Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Media Places: From the Gardens of Versailles to Spatial Robots




From the gardens of Versailles to interactive architecture. HUMlab will host a conference in December on the interplay between media, technology and location. The conference "Media Places" is about everything from how our homes and culture changed when television came, to research into new forms of dynamic materials and interactive architectures. The conference takes place from noon on Thursday 9th December to Saturday afternoon on December 11th 2010.

Among the international guests will be prominent media scholars Chandra Mukerji (UC San Diego) and Lynn Spigel (Northwestern University) and architect Miles Kemp (co-author of the Interactive Architecture, Princeton University Press), Jesus de Francisco (art director at the company Motion Theory), Carter Emmart (American Museum of Natural History), Erica Robles (New York University) and Molly Steenson (graduate student in architecture at Princeton). From Stanford University Zephyr Frank professor of Latin American history and one of the leaders of their Spatial History Project will be presenting. The conference will be a close collaboration between Umeå University and Stanford University on "media places".

From Umeå University presenters will include Simon Lindgren (Sociology), Anna Johansson (Culture and Media Studies), Michael Frango (postdoctoral researcher HUMlab and Language Studies) and Mikael Wiberg (Design School). Both Umeå University Vice Chanceller Lena Gustafsson and Deputy Vice Chacellor Kjell Jonsson will also participating in the program.

Jennie Olofsson from Luleå University of Technology (formerly Cultural Analysis program and HUMlab), who defends her doctoral thesis on 10 December, will give a luncheon lecture on December 11 at the conference on the thesis entitled "Welding Robots, Space and Gender".

Registration for the conference can be made via its website. Seating is limited. Information about notification procedures and programs can also be found on the website.

No comments: