Mutamorphosis: Tribute to Uncertainty. Prague 6-8/12/12

International conference on mutant futures of arts, sciences, technologies, design and society brings together over 100 presenters from all over the world to share ideas and discuss various projects and initiatives that cut across disciplines in order to challenge emerging technologies and their impact on us. Among the themes, there are “bacterial sublime”, “nomadic citizen science” or “future of art/science education”. Organized by CIANT | International Centre for Art and New Technologies.

Nanotechnology: Instability in an Unpredictable Milieu
By Paul Thomas & Edward A. Shanken & Mike Phillips & Frederik De Wilde
Keywords: Nanotechnology; Art; Science; Materiality; Measurement.

and :

The End of Things.

Mike Phillips and Gianni Corino.

Abstract:  Just as the ‘thing’ gets its own Internet its significance as a foci of knowledge within a variety of disciplines is dissolving. This dissolution can be clearly seen in microbiology where there has been a steady shift of focus from solitary bacterium to an understanding of quorum-sensing in bacterial communities. At a larger scale, a fly is no longer recognised as a ‘body’ but through an analysis of its DNA and a human more clearly understood as a constituent of a crowd, a demographic or an entry in a National Health Service database. Architecture collapses in importance in the context of the complexity of the urban environment, whether it is the connecting temporal tendrils of traffic flow or an underlying web of a sewage system.

 ‘The End of Things’ explores a set of technologies and processes being developed by i-DAT that offer strategies for understanding these trans-scalar shifts. Framed as ‘Operating Systems’ they embrace social, biological, architectural and ecological data harvesting and manifestation. These OS’s recognise a cultural shift where suddenly a rose by any other name is less significant than the complex temporal.

Remediating Urban Space Symposium

Plymouth University, Plymouth, UK

Organised by: School of Architecture and i-DAT Plymouth University, UK

Keynote: Mark Shepard, University of Buffalo

Communication technologies remediate everyday urban life, resulting in subtle shifts in the spatial, temporal, scalar and material processes which are ‘all too often overlooked in conventional and binary approaches opposing the ‘virtual’ realm of new technologies to ‘real’ urban places’ (Crang 2007). We need to move beyond an artificially created dichotomy of a real and a virtual world as if the two were opposed. Instead, we must develop a new understanding of our activities and behaviour in the spaces of the city; since online and mobile socially networked spaces and realworld places are connecting and converging in numerous and complex ways. The challenge before us is finding ways to engage with these changes as designers. The aim of the workshop is to consider more fully the multiple, subtle, and interdependent spatio-temporalities which together work to constitute ICT-based urban change. How do we start to create meaningful spaces that merge digital and physical interactions?

The workshop will examine and propose design responses for how to remediate urban space through a range of ICT’s, locative media and smart objects. It will draw on an interdisciplinary field of architecture, human computer interaction, geography, media studies, art and sociology to explore questions of how urban space can be conceived and inhabited when it is mediated, and the nature of these mediated experiences at an everyday level. Contributions will be a mix of ideas/projects and case studies.

Programme:

9.30-10.00 am

coffee

10.00am

Session 1: The ‘internet of things’, social memory and networked objects

Chair: Chris Speed, Edinburgh College of Art, UK

Michiel de Lange (themobilecity.nl and Utrecht University, Netherlands)- Playing for ownership: mobile media and playful encounters

Emma Whittaker (www.expandednarrative.org, UK)- Locating Storyworlds: listening and feeling space and sound

Dimitrios Charitos (University of Athens, Greece)- “Where” is the space that we experience during locative media use ?

Karen Martin (University of Kent, UK)- In-between spaces: Interaction as material

12.00-1.00pm – Lunch

1.00-2.00pm

Keynote

Mark Shepard, University of Buffalo, USA

Sentient City

2.00pm

Session 2 Urban screens, urban public space and participation

Chair: Ava Fatah gen. Schieck, UCL, UK

Simona Lodi (Share festival, Italy)- Augmentation, information and immersion in spatial contexts

Lorena Melgacao (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil)- Long Distance Voodoo: social negotiation in the public space through remote actuation.

