Seminar Blogs

“What Do We Mean When We Say ‘Metaverse’?” – Chris van der Vegt
Something that came up repeatedly in our discussion on technological imaginaire was the idea of an immersive virtual world or a ‘Metaverse’. ‘Metaverse’ is the name of a product currently in development by Meta, the company previously known as Facebook. At the same time as Meta announced its rebranding at Connect 2021, the…
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“The Apparatgeist of VR and the Logic of Immersion” – Jingzhe Zhang
One of the many interesting things brought up by Frank Kessler and Imar de Vries in the seminar is the theory of Apparatgeist. Apparatgeist is a neologism coined by James Katz and Mark Aakhus (2002) based on their observation of parallel shifts in communication habits that came out of mobile phone adoption in different…
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“Countering a media imaginary” – Job Santé
In the first session of this year’s Transmission in Motion seminar (2022-2023) Prof. dr. Frank Kessler and Dr. Imar de Vries introduced and discussed the topic of media imaginaries, imaginary media and media imaginations (Kessler and de Vries 2022). This discussion made me think about the works of Nam June Paik. Paik, known…
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“Video Calling and Time Machines: Imaginary Media” – Pauline Munnich
Not too long ago, my friends and I were video calling, laughing about how we covered the three times of the day at the same time during our call. Meeting up, even if it is online, has currently become a bit of a feat for us, living on four different continents and in…
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“Leaving Omelas: Media archeology and science fiction” – Stepan Lastuvka
In the seminar titled “Media Imaginaries / Imaginary Media / Imaginations of Media,” the presenters Frank Kessler and Imar de Vries together reflect on how the three parts of the title interconnect and, in turn, shape the social conditions of the present-day media landscapes. Specifically, the presenters point out how the imaginations of media…
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Walking with the Trouble: Haunted Landscapes, Trauma Maps and Memory Landmarks – Olga Efremova
My natural response to the challenge set by Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink and Anne Karin ten Bosch in the final session of this year’s TiM seminar series to explore methods of drawing, the ‘soft atlas’ and performative mapping (Utrecht University 2022) was to venture outside with a drawing pad and pencil in my hand….
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Misplaced Sublime: In Search of the Music Trapped Between the Two World Wars – Olga Efremova
I have been enjoying the privilege of writing this blog entry from a place in Utrecht Museum Speelklok after having visited their extensive exhibition of musical automations. I came to the place in search of something being “lost in translation”, to quote the title of Sofia Coppola’s 2003 film, when musical performances were…
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The possibility of criticising the technical – Martin Essemann
The framing of music as writing, as fundamentally techical in the broadest sense, and the implicit inflation of technics and culture that seemed to underly the presentation, is perhaps a delayed response in the field of musicology to the questions about Modernism in visual art that arose in the middle of the last…
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The Highest Point of Knowledge: Quentin Tarantino and the Poetics of Interdisciplinary Translation – Olga Efremova
The fifth session of the Transmission in Motion 2021-22 seminar series took place in an unusual setting: a Gather virtual town meeting set up to introduce the participants to an alternative “discursive space of connective and integrative dialogue” (Utrecht University 2022). Departing from the premise that “students with solid training in inter- and…
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Laika Phone Home: Translating the Concept of “Postmemory” to Robotic Theatre – Olga Efremova
In the fourth installment of Transmission in Motion 2021-22 seminar series “Dramaturgy for Devices”, Maaike Bleeker and Marco Rozendaal invited us to analyze four dramaturgical concepts of mise-en-scène, performativity, presence and address (Utrecht University 2022). Reflecting as a part of the discussion on the previous seminars in the series made me wonder about the…
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