Differential Mobilities Begins Today

May 8-11, 2013 at Concordia University, Montreal

More info at http://mobilities.ca/pamnet-4/about/

From May 8-11, 2013 the Mobile Media Lab in the Communication Studies department of Concordia University in Montreal will be hosting Differential Mobilities: Movement and Mediation in Networked Societies. This international conference is sponsored by the Pan-American Mobilities Network, in association with the European Cosmobilities Network. The conference will be held in collaboration with the 4th annual meeting of the Pan-American Mobilities Network.  Previous conferences have been held at:  Royal Roads University, Victoria B.C (2010);  Drexel University, Philadelphia PA (2011) ; and North Carolina State University, Raleigh-Durham NC (2012).

The conference is an opportunity for scholars, artists, activists, and policy makers to engage in a lively exchange of  ideas in an interdisciplinary context, taking the term “mobilities” as a fulcrum. Mobilities has become an important framework for understanding and analyzing contemporary social, spatial, economic and political practices. Mobilities research is interdisciplinary, focusing on the systematic movement of people, goods and information that “travel” around the world at speeds that are greater than before, creating distinct patterns, flows– and blockages. Mobilities research contributes to the study of these technological, social and cultural developments from a critical perspective.

Follow Us On Social Media

You can follow the conference on social media at these locations:
o   Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mmlMTL
o   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mmlMTL
o   Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/mmlMTL

Hashtag #mobilities13 in all your related posts.

We invite you to download our Guidebook Mobile Device App in order to view and manage the schedule remotely. You’ll be able to plan your day with a personalized schedule and browse exhibitors, maps and general show info. The app is compatible with iPhones, iPads, iPod Touches and Android devices. Windows Phone 7 and Blackberry users can access the same information via our mobile site at m.guidebook.com. 

To get the guide, choose one of the methods below:

• Download ‘Guidebook’ from the Apple App Store or the Android Marketplace
• Visit http://guidebook.com/getit from your phone’s browser

Organizing Committee:

• Kim Sawchuk (Concordia University, Québec)
• Jim Conley (Trent University, Canada)
• Owen Chapman (Concordia University, Québec)
• Adriana de Souza e Silva (NC State University, USA)
• Paola Jirón Martinez (University of Chile, Chile)
• Mimi Sheller (Drexel University, USA)
• Phillip Vannini (Royal Roads University, Canada)

The Pan-American Mobilities Network is a scholarly and professional network dedicated to the study of mobilities in South, Central, and North America. The Pan-American Mobilities Network gathers individuals and groups interested in developing more knowledge about mobilities on–or intersecting with–these continents and keen on building collegial relationships. Membership is free and a web-site for the organization is in process.

The Cosmobilities Network connects European scientists working in the field of mobility research. As an interdisciplinary network it represents state of the art research on different aspects of social, physical, cultural and virtual mobilities. It fosters mobility research as a key discipline investigating the modernization of European societies under the conditions of globalization and global complexity.

Conference Chair:  Kim Sawchuk (Concordia University, Québec)

For further information, contact: Ben Spencer, Administrative Coordinator, Mobile Media Labmmcconcordia@gmail.com

 

Ecoarttech visiting Urban Vitality & the Arts

Urban Vitality and the Arts

Thursday, 2 May 2013, 6:30 – 9:20 pm
URBN 141, 3501 Market Street

The artist team Ecoarttech (Leila Nadir and Cary Pepperment) will be presenting a Philadelphia premier of their work Indeterminate Hikes+ as part of the class Urban Vitality & the Arts, taught by Mimi Sheller and Hana Iverson. Ecoarttech work on the overlapping terrain between “nature”, built environments, mobility and electronic spaces and technologies. They will be in conversation with Dr. Christian Hunold, Associate Professor of Political Science in Drexel’s College of Arts and Sciences, whose research interests revolve around sustainability and the politics of renewable energy; and writer Bernard Brown, who writes the Urban Naturalist column for GRID Magazine.

You can find more information on ecoarttech and their other work at http://www.ecoarttech.net/

This event is free and open to the public, but is part of an instructional course so please to attend please contact: Mimi Sheller, director of the Center for Mobilities Research and Policy, mimi.sheller@drexel.edu.

