Download or read book Bastard Culture written by Mirko Tobias Schäfer and published by Amsterdam University Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The computer and particularly the Internet have been represented as enabling technologies, turning consumers into users and users into producers. The unfolding online cultural production by users has been framed enthusiastically as participatory culture. But while many studies of user activities and the use of the Internet tend to romanticize emerging media practices, this book steps beyond the usual framework and analyzes user participation in the context of accompanying popular and scholarly discourse, as well as the material aspects of design, and their relation to the practices of design and appropriation.

Download or read book Cities and Cultures written by Malcolm Miles and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-04-26 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cities and Cultures is a critical account of the relations between contemporary cities and the cultures they produce and which in turn shape them. The book questions received ideas of what constitutes a city's culture through case studies in which different kinds of culture - the arts, cultural institutions and heritage, distinctive ways of life - are seen to be differently used in or affected by the development of particular cities. The book does not mask the complexity of this, but explains it in ways accessible for undergraduates. The book begins with introductory chapters on the concepts of a city and a culture (the latter in the anthropological sense as well as denoting the arts), citing cases from modern literature. The book then moves from a critical account of cultural production in a metropolitan setting to the idea that a city, too, is produced through the characteristic ways of life of its inhabitants. The cultural industries are scrutinised for their relation to such cultures as well as to city marketing, and attention is given to the European Cities of Culture initiative, and to the hybridity of contemporary urban cultures in a period of globalisation and migration. In its penultimate chapter the book looks at incidental cultural forms and cultural means to identify formation; and in its final chapter, examines the permeability of urban cultures and cultural forms. Sources are introduced, positions clarified and contrasted, and notes given for selective further reading. Playing on the two meanings of culture, Miles takes an unique approach by relating arguments around these meanings to specific cases of urban development today. The book includes both critical comment on a range of literatures - being a truly inter-disciplinary study - and the outcome of the author's field research into urban cultures.

Download or read book The New Production of Users written by Sampsa Hyysalo and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-20 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Behind the steady stream of new products, technologies, systems and services in our modern societies there is prolonged and complicated battle around the role of users. How should designers get to know the users’ interests and needs? Who should speak for the users? How may designers collaborate with users and in what ways may users take innovation into their own hands? The New Production of Users offers a rare overview of these issues. It traces the history of designer-user relations from the era of mass production to the present days. Its focus lies in elaborating the currently emerging strategies and approaches to user involvement in business and citizen contexts. It analyses the challenges in the practical collaborations between designers and users, and it investigates a number of cases, where groups of users collectively took charge of innovation. In addition to a number of new case studies, the book provides a thorough account of theories of user involvement as well as and offers further developments to these theories. As a part of this, the book relates to the wide spectrum of fields currently associated with user involvement, such as user-centered design, participatory design, user innovation, open source software, cocreation and peer production. Exploring the nexus between users and designers, between efforts to democratize innovation and to mobilize users for commercial purposes, this multi-disciplinary book will be of great interest to academics, policy makers and practitioners in fields such as Innovation Studies, Innovation Policy, Science and Technology Studies, Cultural Studies, Consumption studies, Marketing, e-commerce, Media Studies as well as Design research.

Download or read book Fun and Software written by Olga Goriunova and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2016-05-19 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fun and Software offers the untold story of fun as constitutive of the culture and aesthetics of computing. Fun in computing is a mode of thinking, making and experiencing. It invokes and convolutes the question of rationalism and logical reason, addresses the sensibilities and experience of computation and attests to its creative drives. By exploring topics as diverse as the pleasure and pain of the programmer, geek wit, affects of play and coding as a bodily pursuit of the unique in recursive structures, Fun and Software helps construct a different point of entry to the understanding of software as culture. Fun is a form of production that touches on the foundations of formal logic and precise notation as well as rhetoric, exhibiting connections between computing and paradox, politics and aesthetics. From the formation of the discipline of programming as an outgrowth of pure mathematics to its manifestation in contemporary and contradictory forms such as gaming, data analysis and art, fun is a powerful force that continues to shape our life with software as it becomes the key mechanism of contemporary society. Including chapters from leading scholars, programmers and artists, Fun and Software makes a major contribution to the field of software studies and opens the topic of software to some of the most pressing concerns in contemporary theory.

Download or read book Critical Architecture written by Jane Rendell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-09-12 with total page 715 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critical Architecture examines the relationship between critical practice in architecture and architectural criticism. Placing architecture in an interdisciplinary context, the book explores architectural criticism with reference to modes of criticism in other disciplines - specifically art criticism - and considers how critical practice in architecture operates through a number of different modes: buildings, drawings and texts. With forty essays by an international cast of leading architectural academics, this accessible single source text on the topical subject of architectural criticism is ideal for undergraduate as well as post graduate study.

