Final Report of Mizukoshi group in “media exprimo”(English Part)

We published Final Report of Mizukoshi group which bound our achievements of 5 and half years in 550 pages!
Here are English parts (100 pages) data of the report for anyone who are interested.
・Index
・Chapter2
-2-1:Thesis
-2-2:Presentation Materials
-2-3:Workshop Abstracts
Also, I’m copying English “Introduction” by Shin Mizukoshi as below.
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Final Report of Mizukoshi group in “media exprimo”
English Part
March 2012
“media exprimo:exploring a new dimension of information design for people’s media narratives”
CREST(Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology) project funded by JST(Japan Science and Technology Agency)
October 2006 – March 2012
Introduction
This is the final report of Shin Mizukoshi group’s achievements in “Media Exprimo”, one of the CREST (Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology) projects, funded by JST (Japan Science and Technology Agency) for five and half year from October 2006. This is one of the research teams of “Foundation of Technology Supporting the Creation of Digital Media Contents” set by JST in 2004. The formal title of “Media Exprimo” is “Platform Design for Emerging ‘People’s Art’.”
“Media Exprimo” is an interdisciplinary research project on information platform design for people’s media expressions and digital storytelling. Japan’s information society has enjoyed an affluent diffusion of the internet, mobile media, and other digital media since mid 1990s. Recently, many people use digital media to generate and exchange various and numerous narratives and visual expressions in the form of social media. In contrast to numerous “private” communications and various “commercial” services, there has been little space for “public” communications via digital media in Japan. Japanese people’s narratives have been dominated by private and commercial communications. The purpose of “Media Exprimo” is to develop a new cultural programs and technological systems empowering people to engage in public communications in a historically regimented society of Japan.
“Media Exprimo” project consisted of four different research groups: a core group engaged in information design research (Takeshi Sunaga group) and groups engaged in interface and SNS engineering research (Takuichi Nishimura group), artificial intelligence and knowledge support system research (Koichi Hori group), and humanities- and social science-oriented media studies (Shin Mizukoshi group). They have collaborated to apply a new methodology called “critical media practice.”
This thick volume is the accumulation of five and half year achievements of Mizukoshi group. Although Mizukoshi group has been collaborated with other three groups in a cross-disciplinary manner, it produced relatively unique theories and practices based on the perspective of media and communication studies and media literacy.
We all owe to people who participated in our workshops, classrooms, festivals and local activities designed as critical media practices. Because of their vital reactions and actual activities, we could reflect and develop our cultural programs and technological systems.
Without the organization of the CREST area of “Foundation of Technology Supporting the Creation of Digital Media Contents” by Hiroshi Harashima, we could not have developed this cross-disciplinary team.
Finally, to Takeshi Sunaga, Koichi Hori, Takuichi Nishimura and other wonderful members of “Media Exprimo,” thank you for your unflagging support and inspirations. We are glad to do our future collaborations.