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.

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/

Neighborhood Roundtable

The Neighborhood Roundtable

photo © Andrew Leiser 2011 Neighborhood Narratives, Drexel, summer 2011

Friday, April 20th, 11am to 2pm

Macalister Hall, Rm. 2019-2020 (33rd & Chestnut St.), Drexel University

Working in partnership with a range of West Philadelphia community organizations, Drexel University recently initiated a set of community revitalization strategies along historic Lancaster Avenue. On April 20th (11am – 2pm), Drexel’s Center for Mobilities Research and Policy is sponsoring a community conversation about the role artists might play in these Powelton, Mantua and Belmont neighborhood enrichment efforts. Can artists be catalysts for change? How and under what conditions? What does ideal collaboration between artists, institutions and the Lancaster community look like?

Co-hosted by Mimi Sheller (Director, mCenter: The Center for Mobilities Research and Policy) and Hana Iverson (Director, the Neighborhood Narratives Project) with support from the Center for Creative Research at NYU, The Neighborhood Roundtable will provide an opportunity for neighborhood and community representatives to engage in creative conversation about these issues with renowned artist/activists, Drexel students and faculty.

Please RSVP to mimi.sheller@drexel.edu 

Co-Moderators:

Mimi Sheller (Professor of Sociology; Director, mCenter@Drexel)

Hana Iverson (Drexel faculty; Director, Neighborhood Narratives; CCR Fellow)

Participants:

Lucy Kerman (Vice Provost for Community and Education)

Liz Lerman (Artist, Founding Artistic Director Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, CCR Founding Fellow)

Jawole Willa Jo  Zollar (Artist, Founder and Artistic Director Urban Bushwomen, CCR Founding Fellow)

Mark Christman (Representative from University City District: 38th Street/South)

George Stevens (President of the Lancaster 21st Century Business Organization)

James Wright (Representative Peoples’ Emergency Center: 38th Street/North)

 

Center for Creative Research and the Neighborhood Narratives Project

Artists and universities in the United States have long enjoyed the benefits of proximity to one another and are participants in a powerful, historically embedded and endlessly re-invented relationship with one another.  As major non-profit actors in American life, both are builders, makers and shapers of society’s values. In 2005, a group of mature choreographers came together to form the Center for Creative Research, in order to investigate and redefine how independent artists and institutions of higher learning could engage with one another. Key questions included, how can reciprocal relationships evolve between artists, institutions and communities, and how might these relationships facilitate mutually-beneficial exchanges between participants while increasing the depth of students’ experiential learning? As a nexus of this investigation, a collaboration was developed with the Neighborhood Narratives Project, a mobile locative media curriculum that engages students in a practice of situated story-telling incorporatingaspects of cultural and visual anthropology, ethnography, geography and, with the recent addition of CCR artists, the role of embodied practice in interdisciplinary investigation.  The Neighborhood Narratives Project is a vehicle to engage interactively and interconnect community, requiring students and artists to invite public participation, enabling organic growth of a community’s collective narrative and empowering citizens to embed social knowledge in the wired/wireless landscape of the urban environment.

 

Contact for Further Information: mimi.sheller@drexel.edu

Future Everything 2012

Limited Offer on FutureEverything Conference

FutureEverything is an award-winning festival and conference based in Manchester, England. We’d like to bring your attention to the upcoming conference events running in Manchester between 17-18 May and the special offer, which has just been announced.

The FutureEverything 2012 Conference http://futureeverything.org/speakers (and associated workshop events) brings together around 500 delegates from across the creative industries, new technologies, innovation, arts, public sector and academia.

FutureEverything was recently rated by the Guardian as one of the top ten international ideas festivals, alongside TEDx, 99% and South by South West.

The FutureEverything 2012 Conference looks at the next lurch into the unknown brought about by a new participatory culture that is changing our world. We see profound changes in the digital and creative sector, as well as in society at large. The conference presents the people who are changing our world and the future-thinkers who enable us to see the possibilities of such connectivity.

Conference topics include:

• Participatory Media
  
• Wikileaks and Arab Spring
  
• Future Cities
  
• Open Knowledge
  
• Fab Lab Creative Communities

Three of our keynote speakers (Carlo Ratti, Rohan Gunatillake and Cesar A. Hidalgo) are from Wired Magazine’s The Smart List 2012: 50 People Who Will Change The World. Additional speakers include Icelandic MP and former Wikileaks spokesperson Birgitta Jonsdottir, Bilal Randeree (Al Jazeera), Juliana Rotich (Ushahidi), Bill Thompson, William Heath (Mydex), Adrian Woolard (BBC), Juha van’t Zelfde, Moritz Stefaner and more to be announced.

