Posted on: May 13th, 2009 June 18 & 19 2009, Filmmuseum, Amsterdam
If making is thinking, as Richard Sennett has recently argued in his book The Craftsman, studying making can enable us to understand visual artefacts. Paintings, films, computer animation, or scientific images are the results of skilled procedures and complex interaction between makers, materials, tools and technologies, which generate and shape meaning. Mainly based on tacit knowledge though, these procedures and interactions tend to evade textual description and are, although enclosed in the finished product, usually not recorded. How do we get our hands and minds at these material procedures if we want to study the meaning of making?
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Posted on: April 3rd, 2009Dear students, colleagues, alumni, and friends,
You are cordially invited to the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Department of New Media and Digital Culture of Utrecht University on Friday the 15th of May in Studio T. 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.
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Posted on: March 26th, 2009Bestaat er zoiets als visuele geletterdheid?
Wat maakt Vermeers schilderijen mooi? Dat is een klassieke vraag uit de kunstgeschiedenis. Maar is een hersenscan mooi? En kan een arts er dan nog objectief naar kijken? Wetenschappers produceren steeds meer beeldmateriaal. Krachtige microscopen en computers genereren prachtige plaatjes in kleur en 3D. Maar eigenlijk leren we nooit hoe we moeten kijken naar beeld. We hebben geen woorden geleerd om elkaar uit te leggen waar we op moeten letten. Toch kunnen beelden ons veel makkelijker verleiden (of misleiden) dan teksten. Kunnen we ons daartegen wapenen?
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Posted on: March 23rd, 2009All the contributions in the latest edition of BLIK (the academic student magazine on audiovisual culture from the department of Media and Culture Studies) balance between media theory and practice. In the editorial it is discussed how scientific theories can serve as a searchlight in the quest for greater insight and for posing new questions. That light seems to literally shine through our feature image on the cover, which is intentionally out of focus. This because posing new question requires more than an absent-minded gaze, but the attentive vision of the critical observer.
Interviews with Dieter Mersch and Michal Kobialka, essays by Asher Boersma, Shirley Niemans, Mirko Tobias Schaefer, and Nora Wellhausen.
On the website you can read the full content overview. You can order your own copy of BLIK 2.1 by sending an email to blik.tijdschrift[at]gmail.com
Posted on: March 18th, 2009Utrecht University acts as a consortium partner in two research projects that were recently honoured with a RAAK-Publiek subsidy. These projects are titled ‘Arts-professionals in transdisciplinary art projects’ and ‘Inside movement knowledge’. The Utrecht University Theatre Studies department acted as co-applicant and initiator in both of these research projects that are supported by a number of knowledge and educational institutions and art organisations within the regions of Utrecht and Amsterdam.
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