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?

Send abstracts to Troy Paddock paddockt1@southernct.edu no later than Feb. 1, 2013.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to: