[ecrea] Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media Research Centre ANNUAL SYMPOSIUM

>Mediatising Public Space and Mediatising Practices
>
>Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media Research Centre ANNUAL SYMPOSIUM,
>Sat 27 & Sun 28.Novemeber 2010,
>Goldsmiths University,New Academic Building
>
>27 November: Mediatising Public Space:
>
>Urban public spaces today are saturated by 
>media, perhaps more than ever before. These 
>range from highly visible large LED screens in 
>cities like Tokyo through the cassette sermons 
>one hears in the streets of Cairo to the 
>invisible, inaudible satellite surveillance 
>systems that are everywhere. They include 
>personal media like MP3 players and mobile
>phones, public information systems, commercial 
>advertising, and more. How do these media shape, 
>interconnect, or constitute physical public 
>space, and how do they connect to virtual public 
>spaces?  How should we understand these 
>phenomena? Is this simply a process of ever 
>greater degradation of the public as direct 
>face-to-face communication is replaced by ever 
>more mediated and commercialized forms of 
>communication among strangers? Or are new 
>publics, new public processes, and new public 
>spaces being constituted? And how should we 
>understand public communication? Is it only a 
>matter of rational discourse, or does it also 
>concern emotion, affect, and fleeting 
>perceptions?  This  symposium puts a focus on 
>the often overlooked quotidian urban experience. 
>As media floods our everyday life, we hope to 
>open up a better understanding of the  desires, 
>dilemmas, and disappointments of the contemporary urban subject.
>---
>
>28 November: Mediating Practices: Design, Politics and their Publics
>
>The symposium is focused on design as a 
>mediating practice; both in the narrowcast sense 
>of how it contributes to the production of new 
>forms of â¬Ümediaâ¬", and, also, in the wider 
>sense that design is itself a mediatory 
>practice; conditioning the spaces and objects of 
>our everyday practices and, in and through this, 
>effecting the way we are, and mediating the very 
>sense of ourselves, as individuals and 
>communities. So the symposium is not only 
>focused on the design of media and its objects 
>(this as well, of course) but also on the way 
>design shapes our ways of being and belonging 
>more generally. The symposium speakers will 
>reflect on the political, social, technological 
>and ecological implications of design 
>interventions in media, and, also, in mediating 
>the spaces, objects and practices of living - 
>including its effect on selfhood, public life 
>and social relations. In what it addresses the 
>symposium will not merely be focused on â¬Üthin
>slicingâ¬" current media spaces and practices - 
>to study, analyse and pronounce on contemporary 
>trends and forms - but will also be concerned 
>with appreciating and having critical purchase 
>on future possibilities for design (as one of 
>the key agencies through which our lives are 
>mediated). All speakers, to a larger or smaller 
>extent, will be concerned with the
>possibilities and processes by which futures are 
>gained ­ they wiill be concerned with unpicking 
>the retentive and protentive dynamics at work in 
>producing what is â¬Ünowâ¬" (our contemporary conditions) in order to project
>thoughts on the futures (or lack of futures) we 
>are producing. What is clear is that design is 
>currently encysted within an unsustainable 
>programme of human development in which future 
>freedoms and freedoms to have particular futures 
>are rendered impossible. In light of this, the 
>speakers will through their different positions 
>and projects, tease out the ethical imperatives 
>for design (as profession) and designers (as 
>individuals) in the choices to be made in 
>producing futures; the ethical imperatives in 
>the changes that design can effect in setting 
>course for these futures and in the changes that 
>can (and should) be effected within design 
>practice to carry through these transformations.
>The symposium has speakers from industry and 
>academia, theorists and practitioners, 
>nationally based and international, who will 
>present ideas and projects that will address the 
>concerns of design as a concourse of
>â¬Ümediating practicesâ¬".
>
>The event is free but places are restricted. For 
>registration please email (e.baumann-meurer /at/ gold.ac.uk).
>
>For further information please visit
>http://www.gold.ac.uk/media-research-centre/events/symposium2010/#d.en.20979
>

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