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 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 November 2007 / Category News
The first Rotterdam Barcamp ever took place at the Worm. It was a packed evening with very exciting presentations on software development and socio-political issues.
Denis Jaromil Rojo gave a talk on piracy and file sharing and discussed option for anonymous access.
Media design student Danja Vasiliev presented a modified ADSL router that was turned into a camera with automatic picture upload to a server through open WLANs.
Audrey Samson talked about the efforts of the Genderchangers to teach woman in using software. Criticizing open source software development for blindness in gender issues Femke Snelting from Constant hit the mark. The unfolding discussion was filled with gender essentialism and revealed how important it is to revisit developer's culture and its relation to the produced artifacts.
Thiago Noaves from Brazil talked about open source operated online radio broadcasting and how the government's increased funding is changing the Brazilian open source scene.
Socio-political issues were crucial in most of the presentations. It was clear that technology is never just means but reveals society and its regulations and codes. Hopefully the debate will develop further bringing together people from software development as well as from humanities and policy making. The first BarCamp was a good start and hopefully it establishes as regular event.
Date September 2007 / Category News
The recent trend in Germany towards surveillance is threatening civil rights seriously. The right wing minister for Inner Affairs even requires clandestine online searching of personal computers next to wiretapping, and data retention. This would be similar to house searches without even notifying the occupants. The constitutional legality does not approve the practice why CDU and CSU politicians currently try to change the laws. The plans for data retention of all citizen's Internet traffic, phone calls, e-mails and even the logging of geographical location in relation to mobile phone communication will be in effect soon. A growing group of concerned citizens is organizing actions for defending what is left of our civil rights.
Date October 2006 / Category News
After Neurath at Stroom is covering the actual interest in the heritage of Neurath and Arntz, starting with a symposium on October 31st and November 1st with Frank Hartmann, Robin Kinross, Kristóf Nyíri and Femke Snelting.
Stroom -based in The Hague- is organizing a series of events on Otto Neurath and his influence on graphic and information design. Neurath and Gerd Arntz, an artist and graphic designer, emigrated to the Netherlands in the 1930s, where they continued their work on ISOTYPE (International System of Typographic Picture Education). The Hague's Gemeentemuseum does not only display a work of art of Gerd Arntz but keeps also a large collection of the ISOTYPE publications, the linocuts for printing the pictograms and display boards from exhibitions which used the ISOTYPE system. With ISOTYPE Neurath and Arntz turned the numbers of statistics into comprehensible pictures. Driven by the educational ideal to bring knowledge to illiterates they made information accessible in pictures which should enable their audience to develop an understanding of sociopolitical contexts.
For more information on Otto Neurath, see:
Paul Rotha (1946) From Hieroglyphs to ISOTYPE and Frank Hartmann (2002) Bildersprache Otto Neurath Visualisierungen
Master students of Utrecht University (Institute for Media en Re/presentation) are organizing a media festival (May 26th-27th).
Inside the Magic Bubble refers to the idea of an immersion into virtual worlds. The festival is presenting student projects on lifelike experiences in virtual reality, the vanishing of interfaces and the blurring between real life and virtual reality.
Inside the Magic Bubble
Festival Inside the Magic Bubble will take place on:
Thursday the 26th and Friday the 27th of May 2005
at Studio T - Kromme Nieuwegracht 20 - Utrecht
Entrance fee: 2,50 Euro
Op 26 en 27 mei 2005 zullen nieuwe media projecten van studenten uit heel Nederland eenmalig tentoongesteld worden op het festival Inside the Magic Bubble. Tijdens dit festival, georganiseerd door negen studenten van de Universiteit Utrecht, zal het begrip immersie onder de loep genomen worden. De vraag die centraal staat tijdens dit event is hoe nieuwe media onze ideeën over immersie hebben beïnvloed. Een vraag waarop de bezoeker spelenderwijs zelf een antwoord zal formuleren. Meer is er te zien op op de website.
Tags Event
[d]vision, the Vienna International Festival for Digital Culture is back with a new festival. Realtime generation is entirely dedicated to the demoscene and realtime animated visuals. Since last year the dvisionaries and their new director Regina Webhofer have been preparing this year's festival with a series of smaller events to present demos and outstanding coders to a broader audience outside the dynamic demo scene sphere. In close collaboration with the scene, [d]vision has set up a full scale festival with an exhibition, demo screenings, lectures, and panel discussions. And the popular nerd venue Werkzeug H hosts a daily demo lounge. After this packed program the festival features a demo party on which scene members from all over Europe compete for coding the best demo.
The festival takes place from July 4 to July 20 at Museumsquartier Vienna, Werkzeug H,and Metalab.
Program and information at [d]vision.
Tags Event
Date September 2007 / Category News
The festival 'Nieuwe Grond: the Artist as Opinion Leader' features next a series of interesting lectures and performances an event with the notorious Yes Men. The Yes Men have infiltrated the public communication of corporate companies as Exxon, Halliburton, and Dow Chemicals, and deliver lectures as representatives of the World Trade Organisation. Their pranks involve a WTO call for legalizing slavery, a Dow Chemical press release pretending to pay appropriate compensation for the victims of the scandalous Bophal accident in 1984, and a call for replacing the democratic voting system through selling the votes to the highest bidder. Besides the lecture 'Roping and Branding: Riding the Corporate Bull with the Yes Men' the event features the documentary 'The Yes Men'.
Festival, Nieuwe Grond: The Artist as Opinion Leader,
September 27th - 30th, Landgoed De Horst, Driebergen (NL)
Lecture, Roping and Branding: Riding the Corporate Bull with the Yes Men,
Saturday 27th September, 17:30-19:30
Tags Event
Date March 2007 / Category News
The forthcoming Dutch Electronic Art Festival is emphasizing "messy, sloppy interactions: interaction whose outcome is malleable and not definitive." Sounds good so far, and a look upon the program shows some most interesting events scheduled: The Evening of Knowbotic Research promises a Black Benz Race, a semi-fictional race in the migrational space between Switzerland and Albania. It deals with creating and using local communities to stimulate migration from one country into the other.
The seminar Not Everything is Interaction revisits the concepts of interactivity. The exhibition is assembled around concepts of interactivity in media art and presenting contemporary and almost classical works of the young field of media art. These are only a few examples from the comprehensive festival program. The festival will take place at the Las Palmas in Rotterdam.
Date November 2004 / Category News
In het kader van het Dutch Electronic Art Festival 2004 organiseert V2_
op 10 november a.s. een bijeenkomst over samenwerking tussen universiteiten, hogescholen, bedrijven en r&d instellingen in kunst en mediatechnologie. Studenten nieuwe media worden opgeroepen mee te discussiëren met sprekers uit onderwijs en bedrijfsleven; in samenwerking met het bedrijfsleven van invloed op de kwaliteit van het hoger onderwijs? Hoe is het om met studenten van een andere opleiding samen te werken in interdisciplinaire projectgroepen?