The last couple of weeks I have been doing various lectures (at the University of Amsterdam) and a series of talks for cultural institutions and various other parties (through The Next Speaker) on Obama’s implementation of digital media during his succesful bid for the White House.

One of the talks was at the Marketingdag voor de Podiumkunsten at De Reehorst in Ede. The cultural sector has its own magazine; MMNieuws and in their latest number (vol 10, ed. 2, page 6-7) I wrote a two-page piece on Obama’s campaign: “Ja, wij kunnen het ook! – Obama’s nieuwe media campagne van binnenuit”.

If you are interested in a lecture on why Obama won because of new media, contact The Next Speaker for more information.

Today Dagblad De Pers published my analysis of Facebook as a (new) game platform. I enjoyed researching this, as well as writing the piece, as Facebook is in many ways such a new platform (compared to hardware platforms as the Wii or Xbox) and at the same time a very familiar one, i.e. hosting short & simple casual games. The article is online here: “Facebook maakt je trots en gelukkig“, but do check out the .pdf of the newspaper (page 15) which contains some Facebook game reviews, and nice pictures. The article also contains bits and pieces of an interview I had with Sebastien de Halleux, chief operating officer of Playfish. Playsfish develops games for Facebook and is quite succesful at that.

For Bashers I wrote a (p)review of Battlefield Heroes, the f2p (free-to-play) shooter for the PC. The game is still in beta, but there’s much to discuss. How will the social networking features be implemented, how will the project evolve, when will it launch? There’s already some discussion going on here “De enorme potentie van Battlefield Heroes“. As the title of the (p)review suggests, I think the project has some serious potential. We’ll see.

And also on Bashers, a link to an interesting VPRO documentary “Trendspotting San Francisco“. The docu is available online, so in case you’ve missed it, watch it!

No game reviews or articles this week (mainly because of Easter). Also, I’m working on other stuff (thesis supervision and my PhD). I am working on a newspaper article for next week’s paper and got some cool research related projects I am working on as well. But that’s all in the future.

In the meantime, there will be an interesting lecture by Richard Grusin (co-author of Remediation) at the University of Amsterdam on May 18. I’ll certainly be there because he’ll be talking about the concept of premediation which fascinates me because he draws on the representation (and premediation of warfare) in particular. Here’s an outline:

This talk is drawn from my recently completed book, Premediation: Affect and Mediality after 9/11, which takes up where my earlier, co-authored study of new media, Remediation: Understanding New Media, left off. Premediation extends the theoretical concerns of Remediation to the period after 9/11, attending to the ways in which print, televisual, and networked media mobilize individual and collective affect in an era of heightened securitization. The book expands upon my 2004 article, “Premediation,” in which I set out to explain the geopolitical and medialogical inevitability that prevailed in the run-up to the Iraq war. In addition to functioning as the media logic of the Bush administration’s doctrine of preemptive war, premediation helps to structure our post 9-11 media environment both in its social and in its technical formations. The talk will lay out two related concepts developed in the book’s concluding chapter–the mediaphilia of anticipation and the anticipatory gesture–which help to characterize the modes of affectivity that have come to inform our interactions with our increasingly mobile social networks.

More info: Lecture starts at 3:15pm (15.15u.), Location: University of Amsterdam, Oudemanhuispoort (OMHP) 4-6 1012 DL Amsterdam, Room A008

We (the Media & Culture studies departement, faculty of Humanities at the Uni of Amsterdam) need some help. There are two open positions.
1. Assistant Professor of New Media and Digital Culture (“Universitair Docent UD” i.e. assistant professor, a.k.a. lots of teaching).
2. Docent-Promovendi (i.e. PhD student with a 60/40 position, 60% PhD research, 40% lecturing), this is the job I have. One of the upsides of this position is that you can write your own proposal (on new media in general, games or anything else).

Be quick, the deadline is next week!

As shown here, last year I contributed to the book “Digital Material“. It will be officially presented to the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities (@ Utrecht University) May 15. My chapter is entitled “Empower Yourself, Defend Freedom! – Playing games during times of war” and is on war & games. It is published by Amsterdam University Press (the irony) and has chapter by the best and brightest Utrecht University has to offer, cannot wait to get a copy of my own! The book launch coincides with a celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Department of New Media and Digital Culture of Utrecht University (which is my alma mater). Here’s the program:

14.00-17.00 Book launch and presentations, StudioT
Moderator: Ann-Sophie Lehmann
14.00-14.30 Official opening and presentation of first copy to Wiljan van den Akker (Dean of the Faculty of Humanities)
14.30-15.15 Presentations by selected contributors to the book
15.15-15.30 Break
15.30-16.15 Presentations by Geert Lovink & Florian Cramer
16.15-17.00 Presentations by Walter Langenaar & Audrey Samson
17.00-18.00 Drinks

And for todays newspaper I wrote a short review of Ninja Blade (Xbox 360), see the .pdf (page 13).

Last months I dug into the world of podcasts. While I have had an iPod for ages and podcasts have existed for years, the concept never appealed to me. Such a shame, because there’s so much valuable stuff out there. From lectures to book launches, and from game podcasts to political discussions, it’s all there. So when Niels from Bashers.nl asked me to do a Bashers-podcasts I gladly took him up on the offer.

In the 80 minute talk (which is indeed a bit long) we discussed GDC topics, America’s Army 3.0, Modern Warfare 2, the new Nintendo DSi and a range of other topics. I had a great time and I love the format. I hope there will be more opportunities to do this.

The podcast can be downloaded as a MP3 here, M4A here, or launch iTunes. There’s more information and discussion (on the podcast) at bashers.nl.

On a related note, last Monday I helped on a story for Dagblad De Pers on OnLive and wrote a small review of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 – Ultimate Edition (PS3), the .pdf is downloadable here.