media exprimo Mizukoshi group

** “media expirmo” project finished its 5 and a half years research on March 2012, but several activities are still ongoing in Tokyo, Aichi prefecture, and some places in Tohoku area. This site may continue to report those practices. Thank you! (April 1, 2012)
“media exprimo” is an interdisciplinary research project on information design for people’s media expression and narratives. This project is organized by 4 research groups from different areas; information design, interface and network engineering, knowledge support system, and socio-media studies. This is a blog site of the last group from socio-media studies which Shin Mizukoshi (Professor of the Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, The University of Tokyo) is a group leader.
The purpose of “media exprimo” is to develop a new technological and cultural platform system empowering people to engage in public communications in a historically regimented society of Japan. By applying a new methodology called “critical media practice”, researchers from 4 interdisciplinary groups have been collaborating each other. “media exprimo” is a contract research of CREST (Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology), Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) for five and half year from October 2006 to March 2012.
For more information, please check the website and the declaration below.
■Official Website
■Declaration of the “media exprimo”: New Horizons in Citizen Media Expression and Information Design
As an only one group from social science, Mizukoshi group has been taking a role of considering and developing “cultural program” as we call to see our practices (each workshop and project) in social (and also historical) contexts. When designing a practice for people to express their experience or memories using media, we cannot do it without knowing backgrounds or histories that people and the community they belong have. By seeing the social dimension (communal or mezo-level dimension), Mizukoshi group has been designing, implementing and analyzing practices, and at the same time, updating a theoretical framework of “cultural program”.
This site has on going and past workshops and projects’ announces, reports and articles. Please check and leave your comments.