SGKM Conference: Media Research Meets Design and Technology

Transferring images on smartphones, tablets, etc. instead of printed paper – This year’s conference of the Swiss Society for Communication and Media Studies (SGKM) from Thursday 21 to Friday 22 April will deal with this change in media and its consequences. The main speakers come from the USA, Denmark and Germany.

Frank Rose is best known for his bestselling book The Art of Immersion, and his most recent work is dedicated to the question of “How Stories Work in a Data-Driven World.” Rose teaches the Strategic Storytelling Symposium at Columbia University School of the Arts and writes for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired. His inaugural lecture is titled “The Narrative Role – and Its Interaction with the Visible Turn in Digital Media.”

Danish newspaper designer Marianne Bahl and founder of the European Newspaper Prize Norbert Cooper will open the second day of the conference with award-winning examples of how classic newspapers have become increasingly visible in their online and print editions, using extensive images, videos and interactive infographics. This trend originally comes from Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg, where newspapers are produced with a high proportion of pictures and graphics in magazine design.

After the keynote speeches, several Swiss and international research findings from the fields of communication and media studies as well as design and media technology will be presented in parallel in three rooms. Topics range from “video content for Swiss media on Instagram” to “mobile media use and sleep” to image theory, algorithms and “augmented reality” projects. The Center for Media Technology of ETH Zurich, a research institute donated by media companies TX Group, Ringier, NZZ, and SRG, will present itself at workshops and panel discussions and provide insight into current research projects at the interface of computer science/media innovation and storytelling.

The annual SGKM conference is being held for the first time in the Toni-Areal district of Zurich, where the University of the Arts Zurich (ZHdK) and the University of Applied Sciences Zurich (ZHAW) are located. The two-day conference is open to anyone interested, and tickets can be booked on the website: www.sgkm2022.ch. (pd/wid)