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
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'.
Date March 2009 / Category News
Forthcoming MIT6 conference focuses on structural changes in media practices related to storage and transmission. Referring to Harold Innis' notion of time-based media such as stone or clay, and space-based media such as paper, the conference revolves around the current transformations in archiving, communication, and social organization. My contribution will analyze explicit and implicit participation in online data collections and discuss the implementation of media practices into new business models.
MIedia In Transition 6: Stone and papyrus, storage and transmission
April 24-26, MIT, Boston
http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/mit6/index.html
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 March 2009 / Category News
While Amazon's Kindle is a bestseller in the United States, Europe seems still a bit slow in taking up e-readers. Producers prepare for conquering the European market. The introduction of e-book readers and their eventual effective diffusion will transform the publishing industry. An international conference organized by Florian Cramer from Rotterdam-based Piet Zwart Institute revolves around the future of publishing, paper and the transformation of reading and the book in the digital age. The program is packed with exceedingly interesting presentations by designers, publishing experts, and researchers from the cutting-edge front of media development.
PRINT/pixel, May 12-13, Willem de Kooning Akademie, Blaak 10, Rotterdam
Tags conference
Date November 2008 / Category News
On Monday December 1 2008, I will defend my dissertation "Bastard Culture! User participation and the extension of cultural industries" at the University of Utrecht. The thesis supervisors are Frank Kessler and Joost Raessens. Seating on the reading committee are José van Dijck, Frank Hartmann, Toby Miller, Paul Rutten, and William Uricchio.