Mashup Cultures
Sonvilla-Weiss, Stefan (Ed.)
1st Edition., 2010, 256 p. 41 illus., Softcover
ISBN: 978-3-7091-0095-0

• Aimed at the media theory reader
• Appears on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of ePedagogy Design - Visual Knowledge Building study program at the University of Art and Design Helsinki
• Includes contributions by Henry Jenkins, Mimi Ito, David Gauntlett and many others

This volume brings together cutting-edge thinkers and scholars together with young researchers and students, proposing a colourful spectrum of media-theoretical, -practical and -educational approaches to current creative practices and techniques of production and consumption on and off the web. Along with the exploration of some of the emerging social media concepts, the book unveils some of the key drivers leading to participatory engagement of the User.

Mashup Cultures presents a broader view of the effects and consequences of current remix practices and the recombination of existing digital cultural content. The complexity of this book, which appears on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the international MA study program ePedagogy Design – Visual Knowledge Building, also by necessity seeks to familiarize the reader with a profound glossary and vocabulary of Web 2.0 cultural techniques.

Content Level » Professional/practitioner

Keywords » collective memory - content - creative commons - creativity - crowdsourcing - e-learning - fair use - filesharing - folksonomy - free culture - mashup art - network - remix culture - second order gaming - social media - swarm intelligence

Related subjects » Art
Table of contents
Stefan Sonvilla-Weiss: Introduction: Mashups, Remix Practices and the Recombination of Existing Digital Content; Axel Bruns: Distributed Creativity: Filesharing and Produsage; Brenda Castro: The Virtual Art Garden: A Case Study of User-centered Design for Improving Interaction in Distant Learning Communities of Art Students; Doris Gassert: “You met me at a very strange time in my life.” Fight Club and the Moving Image on the Verge of ‘Going Digital’; David Gauntlett: Creativity, Participation and Connectedness: An Interview with David Gauntlett; Mizuko Ito: Mobilizing the Imagination in Everyday Play: The Case of Japanese Media Mixes; Henry Jenkins: Multiculturalism, Appropriation, and the New Media Literacies: Remixing Moby Dick; Owen Kelly: Sexton Blake & the Virtual Culture of Rosario: A Biji; Torsten Meyer: On the Database Principle: Knowledge and Delusion; Eduardo Navas: Regressive and Reflexive Mashups in Sampling Culture; Christina Schwalbe: Change of Media, Change of Scholarship, Change of University: Transition from the Graphosphere to a Digital Mediosphere; Noora Sopula & Joni Leimu: A Classroom 2.0 Experiment; Stefan Sonvilla-Weiss: Communication Techniques, Practices and Strategies of Generation “Web n+1″; Wey-Han Tan: Playing (with) Educational Games - Integrated Game Design and Second Order Gaming; Tere Vadén interviewed by Juha Varto: Tepidity of the Majority and Participatory Creativity; Glossary; About the Authors

Online presentation with Prof. Stefan Sonvilla-Weiss at the Designs on eLearning Conference 2009, University of the Arts London: Thursday 3rd SeptemberAM: 10:00 – 11:00 London time. More info

Abstract: With the notion of space many people spontaneously make associations with their immediate surroundings. This so-called personal space is the region surrounding each person or that area we think of as something that belongs solely to ourselves.By the end of 2008, half of the world’s 6.7 billion people will live in urban areas, according to a recent report by the United Nations. As the space around us becomes denser, people with wealth will search for new ways to separate themselves from the masses. Therefore interest in the issue of personal space — that invisible force field around your body — is intensifying in both real and virtual world contexts.

What can be concluded from actual research findings suggests that a major part of virtual world inhabitants feel physiologically uncomfortable about breaking the rules, social norms and real-life stereotypes. Human nature may be the same no matter what brand new world we discover. The appeal “don’t stand so close to me” goes hand in hand with the so-called “elevator effect”. Recent studies found that misbehavior creates the same discomfort no matter whether it happens in real or in virtual life.In this context it is no surprise that Edward T. Hall’s observations and research of nonverbal communication or proxemic behavior categories from the late 1950s gain fresh momentum in virtual societies.

Another important aspect relates to interferences and dis turbances caused by intervention in public and private spaces with mobile technologies. We are acting in the public sphere, handling private or professional phone calls, and simultaneously entering a set of personal and electronic networks.We also experience that the borders between institutional settings, social systems, individual roles and intersubjective relationships are becoming a) more permeable, insofar as components of one sphere can more easily enter the other; b) more flexible to the degree that the extension of different spheres can be varied according to current situations and needs; and c) more interpen etrating (or “blending”), insofar as role activities may expand and belong to different domains at the same time.This paper seeks to produce some of the pertaining arguments coming from the art/media/education research sphere on how the extension of physical space will affect individual and collective behavioral patterns in either modes of switching between real and virtual identities, augmenting sensory perception of real-life objects with retinal projected images, or being entirely immersed in 3D data spaces.

Keywords: Proxemics, Voronoi diagram, Embodiment, Second Life, Virtual Worlds.