Just saw this very rudimentary urban screen (no interactivity it seems) at the Haarlemmerplein. Apparently with old photos from the neighborhood. The chill and wet snow prevented me from being more inquisitive…
Archive for the ‘announcements’ Category
Urban screen encounter at Haarlemmerplein, Amsterdam
Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009Review: “Portable Objects in Three Global Cities” by Mimi Ito et al.
Friday, January 23rd, 2009I put a review online of a great chapter by Mimi Ito, Daisuke Okabe, and Ken Anderson called “Portable Objects in Three Global Cities: The Personalization of Urban Places”. Read it at The Mobile City weblog >>.
Finally on Twitter…
Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008Yeah yeah, so much for participatory observation in research… I am finally on Twitter. Reading this article – which appeared a few months ago – convinced me to have a go and see what this “ambient awareness” thing is all about in practice. Now I gotta find some friends to twitter to…
Uitnodiging boekpresentatie “Draagbare lichtheid”
Thursday, November 27th, 2008(Sorry, in Dutch only..)
Op zaterdag 13 december om 14.00 uur zal in in het theater in de kelder van Selexyz Donner, Lijnbaan 150 Rotterdam de boekpresentatie zijn van ‘De draagbare lichtheid van het bestaan’. Na een korte introductie op het boek door de redacteuren Valerie Frissen en Jos de Mul wordt het boek aangeboden aan Marie-José Klaver.
==update==
Publiciteit komt los 
. Vanavond (4 december) om 21:00 op Radio Hoezo! een gesprek met Jos de Mul over het boek.
==update2==
Valerie en Jos zitten op 28 december 2008 in het TV programma Boeken van Wim Brands. Uitzending terugzien.
New book: “De draagbare lichtheid van het bestaan”
Thursday, November 13th, 2008
In the shameless plug department:
“De draagbare lichtheid van het bestaan: het alledaagse gezicht van de informatiesamenleving” is a new book (in Dutch) about how new technologies have become part of our everyday use and experience. A group of mostly young researchers and PhD students, including myself, from various universities and institutions have contributed to this volume edited by Valerie Frissen & Jos de Mul. The book is aimed at a non-academic audience who are interested in understanding the role of new technologies in society. The topics of the various chapters range from ambient intelligence, mobile phones, web 2.0, open source, etc. The book explicitly aims to show in what ways these technologies have already become an everyday reality and consequently reaches beyond the common tendency to use utopian and/or dystopian visions to understand their ‘impact’.
List of contributors: Robin van den Akker (University of Birmingham), Bibi van den Berg (EUR), Jop Esmeijer (TNO), Madelon Kuiper (EUR), Michiel de Lange (EUR), Marc van Lieshout (TNO), Sander Limonard (TNO), Awee Prins (EUR), Mijke Slot (EUR/TNO), Marc Steen (TNO) en Stefan Verhaegh (Universiteit Twente).
Publisher: Klement/Pelckmans; ISBN 9789086870301; price: about € 20.
==update==
Book presentation: Saturday December 13 2008 14:00 – 17:00 in Bookstore Donner, Lijnbaan 150 Rotterdam (click for map).
Special guest: Marie-Jose Klaver.
(click to enlarge)
Teaching course “Homo Mobilis: mobility, media & identity”
Friday, September 26th, 2008
Starting this academic year Jeroen Timmermans, Jos de Mul and I are teaching a new course called “Homo Mobilis: mobility, media & identity” at the Erasmus University Rotterdam as an international masters. The aim of the course is to acquire a deeper understanding of some of the main theories of mobility, and its place in modern history, and to critically rethink the influence of transportation- and (digital) communication mobilities on human identity. The 15-week course schedule looks like this:
Introductory classes
1. First meeting, introduction, practical matters, course outline, syllabus, etc. Thematic overview of the course.
2. From movement to mobility: the concept of mobility.
3. Mobility systems and the mobilities paradigm.
4. A short history of media.
5. Philosophical overview of time/space by Jos de Mul.
Mobility systems
6. Public transport and the time schedule.
7. Airplanes, airports and non-places.
8. Car mobility.
9. Mobile media and smart mobs.
10. ICTs: spaces of flow.
Thematic & critical classes
11. Guest lecture by Lucas Harms (SCP)
12. ‘Liquid identity’ and ‘The corrosion of character’
13. ‘Identity under siege’ and ‘the saturated self’
14. Overshoot: critical perspectives on mobility.
15. Closing session. Presentation of assignments and discussion.
My writings: new page
Sunday, June 22nd, 2008I decided to rework the literature page from linking to other people’s work to featuring my own output. You can find some of my work so far on the page my writings. Happy reading!
The Mobile City conference 27 & 28 Feb. 2008 was a succes!
Monday, March 3rd, 2008The Mobile City conference, which I organized together with Martijn de Waal, has been a great succes! The auditorium of the Netherlands Architecture Institute in Rotterdam was packed with around 200 people from various backgrounds and disciplines. Great speakers, workshops, interesting project presentations, a discussion panel, and a very lively atmosphere.
