THE MEDIATED CITY – Two Multidisciplinary Conferences [April & October 2014]

THE MEDIATED CITY – two multidisciplinary conferences examining “the city”…… a virtual, filmic, social, political and physical construct.

CONFERENCE  1.
Place: London
Dates: 01-03 April 2014
Host: Ravensbourne (University)

CONFERENCE  2.
Place: Los Angeles
Dates: October 2014 (TBC)
Host: Woodbury University

Outline:

The nature of the city is a contested concept. For architects it is generally a question of bricks and mortar – a physical entity. For human geographers it is a place of human interaction and engagement. For filmmakers it is a site for action and futuristic nightmare. For animators and computer programmers it becomes a virtual world – a second life, a SIMulated city. For sociologists, it is a defining aspect of cultural identity. For political activists and theorists, it is a place to ‘occupy’ and the site of the polis.

THE MEDIATED CITY conference offers a platform for multiple and diverse examinations of the city. It aims to bring people together from diverse backgrounds and fragment, multiply and reconfigure our readings of the city; to offer multiple and conflicting discipline perspectives. The intention is to share views of the city as physical entity, online community, film set, photographic backdrop, geographical map, sociological case study, political metaphor, digital or video game etc…. – to examine it as a mediated and shared phenomenon.

Key dates – Conference 1 – London

15 September 2013. Deadline for abstracts / initial proposals

15 January 2014. Deadline for full papers / detailed proposals

01 April 2014. Conference –1

For full details visit: http://architecturemps.com

Megan Kendrick DH article from Vectors Journal / Los Angeles-Hotels

Thinking through DH in general as I have been for some time I came across the following journal and article Click on the “Launch project link” on the site below, you won’t be disappointed.

http://vectors.usc.edu/projects/index.php?project=94&thread=AuthorsStatement

[I’m pasting here the Author’s statement about her project]

Author’s Statement: Touring History through New Media

Hotels provide the nexus between the tangible, lived experience of the city and the imagined landscape that tourists carry with them when they visit a city. They are objects of circulation, they are monuments to the city, and as Siegfried Kracauer observed, they are sites of spectacle and display. This web-based project comes out of my dissertation research which explores the role of hotels in the shaping of Los Angeles. I seek to understand how their representation in visual culture reflects their particular stories in the urban planning of the city. I argue that the hotel served as a vanguard in the shaping and imaging of the city.

Throughout different phases of urban planning history, influenced by distinct systems of transportation, hotels have played a leading role in the way Los Angeles has been planned, formed, and imagined. In this context, Virtual Tourisms brings new meaning to the concept of a digital “virtual tour” by making visible the urban planning context and socio-spatial relationships involved in the historical and cultural practice of a tourist’s stay at a landmark Los Angeles hotel. The digital project takes shape in the form