Apr 21, 2011

Revisiting Aether: The Journal of Media Geography, an on-line publication (includes links)

Aether is an on-line publication that focuses on the emerging and converging field of geographic media.  Given my interest in interactive multimedia technology and the fact that Social Science was one of my undegraduate majors, it makes sense that many of the topics covered in Aether would appeal to me. I discovered Aether about a year or so ago, and shared some information about it in the following post: Aether- The Journal of Media Geography (A Convergence of Disciplines).  


Aether  is hosted by the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of California, Northridge.   In addition to the on-line publication, Aether has a blog, "Aether, The Blog of Media Geography", which is a great resource about workshops, events, and resources related to the focus of the publication. 

Since a good number of the readers of this blog are graduate students, I decided to take the time to include in this post information and links that might be helpful to someone gathering information on a deeper level. 

"Aether offers a forum that examines the geography of media, including cinema, television, the Internet, music, art, advertising, newspapers and magazines, video and animation. It is our goal to provide a space for contributions to current issues surrounding these media, beginning with constructions of space and place, cultural landscapes, society, and identity."

"We invite inquiries into the production, distribution, exhibition, and consumption of all types of media and thus we will offer critical, pedagogical and discursive content that views the world in new and exciting ways. We welcome submissions from anyone wishing to publish material that extends the boundaries of the traditional academic journal. We encourage work that is highly visual or aural, including video, and will actively promote material that makes use of our digital technologies."

I appreciate the fact that Aether's editors value the importance of using multimedia representation in scholarly research, embodied in the following quote from the introduction of Volume 3:
"All too often we remain wedded to textuality when it comes to presenting our research.  However, as we move further into a world of advance capitalism driven by new information technologies and spaces of flow, streams of innovations, knowledge and ideas are increasingly circulated in non-textual formats. Academic geographers have long dabbled in video technology and the production of documentaries...We strongly encourage and support the use of multimedia productions in our journal and we hope we can offer an acceptable venue for those seeking to transcend (and even transgress) the knowledge-limiting restraints of traditional academic publications." - Jim Craine, Jason Dittmer, and Chris Lukinbeal, Aether, Volume Three


One of the good things about Aether is that all of the volumes can be freely downloaded from the website.  For the convenience of knowledge-junkies,  I've posted links to the past seven volumes, along with information/links about the editors and editorial board of Aether.  

Volume Seven | Fall, 2010
Theme: Space and Sound: "Geographies of Music, Geographers Who Play Music"
http://130.166.124.2/~aether/pdf/volume_07/volume_07.pdf


Volume Six | October 2010
http://130.166.124.2/~aether/pdf/volume_06/volume_06.pdf



Volume Five a | March, 2010 (Edited by Tristan Thielmann)
Theme: Locative Media
"This special issue of Aether, edited by Tristan Thielmann, explores the spatial turn in media studies and the media turn in geographical studies, providing a sketch of the subject area “geomedia” from a phenomenological perspective and the field of “media geography” from a disciplinary perspective."
http://130.166.124.2/~aether/pdf/volume_05a/volume_05a.pdf

Volume Four | March, 2009
Theme: The Geography of Journalism (Edited by Mike Gasher)
"This special issue of Aether brings together six papers that address news geography on a range of scales. Each speaks to the question of how the news media position the people and places that constitute their particular communities."
http://130.166.124.2/~aether/pdf/volume_04/volume_04.pdf


Volume Three | June, 2008
"One of the main reasons Aether was developed as an ejournal was to offer authors alternative publishing outlets– something that went beyond the textural format of both traditional hard journals and text-based ejournals. Volume Three presents the first articles that justify these editorial goals."
http://130.166.124.2/~aether/pdf/volume_03/volume_03.pdf

Volume Two | April, 2008
Theme:  Imagining Geography Through Interactive Media
"This special issue of Aether offers an examination of the utopian and dystopian representations of digital landscapes including narratives of colonialism, gaming as social space and the influence of historical ideologies on social game space plus much more."