Marcos Pereira Dias (School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne, Australia)- New Experiences of Mediated Urban Space Through Participatory Networked Art

Martyn Dade-Robertson (University of Newcastle, UK)- Architectural User Interfaces

4.00-4.30

Alex Aurigi (Plymouth University, UK)

False Syntaxes: Why urban design thinking should help shaping the digital city

4.30-5.00pm

closing discussion/wrap up

Participation

There will be no registration fee, but in order to participate please confirm your attendance in advance to artsresearch@plymouth.ac.uk

Further Information: http://www.plymouth.ac.uk/pages/view.asp?page=38864

Devonport Guildhall, Ker Street, Devonport

http://goo.gl/hl10k

ALL WELCOME
Friday 3rd February 2012
2pm – 4pm

An one-off event showcasing a series of exploratory projects which
reveal invisible histories, memories and traces in and around Devonport. These projects embed and reveal information about the past, present and future. They explore the use of interactive mobile media, smart objects and projection to suggest new ways of experiencing, interacting and engaging with our built environment.

Background.
Fourty students from the Schools of Architecture and the Digital Art and Technology have worked to create interactive projects that address the following topic:
How can we bridge the gap between the digital and the physical, the material and the immaterial transforming the way we interact with the space around us?

Organisers:
Unit Inbetween, School of Architecture and i-Dat, University of Plymouth

with the kind support of RiO (Real Ideas Organisation)

Further information:

Katharine.willis@plymouth.ac.uk / Gianni.corino@plymouth.ac.uk

PDF flyer

Hundreds of Things: the Internet of Things for Cultural Networks.

hundreds_of_things_phd_ad.pdf

i-DAT, in collaboration with University College Falmouth, invites applications for a 3-year full-time PhD studentship to engage in an applied, practice based research project to explore the potential of smart networked technologies (topically described as the ‘Internet of Things’) to map and evaluate the movement and relationships of people and resources across a geographically distributed communities.
Project overview:

The research will take place through collaborating cultural and heritage venues and regional art galleries distributed across Cornwall. These venues act as active nodes on a dynamic network, linking communities of local residents to a transient community of visitors. They operate as conduits for exchange for ideas, knowledge and physical objects. They also become nodes on more problematic seasonal networks, such as supply chains for food, traffic and amenities (water, electricity and sewerage).

The research will engage in participatory design process through the use ‘provocative prototypes’ or ‘cultural probes’. It will explore the use of smart networked technologies, such as RFID’s, networked sensors, mobile phones, web and embedded technologies, to reveal the complex processes that exist within this networked ecology.

Applicants should therefore have accomplished digital media production skills, such as programming (such as processing, AS3, max msp php, java, etc) and hardware and basic electronics (such as arduino, xbee, RFID, etc).

These processes can be described as a ‘techno-ethnography’ that embraces quantitative data (such as server hits, financial transactions, GPS tracking of artefacts and people, etc) and qualitative data (such as stories, images, audio/visual recordings and conversations).

The research builds on i-DAT’s research projects that can be found at: http://www.i-dat.org/

Supervisory team
Mike Phillips, Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts and Director of i-DAT (www.i-dat.org) , University of Plymouth, Faculty of Art, Centre for Media Art & Design Research.

Phil Stenton, Professor of Pervasive Media and Associate Dean for Research & Enterprise at the School of Media and Performance at University College Falmouth.

(‘Hundreds of Things’ refers to the geographic division of Cornwall).

How to apply:
For an application form and full details on how to apply, please visit www.plymouth.ac.uk/pghowtoapply. Applications should be made by using the PDF application form or the Word application form. Printed application forms are also available and can be obtained from the Course Information Unit, Tel: +44 (0) 1752 585858, Email: prospectus@plymouth.ac.uk.
On completion send your application form to:
Sue Matheron by email: susan.matheron@plymouth.ac.uk or posted to:
Faculty of Arts
Research and Graduate Affairs Office
Room 305
Roland Levinsky Building
Plymouth, PL4 8AA

Further information on the terms and conditions of a PhD at the University of Plymouth can be found on www.plymouth.ac.uk/graduateschool.
Application deadline: 12 noon, Friday 3 June 2011
Please contact Professor Mike Phillips (mike.phillips@plymouth.ac.uk) for further information and an informal discussion regarding the research.