Masters of Media

Today online dating isn’t such a big deal anymore; men and women from al ages and different backgrounds use the Internet weekly in the hope to form and maintain a romantic relationship. The reason why the Internet gained popularity in the field of dating is because of the high amount of anonymity. Internet is known [...]

The first computer game which could be played by multiple users at the same time and used a virtual world as environment was created in 1978 and was called Multi-User Dungeon. This game represented the first of its kind thus creating a model for future multi-user online games that utilize a virtual world in which [...]

“There will be no media consumption left in ten years that is not delivered over an IP network. There will be no newspapers, no magazines that are delivered in paper form. Everything gets delivered in an electronic form.” Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, Washington Post, 2008 During my bachelor in Communication, I had the opportunity to [...]

There’s Mercedes-Benz and there are other cars. I’ve always been an admirer of the German super-brand, not only for its outstanding four-wheeled pieces of art, but also for having a spectacular history and the power to constantly re-invent itself. Mercedes-Benz is probably one of the most well-known brands throughout the world, having its name next [...]

  One of the latest achievements of technology that has been recently introduced in the classrooms is the interactive whiteboard (IWB), which already used in many European countries, is now starting to make its presence observable in Greek schools. What impressed me during some visits I had in classrooms where the IWB was being used, [...]

A collaboration between artists Sebastian Shmieg and Silvio Lorusso, this project examines and documents 56 images of broken Amazon Kindle display screens that result in quite astonishing pieces of collage art. In an era of highly advanced computing technology, collage has reached new heights in contemporary arts culture and has redefined itself as a medium. [...]

In the digital media landscape new opportunities arise for active users and growing communities. As a active user of media you have the possibilities to use, modify and produce media. According to Henry Jenkins  new media technologies have profoundly altered the relations between media producers and consumers. Media producers are becoming more aware of fan [...]

“If you would concentrate the entire Romanian fashion inside a capsule, you would have as a result Molecule F, a small, but refined part of the Romanian design“ (www.molecule-f.com). This quote defines best what Molecule F, the first online concept store in Romania dedicated to Romanian designers, is. From an Idea to a Successful Online [...]

Ever since “digitization” took over “globalization” as the biggest phenomenon in the modern world, there’s very little that remains inaccessible – art, dance, films, world news, sports, music and what will you – everything is usually not more than three clicks away. Especially in the world of music, the concept of “exclusive” or “breaking” is [...]

What exactly are the major differences between a fan culture participating around a popular text on the one hand, and fan cultures based around brands or organizations on the other hand? This question I was studying in my Thesis I wrote for my Bachelor in the direction of new media and digital cultures. A Thesis [...]

In the digital media landscape new opportunities arise for active users and growing communities. As a active user of media you have the possibilities to use, modify and produce media. According to Henry Jenkins  new media technologies have profoundly altered the relations between media producers and consumers. Media producers are becoming more aware of fan [...]

”The Challenge for the foreseeable future is to create new openings, new possibilities, new temporalities and spaces within which life may assert its insistence on an ethico-aesthetic existence” Geert Lovink in The Principle of Notworking 2005. * Locked-out. For my Bachelor Thesis I did a literary research on computation and Internet regulations. Curious why media [...]

The Vancouver media landscape as an example Late last year, I had the opportunity to interview twelve journalists in Vancouver, British Columbia, as part of an undergraduate research project. I interviewed six journalists from the local “corporate media,” and six from “alternative or independent” sources. The goal was to investigate the state of the local [...]

My BA dissertation, on which I recently graduated, is the most extensive academic piece I’ve written so far. This blog post offers a brief account of how my dissertation, titled “Off the record: Understanding the rationale behind Last.fm’s social music recommendation system,” came to be. To a great extent, my bachelor thesis was prompted by [...]

It won’t be a shocking discovery if I write that that digital technology dramatically changed the art of photography. Travel photography gained (or lost?) the most, since digital equipment freed this art form from being a domain of experts. Now every traveler becomes an author of a potential artwork, and has the  means to publish it [...]

At the end of March, 2012, I attended the Unlike Us conference, organized by the Institute of Network Cultures. What followed was a series of conferences and insightful discussions. Unlike Us brought together activists, academics, students whom all discussed a variety of topics ranging from the economization of social media networks to cyberactivism.     [...]

It started off as a protest, a personal objection to the poorly made yellow journalism we all come across on a daily basis. Being called a “grammar nazi” so many times before certainly has its perks. At first, you’re surprised to notice every little spelling error up to grammatical tragedies on everything you read, magazines, [...]

‘ Yes We Can’ Dutch politicians during electorial campaigns in 2012 During their campaign for the 2002 Dutch elections, politicians were mainly using blogs as a mechanism to advocate their ideas on the Internet. In 2006 podcasting and postings on the Dutch Facebook equivalent “Hyves” were added as additional ways of communicating more direct with [...]

A pedantic Semantic Introduction Media has shaped the language we use in conversation since the unprecedented invention of the printing press which allowed for the emergence of mass media. Content found in news feeds, published articles and gossip columns dictate the subject and composition of our conversation as we perceive them to be a reflection of [...]

Virtueel Platform Since November 2011 I work as an editor for Virtueel Platform, the knowledge institute for digital culture in the Netherlands. I write about Best Practices; good examples of Dutch digital culture. The projects vary from interactive installations, games, apps, media art and digital archives, to theater productions, music instruments and exhibitions. Every year we choose [...]