Posts

New Book out! The Leisure Commons: A Spatial History of Web 2.0 (Routledge)

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My book, ' The Leisure Commons: A Spatial History of Web 2.0 ' has just been published by the Routledge Science, Technology & Society Series.  About the book:  There is much excitement about Web 2.0 as an unprecedented, novel, community-building space for experiencing, producing, and consuming leisure, particularly through social network sites. What is needed is a perspective that is invested in neither a utopian or dystopian posture but sees historical continuity to this cyberleisure geography . This book investigates the digital public sphere by drawing parallels to another leisure space that shares its rhetoric of being open, democratic, and free for all: the urban park. It makes the case that the history and politics of public parks as an urban commons provides fresh insight into contemporary debates on corporatization, democratization and privatization of the digital commons . This book takes the reader on a metaphorical journey through multiple forms of pu

NIAS Grant -Exploring the Democratization and Globalization of the art world in the Digital Era

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My colleague Filip Vermeylen and I have been working for a number of years on the extent to which the internet serves as a game changer in the art world. We have already published quite a bit on this, including our article on ' the end of the art connoisseur ?' and ' digital art markets. It has been an exciting journey so far working with someone from a completely different discipline -cultural economics and art history. Perhaps because of this unusual mix of bringing Media Studies with Art Economics, we have had quite an adventure in our invited lectures, be it at ' Sotheby's ,  Duke's Visual Studies Initiative  to the  Swiss Institute for Art Research . NIAS venue-Netherlands We keep hearing how academia pays only lip-service to interdisciplinary work, especially in grant acquisition. Yet, we persisted as we believe that it is essential if we are to find some original answers to these hyped and revolutionizing notions on how the art world is tr

New publication out in the Space and Culture Journal on digital activism

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My publication in the Space and Culture journal is finally out! This paper draws parallels between the use of public leisure spaces in the city such as parks and squares, and the use of certain forms of digital networks . Similarities between these two sorts of social contexts are worth considering, particularly their political dimension. This efforts ituates the current conversation about social media as sites of political mobilization into dialogue with the historical analysis of public parks as spaces that, in a similar fashion, were designed for leisure and consumption but was appropriated as sites of resistance. It brings together the literature on urban parks as centers of democracy and the literature on new media spaces as portals of cyber-protest , extending the spatial history of digital politics.

Video talk: Search across borders by Institute of Network Cultures: Society of the Query#2

I was invited to speak at the Society of the Query#2 on ' The making of art knowledge via Google Images in rural India' . It was one of the more exciting venues I have been to in 2013 and much credit goes to the Institute of Network Cultures -a vibrant space for innovation and learning in Amsterdam. 

Celebrating Erasmus University's 100th Birthday & honoring Arjun Appadurai

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What a wonderful event ! It was the 100th anniversary of Erasmus University Rotterdam  on Nov 8th and for that, they did not cut corners to say the least. The event was at the de doelen, a massive orchestra house which I had never been to until now, in spite of living in the Netherlands for four years now. The hall was packed with invite-only guests that were fed a four course meal, unlimited drinks and wonderful dessert. I believe there was at least a couple of thousand people overall.  It was indeed a spectacle and I could see many Erasmus University alumni getting rather sentimental about their time at the university. De Doelen Erasmus University Campus 2013 Also, thank god the construction is gone and we now have a much improved campus. Since I came here years ago, I have gotten used to cranes and re-routes to classes and mountains of mud and construction signage all around. What a relief it is now over. Organizing Committee: Karin Willemse, Filip Ve

Frontiers of New Media Symposium at University of Utah

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So am back from the University of Utah, having participated in their Frontiers of New Media symposium . The location of Utah is not a coincidence. In 1969, the University of Utah was the fourth of four nodes of the ARPANet. It is popularly believed that the birth of the ARPANet, and later the Internet, marked the beginning of this "new frontier." To top it off, this year, the National Security Agency’s “ Community Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative Data Center ” will be completed in Bluffdale, Utah. This data center will be a key archive of the electronic communications of individuals all over the world. In light of the PRISM/NSA scandal, this years symposum theme was "The Beginning and End(s) of the Internet: Surveillance, Censorship, and the Future of Cyber-Utopia." The speakers came from diverse disciplines including law, sociology, cultural studies and communication. Ron Deibert opened the symposium with an alarming keynote on the extent to wh

2 New Papers Out on First Monday: Museum 2.0 & the Fashion Blogosphere

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What a wonderful day to see 2 of my Masters students get their thesis published as papers in one of my favorite journals - First Monday . This journal is one of the first open access journals dedicated solely to the study of the Internet. It has published excellent and pioneering texts from several renowned scholars such as Howard Besser, danah boyd, John Seely Brown, Edward Castronova, Paul Duguid, Nathan Glazer, Eszter Hargittai, Lev Manovich, Helen Nissenbaum, Trevor Pinch, and Richard Wiggins. So proud of Jessica Verboom , and Kristina Sedeke , both wonderful young scholars and practitioners. So the first paper by Jessica Verboom , ' Museum 2.0: A study into the culture of expertise within the museum blogosphere' is on how museums are addressing the rise of social media and how this challenges the notion of expertise in the art world. The abstract below gives a glimpse of what its about: Abstract While studies on popular culture have a more vast understanding of