Volume One | November, 2007
"The premiere issue of Aether consists of a series of short essays by members of the editorial board. Each explores the author's personal interests in Media Geography and discusses the future direction of the field."
http://130.166.124.2/~aether/pdf/volume_01/volume_01.pdf

Aether's "Who's Who"
Review Editor

Giorgio Hadi Curti


San Diego State University
cedarboot@gmail.com

Editors

Jim Craine


California State University, Northridge

jwc53531@csun.edu

Jason Dittmer

University College London

j.dittmer@ucl.ac.uk

Chris Lukinbeal

The University of Arizona

chris.lukinbeal@arizona.edu


Contributors
Shawna Dark, Director
Center for Geographical Studies

Department of Geography

California State University, Northridge

shawna.dark@csun.edu

David Deis

Staff Cartographer

Department of Geography

California State University, Northridge

david.deis@csun.edu


Editorial Board
Paul C. Adams • University of Texas at Austin
Stuart C. Aitken • San Diego State University
David B. Clarke • Swansea University
Christina Dando • University of Nebraska, Omaha
Deborah Dixon • Aberystwyth University
Marcus Doel • Swansea University
Colin R. Gardner • University of California, Santa Barbara
Ken Hillis • The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Sarah F. Ives • Stanford University
Ed Jackiewicz • California State University, Northridge
John Paul Jones III • University of Arizona
Christina Kennedy • Northern Arizona University
Minelle Mahtani • University of Toronto
Susan Mains • University of the West Indies, Mona
Kevin McHugh • Arizona State University
Christopher M. Moreno • San Diego State University
Wolfgang Natter • Virginia Polytechnic Institute
Joseph Palis • University of the Philippines

Brent J. Piepergerdes • University of Kansas
Rob Shields • University of Alberta
Amy Siciliano • University of Wisconsin
Paul F. Starrs • University of Reno, Nevada
Dan Sutko • North Carolina State University
Jonathan Taylor • California State University, Fullerton
Stefan Zimmermann • University of Mainz
Leo Zonn • University of Texas

Aether's "Special Thanks"
Stella Theodoulou, Dean • The College of Social & Behavioral Sciences

California State University, Northridge

stella.theodoulou@csun.edu

Darrick Danta, Chair • Department of Geography

California State University, Northridge

darrick.danta@csun.edu

Paul Adams, Communication Geography Specialty Group

Department of Geography and the Environment 
University of Texas, Austin


Apr 20, 2011

Interactive Tweet Topic Explorer, by Jeff Clark

Thanks to Nathan Yau (FlowingData) for the link!


If you use twitter, you might like exploring Jeff Clark's on-line interactive Tweet Topic Explorer to get a new perspective of your tweets, or the tweets of others. (Just enter the twitter ID in the search box in the lower left-hand corner of the screen.)  
Here is a screenshot of my tweets.











Jeff Clark created this application using Processing.js. According to his blog post, it works well in the Chrome browser, and doesn't work in IE. Jeff is a programmer with an academic background in Applied Physics and Mathematics, and is interested in data mining, statistical analysis, and visualizations. You can learn more about Jeff Clark's work, and visually-inspired thoughts/communication on his Neoformix blog.

RELATED
Tweet Topic Explorer
Jeff Clark, Neoformix 4/19/11
Word Cluster Diagram
Jeff Clark, Neoformix, 4/18/11
See what you and others tweet about with the Tweet Topic Explorer
Nathan Yau, Flowing Data, 4/20/11

Apr 19, 2011

Gesture + Multitouch Interactive Media Wall, Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, 2011 Award of Excellence, Digital Screenmedia Association

Below is a video of an interactive media wall at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, the winner of the  2011 Award of Excellence from the  Digtal Screenmedia Association in the category of Best Government/Education/Non-Profit Agency Deployment.  


