Abstracts of the conferences

20 June 2012. Published by Benoît Labourdette.
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The documentality explosion

By Maurizio Ferraris

Contrary to the predictions of the past century, we have not witnessed the disappearance of writing but, rather, to its explosion. And more generally to the explosion of the recording. The company’s communication has emerged as a company record. This is not a coincidence: in fact, recording and writing (and let’s not forget that every image, every word, is when writing can be stored indefinitely repeated) is the condition of possibility of the existence social objects, parties to weddings, money for war. What we are witnessing is an explosion of what we can call “documentality”, whose hero is ubiquitous cell phone, which always follows us and saves all archive.

Maurizio Ferraris Theoretic is professor of philosophy at the University of Turin, where he directs the Labont (ontology Laboratory) and Rivista di estetica. He wrote more than 40 books. Among his works translated into French: Where are you? Ontology mobile phone, Albin Michel, 2006 Goodbye, Kant! What remains today of the Critique of Pure Reason, Editions of brightness, 2009.

SMS between form and gesture analysis of a writing practice

By Anne Jarrigeon and Joëlle Menrath

Beyond the debate on “undermined” the language of modern communication technologies, we propose to take seriously the production of SMS as a writing practice, that is to say, both as a writing and writing process. The SMS part in the spread of writing every day, by providing individuals specific resources that will be analyzed from a corpus experimentally and in situ observations. Real act generally related to the situation, the SMS provides a space where the game on writing doubles as another game with the circumstances of production and reception. Registered in multiple genres - correspondence, poetic, humorous, narrative - the SMS led to interest both ordinary creativity, and other forms of manifestations of the inner life, such as slips or missteps.

Anne Jarrigeon is a PhD in information and communication, anthropologist and lecturer at City Mobility Transport Laboratory (University Paris Est). She conducts research on the experience of contemporary mobility between practical devices and places, social interactions and spatial perceptions.

Joëlle Menrath directs research firm Applied Speech & Practice, specializing in the analysis of the experiences of contemporary communication. She is co-author of Mobile Attitude, What phones have changed our lives, published by Hachette in 2005.

m-Novels for Africa: Engaging Readers through Mobile Phones

By Steve Vosloo

The Yoza Project, originally known as m4Lit (mobile phones for literacy), set out to explore the viability of using mobile phones to support reading and writing by youth in South Africa (SA). If mobile phones proved to be a legitimate alternative and complement to printed literature then their potential for increasing youth literacy practices of reading and writing in SA, and indeed the developing world, would be significant. Most developing countries are book-poor and mobile phone-rich, after all. The background to the project, its stories and user response will be presented. The project clearly demonstrated that mobile phones can distribute long form content and enable user engagement. In the developing world participatory culture is practiced through the mobile phone. Related lessons and questions from the project will be shared.

Steve Vosloo is a mobile for development (M4D) programme manager, with a particular focus on mlearning, youth and ICTs in South Africa. He is currently a programme specialist in mobile learning at UNESCO in the Education Division where he manages the UNESCO Nokia Partnership. Previously he has been the fellow for 21st Century Learning at the Shuttleworth Foundation. He founded the m4lit (mobiles for literacy) project, which demonstrated the enormous potential of mobile publishing to support teen reading and writing in South Africa and Kenya. In 2007 he was a research fellow at Stanford University, where he researched youth and digital media. He holds a Masters degree in Information Systems from the University of Cape Town.

Video mobile and Politics: Stories Iranian / Syrian Stories

By Cyril Cardars

Cyril Cardars is a producer; Thibault Lefèvre a journalist specializing in radio and multimedia. After working in France Info, FIP, France Bleu and France Music, Thibault Lefèvre joined in July 2011 multimedia hub France Inter. Director and producer and iranianstories.org syrianstories.org sites. They worked together for the realization of Iranian Stories project’s goal is to collect and disseminate testimonies and multimedia documents on demonstrations following the last presidential elections in Iran.

CrowdVoice : Images et voix des peuples en protestation

Par Esra’a Al Shafei

Esra’a Al Shafei is the founder and Director of www.mideastyouth.com, an organization that aims to amplify diverse and progressive voices advocating for change throughout the Middle East and North Africa using digital media. She is also the founder of www.crowdvoice.org, a user-powered service that tracks voices of protest from around the world by crowdsourcing information. In 2010 she founded www.mideastunes.com, a platform for underground musicians in the Middle East who are using music as a tool for social change. In 2011 she founded www.ahwaa.org, a bilingual tool for LGBTQ youth in the Middle East that leverages game mechanics to facilitate high-quality interactions. She is a recipient of the Berkman Award from Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society for “outstanding contributions to the internet and its impact on society,” and is currently a Senior TED Fellow. In 2011 she was featured in Fast Company as one of the “100 Most Creative People in Business.” Most recently, she was awarded the Monaco Media Prize, which acknowledges innovative uses of media for the betterment of humanity. She lives in Bahrain.

