to see an example of the affordances of the sketchpad (discussed yesterday), which aimed for a kind of "magical paper" or smart paper, please see on the CD that comes with the New Media Reader, the short quicktime movie with Alan Kay's demonstration = CD: SAMPLE: KAY_TALK.MOV

-> also please compare this video, available online, that demonstrates how the creation of new media comes ON TOP of all the properties of physical media, adding new properties that are 'meta' - e.g. spline: bezier control is clumsy - adding control points (softimage, NURBS).

the centre pompidou: archicture non-standard video, especially when compared to alan kay's demo, should appeal to you as architects: centre pompidou: architecture non-standard

The Department of Film & Media Studies and HumaniTech® proudly present

New Media, Technology, and the Humanities

A Conference at UC Irvine, Friday-Saturday, February 17-18, 2006
135 Humanities Instructional Building

Given the growing importance of digital technologies in contemporary culture, the humanities should be well positioned to offer perspectives on cultural communication. The fast pace of technical innovation, as well as the rapid development of academic disciplines relating to individual media or to discourse on media, also pose a challenge to the humanities. This conference seeks to articulate the relation between media history, digital culture and the humanities. Panel discussions and demonstrations will focus on the following topics:

Friday, February 17, 9:00 AM to 12:45 PM
Digging: Media / Archeology
Lev Manovich, Visual Arts, UC San Diego
Erkki Huhtamo, Department of Design/Media Arts, UCLA
Tara McPherson, Division of Critical Studies, USC School of Cinema-Television
Jennifer Urban, Intellectual Property Clinic, USC Law School
Mark Poster, History, UC Irvine

2:00 PM to 5:00 PM
Texting: Digital / Humanities
Jeffrey Schnapp, French & Italian, Stanford University
Eyal Amiran, Comparative Literature, UC Irvine
Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Communication, UC San Diego
Mark Hansen, English and Cinema & Media Studies, University of Chicago
Rita Raley, English, UC Santa Barbara

5:15 PM - Public Reception, Beall Center for Art & Technology

Saturday, February 18, 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM
Gaming: Remix / Culture
Rosemary Coombe, Law & Cultural Studies, York University
Andrew Herman, Communication, Wilfred Laurier University
Robert Nideffer, Studio Art & Computer Science, UC Irvine
Henry Lowood, History of Science & Technology, Stanford University Libraries
John Seely Brown, former Chief Scientist for Xerox Corp., and former Director, Xerox PARC

- free and open to the public
- organized by Barbara Cohen and Peter Krapp
- supported by: Arts Computation Engineering (ACE), Beall Center for Art & Technology, California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), Department of Film & Media Studies, Humanities Center, International Center for Writing and Translation, Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Studies, School of Humanities, UC Humanities Research Institute

As part of our discussion in the class, I have posted a first draft of a hypothesis on Uruguay. Do you know any case-studies similar to the project? How does this discussion relate to new media? The aim of this thesis is to design an interface between local Uruguayans and international Uruguayans. How can one explore new possibilities in the design of that interface, and what do you think new media has to offer?

Hypothesis:

Uruguay has constructed its identity as a country of immigrants. From the second half of the past century, a strong stint of emigration began, and today it has reached worrisome levels, even if not considered an important phenomenon until recently. The spell of emigration, which took place in the '70s and the '80s, was a phenomenon of forced emigration or exile for political reasons derived from authoritarian processes and a later military dictatorship (1973-1984).

A large population of Uruguay lives in other countries.

Does this raise a question of country’s physical existence?

Does Uruguay really exist like a conventional country?

Does it not pose a different set of ontological parameters?

Is the country in a state of transience or transportation?

Is there a need to establish an identity for a country that is essentially dispersed?

The new entity of Uruguay may etherealize its physical identity, yet making it more prominent globally.

If Uruguay is distilling fractionally, is it better networked/ associated?

The aim of this thesis is to propose a new interface between local Uruguayans and the international Uruguayan population. This interface will strengthen the communication network among them. The scheme assumes that emigration has its own advantages and it endeavors to propose ways of capitalizing the phenomenon in order to extract benefits.

hi peter,

can you rephrase the question for the due assignment. it will be nice to have it in the written word!

regards,
luv.

this blog will serve as our forum for discussing the history and theory of new media.
you may ignore the older posts (from other classes).
posts here should cite and discuss the assigned readings, and related things.
hopefully, we can continue the dialogue on this blog between meetings.