scholarly journals The Imaginary and the Dead Media in the Works of the Kosmoplovci Collective

Author(s):  
Aleksandra Sekulić

Drawing from a movement which aimed to re-activate the practices of the emancipation of cultural production established in Yugoslav cine-amateurism: Low-Fi Video (1997–2003), the Kosmoplovci Collective, established in 2001, developed various interdisciplinary experiments, contesting the elements of the media framework of production. In a specific osmosis of practices stemming from the computer demo scene, video, alternative comics, electronic music and design, Kosmoplovci contributed to the contemporary explorations of the media-archaeological art, which uses archival work and historical materials related to the shifts of media paradigms. The videos, computer demos and online interactive projects of Kosmoplovci produced in the beginning of the 2000s can be seen as the projections, emulations or anticipations of the imaginary or dead media, or even a future excavation and re-invention of media (Void, Selfaware, X21, Artificial Detection). The treatment of media machines in the tension of their imagined untimely existence, as in the description of imaginary media by Siegfried Zielinsky, and the imagined future recovery from their deep death which is another form of their dislocation, destabilizes the fixed positions of the elements of contemporary media art production: the camera, the internet, but also the parallel relation of the image and the sound. The practice of this overall destabilization of fixed elements of the media system puts the Kosmoplovci Collective in the line of continuity of the experiments of radical amateurism. Article received: December 28, 2017; Article accepted: January 10, 2018; Published online: April 15, 2018; Original scholarly paper How to cite this article: Sekulić, Aleksandra. "The Imaginary and the Dead Media in the Works of the Kosmoplovci Collective." AM Journal of Art and Media Studies 15 (2018): . doi: 10.25038/am.v0i15.233

Author(s):  
Anthony M. Nadler

This concluding chapter discusses the intellectual resources of critical media studies and applies them to debates about the future of news. The changes taking place in news media concern not only content but the very modes through which people engage the media in everyday life, as well as the ways media connect individuals to larger communities. Although interactive media is not inherently destined to level hierarchies of power, it is certainly possible that societal appropriations of new media technologies could mean a reworking of the infrastructure that regulates which ideas and visions circulate from point to point in the media system. The issue lies in how crucial decisions at this critical juncture will be made and what course they will set for the years to come.


Author(s):  
Phan Van Kien ◽  
Vu Hoang Long

In this article, we aim to analyze particular conditions of the media landscape in recent days Vietnam – which is characterized by the domination of mass media and social media in constituting public opinions – that significantly affect collective actions from the online citizens. By using the concept “collective actions”, we design to reconceptualize the concept of “the crowd” which is used commonly to assert the detrimental effects of online citizens’ actions toward heated public debates nowadays. Through the framework of media and journalism studies, we suppose that the contemporary media landscape is not the same as the social situation in approximately 150 years ago when Western scholars first used this concept. Moreover, we intend to provide the framework of Affect Studies in approaching online citizens’ practices that considerably influences the field of media studies in particular and Social Sciences and Humanities in general.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 390-398
Author(s):  
Paolo Mancini

This essay proposes a possible typology of mediated corruption scandals: market-driven corruption scandals, “custodians of conscience” corruption scandals, politically oriented corruption scandals. This typology is proposed in connection to the different social and political contextual conditions within which scandals develop. Particular attention is placed on the nature and the proceedings of the media system and the journalistic professionalism connected to each type of mediated corruption scandals. The essay insists also on the necessity to go beyond the usual attention that is placed on the western world that addresses most of the studies on corruption scandals: this represents just a minor part of the observable corruption cases. Literature on corruption and on media studies constitutes the basis for this essay.


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 21
Author(s):  
Amirudin Amirudin

In the 21st century, the media is increasing rapidly and requires a specific response from anthropology studies. Not only does the media bring with implications for changes in the process of production and consumption of culture, but also changes to its viewpoint and approach. It's not enough if the media was studied only with a classical perspective that only positioned the media as a cultural communication agent, or otherwise the media is approached with the effects study. However, the media also needs to be recognized with a more progressive perspective that positions the media as an agency in cultural production practices. Based on the idea, this paper provides provocation through Amirudin's research (2016) which tried to present a new perspective in media studies


Author(s):  
Tereza Havelková

This book deals with contemporary relationships between opera and the media. It is concerned with both the use of media on stage and opera on screen. Drawing on the concept of hypermediacy from media studies, it situates opera within the larger context of contemporary media practices, and particularly those that play up the multiplicity, awareness, and enjoyment of media. The discussion is driven by the underlying question of what politics of representation and perception opera performs within this context. This entails approaching operas as audiovisual events (rather than works or texts) and paying attention to what they do by visual means, along with the operatic music and singing. The book concentrates on events that foreground their use of media and technology, drawing attention to opera’s inherently hypermedial aspects. It works with the recognition that such events nevertheless engender powerful effects of immediacy, which are not contingent on illusionism or the seeming transparency of the medium. It analyzes how effects like presence, liveness, and immersion are produced, contesting some critical claims attached to them. It also sheds light on how these effects, often perceived as visceral or material in nature, are related to the production of meaning in opera. The discussion pertains to contemporary pieces such as Louis Andriessen and Peter Greenaway’s Rosa and Writing to Vermeer, as well as productions of the canonical repertory such as Wagner’s Ring Cycle by Robert Lepage at the Met and La Fura dels Baus in Valencia.


