Northern Lights

This article will identify and define the concept of transdiegetic sound space in computer games, and discuss the relationship of this space to action and events in the game. The point of departure for the article is based on discussions of the diegetic space in film theory, but ...

Page 1. 69 NL 8 pp. 69–92 Intellect Limited 2010 Northern Lights Volume 8 © 2010 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/nl.8.69_1 KEYWORDS cultural journalism culture wars press history mediatization media profiling NETE NØRGAARD KRISTENSEN ...

Latvian composer Ēriks Ešenvalds (b. 1977) has been rapidly gaining recognition in the global choral world with his consumer-conscious in terms of musical style and technical execution, and yet, textually complex compositions. A significant number of Ešenvalds's works are inspired by the phenomenon of the Northern Lights (aurora borealis), including at least three compositions for choir, a multi-media symphony, a piano piece, and a clarinet concerto. I focus on Ešenvalds's composition Northern Lights for mixed choir, power chimes, and water-tuned glasses, utilizing excerpts from the journals of 19 th-century Arctic explorers-American Charles Francis Hall and Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen-in combination with the ancient Latvian folksong. This well-crafted choral work demonstrates main features of Ešenvalds's current style, including uncomplicated harmonic language and structural design. The ways in which Ešenvalds sets, highlights, and layers chosen texts, however, are sophisticated and effective, resulting in a powerful narrative. Drawing upon writings of cultural geographers, ethnographers, historians, and literary scholars, and using Ešenvalds's Northern Lights as an example, I argue that, through his "Northern" creative output, Ešenvalds discovers, negotiates, and, finally, authors his cultural identity as both a Latvian and, more broadly, a "Northern" composer.

Understanding creative industries in general and media work in particular poses a fascinating paradox: as people worldwide engage with media in an increasingly immersive, always-on, almost instantaneous and interconnected way, the very people whose livelihoods and sense of professional identity depend on delivering content and experiences across such media seem to be at a loss on how to come up with survival strategies -in terms of business models, effective regulatory practices (e.g. copyrights and universal access provisions), and perhaps most significantly the organization of entrepreneurial working conditions that support and sustain the creative process needed to meet the demands of a global market saturated with media. This article proposes a model for professional identity in media work that engages with these questions, based on past, present and ongoing personal experiences of one of the authors as a self-employed media worker in multiple creative industries.

Taking as a point of departure that the website constitutes an important analytical unit for the analysis of Internet activities, this article discusses to what extent the work of Bolter and Manovich can contribute to the clarification of what characterizes the website as a phenomenon in ...

This article deals with the effect of 9/11 and the subsequent War on Terror in media in the United States, the United Kingdom and Denmark. The focus is particularly on documentary films and programmes and the investigative genre. Structural and long-term media developments in both the United States and Europe have, since 2000, undermined and weakened the role of critical, investigative documentaries. The effect of the War on Terror on media and democratic, public dialogue and criticism was clearly a further weakening of dissenting, documentary voices. The strong tradition in Europe for public service film and television cultures had to face up to severe political criticism and attacks on their independence when broadcasting critical documentaries on the War on Terror, and in the United States the independent voices were even more marginalized from the mainstream media.

Building on a preliminary case study of the Danish educational publisher Systime A/S and its flagship product, the web-based 'iBog'/'iBook', this article explores how digital textbooks can be understood as design. The shaping of digital books is seen as being intertwined in a wider circuit of design culture, constituted by changes in designer roles, consumption and mediation practices and restructuring of book production. Following this perspective entails an investigation not only into the shaping of the book as an isolated artefact or product but also into how business models, internal reorganization of the publishing company, web-based user interfaces, and ultimately the branding, which market these new digital objects, are building powerful discourses around the product. Thus it is suggested that the design process of the iBog case can be understood in a model of database-based publishing with multiple levels. In the final analysis, the iBog is much more than a product and a technology. It is a brand that goes beyond what can be studied by looking at the digital textbook as a singular artefact.

This article adopts a cultural approach in order to provide an empirical grounding to the multidimensional concept of media generations. Data from the representative survey 'Me. The World. The Media', conducted in autumn 2011 among members of the Estonian population aged 15-74 (N=1510), are used to map similarities and distinctions among four age groups with regard to the use of media technologies and channels, format and topic preferences, spatial orientations of media use, and attitudes towards the Internet. The findings demonstrate significant and multifaceted differences between the age cohorts, suggesting that in addition to the ascent of new media technologies, broader social and cultural changes need to be considered in interpreting generational groups' relations with the media. The study partially confirms the hypothesis that media experiences shared with members of another media generation are related to a weaker perception of inter-generational gaps. All 15-29 30-44 45-59 60-74 ß p ß p ß p ß p ß p Watching TV (frequency and versatility) View publication stats View publication stats

Following Henry Jenkins' argument that online fan discussions contribute to 'collective intelligence' that then feeds into the creative processes of the media industries, this article explores the ways in which online fans of the ABC television programme Lost discuss the religious and philosophical references of the programme as well as the directions the series seemed to follow as a result. By considering the ways in which both popular entertainment producers and fans of popular entertainment contribute to the emergent norms of plural religious and cultural representation in media and expectations regarding the plural religious environment generally, this article adds to our understanding of the processes through which the mediatization of religion is occurring.

Page 1. 9 NL 9 pp. 9–25 Intellect Limited 2011 Northern Lights Volume 9 © 2011 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/nl.9.9_1 ANNE MARIT WAADE Media Studies, Faculty of Arts, Aarhus University Crime scenes: Conceptualizing Ystad ...

The article uses gossiping about Angelina Jolie on two different celebrity entertainment news sites in order to propose a contextual understanding of online gossip/talk. A contextual reading explains differences between types of talk on the sites in view of the different affordances of the sites, the sites’ particular profiles, the particular invitations to gossip (often in the form of paparazzi photographs), and the different types of users taking part in the discussions. The article discusses the two sites and argues that gossip on one site resembles oral gossip and is performed by a random group of visitors whereas on the other site, Jolie fans perform a double move when talking about Jolie: on the one hand they elevate her and on the other hand they include her in their extended family.

Abstract Religion in the Middle East is, in general, related to political discussions on Islam's position and influence on the development of democracy. The same approach has been dominant in research into new media in the Islamic world. The argument of the article is that the ...

Geomagnetic virtual pole positions (VGP's) calculated from archaeomagnetic directional data are compared with three ancient accounts of low latitude observations of the Aurorae boreales, viz. by Aristotle (384-322 BC), Seneca (55 BC-40 AD) and simultaneously by Chinese astronomers in Hangzhou, China and by European observers in Prague in 1138 AD, October 13th.