CALL FOR PAPER ABSTRACTS
MediaCity 4: MediaCities
http://www.mediacities.net
International Conference, Workshops and Exhibition
University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
May 3-5, 2013
Deadline: 12 November, 2012
The fourth MediaCity conference reflects on pluralities and globalities, on
MediaCities everywhere.
What new lines of inquiry and emergent relations between urbanity and digital
media are found in non-Western cities, in post-Capitalist cities, in cities
hosting civic turbulence or crossing international boundaries? What
urban-medial relations are taking shape differently in urban milieux that may
have been heretofore overlooked? These cities are deserving of more attention
than ever before, as sites of population growth, of new cultural and social
formations, of new entanglements between urban life and contemporary media,
communications and information technologies, and more. MediaCities promises to
expand our understanding of both media and the city today, and to articulate
new sites of practice and working methods for an expanding field.
This fourth MediaCity conference inaugurates its transition to a roving event
taking place every two years in different cities around the world. Additional
calls will follow for proposals to host the next event as well as for workshops
and media art and architecture projects.
Topics
Areas of interest may fall broadly into several themes, with the assumption
that others will appear in the process of proposals and discussion leading up
to the event, always expanding our lexicon and mental maps of MediaCities
globally. These themes are: Other Urbans, Uncommons, Zero Growth Cities, Media
Geographies and Bordervilles.
Other Urbans
MediaCities are typically associated with post-industrial societies, Western
and Asian cultures, and urban centers whose economic bases are rooted in
technology. But many nonwestern cities around the world are rapidly evolving
under the aegis of ubiquitous computing, and urban living in these places
appears differently as well. Now is the time to recognize and identify the new
models, problems and lives of nonwestern and other MediaCities as relevant to
all cities. Other Urbans concerns the non-Western MediaCity, but also the
marginalized Western (Detroit, Charlotte, Pittsburgh, Belfast, Leipzig) as well
as the experimental (Songdo, Masdar).
Uncommons
What novel shifts are found now at the nexus of protest and public space in
cities, and what roles are digital media playing? How are we to understand the
enduring implications for events of 2010-2011 and after, from the Arab Spring
to Occupy Wall Street to whatever unfolds up until the conference itself, as
each suggest diverse mutations in urban, medial and participatory formations?
Lately we are seeing new catalytic reactions between these three elements.
While the cases are familiar (WikiLeaks, Tahrir Square’s life on Twitter, OWS’s
“human microphones”), their potentials to intertwine matters of economic,
cultural and other representation suggest the start of enduring changes to how
public space and public discourse appear within and between global cities. Each
holds potential to recognize and reform our thinking of public space and public
discourse irrevocably as an “uncommons.” No longer modeled on a rural pasture
and no longer only a problematic of shared resources and individual interests,
uncommons describe novel formations located in contested shared urban events.
Zero Growth Cities
This theme regards relations between growth, economy and MediaCities in diverse
cases where urban landscapes and populations once considered dead or dying are
rejuvenating themselves: an urban afterlife of sorts, often with clever
mixtures of new and old technologies. How are MediaCities being newly inhabited
and opportunistically developed in response to market conditions, and what
creative and theoretical responses can we make to these developments? And what
of those cities experiencing no growth (or even shrinkage)? Do wireless
networks perform similarly in these cities as elsewhere? How do sensate and
sentient landscapes affect life in cities whose populations don’t otherwise
change? What vibrant new urban events and situations are appearing in these
sometimes overlooked places?
Media Geographies
Today we recognize terms like "landscape" and "urban" to be non-oppositional -
instead, we embrace the view that environment, social relations and even human
subjectivity must be seen as interrelated ecologies. What roles do digital
media play in this shift, and what new practices under a rubric of “Media
Geographies” can it all suggest? For example, how are we to operate across
scales, as critics, scholars, artists, designers? From bodies to landscapes
that are at once local and global in scale, media geographies ask how this
trans-scalar subject constitutes a form of urbanism. This theme critically
engages spatial, social, ecological and philosophical implications as it mines
the media cities we know for urbanities that we have overlooked.
Bordervilles
How are urban conditions around national borders inflected by ubiquitous
computing? What mediated forms of citizenship are emerging at these border
zones, and how do they differ around the world? Bordervilles are often
unofficially twinned cities that share common conditions (ecological,
micro-economic, climatic) but not others (lingual, macro-economic), all of
which can be affected by digital media that transcend physical boundaries and
sometimes skirt national regulation. What new mediated bordervilles are to be
seen, and what urban conditions do they propose? These MediaCities are diverse
and ripe for study. Some include an expanded border region, (San Diego/Tijuana,
Buffalo/Toronto) while others are cities divided across nations (Istanbul,
Jerusalem, Shenhzhen / Hong Kong).
Host
University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
Disciplines
Architecture, Art, Computer Science, Interaction Design, Geography, Media,
Sociology, Urban Planning
Conference Chairs
Jordan Geiger, Omar Khan, Mark Shepard
Submission Requirements
Paper abstracts Due 12 November, 2012 by 11:59pm GMT, uploaded to the
conference’s EasyChair website @ http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=mc4
Abstracts should address global pluralities of MediaCities as the focus in this
year's conference, whether that corresponds to one of the sample topics
described herein or one of your own interest. The proposed presentation may
relate academic research, a creative project or other subject matter but should
not exceed 500 words. Abstracts will be double blind peer-reviewed by
representatives of a wide range of expertise in relations between media and
urban issues today. Send questions to chairs [at] media cities [dot] net
Important Dates
October 8, 2012 Call for Paper Abstracts
November 12, 2012 Abstracts Due
Dec 31, 2012 Acceptances Issued
March 1, 2013 Final Papers Due
May 3-5 2013 MediaCity 4: MediaCities
For more information, visit:
MediaCity Project - http://www.mediacityproject.org
MediaCity 2010 - http://www.mediacityproject.org/en_EN/events/conference-10/
MediaCity 2008 - http://www.mediacityproject.org/en_EN/events/conference-08/
MediaCity 2006 - http://www.mediacityproject.org/en_EN/events/conference-06/
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