The Centre for TV in Transition brings together the work of the television and scholars at the Department of Media and Culture Studies of Utrecht University who study the cultural transition of television from its early beginnings on. Our research focuses on the historical, recent and current transitions of television’s screens, histories, discourses, and practices. We suppose that television is a medium that never just is, but constantly is in the state of transition. Currently, we do not witness ‘ The end of TV’ as many commentators claim, but the re-invention of television in the digital environment.

Visit our website: http://tvintransition.wordpress.com/

UTRECHT MEDIA & PERFORMANCE RESEARCH SEMINAR ‘09-’10

The Utrecht Media & Performance Research Seminar invites participation of both junior and senior researchers from various research areas in a new series of discussions about the concept of liveness, presence and mediatization in debates about new and transforming media and performance technologies and practices.

In seven sessions we will discuss key publications on notions of liveness, presence, mediatization, aura, dis/appearance, and the relationship between public and private spaces, including work by authors like Philip Auslander, Herbert Blau, Walter Benjamin, Jay David Bolter, Steve Dixon, Adrian Heartfield, and Amelia Jones.

Literature will be selected and distributed by the organizers.

Dates: October 30, December 4, January 29, February 26, March 26, May 7, June 4. Time: 2.30 - 17.00. Location: Janskerkhof 13, 0.06 (OGC), except for the first session in October: Kromme Nieuwegracht 80, 1.06 (Stijlkamer van Ravenstyn)

If you would like to participate, send a message to N.Verhoeff[at]uu.nl no later than October 15th 2009.

We look forward to your participation,

Frank Kessler, Maaike Bleeker, Nanna Verhoeff

Theme five: Signs & numbers; culture & nature
(first session September 8, 2009)

Organised by: Dr. Rick Dolphijn (Media and Culture Studies), Dr. Iris van der Tuin (Gender Studies)

“Signs & numbers; culture & nature” deals with the ways in which the new materialism engages itself with mathematics, models, numbers, always in their entanglement with the human sciences, culture, signs. This theme will make clear the importance of science in new materialist theory. Yet it is not by taking the sciences as exemplary for good academic research that the humanities are critiqued. On the contrary, it is in re-reading the sciences and the humanities as they write a similar morphogenesis that builds up new materialist thinking. Neglected by the philosophy of science, this theme unveils a history of thought that is affirmative of both the sciences and the humanities, and shows their entanglement throughout the history of Western thinking.

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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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Dear 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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Bestaat 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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All 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

Utrecht 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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