22.-24. Juni 2023

Körper und Dinge kartieren

Anschließend an einen erfolgreichen Workshop im vergangenen Jahr, der darauf zielte kartographische Beiträge und Perspektiven aus Design, Kunst und Geographie ins Gespräch zu bringen, laden wir 2023 erneut nach Halle ein.

Körper und Dinge kartieren – der Titel des diesjährigen Workshops weist eine Doppeldeutigkeit auf, die das Themenspektrum abstecken soll: Körper und Dinge werden einerseits zu einem Gegenstand kartographischer Praktiken – sie werden kartiert –, können aber andererseits selbst als aktiv kartierende Instanzen adressiert werden – sie kartieren. Während ersteres eher bestehende kartographische Konventionen und exemplarisch den klassischen Modus ‚thematischer Kartographie‘ beschreibt, was auch für weite Teile kritischen Kartierens gilt, so nimmt diese Doppeldeutigkeit sowohl die Inspirationen neuer Materialismen, nicht-repräsentationaler, handlungs- und praxistheoretischer sowie materiell-semiotischer Ansätze auf, als auch – stärker zeitdiagnostisch und konkret auf den Alltag gewendet – die Rolle von Sensoren und Automatisierung in der Produktion geographischen Wissens. Smartphones, Fahrzeuge, Haushaltsgeräte, immer mehr Dinge um uns herum produzieren räumliche und raumbezogene Daten über ihre Umgebung.

Dabei ist die herkömmliche Karte als (Re-)Präsentation geographischer Zusammenhänge nur ein möglicher Output eines Trackings und Tracings ortssensitiv gewordener Technologien. Doch als tradierte Formen der Vermittlung bleiben kartographische Visualisierungen besonders wirksam im gesellschaftlichen Diskurs. Was bedeutet es also für eine kritische Kartographie, die ihre Wurzeln in der Repräsentations- oder Inhaltsforschung hat, wenn humane und non-humane Interaktionen, Praktiken und Identitäten sowie die damit einhergehenden Materialitäten von Körpern, aber auch Medien(-technologien) in den Blick genommen werden? Mit welchen Methoden können wir diese Entwicklungen verstehen und adressieren?

Zur Diskussion dieser und weiterer Fragen möchten wir im Rahmen des Workshops interdisziplinäre Perspektiven und Ansätze zusammenführen, welche einerseits die Ausweitung kartographischer Praktiken auf verschiedenste Lebens- und Gesellschaftsbereiche thematisieren und andererseits neue Formen kartographischer Wissensproduktion entwickeln und kritisch analysieren. Hierbei interessieren wir uns besonders, aber nicht ausschließlich, für Einreichungen aus Medienwissenschaften, Geographie und benachbarten Feldern, Kunst- und Designwissenschaften sowie Kulturwissenschaften, die sich mit folgenden Themen beschäftigen:

• Geomedien und Technologien der Lokalisierung
• Geschichte und Gegenwart des Trackings und Tracings von Menschen und Dingen
• Sensorische Geographien
• Automatisierungen und die KI-gestützte Produktion kartographischer Informationen und karto­gra­phischen Wissens
• Kartieren aus einer Critical Zones-Perspektive
• Ethische Fragen und Fragen der accountability von Daten und Technologien

Wir freuen uns über Beitragsvorschläge (Abstracts ca. 250 Wörter) bis zum 31.03.2023 an finn.dammann@fau.de und nora.kuettel@geo.uni-halle.de. Die Rückmeldung zu den Einsendungen erfolgt bis zum 02.04.2023.

Neben klassischen Paper-Präsentationen ist der Workshop offen für experimentelle und praktische Formate.

Der Workshop findet vom 22.-24.06.2023 in Halle (Saale) statt und wird gemeinsam von Boris Michel, Pablo Abend, Nora Küttel (Halle), Finn Dammann (Erlangen), Lea Bauer und Francis Harvey (Leipzig) organisiert.

Hier geht’s zur PDF-Version

Abstract Deadline: November 1st 2020.

Edited by: Karin Fast (Karlstad University) and Pablo Abend (University of Siegen)

Overview

There has been an increased interest in the process of place-making by means of technology. Spurred by the spatial turn in the humanities and social sciences, and the appearance of new location-aware technologies, the nexus between geography and media came into focus of media and communication studies. While the majority of work within the field of geography and media focus on contemporary developments, this volume wants to address the nexus of geography and media from a historical perspective. Such a perspective serves to counterbalance dominant discourses – produced not least by ICT companies and policy makers but also by academics – about the “revolutionary” traits of new location-aware media.

Cfp Geomedia Histories FINAL

The objects of study are geomedia (e.g. Thielmann, 2010; Lapenta, 2011; McQuire, 2016; Abend, 2017; Fast et al, 2018). The term is used for a wide variety of phenomena in many contexts. In geography and adjacent fields, for example, geomedia refers dominantly to visual media used to communicate geographic knowledge about the earth like (digital) maps and globes. Within media and communication studies a wider definition has been developed. Here, geomedia qualifies as an umbrella term used for assemblages of technologies, processes, operations and practices that socio-technologically reorganize our encounter with space and place (Döring/Thielmann, 2009). This includes localizing technologies, augmented-reality applications and data practices.