Aluminum Wars

A talk by Dr. Mimi Sheller

12 noon, Friday, 26 April 2013

Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University

Aluminum has become the most important single bulk material of modern warfare. No fighting is possible, and no war can be carried to a successful conclusion today, without using and destroying vast quantities of aluminum.– Dewey Anderson, 1951

 

Dr. Mimi Sheller will be speaking on “Aluminum Wars” at the research Seminar of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University on Friday, April 26th. All seminars are held at 12 noon in the Academy’s Ewell Sale Stewart Library & Archives unless otherwise noted. These technical seminars are intended for scientists and college-level students. Guests from other research and higher education institutions and organizations are encouraged to attend.

The talk is based on Dr. Sheller’s forthcoming book Aluminum Dreams: Lightness, Speed, Modernity (MIT Press, 2014). This chapter concerns the ways in which aluminum was crucial to warfare, but also how the contemporary culture of innovation and entrepreneurship remains deeply entwined with the military-industrial complex, with serious implications for our ability to address ethical issues concerning global pollution, environmental destruction, and the huge impacts of aluminum production on marginalized people.

For more information please contact: mimi.sheller@drexel.edu

Mobilities & STS Visiting Speaker

Mobilities Visiting Speaker

Co-sponsored by the Science & Technology Studies Program, College of Arts and Sciences

THURSDAY, APRIL 4

6:30-7:30pm, MACALISTER 2020 BOARD ROOM

Crossroads in STS based Mobilities: The ‘Costa Concordia’ case as exemplary story

Costa Concordia Salvage

 

A talk by Giuseppina Pellegrino (President of STS Italia, and Asst. Professor, Sociology of Culture & Communication, University of Calabria, Italy

This talk aims to describe and identify potential crossroads between STS and Mobilities as two contiguous fields. As they share an interdisciplinary and even transdisciplinary status, their hybridization can provide fertile materials of reflection from both a theoretical and an empirical viewpoint.
In order to depict similarities and differences between STS and Mobility Studies, the case of the cruise ship ‘Costa Concordia’ partial sinking in January 2012 off the Giglio island in Italy will be proposed as ‘exemplary story’ to summarize the key-concepts and criticalities of STS-based Mobilities.

Dr. Pelligrino will also be discussing the state of Science and Technology Studies in Italy and the formation of STS Italia:

THURSDAY, APRIL 4
12-1 P.M.
HAGERTY LIBRARY
STEIN CONFERENCE ROOM 302

For more information please contact:

mimi.sheller@drexel.edu

Mobile World Capital

Mobile World Capital – Barcelona

mCenter Director Mimi Sheller will be featured in a video installed in the new Mobile World Center, in the heart of Barcelona.

What is the Mobile World Centre?

The Centre is Mobile World Capital’s permanent exhibition & venue, to spread and demonstrate the latest mobile technologies and solutions to citizens.

Content

Permanent Exhibition

The Centre permanent exhibition is an open platform to all citizens to understand, learn & experience the mWorld.  At the first floor you will find:

1. Data Cloud: Dynamic screens with key metrics showing the evolution of mobile telephony, including penetration and social usage all around the world
2. Interactive Forest: An attractive walk through the different visions and components of mWorld and its capacity to transform the way we live.
3. mWorld Experience – Central element of the exhibition, showing the transformation capability and the constant evolution of the mobile industry and its impact in people’s life
4. mWorld Experience – Video Library
5. mHistory - Timeline with multimedia information covering mobile development, since the beginning of commercial mobile telephony to nowadays.

The Centre exhibition will always be in constant evolution showing latest trends, events and facts from the mWorld.

We welcome all companies, citizens and mLovers to participate, so if you would like to present or suggest some potential content for the centre, please do contact us at: centre@mobileworldcapital.com

Events

At the 2nd floor of the Centre you will find a highly versatile space dedicated to Mobile events (mEvents).

A unique, contemporary and innovative space of 440m2 that hosts approximately 150pax for event.  The centre also offers catering and AV Services.

For the latest agenda of mEvents at the centre please visit mobileworldcentre.com

If you would like to find out more about how to use this space or can you collaborate with the Mobile World Centre please email:  centre@mobileworldcapital.com

Location

Barcelona, Spain, placed in Fontanella 2, in the corner of Plaça Catalunya with streets Portal de l’Angel and Fontanella, in a flagship building of Telefónica Movistar.