Download or read book Social Innovation Social Enterprises and the Cultural Economy written by Rocío Nogales Muriel and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-04-21 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Faced with a depleted planet and a series of connected crises, socially minded agents and entities within the world of culture and the arts are reacting from within. With insights from sociology, economics, and cultural management and policy, this book aims to chronicle the journey of SMart – a cultural and artistic social enterprise now present in eight European countries – in order to illustrate such organisation’s efforts to achieve its potential for social innovation and transformation. Tackling the endemic precariousness and intermittency of work through innovative arrangements for cultural workers and artists has been central to these efforts. In many cases, however, this activism not only had a direct impact at the level of individual and collective labour, but also has transformed the ways culture is ‘governed’. Readers of this book will better understand the connection between social innovation and culture and the arts; gain awareness of the trends and transformations within the field of culture and cultural work and their connection with institutional arrangements; and critically engage with the processes, challenges and benefits of scaling up and diffusing social innovation. The debates presented will be of relevance to scholars and students across disciplines, policy makers at both EU and national levels, practitioners and social activists.

Download or read book The State of Copyright written by Debora Halbert and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-02-05 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book seeks to make an intervention into the ongoing debate about the scope and intensity of global copyright laws. While mapping out the primary actors in the context of globalization and the modern political economy of information ownership, the argument is made that alternatives to further expansion of copyright are necessary. By examining the multiple and competing interests in creating the legal regime of copyright law, this books attempts to map the political economy of copyright in the information age, critique the concentration of ownership that is intrinsic in the status quo, and provide an assessment of the state of the contemporary global copyright landscape and its futures. It draws upon the current narratives of copyright as produced by corporate, government, and political actors and frames these narratives as language games within a global political project to define how information and culture will be shared and exchanged in the future. The text problematizes the relationship of the state to culture, comments on the global flows of culture, and critiques the regulatory apparatus that is in place to commodify culture and align it with the contemporary nation-state. In the end, the possibility of non-commodified and more open futures are explored. The State of Copyright will be of particular interest for students and scholars of international political economy, law, political science, anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, library sciences, and communication studies. It also will appeal to a growing popular audience that has taken an interest in the issues of copyright.

Download or read book Art Platforms and Cultural Production on the Internet written by Olga Goriunova and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-05-23 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Goriunova offers a critical analysis of the processes that produce digital culture. Digital cultures thrive on creativity, developing new forces of organization to overcome repetition and reach brilliance. In order to understand the processes that produce culture, the author introduces the concept of the art platform, a specific configuration of creative passions, codes, events, individuals and works that are propelled by cultural currents and maintained through digitally native means. Art platforms can occur in numerous contexts bringing about genuinely new cultural production, that, given enough force, come together to sustain an open mechanism while negotiating social, technical and political modes of power. Software art, digital forms of literature, 8-bit music, 3D art forms, pro-surfers, and networks of geeks are test beds for enquiry into what brings and holds art platforms together. Goriunova provides a new means of understanding the development of cultural forms on the Internet, placing the phenomenon of participatory and social networks in a conceptual and historical perspective, and offering powerful tools for researching cultural phenomena overlooked by other approaches.

Download or read book Digital Humanities written by David M. Berry and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2017-05-30 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the twenty-first century unfolds, computers challenge the way in which we think about culture, society and what it is to be human: areas traditionally explored by the humanities. In a world of automation, Big Data, algorithms, Google searches, digital archives, real-time streams and social networks, our use of culture has been changing dramatically. The digital humanities give us powerful theories, methods and tools for exploring new ways of being in a digital age. Berry and Fagerjord provide a compelling guide, exploring the history, intellectual work, key arguments and ideas of this emerging discipline. They also offer an important critique, suggesting ways in which the humanities can be enriched through computing, but also how cultural critique can transform the digital humanities. Digital Humanities will be an essential book for students and researchers in this new field but also related areas, such as media and communications, digital media, sociology, informatics, and the humanities more broadly.

Download or read book The Legacy of Cornelius Cardew written by Tony Harris and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-03 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cornelius Cardew is an enigma. Depending on which sources one consults he is either an influential and iconic figure of British musical culture or a marginal curiosity, a footnote to a misguided musical phenomenon. He is both praised for his uncompromising commitment to world-changing politics, and mocked for being blindly caught up in a maelstrom of naïve political folly. His works are both widely lauded as landmark achievements of the British avant-garde and ridiculed as an archaic and irrelevant footnote to the established musical culture. Even the events of his death are shrouded in mystery and lack a sense of closure. As long ago as 1967, Morton Feldman cited Cardew as an influential figure, central to the future of modern music-making. The extent to which Cardew has been a central figure and a force for new ideas in music forms the backbone to this book. Harris demonstrates that Cardew was an original thinker, a charismatic leader, an able facilitator, and a committed activist. He argues that Cardew exerted considerable influence on numerous individuals and groups, but also demonstrates how the composer's significance has been variously underestimated, undermined and misrepresented. Cardew's diverse body of work and activity is here given coherence by its sharing in the values and principles that underpinned the composer's world view. The apparently disparate and contradictory episodes of Cardew's career are shown to be fused by a cohesive 'Cardew aesthetic' that permeates the man, his politics and his music.