Detailed information about the Discovery Wall, including an overview of the technology, objectives of the deployment, and the positive outcomes of his project can be found on the Digital Screenmedia website.   

"Float4 Interactive is a creative technology company that develops interactive systems for entertainment, advertising and design applications."


Credits
Interactive technology: Float4 Interactive
Content: Zebra Dog
AV Integration: R2W
Concept: Sensory Interactive


DISCOVERY WALL: 10 X 4 Christie MicroTiles
5496 X 1650 resolution
Gesture + MultiTouch Interaction
2 X RealMotion Servers


ENTRANCE PORTAL 17 X 2 Christie MicroTiles
9824 X 866 resolution
Multi-Zone Gesture Interaction
2 X RealMotion Servers

RELATED/SOMEWHAT RELATED
Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery: 2011 Excellence Award, Architainment 
Live Design, 3/21/10
Architainment Examples
Christie MicroTiles Drive Fan Experience at new Nascar Hall of Fame
Nascar Hall of Fame (I live in the Charlotte area, so I'll visit the Nascar Hall of Fame soon and check out the Christie MicroTiles display soon!)
Miami Dolphins Choose Montreal's Arsenal Media and Float4 Interactive for Fan-Focused Interactive Wall at SunLife Stadium (BuzzWall) Arsenal Media, 12/16/10

Link: Where Digital Signage Software is Going - interesting thoughts about DOOH from Dave Haynes of Sixteen:Nine

Mathematica 8: Resources, free online seminars, plus TED-talk video: "Teaching kids real math with computers"

I admit it.  Once in a while, I wake up after having a dream with a re-occurring theme of algorithms, technology, and programming.  It happened again this morning, inspiring me to take a look at the Wolfram Mathematica website. 


Here are a few on-line seminars I might take a look at soon:

"To give a broad overview of the major new features in Mathematica 8, including free-form linguistic input and Wolfram|Alpha integration, probability and statistics, finance, control systems, graphs and networks, improved image processing, wavelet analysis, C code generation, and more, using example-driven material."

Statistics and Data Analysis with Mathematica 8
Image Processing with Mathematica (Seminar description and registration)


Look at what I found while exploring the Wolfram suite of websites!


TEDGlobal 2010: 
Conrad Wolfram: Teaching kids real math with computers



RELATED
Mathematica 8 Seminar Calendar
Image Processing and Analysis (Info)
Interface development with Mathematica (I haven't tried this out.)
Here are a few links about the arts and math, from the Wolfram site:
Mathematica and High Fashion
Art Inspires a Lesson in Calculus
Computer Science PRofessor Sculpts Award-Winning Art with Mathematica
Wolfram Tones: An experiment in a new kind of music
Mathematica Music Demonstrations
Computerbasedmath.org 
Conrad Wolfram
Stephen Wolfram

FYI:  For those of you who are curious to know more about my technology dreams, I plan to devote a few posts about them in the future.   Here's a link to a post I wrote after waking up from a dream about haptic interfaces:

Last night I dreamt about haptic touch-screen overlays...

Apr 17, 2011

Jamendo Jammap, Marker/Music: Google music map mashups bring the world of music right to you!

Here are a couple of interesting ways people are using Google Maps for music:

Screenshot of Jammap, featuring music from Brazil, created by Cassioso Oliveira :

China:



Marker/Music

"marker/music is an interactive sound and music map created by Darren Solomon, the students and faculty of Northern State University, and members of the community of Aberdeen, South Dakota. From October 18th - 22nd, 2010, the group shot over 70 videos in the area, from which 12 were chosen to be embedded in a custom Google map. The project was inspired by Darren's inbflat.net, and is intended to explore the concept by producing the entire project locally in a single community, rather than through internet-based crowdsourcing." -marker/music website

RELATED
Google Maps Mania Posts (tagged Music Maps)
(Scroll down for "how-to" information.)


Thanks to Richard Byrne and Julien Llanas for sharing this information!