Responses to YouTube.
With the recently published YouTube Reader, edited by Pelle Snickars and Patrick Vonderau, a comprehensive book is available that attempts to go beyond mere description to theorize an emerging media phenomenon from different perspectives. The entire book is available as free download (.pdf).
Date April 2009 / Category News
On May 15th 2009 the Utrecht New Media Studies program will celebrate its 10th something anniversay.
The book launch takes place on May 15th 2009 at Studio T, Kromme Nieuwegracht 20, Utrecht (NL). On this day we want to reflect on what we have achieved in the last ten years and how we have developed into a full-fledged and indispensable field of study. The day will be kicked off with a series of presentations of former student who will tell us about their professional careers after their study. In the afternoon our book Digital Material: Tracing New Media in Everyday Life and Technology will be launched (AUP, eds. M. van den Boomen, S. Lammes, A.-S. Lehmann, J. Raessens and M.T. Schäfer). Lectures will be held by Geert Lovink (Institute for Network Cultures) and Florian Cramer (Piet Zwart Institute). During the day Studio T exhibits two installations: nOtbOt by Walter Langelaar and threads/ by audrey samson. Both artists will also give talks on their approach to working with 'digital material'.