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From: Theory, Culture & Society [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 13 October 2006 11:20
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: TCS 25th Anniversary Conference
Ubiquitous Media: Asian Transformations
Theory, Culture & Society 25th Anniversary Conference
Interfaculty Institute of Information Studies,
Tokyo University 13-16 July 2007
13th October 2006
Dear Colleague
In 2007 Theory, Culture & Society will have been published for 25 years. To
celebrate this anniversary we have joined with the Interfaculty Institute of
Information Studies at Tokyo University to develop a conference on
Ubiquitous Media.
For the programme (see below) we have brought together some of the leading
academics and intellectuals for plenary sessions along with an exciting
range of paper sessions and round tables.
We would very much like you to come along and share this occasion with us.
Please take a look at the list of paper session and round table lists to see
if there is a topic on which you can present a paper - or perhaps you would
prefer to offer to coordinate an additional session.
The conference will take place at the Hongo Campus of Tokyo University,
which is an excellent venue in central Tokyo. We are currently checking out
the potential for developing a number of media arts and other events around
the conference, so there could well be an opportunity to explore Tokyo more
widely.
We do hope you can take a look at the website: http://www.u-mat.org/
<http://www.u-mat.org/>
You can contact us at: [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Here's looking forward to hearing from you and seeing you in Tokyo next
July!
Best wishes
Mike Featherstone
for
Mike Featherstone, Scott Lash, Shunya Yoshimi Tomoko Tamari, Takuji Yamamoto
Ubiquitous Media: Asian Transformations
IIIS Tokyo University/Theory, Culture & Society 25th Anniversary Conference
Tokyo University Hongo Campus 13-16 July 2007
Conference Outline
Today media are increasingly ubiquitous: more and more people live in a
world of Internet pop-ups and streaming television, mobile phone texting and
video clips, MP3 players and pod-casting. The media mobility means greater
connectivity via smart wireless environments in the office, the car and
airport. It also offers greater possibilities for recording, storage and
archiving of media content. This provides not just the potential for greater
choice and flexibility in re-working content (TV programmes, movies, music,
images, textual data), but also great surveillance (CCTV cameras, computer
spyware, credit data checking and biometrics). The media, then, can no
longer be considered to be a monolithic structure producing uniform media
effects. Terminology such as 'multi-media,' and 'new media,' fail to
adequately capture the proliferation of media forms. Indeed, as media become
ubiquitous they become increasingly embedded in material objects and
environments, bodies and clothing, zones of transmission and reception.
Media pervade out bodies, cultures and societies.
These ubiquitous media constitute our consumer and brand environment. Their
interfaces and codes pervade our bodies and our biology. They pervade our
urban spaces. They are ubiquitous in art, religion and our use of language.
Yet from another angle art and language are, and have immemorially been,
media. Media are about the physical, algorithm and generative code; but they
are also immaterial and metaphysical. Communication is about channels and
hardware/software; but communication is also about communion and community.
Media deal in images: that is in the material; but their idiom is also
symbols and the transcendental.
To theorize about today's world, we evidently need to theorize media. Yet to
theorize media also means we need to focus on how technological media are
used in everyday practices. Not least, we need to address the question of
the relationship of media practices to politics. This opens up questions
about the formation of informed publics, new social movements and media
events, not just the alleged need to combat media terrorism, nationalism and
crime. Suggesting further questions about the power and influence of
transnational media, intellectual property rights and openness of access.
Raising issues of generativity, creativity and critical intervention.
Asia - East Asia, South Asia, and increasingly crucial, the Middle East -
are becoming sites for these processes. Global geopolitics has been
restructured by the 'rise' of China and India and the turbulence of the
Middle East. With concomitant transformations of the role of the West and
Japan, this conference becomes also a question of 'ubiquitous Asia.' These
transformations are producing new trans-Asian culture industries, social
movements and activism. At stake are a set of transformations of Asian
culture(s) itself - of language, and modes of cultural thought and being. We
will seek to address these questions of media transformations and their
relation to social and cultural processes in a number of plenary sessions,
paper sessions, round tables and events.
Plenary Speakers
Rem Koolhaas (OMA Rotterdam)
Mark B. N. Hansen (University of Chicago)
Katherine Hayles (University of California at Los Angeles)
Ken Sakamura (Tokyo University)
Barbara Stafford (University of Chicago)
Akira Asada (Kyoto University)
Call for Papers
We would welcome the submission of titles and abstracts (up to 150 words)
for papers on the areas listed below.
We would also welcome suggestions from people interested in organizing round
tables and additional paper sessions.
Thematic Areas for Paper Streams (Provisional List)
1. Mediated Image
* media narratives
* sound and image
* transforming journalism
* audience
* culture industries
* media regulation
* political economy
* media nationalism
2. Technological Media
* new media/multi-media/metadata
* generative code
* genetic algorithm/database
* protocol/interface/portal
* digital evolution
* nanotechnology
* intellectual property rights
3. Media and the Immaterial
* communication/communion and community
* symbol/image/icon
* the immediate
* technology and ontology
* media: physical and metaphysical
* primordial media: art, language, religion
* money as media/value
4. Sensory Media
* biomedia and biotechnology
* wearable media
* media arts
* affect
* the five senses of communication
* proprioception: inhabiting media
* encyclomedia
5. Media Environments
* consumer spaces
* brandscapes
* information cities
* surveillance
* mediated home
* digital public life
* living space as installation
* inhabiting the archive
6. Geopolitical Transformations
* rise of China and India
* Islam and world politics
* Asianization and the world economy
* Interasia and South-South relations
* Eurasia
* East-West: relationality v. individualism?
* media wars
* militarised media
Round Tables (Provisional Suggestions)
Media Art
Bill Viola
Internet television
Internet Publics
Documentaries
Digital Media
Media Sport
Simulation
Computer Games
Manga
Anime
Asian Romantic soap operas/Telenovelas
Religious Media
Asia Media Politics
Beijing Consensus
Media democracy
Slow media
Work station
Presentation types
Paper sessions
* There will be over 50 papers sessions. Each will last 1
hour 45 minutes and contain up to 4 presentations.
* Presenters should prepare a paper and be prepared to speak
for approximately 20 minutes.
* Please indicate with your abstract form if you need
Powerpoint or other equipment for your presentation.
Round tables
o Round tables will take place in the lunch
breaks of each of the main conference days.
o Round tables normally involve 5-12
participants and will take up to 8 short presentations ranging from 5-10
minutes each.
o The structure is more informal over lunch,
with a number of round tables in the same room so that conference attendees
can move around and sit into a session as their interests dictate.
o If you wish to offer a presentation please
do so at one of the listed round tables. We also welcome suggestions
Ad Hoc Round Tables
Space will be made available for ad hoc round tables arising
out of emergent themes at the conference.
Abstracts
All presenters for Paper Sessions or Round Tables should prepare a short
abstract (no more than 150 words) and use the template provided on this
website. Make sure to include your name, institutional affiliation and email
address.
Suggestions for Sessions and Round Tables
We welcome suggestions for organizing sessions or round tables. Please
provide a short rationale for the suggestion (max. 150 words) and names and
titles of presentations along with details of the institutional affiliation
of the people you have invited.
For further information contact http://www.u-mat.org/
<http://www.u-mat.org/> [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
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