For further details, please contact:

Dr. Sophie Dale

Project Manager

University of Nottingham

ubicomp at nottingham.ac.uk

Tel: 0115 84 68923

     

Ubiquitous Computing at a Crossroads Workshop

 

Ubiquitous Computing at a Crossroads: Art, Science, Politics and Design 

January 6th and 7th 2009
Huxley Building, Imperial College London

 

The Art of Mobility: How transdiciplinary artists’ projects are testing the boundaries of mobile media design

Martin Rieser, De Montfort University

 

Presentation slides

 

Screen cultures to date have been dominated both by narrative and by its modes of framing. Dispersed modes of interaction raise a series of questions about emergent new media art forms, particularly in relation to an audience’s changing modes of participation and reception. The convergence of mobile technologies and pervasive computing methods are creating a world where information-rich layers can be mapped directly onto urban topologies.  This opens up a series of interrogations around changing concepts of space and place and new perceptions of urban space for a wide range of traditional disciplines from art and architecture to cultural studies. The blurring of the boundaries between physical and virtual demands a new theory-base to explain our changing concepts of the “real”, and, with the growth of hybrid environments, the concomitant changes in sociability and communication patterns.

The nature of audience interaction is responding to a socio-cultural dynamic that, although yet far from being quantified, demonstrates both a desire for a greater degree of ‘participation’ (evidenced in popular broadcast television e.g. Big Brother and its interactive outlets) and in the meteoric expansion of social networking on sites such as MySpace and Facebook. Where both these participatory and networking imperatives meet with pervasive media, an emergent art practice is developing, which is pushing at the boundaries of these technologies.

This paper will examine and critically align a number of projects using mobile and pervasive technologies which have challenged the design and delivery of mobile services from around the world, as documented on the author’s weblog and forthcoming book Mobile Audience. These will be presented together with examples from the Artist’s own research and practice, including Riverains, an exploration of underground Manchester through mobile technology, commissioned by the b.tween Festival; Vienna Underground –an experiment in multi-linear film narrative and performance for mobiles, reinventing the Third Man for the 21st Century, as part of the emobilart European artists’ workshop initiative, and Songlines, a mobile wiki map and virtual artworks delivery system for Leicester cyclists and walkers.

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