FutureEverything 2012 also hosts the launch of the £4M Creative Exchange (http://thecreativeexchange.org) Knowledge Hub funded by AHRC, and a celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Mass Observation Movement and the UN International Year of Co-operatives - presented with a unique contemporary twist by artists and designers working in these new media.

Visit the website for further details: http://futureeverything.org/conference.

The Festival also features a packed programme of art and music events.

Special Offer (until April 1st, 2012)
We have created a special offer of 20% off the current Advanced Rate 2 Day Conference Ticket. With this exclusive rate, the price is reduced from £180 to £144.

If you’d like to take advantage of this limited offer, quote this promotion code when purchasing your ticket: CSO2012

Tickets can be purchased via this link, please select the Advanced Rate 2 Day Conference Ticket and press the promotion code button for this exclusive special offer: http://futureeverything.org/tickets/

Conference Bursaries
FutureEverything is pleased to announce that a limited number of Conference Bursaries are available for practicing artists, activists and change makers without institutional support to ensure their voices are fully represented at the Conference. Apply here http://bit.ly/febursary.

If you have any further queries do not hesitate to get in touch.

Best Wishes,

FutureEverything
39 Edge Street
Manchester
M4 1HW
info@futureeverything.org
http://www.futureeverything.org

LA Re.Play Opens

LA Re.Play

An Exhibition of Mobile Media Art

Feb. 22-26, 2012, Los Angeles

Mobilizing Los Angeles as a place to play and a place in play, LA Re.Play presents leading international artists working with mobile and geolocated media. The exhibit accompanies the double session presentation on Mobile Art: The Aesthetics of Mobile Network Culture in Placemaking, co-organized by Hana Iverson and Mimi Sheller for the College Arts Association 2012 conference, as well as an off-conference roundtable City/Space and Creative Measure, moderated by Jeremy Hight at the Art Center.

Playing upon the dynamic relations between physical place, digital space, and mobile access via smartphone, we explore art that incorporates cell phones, GPS and other mobile technology, revealing the complex social, political, technological and physiological effects of new mixed reality interactions.

See http://www.lareplay.net/ for more information.

Follow @LARePlay on Twitter

And La Re.Play on Facebook.

Opening Reception:

College Art Association Conference Convention Center

LA re.Play Hub Location

February 22, 5:30 – 7:30 PM

Reception:

EDA Grad Art Gallery,

Broad Art Center, UCLA

February 24, 6:00 – 8:00 PM

Artists

• Brett Stalbuam and Ricardo Dominguez
• Chris Robbins and Katherine Lambert
• Colleen Macklin
• Ecoarttech
• Esther Polak & Ivar van Bekkum
• Hana Iverson & Sarah Drury
• Ian Woodcock & Julian Rickert
• Jenny Marketou
• Jeremy Hight
• ManifestAR
• Martha Ladly & Bruce Hinds
• Paula Levine
• Teri Rueb

L.A Re.Play

L.A Re.Play – A Mobile Art Exhibition

Co-Curators: Hana Iverson, Mimi Sheller, Jeremy Hight

Utilizing the thriving, diverse, artistically vibrant and architecturally unique city as a living medium, the exhibition L.A Re.Play will showcase emergent forms of mobile media art that turn the city of Los Angeles into an exhibition space, a game space and a performance space. Presented as a location-based mobile public art exhibition in February 2012, it will accompany the double session presentation on Mobile Art: The Aesthetics of Mobile Network Culture in Placemaking, co-organized by Iverson and Sheller for the College Arts Association 2012 conference. Playing upon the dynamic relations between physical place, digital space, and mobile access via smartphone, the mobile artworks in the exhibit (along with the conference panels) will highlight the embodied performance of hybrid place and the social and collective politics of networked space.

Events

Feb. 22 – 29, 2012 L.A Re.Play Exhibition

Installations: Grad Art Gallery, Broad Art Center, UCLA

Tuesday, February 21

Pre-Conference Workshop: Mechanics of Place, a Mobile Augmented Reality participatory project by Hana Iverson and Sarah Drury. Held at CalArts.

