A rather different University of Sussex than the one I recounted on my visit in January for an event dedicated to Roger Silverstone (and the naming of a new Silverstone Building on campus). The riot police shown in the clip embody the University’s apparently heavy-handed philosophy around how to respond to student protest. Students were … Continue Reading
Author Archives
Scott Rodgers
Hayles: technogenesis, distributed cognition and hyperattention
I thoroughly enjoyed N. Katherine Hayles’ seminar earlier this afternoon at London Southbank University, as part of a double bill with Lev Manovich. Hayles’ talk was rich, and certainly full of more insights than I can recount here. But a couple of basic and I think very interesting ideas were at the core of the … Continue Reading
N. Katherine Hayles and Lev Manovich double bill in London
Recently I wrote about an enticing forthcoming conference at Swansea University on The Computational Turn, which, alas, I was unable to attend. Well, good news has arrived for us all in London, and indeed, the South East of England. The two keynotes of that conference – N. Katherine Hayles and Lev Manovich – have been … Continue Reading
You can count on coal, if not media
For some reason, I just find the whole idea of mining coal as a stable support for the uncertainties of television production hilarious. Also funny, of course, is the stark contrast implied between the grittiness of mining for coal (going down a mineshaft, the need for canaries as a warning system) and the superficiality of … Continue Reading
Recalling the OU (Open University), through already-hazy hindsight [part 2]
This is the second of a two-part post. See the first post. A very nice feature of the campus (using these photos is leading me to talk much more about the campus itself than I intended, but there you go) was its landscaping. Much of the landscaping being implemented during my time at the OU … Continue Reading
Recalling the OU (Open University), through already-hazy hindsight [part 1]
Last week, I visited my former place of work, The Open University in Milton Keynes (hereinafter ‘the OU’) for a couple of meetings. And it reminded me that I had intended to write down a few reflective thoughts about this rather odd but special place, which I left at the end of December 2009. Now, … Continue Reading
The iPad in incredible, amazing, unbelieveable and gorgeous adjectives
This edited video by Neil Curtis gives a nice 180 second overview of the over-the-top adjectives used by Steve Jobs and associates at the recent launch of the new Apple iPad. No repeated scenes here, this was all really in there – and some amazing, wonderful, unbelievable adjectives were even left out. Not that this … Continue Reading
Computing arts and humanities matter
A couple of months ago I noticed this intersesting event, The Computational Turn, which will be held at Swansea University on 9 March 2010. The conference promises a slightly unconventional take on the ‘arts and humanities’, considering the ways in which digital or computation-based technologies and techniques are fundamentally transforming the means and forms through … Continue Reading
Easy how-to guide on constructing a news clip
This is really brilliant stuff. Charlie Brooker on his excellent BBC show Newswipe (which I think is easily superior to The Daily Show) encapsulates how to construct a news clip. It rests on the idea of news clips having an easily recognizable form; which reminds me of the classic debates in studies of media effects … Continue Reading
Visualizing cyberscapes
Caught wind of a really interesting new blog called Floating Sheep. As many will be aware, more and more of the data we see emerging through the Internet is geo-coded, that is, it is associated to a particular location on the earth (for example, by longitude and latitude). And, increasingly this data is user created. … Continue Reading