Read more about it, watch photos, and see some video registrations at the conference website’s coverage area.
[update: website structure changed: all content of The Mobile City '08 now here]
announcement The Mobile City conference 27/28 Feb 2008
Thursday, December 20th, 2007Below the announcement of The Mobile City conference I am co-organizing:
The Mobile City conference 27 & 28 February 2008
NAi (Netherlands Architecture Institute) Rotterdam, The Netherlands
“The Mobile City” is a two-day conference about locative & mobile technologies, urban culture and identity. The Mobile City brings academics, architects, urban professionals and media designers together to address the question: what happens to urban culture when physical and digital spaces merge? Keynote speakers are Stephen Graham, Tim Cresswell, Malcolm McCullough and Christian Nold.
Background
The physical, geographical city with its piazza’s, its neighbourhoods and crossings intersects with the ‘virtual space’ of electronic communication-, information- and observation-networks of GSM, GPS, CCTV, UMTS, WIFI, RFID, etc. At the same time, the domain of digital space is increasingly becoming physical, an “internet of things” is emerging. Another example is the rise of ‘pervasive games’, digital games with a physical component in urban space. Is it still useful or even possible to talk about the city as being only physical? Or about the digital world as purely ‘virtual’ (in the sense of ‘not real’ or immaterial)? The physical city and the spaces of digital technologies merge into a new “hybrid space”. Hybrid spaces are shaped by the social processes that concurrently take place in digital and physical spaces. What is the influence of these developments on the ideas we have of time, space and place, citizenship and identity?
Conference questions
Locative and mobile media can be understood as interfaces between the digital domain and the city, as bridges between the social processes that formerly took place in more separated domains (digital or physical) but now are spilling over into each other. The Mobile City will ask the following questions:
- From a theoretical point of view, what are useful concepts to talk about the blurring/merging of physical and digital spaces?
- From a critical perspective, what does the emergence of locative and mobile media mean for urban culture, citizenship, and identities?
- From a professional point of view, what does all this mean for the work of urban professionals (architects, designers, planners), media designers, and academics?
The full program text is available at our website, www.themobilecity.nl/background
Weblog
The conference organizers have set up a special weblog devoted to the themes of the conference at www.themobilecity.nl. Relevant contributions are welcome.
Call for Participation – Workshops
On February 27th two small scale intensive workshops will be held. The first session is about Urban Culture and locative media (with Stephen Graham and Christian Nold), the second session about mobility and new technologies (with Tim Cresswell and Malcolm McCullough). Please send a very brief bio with relevant current and past activities, and short motivation to info@themobilecity.nl. Indicate what you would like to contribute to, and get from the session(s). Only a limited number of places is available. When interest supersedes availability, the organizing committee will select participants. Registration closes at January 31st.
Call for Participation – Project Presentations
During the main conference on February 28th, Keynote speeches will be alternated with short project presentations about locative and/or mobile technologies for artistic purposes, business, research, etc. We are thinking of: locative media art, commercial locative services, pervasive gaming, mobile marketing campaigns, geo-tagging or geo-storytelling, research projects etc. etc. Your presentation will have to fit in 10 minutes, and be as concrete as possible. Your project will also be featured on our website. If you wish to present, please send us an email about your project at info@themobilecity.nl. Please do so before january 31st.
February 27th: Small scale in-depth workshops
February 28th: Main conference with:
* Stephen Graham – Professor of Human Geography, Durham University
* Tim Cresswell – Professor of Geography, University of London
* Malcolm McCullough – Associate Professor University of Michigan
* Christian Nold – Independent artist and lecturer based in London
From the Netherlands, experts such as Rob van Kranenburg (Waag Society), Nanna Verhoeff (University of Utrecht) and Marc Schuilenburg (Free University Amsterdam, Studio Popcorn) will also participate.
Practical
The Mobile City takes place 27 and 28 February 2008 in the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi) in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
More info, call for participants, and registration: www.themobilecity.nl.
The conference fee is € 25,-
Organization
The Mobile City is organized by:
* ‘New Media, Public Sphere, Urban Culture’ project at Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (RUG).
* ‘Playful Identities’ project at Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) and University Utrecht (UU).
* Netherlands Architecture Institute Rotterdam (NAi).
Contact
Conference organizers: Martijn de Waal (RUG), Michiel de Lange (EUR), Oene Dijk (NAi). Email: info@themobilecity.nl
Sponsors
The conference is sponsored by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research through the NWO-research program Transformations in Art and Culture.
The Mobile City is kindly sponsored by Dienst Kunst en Cultuur, gemeente Rotterdam.
The conference organization wishes to thank the Vereniging Trustfonds Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam for their kind financial guarantee.
Posting on TheMobileCity blog
Wednesday, November 14th, 2007The next few months I’ll be posting more often on The Mobile City conference blog than here. The Mobile City will be organized end of February 2008 in Rotterdam, and will discuss the interplay between locative technologies, and urban culture and design. So head over there now…!