Wednesday, February 22, 2:30 – 5:00 pm

CAA Panel 1: The Aesthetics of Mobile Network Culture in Place Making, Part I Chairs: Hana Iverson, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey; Mimi Sheller, Drexel University (Concourse Meeting Room 403A, Level 2, Los Angeles Convention Center)

In a Network of Lines that Intersect: Placing Mobile Interaction

Teri Rueb, University at Buffalo, State University of New York

Situated Mobile Audio

Siobhan O’Flynn, Canadian Film Centre Media Lab

Sounding Cartographies and Navigation Art: In Search of the Sublime

Ksenia Fedorova, University of California, Davis

Indeterminate Hikes

Leila Nadir, Wellesley College

“En Route” and “Past City Future”: Making Places, Here and There, Now and When

Ian Woodcock, University of Melbourne

Wednesday, Feb. 22, 5:30 – 7:30 pm L.A Re.Play opening reception at CAA Convention Center L.A Re.Play Hub Location

Thursday, Feb. 23 6:00 – 8:00 pm

Off-conference Roundtable:  The City / Space and Creative Measure moderated by Jeremy Hight at ArtCenter South Campus

Panelists TBA

Friday, Feb. 24, 6:00 – 8:00

Reception: DESMA Grad Art Gallery, Broad Art Center, UCLA

Saturday, Feb. 25 9:30 AM–12:00 PM

CAA Panel: Mobile Art: The Aesthetics of Mobile Network Culture in Place Making, Part II,  Chairs: Hana Iverson, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey; Mimi Sheller, Drexel University (Concourse Meeting Room 406A, Level 2, Los Angeles Convention Center CAA)

I-5_Passing/52 Food Marts Project

Christiane Robbins, Jetztzeit

Narration in Hybrid Mobile Environments

Martha Ladly, Ontario College of Art and Design

Silver (Gateways): Being Here and Everywhere Now

Jenny Marketou, independent artist

Mechanics of Place: Textures of Tophane

Sarah Drury, Temple University

ManifestAR: An Augmented Reality Manifesto

John Craig Freeman, Emerson College

Feb. 29 show closes

Event Locations

CAA Conference Center and Exhibition Hub: Los Angeles Convention Center

1201 S Figueroa St Los Angeles, CA 90015

Exhibition: Grad Art Gallery, DESMA, UCLA

Broad Art Center, 240 Charles E. Young Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90095

Art Center South Campus

950 South Raymond Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91105

CalArts (pre-conference workshop)

24700 McBean Parkway, Valencia, CA 91355

Body, Nature, Social Relations

NEW ALLIANCES – BODY, NATURE AND SOCIAL RELATIONS

International Conference

June 6 – 7, 2011

Utzon Center Aalborg, Denmark

Michael Singer - Cloud Hands Ritual Series 1980-81

Dr. Mimi Sheller, Director of the mCenter@Drexel, will be giving the talk “Place Pulse: Mobile Orientations, Sentient Cities, New Media Ecologies” at the New Alliances conference in Aalborg:

How do humans interact with architecture or nature? How does the human body encounter and sense different spaces? And how does the urban or natural environment influence our body consciousness and our social relations? These are some of the questions the international symposium at the Utzon Center, Aalborg (Denmark) will ask with the help of scholars and artists from multiple disciplines and approaches: Richard Shusterman (philosopher, Florida Atlantic University, USA), Michael Singer (sculptor, architectural and landscape designer, Vermont, USA), Mimi Sheller (sociologist, mobility researcher, Drexel University Philadelphia, USA) and Kent Martinussen (architect, director of the Danish Centre for Architecture, Copenhagen) will address in their keynotes the interdependencies between the human body, consciousness, space and social relations.

The Danish artist Joachim Hamou (Copenhagen) and the scholars Ole B. Jensen (AAU), Hans Fink (AU), Michael Lauring (AAU) as well as the architect Jacob Kamp (Copenhagen) will comment and discuss with a wider audience the ideas brought about by the key note speakers.

Michael Singer will play a special role within the symposium as he will be present with an exhibition of some of the pieces of his sculptures, site specific projects, architecture and poetic garden projects at the Utzon Center, Aalborg (opening June 7 2011). While scholars like Shusterman and Sheller analyze and discuss theoretically how humans are bound to the inhabitation of real physical places, Singer is practically experimenting in his art and architectural sites with a sustainable and constructive interplay between the human subject and the natural environment. Sustainable architecture will also be in the centre of Martinussen’s contribution.

