The International Association for the Study of Environment, Space and Place will have its 9th annual conference on April 26-28, 2013 at the University of Florida. The theme of the conference is “Mediated Spaces.”
Mediated spaces infuse daily life. These spaces occur between. They also offer transitions from specific place to specific place. And in some cases, they constitute nodes that contain their own mediations. Such spaces mediate between people, between people and things, and between people/things and environments. In the latter, ecological conditions might require intermediate zones that work between inside and outside, between body and climate or less habitable states, or even between body and micro-climate. Between people, social relations might occur in mediated spaces both physical and virtual. Between people and things, tools—both new and old—continue to mediate our experience and our work. In many of these spaces there runs a technological vein of inquiry. Here, the in-between is temporally charged, reducing time and space but also eliciting simulation and sometimes unexpected immediacy. Links between disparate places might also suggest a mediating tendency—a working between. And the process of mediation might then involve medium as well as means.
Questions that the conference seeks to address include: Where is “between”? How do we understand “mediated life”? What is the role of the intermediary? How do senses, materials, and/or experience help with mediation? How has media changed concepts of space and place? How has the logic of (new) media been translated into spatial design? How do new modes of communication revise experiences of technology? What do distinctions between “by technology” and “with technology” mean?
Potential topics include, but are not limited to:
airports, immigration centers
aquariums and zoos
billboards, electronic landscapes
biosphere, biodome, bathysphere, capsule
computer terminals, TV-rooms, narrative spaces
conventions and expositions
court-rooms
e-readers (Kindle, Nook) and e-texts
lobbies and foyers
malls, movie theaters, ticket booths
markets
mobile phone screens, urban screens, facades
montage, collage, recording studios
playscapes and playgrounds
porches, stoops, storefronts, sidewalks, fire escapes
ports and stations
sacred sites, temples, cathedrals
skins
social networks and social media
tools
transportation networks
Send abstracts to Troy Paddock at paddockt1@southernct.edu by February 1, 2013.
For more information, contact Charlie Hailey at CLHAILEY@ufl.edu