Ubiquitous Media conference in Tokyo, July 2007

Ubiquitous Media: The media that are ubiquitous throughout society provide "not just the potential for greater choice and flexibility in re-working content (tv programmes, movies, music, images, textual data), but also great surveillance (CCTV cameras, computer spyware, credit data checking and biometrics). The media, then, can no longer be considered to be a monolithic structure producing uniform media effects. Terminology such as 'multi-media,' and 'new media,' fail to adequately capture the proliferation of media forms. Indeed, as media become ubiquitous they become increasingly embedded in material objects and environments, bodies and clothing, zones of transmission and reception. Media pervade out bodies, cultures and societies.

These ubiquitous media constitute our consumer and brand environment. Their interfaces and codes pervade our bodies and our biology. They pervade our urban spaces. They are ubiquitous in art, religion and our use of language. Yet from another angle art and language are, and have immemorially been, media."

The journal Theory, Culture & Society will have been published for 25 years in 2007. To celebrate this anniversary, TCS has joined with the Interfaculty Institute of Information Studies at Tokyo University to develop the Ubiquitous Media conference.

Plenary speakers include:
Rem Koolhaas (OMA Rotterdam)
Mark B. N. Hansen (University of Chicago)
Katherine Hayles (UCLA)
Ken Sakamura (Tokyo University)
Barbara Stafford (University of Chicago)