<nettime> Issue four of M/C now available (fwd)

[Geert Lovink <geert@xs4all.nl>]

  The Media and Cultural Studies Centre at the University of Queensland
           is proud to present issue four of the award-winning

                  M/C - A Journal of Media and Culture
                        http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/

                            and to introduce

               M/C Reviews - An ongoing series of reviews
                   of events in culture and the media.
                    http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/reviews/


M/C is an award-winning journal that crosses over between the popular and
the academic. It is attempting to engage with the 'popular', and integrate
the work of 'scholarship' in media and cultural studies into our critical
work. We take seriously the need to move ideas outward, so that our
cultural debates may have some resonance with wider political and cultural
interests.

M/C Reviews is a companion piece to the M/C journal itself. Publication on
the Internet gives us the freedom to keep its link to M/C proper ambiguous:
M/C Reviews is neither simply a sub-section of M/C, nor completely
independent of it; you, the reader, decide how you want to see it. The
reviews are informed by the culture-critical perspective of M/C, but you
don't need to take notice of this fact; if you do, however, you'll find
that they tie in to some of the debates represented in greater length in
M/C.


Issue four of M/C looks at the concept of 'space'. Space is ubiquitous --
not only in physical terms, but also metaphorically. Governments,
researchers, business and the media are rushing to stake their claims in
cyberspace; at the same time, the increasing globalisation makes
terrestrial space seem smaller than it was, and with international
marketspaces contested more and more fiercely, there is a diminishing
amount of space for errors of judgment, as recent financial turmoil shows.
These are the articles included in issue four of M/C:


  "Of Cyber Spaces: The Internet & Heterotopias"
Foucauldian idea of heterotopias -- or 'other' spaces -- gave architects
and urban designers in particular a new way of interrogating notions of
space. Sherman Young examines the usefulness of such ideas in conceiving of
the Internet.

  "'What the Hell is a Tim Tam?' Reducing the Space between Cultures
  through Electronic Publishing"
Lara Cain shows how the introduction of Internet links into a translated
text could greatly improve the translatability of culturally-specific
references, by looking at some examples from recent international releases
of Australian novels.

  "NXT Space for Visual Thinking: An Experimental Cyberlab"
Sherry Mayo introduces the idea of the cyberculture as creating a NXT
space, where new tools for visualisation allow an expanded perception and
where culture takes place in an objectless fictionalised space.

  "The n-Dimensional Village: Coming to Terms with Cyberspatial Topography"
Axel Bruns questions the usefulness of the metaphor of cyber-'space',
describing how the deeply-ingrained three-dimensional ideas that go with
this image are hindering our understanding of what in reality is
multi-dimensional and variable in its topography.

  "Knockin' on Heaven's Door: The Conceptual Movement of the Dead"
Felicity Meakins looks at the language used in funerals, showing how the
linguistic creation of distance in the eulogy reflects the funerary process
of social and psychological distancing.

  "'The Truth is Over There': Is There Room for Space in Postmodernity?"
Adam Dodd notes the growing acceptance of a more ethereal conceptualisation
of space, pointing out that the traditional conceptual model of space is
simply not useful for articulating the wide, varying range of contemporary
human experience.


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Issue four of M/C is now on the Web, at <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/>.
Previous issues of M/C on various topics are also still available online.
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M/C Reviews is now available at <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/reviews/>.
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All M/C contributors are available for media contacts: mc@mailbox.uq.edu.au
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end

                                                          Axel Bruns

--
M/C - A Journal of Media and Culture                  mc@mailbox.uq.edu.au
The University of Queensland                      http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/


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