History

In the summer of 2011, GSMA selected Barcelona as the world’s first Mobile World Capital from 2012 to 2018. The GSMA represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide. Spanning more than 220 countries, the GSMA unites nearly 800 of the world’s mobile operators with more than 230 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem.

The Mobile World Capital will radically accelerate the global growth of mobile and Barcelona will be the global showcase for innovation.

The Mobile World Capital Foundation & Telefonica have worked hand in hand to create a unique, open platform called Mobile World Centre; a state of the art exhibition showroom where citizens are able to understand and experience how mobile is enhancing our lives.

The Mobile World Centre, located in the heart of Barcelona, brings mobile technology closer to all citizens, share a global vision of the mobile future and be a source of information for the other Mobile World Capital channels; Mobile World Hub, Mobile Word Festival and Mobile World Congress.

For further information please visit:

http://mobileworldcapital.com/mobile-world-centre/

ExCITE Center Opening

Wednesday, November 28th, 3:30-6pm

UC Science Center,  3401 Market St

Drexel University is opening a cross-discipline research/tech incubator center. The Expressive and Creative Interaction Technology — or ExCITe — Center is being created in 11,000 square-feet of converted industrial office space on the first floor of the University City Science Center building at 3401 Market.

The ExCITe Center will bring together translational research being conducted at Drexel’s colleges of Engineering, Arts & Science, Media Arts & Design and Information Science Technology in the same space. Music technology, humanoid robots, app development, video games, and digital knitting machines will converge with many other technologies in one creative space. The center will also serve as an incubator for local innovation partnerships.

“The opening of the ExCITe Center reflects Drexel’s commitment to re-imagine the urban research university for the 21st Century,” said Drexel President John A. Fry, in a statement. “We seek to foster creativity, innovation, collaboration and a commitment to community. The ExCITe Center will be a place that brings all of those core values together to create real economic opportunities for our city and region as well as a significant impact in society.”

Research in the ExCITe Center will include all aspects of expression and interaction, from performing arts technology to civic and city-scale computing. It will also, build on Drexel’s existing collaborations with arts and cultural institutions, regional development organizations and government.

“The ExCITe Center brings together not only technologists and researchers, but also designers, artists and musicians, city and transportation planners and civic innovators and entrepreneurs,” said Dr. Youngmoo Kim, the director of the ExCITe Center. “It’s a place for creative and passionate people who want to work together to transform Philadelphia through innovation and the digital creative economy.”

Three projects picked for seed funding from ExCITe were announced earlier this year, including one in which the Center for Mobilities Research and Policy is a collaborator, Sonic City.

They are: “Virtual Opera” led by the Opera Company of Philadelphia with the Curtis Institute of Music; “Cerebral Palsy Rehabilitation Gaming” led by Drexel’s Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design with the School of Biomedical Engineering and the College of Nursing and Health Professions; and “Sonic City” led by Neighborhood Narratives Project with Breadboard, Azavea, Drexel University Goodwin School of Education, College of Engineering, and the mCenter in the College of Arts and Sciences.

A truly multidisciplinary effort, Sonic City is a city-scale art and engineering project designed to engage the bus system as a creative interface for people to interactively engage the sounds of the city. Diverse neighborhoods of Philadelphia are connected through a sonic interface made up of real-time and recorded sound that will be experienced in bus shelter “installations” modified by the movement of the bus system. Real-time recordings of the city gathered through geo-spatial sensor-networks, along with seeded music and spoken words will be mixed with sounds contributed by the public via smartphones and the internet. The project will create geographically distinct aural immersion into a “musical” sound collage that reveals an innovative sonic and spatial patterning of the city.

For more info please contact mimi.sheller@drexel.edu, and for some ideas on “mobile mediality” as a sonic experience visit this mCenter blog.

Mobilities Visiting Speaker Fall 2012

From meaning to sense. Social theory in motion

MOBILITIES VISITING SPEAKER:

Lars Frers

(Telemark University College, Norway)

Wednesday, 28 November 2012

12-2 PM

PSA Building – Library

33rd & Powelton Ave., Drexel University, Philadelphia

Sponsored by the Center for Mobilities Research and Policy

Based on the detailed analysis of video material recorded in different public settings, this talk will explore an alternative understanding of central categories of social theory, namely meaning, sense and intentionality. Using video recordings of tourists exploring the Norwegian Tourist Route and of people moving through railway terminals and similar public settings, the discussion will try to bind social theory to actual processes unfolding in everyday practices – with the aim of understanding motion, movement and mobility in the social sphere not beyond language, but on the hither side of language.