Author(s):  
Shannon Mattern

This chapter discusses the significance of historical media infrastructures that precede the digital era. Adopting a media archaeological approach, it studies how historical networks layered in urban space shape contemporary media systems. These networks extend back far beyond nineteenth-century telegraph wires to include much earlier Greek-inspired aural, inscriptive, and architectural forms. Suggesting that research on early media infrastructures can usefully inform studies of the media city, which typically begin with modern media and rarely include discussions of infrastructure, the chapter delineates a number of potential interdisciplinary engagements for media infrastructure studies, ranging from geology to architectural history. It then looks at what media studies can gain from further engagement with archaeological and infrastructural research.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 205630512110213
Author(s):  
Brooke Erin Duffy ◽  
Annika Pinch ◽  
Shruti Sannon ◽  
Megan Sawey

While metrics have long played an important, albeit fraught, role in the media and cultural industries, quantified indices of online visibility—likes, favorites, subscribers, and shares—have been indelibly cast as routes to professional success and status in the digital creative economy. Against this backdrop, this study sought to examine how creative laborers’ pursuit of social media visibility impacts their processes and products. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with 30 aspiring and professional content creators on a range of social media platforms—Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, and Twitter—we contend that their experiences are not only shaped by the promise of visibility, but also by its precarity. As such, we present a framework for assessing the volatile nature of visibility in platformized creative labor, which includes unpredictability across three levels: (1) markets, (2) industries, and (3) platform features and algorithms. After mapping out this ecological model of the nested precarities of visibility, we conclude by addressing both continuities with—and departures from—the earlier modes of instability that characterized cultural production, with a focus on the guiding logic of platform capitalism.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rianne C. Prins ◽  
Sonja Billerbeck

Abstract Background Fungi are premier hosts for the high-yield secretion of proteins for biomedical and industrial applications. The stability and activity of these secreted proteins is often dependent on the culture pH. As yeast acidifies the commonly used synthetic complete drop-out (SD) media that contains ammonium sulfate, the pH of the media needs to be buffered in order to maintain a desired extracellular pH during biomass production. At the same time, many buffering agents affect growth at the concentrations needed to support a stable pH. Although the standard for biotechnological research and development is shaken batch cultures or microtiter plate cultures that cannot be easily automatically pH-adjusted during growth, there is no comparative study that evaluates the buffering capacity and growth effects of different media types across pH-values in order to develop a pH-stable batch culture system. Results We systematically test the buffering capacity and growth effects of a citrate-phosphate buffer (CPB) from acidic to neutral pH across different media types. These media types differ in their nitrogen source (ammonium sulfate, urea or both). We find that the widely used synthetic drop-out media that uses ammonium sulfate as nitrogen source can only be effectively buffered at buffer concentrations that also affect growth. At lower concentrations, yeast biomass production still acidifies the media. When replacing the ammonium sulfate with urea, the media alkalizes. We then develop a medium combining ammonium sulfate and urea which can be buffered at low CPB concentrations that do not affect growth. In addition, we show that a buffer based on Tris/HCl is not effective in maintaining any of our media types at neutral pH even at relatively high concentrations. Conclusion Here we show that the buffering of yeast batch cultures is not straight-forward and addition of a buffering agent to set a desired starting pH does not guarantee pH-maintenance during growth. In response, we present a buffered media system based on an ammonium sulfate/urea medium that enables relatively stable pH-maintenance across a wide pH-range without affecting growth. This buffering system is useful for protein-secretion-screenings, antifungal activity assays, as well as for other pH-dependent basic biology or biotechnology projects.


2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (s1) ◽  
pp. 893-911
Author(s):  
Ilgar Seyidov

AbstractDuring the Soviet period, the media served as one of the main propagandist tools of the authoritarian regime, using a standardized and monotype media system across the Soviet Republics. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, 15 countries became independent. The transition from Soviet communism to capitalism has led to the reconstruction of economic, socio-cultural, and political systems. One of the most affected institutions in post-Soviet countries was the media. Media have played a supportive role during rough times, when there was, on the one hand, the struggle for liberation and sovereignty, and, on the other hand, the need for nation building. It has been almost 30 years since the Soviet Republics achieved independence, yet the media have not been freed from political control and continue to serve as ideological apparatuses of authoritarian regimes in post-Soviet countries. Freedom of speech and independent media are still under threat. The current study focuses on media use in Azerbaijan, one of the under-researched post-Soviet countries. The interviews for this study were conducted with 40 participants living in Nakhichevan and Baku. In-depth, semi-structured interview techniques were used as research method. Findings are discussed under six main themes in the conclusion.


2021 ◽  
pp. 205943642110125
Author(s):  
Kun Li

From the perspective of communication and media studies, this article explores a comparison between the image of older adults presented on media and online self-representation facilitated by the use of smartphones. The qualitative textual analysis was conducted with a sample (228 posts, from 1 January to 31 December,2019) selected from a representative WeChat Public Account targeting at older adults in China. The results demonstrate that leisure and recreation is the most frequently mentioned topic (58%) with memories of past life receiving the least references (3%). The striking features of popular posts among older people include a highly emotional tone, bright colours and multimedia. Sentiment analyses shows 68.42%, 13.16% and 18.42% of positive, neutral and negative emotions, respectively. A generally positive attitude of self-representation is in a sharp contrast with the stigmatic media image of older adults. The article concludes that the visibility of Chinese older people may help to reduce the stigma surrounding old age in China.


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