In addition, geomedia can be used as a concept for describing the state which media is currently entering. Seen this way, geomedia is not referring to a bundle of specific types of media, but rather serves as a label for the particular condition(s) brought about by location-aware and location-based technologies in interplay with wider social, economic, cultural or political trends. Certain trajectories such as convergence, ubiquity, location-awareness, and real-time feedback can be followed, with geomedia sitting at the intersection of these developments (McQuire, 2016). Therefore, the volume is interested in investigations into the starting points of these trajectories.

With this in mind, geomedia can be understood in the double sense of media that is situated – its use being bound to a specific place – and media that situates – producing and altering space and place. In order to account for this productive dimension of geomedia, one has to move away from the representational qualities of media and attend to its placemaking powers. Space gets continually socio-technically re-organized through processes of mediatization. But this re-organization is not only the work of circulating representations of space – e.g. in the sense of a power of maps. It is also, and perhaps to an even greater extent, the result of our concrete interactions with technology. Technology is not only a tool to discover and understand the world, but also a productive force that is granted a certain agency in the production of space and the making of place. Methodologically, this can be translated into a call to de-center the media by looking at the practices and operations surrounding geomedia technologies rather than concentrate on representations, since representations are not the start but an intermediate outcome of these processes. This poses additional challenges for historical research. The volume welcomes research that engages in questions pertaining to geomedia histories, such as, for example:

• What is the historical backdrop of today’s place-aware geomedia technologies?
• What are the historical equivalents to contemporary geomedia affordances?
• Where can we look for the starting points of various socio-technological trajectories that are constitutive of today’s geomedia condition (e.g. convergence, ubiquity, location-awareness, real-time feedback, etc.)?
• How can we trace past geomedia uses and practices?
• Who were the “early adopters” of geomedia?
• How can we account for past changes in power structures introduced or sustained by geomedia?
• Who were the early geomedia producers, advocates or stakeholders? (e.g. foundational industries, authorities, organizations, etc.).

If you have any other perspectives on geomedia histories, share them with us in your paper proposal.

References

Abend, P. (2017). From map reading to geobrowsing: Methodological reconsiderations for geomedia. In Felgenhauer, T. & Gäbler, K. (Eds.). Geographies of Digital Culture. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

Döring, J., Thielmann, T. (Eds.) (2009). Mediengeographie: Theorie – Analyse – Diskussion. Bielefeld: transcript.

Fast, K., Jansson, A., Lindell, J., Bengtsson, L.R. & Tesfahuney, M. (Eds.) (2018). Geomedia Studies: Spaces and Mobilities in Mediatized Worlds. London: Routledge.

Lapenta, F. (2011). Geomedia: on location-based media, the changing status of collective image production and the emergence of social navigation systems. Visual Studies, 26(1), 14-24.

McQuire, S. (2016). Geomedia: Networked Cities and the Future of Public Space. Cambridge, UK: Polity.

Thielmann, T. (2010). Locative media and mediated localities. Aether: The Journal of Media Geography, 5(1), 1-17.

Research Areas

We welcome contributions by scholars of Science and Technology Studies, Media and Communication Studies, History of Computing, Media History, Communication Geography, Media Geography, Geomedia Studies, or from adjacent fields of research.

Deadlines and contact information

Please send your abstract (maximum 250 words) and a short biographical note (maximum 50 words) to karin.fast@kau.se and pablo.abend@uni-siegen.de until November 1st, 2020. Based on the abstracts, the editors will pre-select authors that will be invited to submit a full paper. The first drafts of the full manuscripts are due on May 31st, 2021. All full papers will be double-blind peer reviewed, which means that we cannot guarantee that your paper gets accepted even if your abstract is.

Contact (corresponding editor)

Karin Fast (PhD)

Associate Professor in Media and Communication Studies
Department of Geography, Media and Communication
Karlstad University
Sweden
Karin.fast@kau.se

The theme of this fine conference is: OFF THE GRID

The phrase “off the grid” is commonly understood to refer to the voluntary decoupling from established infrastructure networks such as electricity, water or gas supply. The implication is one of material independence and a self-sufficient lifestyle. Going “off the grid” means making yourself invisible by rebuking the social and technological structures that normally organize our lives. It is entering, or returning to, uncharted territory. The grid from which you disappear is often imagined like a web that we are woven into, at once providing security – of cultural connectivity, opportunities to work, or societal participation – while also limiting individual, political or technological agency.

Keynote Speakers:
Caren Kaplan – University of California at Davis, USA
Nanna Verhoeff – Utrecht University, Netherlands

Suggested paper topics include, but are not limited to:

• Politics, philosophy and ethics of going off grid
• Grid as Network, Grid as Default (Geomedia and Infrastructure)
• Physical Geography/Relational Geography
• Inhabiting Digital Geographies (VR, hybrid spaces)
• Geomedia in the Global South
• Urban and Rural Geomedia
• The ‘geo’ in Geomedia, the ‘media’ in Geomedia
• Governing Geomedia (smart city, sensor media, infrastructures, surveillance & countersurveillance)
• Geomedia Activism
• Digital detox, rationing, quarantine and isolation
• Geomedia Histories

Click here for the full version of the CfP

October 31st 2020: Submission system opens January 7th 2021: Deadline for thematic panel and individual paper proposals January 25th 2021: Notes of acceptance and registration opens March 15th 2021: Last day of registration