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.

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

Urban Spaces

Student Conference on Global Challenges: Urban Spaces

Thursday, Feb. 24, 2011

The Office of International Programs will present the fourth annual Student Conference on Global Challenges, “Urban Spaces,” Thursday, February 24, 2011, from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. in Behrakis Grand Hall, Creese Student Center (32nd and Chestnut Streets).

Flows of people, capital, knowledge, information, and culture converge in cities and metropolitan corridors. These spaces host both embedded centers of power and new challenges to existing political authority and territoriality; they are spaces in which extremes of wealth and poverty grow side-by-side, but also spaces of artistic creation, technological and scientific innovation, and human vitality; they are hubs of transnational capital and immigration, incubators of violence and disease, and hosts to creative solutions, sustainable infrastructure, and democratic engagement.

The conference will bring together undergraduate and graduate students to discuss these global challenges in student panels on Global Media, Global Business Trends, Global Social and Economic Issues, Global Health, Global Science, Technology and Society, and Global Justice and Human Rights. Students will lead the panel discussions and faculty experts will moderate them.

Students: To apply, visit http://www.drexel.edu/international

To register, visit http://www.drexel.edu/international/.

For more information, contact Jennifer Hayes at oip@drexel.edu or 215-895-1204.

 

Mobilities in Motion

New Approaches to Emergent and Future Mobilities

Call for Papers

 

Artwork by Dan Schimmel, 2009

 

From March 21^st-23^rd, 2011, the mCenter at Drexel will be hosting a joint international conference of the Pan-American Mobilities Network and the Cosmobilities Network.

Keynote Speakers:

• Caren Kaplan (University of California, Davis)
• Deborah Cowen (University of Toronto)
• Adriana de Souza e Silva (IT University of Copenhagen / North Carolina State University)

________________________________________________

We invite abstracts (800 words) to be submitted to mimi.sheller@drexel.edu by October 30^th, 2010 (please note extended date), for papers addressing the following themes:

In the early 21^st century people, images, information, goods and even our bodies are moving differently than they did in the past, often in more dynamic, complex and trackable ways than ever before. Technological, social and cultural developments in transportation, border control, mobile communication, ‘intelligent’ infrastructure, surveillance and global positioning are rapidly changing the conditions of possibility for all forms of mobility and accessibility. While for some this means moving ever faster, farther and more frequently, for others it may bring turbulence, friction, slower speeds, and limited access. Furthermore, in the near future the carbon-based mobilities of the 20^th century will likely be replaced by alternative transport systems and fuels, and perhaps less mobile societies.

At the same time, new mobile social media, locative social networks, and digital arts are handling movement and connectivity in new ways, creating new kinds of hybrid public spaces. And, most importantly, new alternative cultures of mobility are also emerging, as people enact, perform, and combine mobility and stillness in new ways. Innovative ways of dwelling, communicating, and moving (as well as policing, surveilling, and excluding) are already emerging in relation not only to the challenges of environmental pressures, fuel security, and economic turbulence, but also to novel possibilities brought about through creative innovation. This is a time of mobility challenges that will demand all kinds of different solutions, new thinking, experimentation and living differently.

In order to grasp these trends, ‘mobility’ has become a keyword in the social sciences, delineating a new domain of concepts, approaches, and methodologies that seek to better understand the character and quality of mobilities and immobilities, their inter-relation, and their contested futures. This conference seeks to advance the field of mobilities research, bringing together both established and new researchers from across the Americas and Europe to present up-to-date research on a wide range of transdisciplinary topics that address some of the most compelling issues that we face in the world today.

How can we break away from routinized practices that reproduce existing systems of transportation, urban planning, and dwelling? How can the search for new openings, possibilities, or ways of leading life propel us towards alternative mobility futures? How can transdiciplinary exchanges across the arts, social science and technology help us generate new approaches to mobilities in motion?

We invite papers that address these themes or related topics:

• Aeromobilities, air travel, and aerial vision
• Alternative mobilities and slow movements
• Borders, surveillance, and securitization
• Critical geographies of logistics
• Embodied performance and affective mobility
• Friction, turbulence and rhythms of movement
• (Im)mobilities over the lifecourse
• Mobile communication and new urban spatialities
• Mobile gaming and locative social media
• New methodologies for mobilities research
• Planning, policy and design for future mobilities
• Tourism, imaginary travel, and virtual travel
• Transitions toward sustainable mobilities
• Qualities, materialities, and feelings of being in motion

Disciplines represented at the conference may include (but are not exclusive to): Anthropology, Architecture and Design, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Communication, Criminology, Cultural Studies, Geography, Media and Visual Arts, Politics and International Relations, Public Policy, Sociology, Theater and Performance Studies, Tourism Research, Transport Research, and Urban Studies.

Also featuring: LoVid (artists Tali Hinkis & Kyle Lapidus)

Conference registration: There will be a registration fee of $225 (discounted to $150 for students, and for those coming from the Latin American or Caribbean countries), which will include a conference dinner, coffee breaks, lunch, and snacks during the conference, as well as a special reception. Discounted rates on local hotel bookings will be available to conference participants.

