Essential New Media Titles

In 2006, graduate students and teachers at the Utrecht New Media & Digital Culture research program presented a list of books, films, movies and games that we considered essential for understanding new media. The extent to which those titles represented the aesthetic and logic of new media was crucial for adding them to this 'Golden List'. We deliberately avoided following short-lived hypes and popular choices. Our aim was to look for texts, movies, music and games which are representative of the qualities of new media and which would also stand a test of time. As such they would constitute a canon of new media titles, a cultural compendium of new aesthetics, media practices, technologies and its discourses. However, a canon is never stable but a temporary representation of what a specific cultural formation considers as their key works. We were not aiming for dogmatism, but rather looking for a common ground to develop a discussion about new media culture. Reaching out to our peers and our students, we perceived this list as a canon for producing an ongoing debate about a key works on new media; we want to perpetually revisit and rethink which titles are suited best to represent our field and the media practices developing with the diffusion of information and communication technologies.

After over 6 years, it is time to lead this discussion to a thorough revisiting of our 'Golden List' list, and to create in a collective effort a new compendium. We invite colleagues and students to participate by sending in their choice of literature, movies, music and games. Please state why the titles of your choice are essential for representing and understanding new media. Please mail your suggestions no later than March 30 to m.t.schaefer [at] uu.nl

The new list will be published in April 2013 at www.newmediastudies.nl