The algorithm and the representation of reality: towards a new documentary practice

Par William Urrichio

The subject-object relationship defining of the modern era, and long under siege, has given way to a new formulation. At its heart is the algorithm. Among its many possibilities, the algorithm has enabled the selective and strategic reformulation of multiple viewpoints — something we can see from Wikipedia to Photosynth. In an era where may people carry cellphones equipped with HD video cameras, might the algorithmic turn enable new forms of collaborative and location-based representation? The documentary form, long a harbinger of the new, offers an excellent place to begin considering the potentials and implications of this new order.

William Uricchio is professor and Director of Comparative Media Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and professor of comparative media history at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. His research considers the interplay of media technologies and cultural practices in relation to the (re-) construction of representation, knowledge and publics. In part, he researches and develops new histories of ‘old’ media when they were new. And in part, he investigates media cultures and their audiences through research into such areas as peer-to-peer communities and cultural citizenship, media and cultural identity, and historical representation.

Play-Mobile immuable

By Nicolas Nova

Multiple components of the mobile phone (calls, address book, microphone, geolocation sensors ...) have become the starting point of many works in art or design. So much so that this device can be considered one of the “future” potential of IT as described in the 1990s by supporters of Ubiquitous Computing. Taking the examples of geolocation, this presentation will describe how artists and designers out scenarios agreed practices that are the lot of commercial applications. In particular, the intervention will address the relevance of the observation of the uses and practices in approaches to creativity and innovation. It will show how ordinary users’ creativity, which appears in the form of diversion and “poaching” (De Certeau) can be seen as fertile ground. Beyond the traditional approaches of “user-centered design” looking for standardized behavior, the presentation will show how to use ethnography can reveal singularities and exceptional practices interesting creation.

Nicolas Nova is consultant for Near Future Laboratory (Geneva). He conducts ethnographic studies on the use of technology to feed the design of digital products and foresight. Author of “Location-media: understanding the new digital landscape” and “technological flops: Understanding failure to innovate” (FYP editions), he also teaches at the Les Ateliers (Paris) and the University of Art and design in Geneva. It is finally official editorial Lift international conference on innovation and use of technology.

Bollywood’s Rythm’n Games: adaptations of Indian movies on mobile phone

By Alexis Blanchet

Since 2005, the Indian popular cinema is adapted video game. This production of video game adaptations is almost exclusively on mobile platform, the most widespread game in India. These dematerialized games are broadcast on the peninsula via online portals download regularly updated new adaptations. In terms of creativity, syntax specific to popular Indian films, sung and danced, pushed the studios to resume Game Rythm’n formula developed in the 1990s in Japan in the area of ??the arch. Our paper will analyze the forms borrowed from the domestic production of video games in the association it creates between a mobile support very widespread and popular former media research new audiences.

Alexis Blanchet is a lecturer at the University Paris 3 new Cinema and Audiovisual Department Sorbonne. His research interests concern the relationship between cinema and video game, especially exploring their economic, technological and cultural dimensions. He is the author of Pixels in Hollywood. Movies and video games, economic and cultural history published by Pix’n Love (2010). Website: www.jeuvideal.com

The role of cellphone file sharing in Tuareg popular music

Par Christopher Kirkley

In the Sahara of West Africa, cellular phones serve a multitude of purposes beyond communication. Equipped with memory cards, the storage and transfer of data, in particular music, has taken precedence as the most important role. The result is a wide network of popular Tuareg music, largely composed of locally produced creations and home recordings, but integrating music from far off geographic regions. The culture of sharing and music trading has an antecedent in the cassette tradingof music of the Tuareg rebellion. As ethnic minorities in their respective countries, Tuareg music has lacked central distribution and adapts easily into a system of music sharing devoid of copyright. The network of popular music is aided by the mobility of Ishumar, or young unemployed Tuareg who move across the desert countries with little impedance from state borders, carrying music on their phones and creating a wide shared folk culture. The presentation will focus on the history of Tuareg music networks, discuss how and what kind of data is shared, the role of the cellphone in these transactions, as well as future tendencies and trends.

Christopher Kirkley is an music collector and archivist focused on the Sahel of West Africa. His work examines contemporary popular musics in the evolving technological landscape, the interplay of localized traditions with transglobal influences, and new modes of cultural transmission. He releases records under the label Sahel Sounds and maintains a blog exploring arts and music of the region. www.sahelsounds.com

Mobile Phone and design: a conceptual approach

By Thomas Paris

One can consider the mobile phone as a new Medim and understand new forms of creation that generates the yardstick. This proposal intends to address the issue of creativity in the field of mobile telephony in a different approach, after work on the analysis of favorable conditions for the creation. It will not be, therefore, speak of “forms of creation”, but rather to provide a conceptual framework for the creativity of a sector, and then examine how the mobile phone is likely to alter the structure of that creativity. In this context, it will be question of desire, and tool market, and virgin land. Communication therefore proposes to clarify a conceptual perspective the finding of creativity that we can do in the world of mobile telephony.

Thomas Paris is affiliated with HEC Paris professor and researcher at the CNRS, associated with PREG-CRG Polytechnic. A graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique and holds a doctorate in management, it conducts research for fifteen years on the creative industries (film and broadcasting, music, fashion, publishing, architecture, advertising, large kitchen design ): he studied the specifics of their economy and their management. Author of a recent book on the subject (creativity Manager, Pearson, 2010), it also runs a seminar on these issues at the Paris School of Management.