St. Pancras Station, London

Lars Frers is Associate Professor at Telemark University College in Norway. He has studied in Kiel, Berlin, Bloomington/IN, and Darmstadt, and completed research projects at the University of Oslo and the University of Hamburg. He has published on materiality, perception, and on the use of video based-methods in fieldwork. He is the main guest editor for the upcoming special issue “Absence – Materiality, embodiment, resistance” in the journal Cultural Geographies and he is currently working on a book, From Meaning to Sense: Social Theory in Motion.

All are welcome – refreshments will be served!

For more info please contact mimi.sheller@drexel.edu

Black Diaspora Talk at Depaul

Depaul University

Center for Black Diaspora

BLACK ATLANTIC DISCOURSE, THE DIASPORA AND THE DISCIPLINES

The Black Diaspora and a Queer Caribbean Freedom
Lecture & Discussion
Mimi Sheller, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Drexel University
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
2:30-5:30 pm
Rosati Room 300, Richardson Library
2350 North Kenmore Ave, Chicago

The Center for Black Diaspora has entered a partnership with Chicago Amplified, a project of WBEZ, Chicago Public Radio to enhance the outreach of our events in the Chicago community. Select public programs presented by the Center for Black Diaspora are now available for listening as a part of Chicago Amplified, a new web-based audio library of diverse educational events recorded throughout the Chicago region.

Art in Your Pocket

Art In Your Pocket – Panel Discussion

Rhizome’s New Silent Series

Friday September 21 7PM

New Museum, 235 Bowery, New York, NY

The computer we carry in our pockets is also an emerging platform for interactive screen-based art. Art In Your Pocket takes its name from a series of texts Jonah Brucker-Cohen wrote for Rhizome on art made for smartphones. This panel will assemble leading media artists working with mobile devices and discuss current trends relating to this practice.

Moderated by Jason Eppink, Assistant Curator of Digital Media at the Museum of the Moving Image. Panelists include artist, programmer, and founder of iPhone app company SOFTOFT TECHECH, Paul Slocum; Mimi Sheller, leading theorist on mobilities research and Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Mobilities Research and Policy at Drexel University; LoVid, 2011 Rhizome commissioned artists for their location-specific art app project iParade #2: Unchanged When Exhumed; and Jonathan Vingiano, Co-founder of OKFocus.

Organized by Rhizome, the New Silent Series receives major support from The Rockefeller Foundation, and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Additional support is provided by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and the New York State Council on the Arts.

To purchase tickets please visit:

http://rhizome.org/events/art-in-your-pocket/

Powering Down

Mobilities Visiting Speaker

25 September, 2012

12:00-1:30PM

Skyview Room

6^th Floor, Macalister Hall

33^rd & Chestnut St., Philadelphia, PA

We are pleased to announce that Professor John Urry will be speaking at Drexel University’s Center for Mobilities Research and Policy on the following topic:

CAN SOCIETIES POWER DOWN AND IF SO HOW?

An analysis of how western societies are confronted by the interdependent crises of offshore finance, energy insecurity and rising GHG emissions; of the obvious need to ‘power down’ societies, of some green shoots of a possible powering down, of the powerful forces which appear to preclude such powering down, and of the varied ways in which a powered down future may materialize.

JOHN URRY is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University, UK. He is the author of various works including After the Car (2009), Mobile Lives (2010), Climate Change and Society (2011), Societies Beyond Oil (2013). He is currently writing Offshoring (2014). He is co-editor of the journal Mobilities, with Mimi Sheller and Kevin Hannam.

This talk is free and open to the public, however due to limited space we do require registration through Event Brite, at this link:

http://johnurry.eventbrite.com/

Co-sponsored by the Center for Mobilities Research and Policy, Drexel Green, the Drexel University Sustainability Council and the Urban Sustainability Forum, Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University

For more information please contact: mimi.sheller@drexel.edu