Convergence Culture: Where Old And New Media Collide

Henry Jenkins, MIT Professor and author of Convergence Culture, talks about the new media landscape and transmedia storytelling from New York City's Times Square.


In his book Convergence Culture: Where Old And New Media Collide (2006) Jenkins "delves beneath the new media hype to uncover the important cultural transformations that are taking place as media converge. He provides an introduction to the world where every story gets told and every brand gets sold across multiple media platforms."

p.4 Convergence does not occur through media appliances, however sophisticated they may become. Convergence occurs within the brains of individual consumers and through their social interaction with others.

p.5 Convergence does not mean ultimate stability and unity. It operates as a constant force for unification but always in dynamic tension with change.

p.17 Our lives, relationships, memories, fantasies, desires also flow across media channels. Being a lover or a mommy or a teacher occurs on multiple platforms.

We Live In Public

Country: USA
Release: 2009
Length: 1u30
Director: Ondi Timoner
Dialogues : English
Subtitling : none

Former Internet millionaire Josh Harris has always been fascinated by the influence of new media on day-to-day life. In 1999, Harris launched his own Big Brother avant la lettre by starting an experiment in New York City, in which around 100 artists were placed in a room, filmed, and followed on the Internet every second of the day. According to Harris, the project "Quiet, We Live in Public" was an analogy for what Internet would really come to look like. Sleeping, showering, having sex -- everything was filmed, watched, and commented upon within the community. After the inevitable implosion of "Quiet," this "Warhol of the web" stuffed his apartment with cameras to provide Internet users with insight into everyday life of him and his (first real) girlfriend. They would become the first ‘public couple’. The new project also failed, and that was when a lonely and penniless Harris left for Ethiopia. Filmmaker Ondi Timoner was one of the residents in the "Quiet" project and spent 10 years worming her way around Harris's life. We Live in Public tells the fascinating story of how man is more and more inclined to give up privacy to become part of an abstract community.


May 3
20:00
Cinema ZED Leuven

Geert Lovink - MyBrain.net

The colonization of real-time and other trends in Web 2.0

"There is no evidence that the world is becoming more virtual. The cyber−prophets were wrong here. The virtual is becoming more real. It wants to penetrate and map out our real lives and social relationships. We are no longer encouraged to act out some role, but forced to be "ourselves" (which is no less theatrical or artificial). We constantly login, create profiles in order to present our "selves" on the global market place of employment, friendship and love. We can have multiple passions but only one certified ID."