Organizing Committee:

Malene Freudendal-Pedersen

Jennie Germann-Molz
Ole B. Jensen
Paola Jiron

Sven Kesselring

Adriana de Souza e Silva
Phillip Vannini

We look forward to receiving your abstracts and welcoming you in Philadelphia.

Deadline for abstracts: 30 October 2010

Length: 800 words (including references)

Notification of acceptance: 1 December 2010

Registration deadline:                     30 January 2011

Conference Dates: 21-23 March 2011

Please send your abstract to: mimi.sheller@drexel.edu

A publication based on the conference is planned for 2012. Best papers will be selected and the authors will be invited to submit a full paper by September 2011.

Conference location:

Behrakis Grand Hall and University Conference Center,

Macalister Hall, Drexel University

33^rd & Chestnut St., Philadelphia, PA

For further information please contact:

Prof. Mimi Sheller

Professor of Sociology

Director, Center for Mobilities Research and Policy

Department of Culture and Communication

Drexel University

3141 Chestnut St.

Philadelphia, PA 19104-2875 USA

Tel. 215-571-3652

Fax. 215-895-1333

Email: mimi.sheller@drexel.edu

http://www.drexel.edu/coas/culturecomm/ccdept/faculty/sheller.asp

http://mcenterdrexel.wordpress.com/

http://twitter.com/mCenterDrexel

Information on the Pan American Mobilities Network:

http://researcher.royalroads.ca/moodle/mod/resource/view.php?id=23907

Information on the Cosmobilities Network: http://www.cosmobilities.net/

Eyebeam Reblog

New Mobilities

Airship Freight Carrier

Tonight’s Mobilities Visiting Speaker, Drew Hemment, of FutureEverything and ImaginationLancaster, is Artist in Residence at Eyebeam in New York, and this week is their guest blogger. You can read his blog posts on all kinds of interesting New Mobilities at the Eyebeam Reblog: http://eyebeam.org/reblog

FutureEverything – New Mobilities

Mobilities Visiting Speaker
“FutureEverything – New Mobilities”

Talk by Drew Hemment

Founder of the FutureEverything Festival and Associate Director of ImaginationLancaster

Friday, 16 July 2010: 5:30-7:00 pm

@ NextFab Studio: 3711 Market Street, Philadelphia

on the campus of the University City Science Center

PLEASE RSVP: http://futureeverything.eventbrite.com

FutureEverything is an art, technology and social innovation organization that runs innovation labs and an annual festival of art, music and ideas. It is recognized around the world for leading pioneering projects and important debates on innovation, technology, art, society and the environment.

FutureEverything is an innovation incubator with a long history of creative leadership in areas such as mobile and locative arts, social media, & the environment — more ‘do tank‘ than think tank. Winner of the prestigious Lever Prize 2010, Shortlisted for the Arts & Business Award 2010 and the Big Chip Award 2010, Honorary Mention for Director at Prix Ars Electronica 2008. Read more in BBC news story.

The FutureEverything Festival (formerly Futuresonic, est. 1995) is a crucible that allows artists, technologists and future-thinkers to share, innovate and bring the future into the present. Attended by 75,000 people, it is completely unique, bringing together world premieres of astonishing artworks, an explosive city-wide music program, and visionary thinkers from around the world.

The FutureEverything Conference is the place to go each year for the important international debates in the field, bringing 500 opinion formers, futurologists, researchers, artists, technologists and scientists together to explore the latest upgrade affecting today’s digital culture.

The FutureEverything Award – an international £10,000 prize to celebrate the creative imagination that will shape our future in 4 categories: for artworks, social innovations, software and technology projects which bring the future into the present, awarded by an international jury.

FutureEverything 2011 will take place 11-14 May 2011 in Manchester England and internationally through the GloNet, or Globally Networked Event.

Get Involved – The theme is New Mobilities in 2011.

Dr. Drew Hemment is an artist, curator and researcher based in Manchester England. Recent projects have been on open data, remote collaboration, new mobilities and environmental mass observation. He is Director and Founder of FutureEverything (formerly Futuresonic), and is Associate Director of ImaginationLancaster at Lancaster University.

Co-Sponsored by:

mCenter@Drexel

Breadboard : breadboardphilly.org

NextFab Studio: nextfabstudio.com

For further information contact: mimi.sheller@drexel.edu

Design Charette

Design Charrette: Urban Connection

charrette: an intensive and often collaborative period of design

The Department of Architecture + Interiors’ Annual Interdisciplinary Design Charrette is an opportunity for students from all majors throughout Drexel University to collaborate on projects of relevance for local and global communities. Sponsored by the Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design, the 2010 Design Charrette will challenge students to rethink public and urban transportation while taking into account differing modes of transport, universal accessibility, sustainable and energy efficient design, inter-modal transfer opportunities, site and community context. The charrette will be held over the second weekend of April with student registration beginning in late February. In addition to inviting students from all majors to apply, the organizing committee for the charrette welcomes faculty participation from all disciplines as well. Please contact the Charrette Committee Co-chairs Lauren Karwoski-Magee lkm@Drexel.edu or Debra Ruben dhruben@drexel.edu for more information.