Download or read book Perspectives on Culture and Agent based Simulations written by Virginia Dignum and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-11-11 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume analyses, from a computational point of view, how culture may arise, develop and evolve through time. The four sections in this book examine and analyse the modelling of culture, group and organisation culture, culture simulation, and culture-sensitive technology design. Different research disciplines have different perspectives on culture, making it difficult to compare and integrate different concepts and models of culture. By taking a computational perspective this book nevertheless enables the integration of concepts that play a role in culture, even though they might originate from different disciplines. Culture is usually regarded as something vague and qualitative and thus difficult to deal with in a computational and formal setting. Taking a computational approach to culture thus encompasses a twofold risk: taking a too simplistic approach to cultural influence on behaviour; or trying to capture too much, hence not leading to useful computational tools. However, the approaches and insights in this collection show how different perspectives by leading researchers described in thirteen chapters still can form a coherent picture. The book thus illustrates the potential of using computing systems to better understand culture. By describing methods, theories and concrete application results about the integration of cultural aspects into computer systems, this book provides inspiration to researchers of all disciplines alike and presents the start of an interdisciplinary dialogue on culture.

Download or read book Digital Material written by Marianne van den Boomen and published by Amsterdam University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a compelling study of the often controversial role and meaning of the new media and digital cultures in contemporary society. Three decades of societal and cultural alignment of new media yielded to a host of innovations, trials, and problems, accompanied by versatile popular and academic discourse. "New Media Studies" crystallized internationally into an established academic discipline, which begs the question: where do we stand now; which new issues have emerged now that new media are taken for granted, and which riddles remain unsolved; and, is contemporary digital culture indeed all about 'you', or do we still not really understand the digital machinery and how it constitutes us as 'you'. From desktop metaphors to Web 2.0 ecosystems, from touch screens to bloggging to e-learning, from role-playing games to Cybergoth music to wireless dreams, this timely volume offers a showcase of the most up-to-date research in the field from what may be called a 'digital-materialist' perspective.

Download or read book Flow TV written by Michael Kackman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-10-19 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From viral videos on YouTube to mobile television on cell phones and beyond, this book examines television in an age of technological, economic, and cultural convergence. It contains essays that establishes television's importance in a shifting media culture.

Download or read book The Truth of i ek written by Paul Bowman and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2007-05-17 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Slavoj Žižek is widely regarded as one of the world's most important contemporary thinkers. His work has contributed dramatically to the reinvention and revivification of many key theoretical and political debates. Indeed, his vociferous and challenging body of work amounts to a sustained, ground-breaking, terrain-shifting and far reaching intervention into a large number of academic disciplines, intellectual fields and cultural debates. The Truth of Žižek addresses the rigorous critical assessment demanded by this broad and increasingly influential corpus. This timely and compelling collection of essays from an international team of leading Žižekian scholars addresses the full range of Žižek's theoretical interventions, assessing critically the political, philosophical, psychoanalytical, cultural and institutional stakes of his work. Each chapter engages with and challenges Žižek's thought to explicate a key aspect of his work, clarifying its importance and challenging its claims through rigorous critique. By focusing on Žižek's contributions to these disciplines, fields and debates, this collection sets out to diagnose and assess the emergence of a ' Žižekian moment' within contemporary intellectual, cultural and political events. The Truth of Žižek provides the first sustained engagement with and assessment of the significant impact of Žižek's work. This compelling and valuable collection of essays from cutting edge scholars picks up the gauntlet thrown down by Žižek: the demand that his readers respond with 'the coldness and cruelty of true friendship.'

Download or read book Brave New Classrooms written by Joe Lockard and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2007 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Textbook

Download or read book War Games written by Jonna Eagle and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-15 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "War Games surveys the contemporary terrain of simulated war experience and locates this experience within the broader history of war and media. Organized around three modes of war representation--live, screen-based, and interactive--this book provides an overview of the nature, function, and appeal of war games. The first chapter on live war games discusses activities such as chess, football, and battle re-enactments. The second chapter looks at the simulated, intense gaze via movies such as Saving Private Ryan, The Hurt Locker, and American Sniper. The final chapter considers the role of video games and other interactive technologies, such as Doom, Counter-Strike, Call of Duty, and other simulated war experiences via helmet cams and drone warfare. In approaching these conceptual categories, Jonna Eagle highlights key tensions in the relationship of media and war and allows for an emphasis on both the historical evolution of the simulated war experience and the continuity of issues and impulses across this evolution"--

Download or read book The Homesick Phone Book written by Cynthia Haynes and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 2016-09-28 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Illustration List -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Party Lines -- 2. Casuistic Code -- 3. Mechanical Faith -- 4. Writing Offshore -- 5. Glitch Rhetoric -- 6. Torture and Absolution -- 7. Postconflict Pedagogy -- 8. Marine Media -- 9. Accidental Metaphysics -- 10. Armageddon Army -- 11. Endgame Rhetorics -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Index -- About the Author -- Back Cover