Situating Ubiquity. Media Art, Technology, and Cultural Theory

International conference at KTH, Stockholm, 18-20 August 2011

The conference Situating Ubiquity brings into play what the expression “ubiquitous computing” means today (ten years after the hype) and how we relate to ubiquitous information and media technologies as “real” (rather than imaginary or utopian) phenomena. In trying to “situate” ubiquity, we enquire in particular:

- What are the implications of the shift in tense, from future tense to present tense?
- What are the users’ situation in relation to ubiquitous media technologies?
- In what ways are ubiquitous information and communication technologies (ICT) made visible (and invisible)?
- What are the ideologies of new media and ICT?
- How should one develop a critical discourse on ubiquitous media technologies?

The objective of the conference is primarily to bring together researchers working with these and related question, but also to formulate research questions and to disseminate new ideas and knowledge. Hence the conference consists of both academic parts (workshops, paper sessions and keynotes) and social activities, focusing on creating encounters and fostering open and critical dialogue.

Proposed thematic sessions:

Critical play – workshop (Annika Waern & Marie Denward)
Critical design uses designed artefacts as an embodied critique or commentary on consumer culture. Critical play design focusses on creating games and play activities that create, or occupy, play environments and activities to represent questions about aspects of human life. It is characterised by a careful examination of social, cultural, and political themes that function as alternates to popular play spaces. Pervasive and transmedia play and ubiquitous technology offer ample opportunities for critical play design. In this workshop we intend to investigate these opportunities from a broad spectrum of perspectives, including theory, experimental design, studies of pervasive critical play activities, and critical readings of pervasive productions. Participants must supply a abstract for presentation no later than one month in advance of the workshop. Contact: marie.denward@tii.se

Materiality/technology/embodiment – paper session (Jenny Sundén)
Accounts of new media technologies as ubiquitous miss an important component: Materiality. The discussion of ubiquitous information a decade ago rendered the technologies and bodies involved in “information exchanges” invisible and ultimately immaterial. This session engages in an ongoing materialist critique of how the specific materiality of technologies and of bodies come to matter in our encounters with media technologies. Media technologies are understood broadly, and may include not only “new media”, but also the technologies of for example literature and cinema. Contact: jsunden@kth.se

Participatory culture (in art & media) – workshop/paper session (Daniel Pargman)
The spread of computing resources has opened up new possibilities to communicate on time scales and in group sizes not previously possible, and we have gone from being (only) user to being (also) developers, from watchers to participants and from consumers to producers. How does participatory culture exhibit itself in current art & media practices? How has participatory culture changed said practices compared to 5 or 10 years ago? Contact: pargman@kth.se

Artistic research workshop on social media (Peter Hagdahl)
The theme for this workshop is how the relationship between private and public has been inverterted in much of contemporary media use. This makes possible a direct and concrete knowledege of people’s behaviour and reactions – what they do and think and what they do together. The workshop explores the material conditions and applications for art with the starting point in various ”sociala media”. Contact: peter.hagdahl@kkh.se

Museum, mediated presence and mixed reality – workshop session (Leif Handberg)
The theme of this workshop is the ”mediated museum” as a cultural heritage archway which enables remote presence at museums and heritage sites. By means of innovative media and new hybrid spaces, museums are redefined and extended beyond physical and architectural constraints: synchronous video-mediated spaces provide remote access to cultural heritage sites and artefacts in their original settings. The designs support mediated interaction between visitors in different locations. As an archway, the mediated museum opens for public participation in the (re)definition, (re)collection and dissemination of cultural heritage, thus enriching curatorial practices. Contact: leifh@csc.kth.se

Visualisation – workshop (Björn Thuresson)
Future life in a built environment. An exploration of datasets and representation practices for a new understanding of possibilities in
visualisation – a hands-on activity. Contact: thure@csc.kth.se

Deadline for registration and paper proposals is June 1, 2011

The conference is part of the Nordic network The Culture of Ubiquous Information (http://ubiquity.nu/), financed by Nordforsk