With regard to Singer’s work, Shusterman’s pragmatic concept of a body consciousness that transcends the duality of body and mind shows to be most fruitful for the understanding of both the cognitive and the emotional-affective elements of what might be called ‘sense of place’. This perspective on body consciousness is situated within broader developments that currently take place in sciences and everyday life: e.g. as a subject of aesthetic surgery the human body becomes flexible and fluid. In architecture and new technological systems the body plays the part of a new type of interface and in information and communications technologies humans seem to be free of time and spatial boundaries. As the symposium is based on these recent transformations, it does not follow a nostalgic renaissance of the a-historical and authentic natural body, but uses the historical, cultural, spatial and social contexts of body experience and consciousness as the starting point for its further investigation into the surprising new alliances between body, nature and social relations.

Organisation:

Else Marie Bukdahl (former rector of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts,

Antje Gimmler (Aalborg University, C-MUS) in cooperation with Anni G. Walther (Utzon Center), Claus Bonderup (Aalborg University).

For further information please contact:

Anni G. Walther: agw@aalborg.dk

Else Marie Bukdahl: mail@em-bukdahl.dk

Antje Gimmler: gimmler@socsci.aau.dk

The conference is free, no conference fee is taken, but we are limited to a maximum of 120 participants. There will be free refreshments (coffee and water) available. To subscribe for the conference please contact:

Utzon Center, Aalborg

Phone 0045-7690500

Email gbm@utzoncenter.dk

AR Panel 4/26

Augmented Reality Check: Seeing the Future Now

April 26^th, 6:00-8:00 pm

Van Pelt Auditorium
Philadelphia Museum of Art

In this panel, cutting-edge artists and software developers working at the intersection of art, technology and science, the real and the imaginary, offer us a tour through the potentials for an augmented future.

Opening Remarks

Gary Steuer – Chief Cultural Officer of Philadelphia; Director, Office of Arts, Culture &Creative Economy

Moderator

Dr. Mimi Sheller – Professor of Sociology, Director of the Center for Mobilities Research and Policy at Drexel University

Panelists

Deb Boyer – Public historian and Project Manager, Sajara and the PhillyHistory project

Dr. Paul Diefenbach – Associate Professor, Digital Media, Co-founder of RePlay Lab, Drexel University

John Craig Freeman – Artist, Professor of Visual and Media Arts, Emerson College, Boston

Chris Manzione – Artist, Founder of the Virtual Public Art Project

Josh Marcus – Software developer,  Technical Lead for Decision Tree

Mark Skwarek – New media artist

Virtual Art Walking Tour
Following the event Chris Manzione will lead a Virtual Art Walking Tour along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.  Original AR artwork will be on view as part of Breadboard’s city-wide Virtual Art Project in partnership with the Philadelphia International Festival of Arts (PIFA). Newer models of iPhone and Android smart phones will be needed to view the art work.

Augmented Reality Check: Seeing the Future Now is a Breadboard production in coordination with the Philadelphia Science Festival , Philly Tech Week and Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts. More information on this event can be found on the official PIFA events calendar

CAA 2012 Call for papers

Call for papers on Mobile Art

The 100th College Art Association Annual Conference will be held February 22–25, 2012, in Los Angeles. We invite submissions for the following session. Abstract Submission due date: May 1, 2011. Full paper due: Dec. 1, 2011.

Mobile Art: The Aesthetics of Mobile Network Culture in Place Making

Session Co-chairs: Hana Iverson, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey; and Mimi Sheller, Drexel University; hiverson@rci.rutgers.edu and mbs67@drexel.edu

The integration of mobile and locational technology into physical place has broadened the possibilities for the creation of new spaces of interaction and opened the disciplinary boundaries used to define and understand the public arena. When real places are merged with virtual worlds, or augmented with interactive digital media, the result is a completely new “hybrid” environment where physical and digital objects coexist in real time. We seek proposals from artists, scholars, or interdisciplinary collaborative teams that engage art that incorporates cell phones, GPS, and other mobile technologies. What are the potentials of mobility spaces as new sites for integrating creative invention, public participation, and social interaction? This panel focuses on emergent forms of mobile art that engage, subvert, or recombine perceptions of the definable (visible) and indefinable (invisible) aspects of place that simultaneously reveal and construct their stabilities and instabilities, their materiality and nonmateriality.

Please send submissions to Mimi Sheller at mbs67@drexel.edu by May 1st, 2011.