INTRODUCTION
NEW MEDIA
Bubbles? Bubbles! Even before the pandemic, a trend had become apparent among children: a decrease in linear content and increase in user-generated content consumption. Home schooling and lockdowns caused children’s media use to sky-rocket and to become even more individualised. Gaming also took off massively over the past period and has become an important social factor, as demonstrated by concerts and weddings in popular games such as Animal Crossing and Fortnite.
Is the digital world reliable, however? Can we safely set
There is a thematic focus on 3 Trails:
our children loose in it? Does media savviness arise from
1. Take a look at ourselves, or how media technology can
high levels of screen time? The answer is: ‘No’.
help us to reflect on our state of being both physically
and mentally. How important is ‘play’ for our brain, our
If you only experience the world through tiny screens,
development and our perspective on ourselves and the
it becomes very easy to believe everything fed to you online. This means developing different perspectives becomes increasingly important. The Cinekid MediaLab takes children as well as their parents/guardians by the hand to unravel and uncover facts about the quirks of
world? 2. Internet of Everything, or how our lives are riddled with artificial intelligence and computer code. Can we get a grip on this? Does poetic code exist? 3. The world around us, or how can stories told in new
media technologies. The latter are so integrated into
ways, using a variety of technologies, whilst expanding
all facets of our daily lives that we often are no longer
our horizons and opening up the world around us?
conscious of them. MediaLab visitors will be pulled from
What can we offer children in the way of tools and
their individual bubbles to see, hear and experience other
insights to make their lives more diverse and inclusive,
creative perspectives at an exhibition which makes bubbles
to find their own stories and shape these?
and realities – as well as the accompanying ethical implications – tangible.
This year, for the first time, MediaLab will not just take place in Amsterdam, but will also be staged in six other
Cinekid will present a broad range of interactive installations,
cities as well as online. With this, Cinekid hopes to impart
games, apps and workshops from the Netherlands and
these other perspectives to a wide-ranging, diverse group
abroad, including a number of wonderful commissions
of children and their parents/guardians.
and premières. These works underwrite the innovation in media technologies yet offer the freedom and space to reflect and pose questions actively, creatively, to seek out adventure, try things out, to learn as well as make things yourself. Cinekid thus intends to provide an alternative to what Big Tech feeds us, namely a programme that stimulates
Siuli Ko
and questions, as well as the presentation of projects in
Head of New Media
which technology serves no other purpose than to amaze, challenge, encourage contemplation and stimulate.
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