Organizing committee: Leif Dahlberg, Marie Denward, Peter Hagdahl, Leif Handberg, Daniel Pargman, Jenny Sundén, Björn Thuresson, and Annika Waern.
Contact: dahlberg@csc.kth.se

Nu är det alldeles snart byggstart för Visualiseringsstudion på Campus Valhallavägen! Diskussionerna kring de sista byggkalkylerna håller på att avslutas och annonserna ska snart kunna skickas. Det ska bli fantastiskt roligt att kunna erbjuda alla skolor på KTH och övriga aktörer i regionen tillgång till denna miljö!

Principen för studion är att det ska kunna bedrivas forskning på och utveckling av den ingående tekniken, såväl som forskning om användningen av tekniken. Teknikkomponenterna är modulära, vilket innebär att de ska kunna kombineras på en rad sätt för att kunna passa olika användningssituationer och –grupper.

Teknikkomponenterna är av avancerat slag och den kombinerade tillgången av dem är, om inte världsunikt, så av synnerligen ovanligt slag.

Exempel på teknik:
• Stereoskopisk 4k-projektor med bakprojektion på glasskiva
• Ljudsystem med biokvalitet
• Högupplöst videokommunikation med ögonkontakt
• Holografisk display
• Multitouch-enheter
• Haptiska arbetsstationer
• Tracking, såsom mocap, ögon mm
• Beräkningskluster

Nu är vi hemkomna från Göteborg och årets inspirerande upplaga av Visual Forum. En intensiv dag med presentationer, utställare och otroligt många roliga möten mellan Sveriges aktörer inom visualisering. Här finns stora delar av dagen dokumenterad. Center of Visualization i Göteborg har än en gång gjort ett fantastiskt arbete. Nästa år kommer Visual Forum att äga rum i Stockholm och vi kommer göra vårt bästa för att leva upp till förväntningarna när det gäller arrangemanget.

Här finns en länk till ett youtube-klipp med ett första resultat av användningen av vårt beräkningskluster som finns placerat hos PDC på KTH. Detta kluster är en av de första komponenterna i KTH:s satsning på en Visualiseringsstudio. Byggstarten är i maj 2011 och ni kommer att kunna följa processen här.

Nu tillbaka till klippet. Jag klipper helt enkelt in beskrivningen som finns i anslutning till filmen:

”This movies shows a subdomain of a two-dimensional, incompressible hydrodynamic simulation. The color represents vorticity. The initial condition has two thin layers of vorticity (one not shown) with small random perturbations. The vorticity sheets become unstable due to the Kelvin–Helmholtz instability.

The simulation was done with grid size 4096×4096 on an nVidia GeForce GTX 580 card. I used only single precision float and reached 130 GFLOPS. The simulation software is written in CUDA C and available for free on http://nas-fermi.albanova.se/cgit.cgi/sgihd2. It uses Galerkin spectral method with 4th low-storage Runge-Kutta time integrator.

I would like to thank PDC for providing the Zorn cluster, which makes the development possible. The Zorn cluster is named after a painter Anders Zorn because it has GPUs.”

Torsdag den 5 maj kommer vi fira att DAC varit igång i ett år. Då highlightar vi saker som hänt, vad vi gjort och spanar framåt mot när vi öppnar upp DAC Digital Art Center i stor skala. Vi har under året fått enormt mycket positiv respons från såväl landshövdingar, kulturchefer, företag som studenter och forskare, nu vill vi bjuda in till en kväll med trevliga festligheter.

Tid: kl 16 – sent
Plats: Kronborgsgränd 13, Ärvinge, Kista

16.30 – 16.50
Jubileumstalare från Stockholms stad och regionen

DAC visar nyheter
Utställarna berättar om sina senaste projekt
Studenter visar arbeten och projekt
Vi bjuder på skön stämning, dryck och plockmat, bar, musik, DJ och uppträdanden

Varmt välkommen!

Talarlistan kommer fyllas på, även innehållet under kvällen.

Anmälan

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