MML

The Mobile Media Lab (MML) is an interdisciplinary research team exploring wireless communications, mobile technologies and locative media practices. MML brings together a unique configuration of expertise in art, design, engineering, new media, cultural theory, social science and policy studies. We have produced projects exploring the cultural and aesthetic dimensions of media rich content for mobile platforms using an assemblage of cell phones, PDAs, GPS systems, custom built Bluetooth sensors, and open source software.

Our creative research probes how these subtle technologies augment, enhance, deplete, mediate and foster new sensations of temporality in urban contexts and outdoor spaces. As such, our projects treat physical territory as an active and volatile interface using networked technologies to connect the physical to the virtual.

The following questions shape the collaborative work of the Mobile Media Lab.

How can an awareness of environmental contexts, social histories and local knowledges influence mobile media use?
What are some of the social practices, communities and activist agendas that might engage with these technologies?
What are the material and regulatory contexts shaping the production, distribution and use of mobile practices and wireless technologies?
How can we push the tensions and boundaries between mobility and immobility, the analogue and the digital, the virtual and the material?
In what ways are these practices embodied and how might these new media modalities produce new forms of embodiment?
What are the temporal rhythms that pulsate in this new media ecology?

The MML is jointly located in Hexagram, at Concordia University in Montreal and at York University in Toronto.

Lab Directors

is the Director of the graduate program in Communication and Culture at York University. She was a project lead for the Mobile Digital Commons Network (MDCN), exploring relations of mobile technologies and cultural production, and Digital Cities, focusing on the relationship between digital technology and multi-media cities. She is co-editor of Wi with Kim Sawchuk, a digital journal focusing on mobile technologies and culture. Her research projects include: CWIRP exploring WiFi as public infrastructure; and Canadian Sexual Assault Law and Contested Boundaries of Consent: Legal and Extra-Legal Dimensions (with Lise Gotell), investigating women's organizations and legal discourses. She was president of the Canadian Women's Studies Association, 2002-2004.

is an Associate Professor and the Chair of the Department of Design and Computation Arts at Concordia University. His creative work and research activities reside at the intersection of photography, graphic design, 3D rapid prototyping and digital media. Recently, he completed a three year project as the co-principal investigator (with Sara Diamond, OCAD) for the Mobile Digital Commons Network (MDCN), a national research network developing technology and media rich content for mobile devices. He is a founding member of Hexagram: Institute for Research and Creation in Media Arts and Technologies and served for three years as the Director for the Advanced Digital Imaging and 3D Rapid Prototyping Group. He has also organized numerous workshops, artist talks, exhibitions and conferences devoted to design and new media.

is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies, Concordia University and the current editor of the Canadian Journal of Communication. She has been with the Mobile Digital Commons Network (MDCN) since 2005 and has worked on the Haunting team, as a co-leader of Evaluation Mobility Usability (EMU) and as the co-editor of Wi with Barbara Crow. Kim is the author of numerous articles and edited collections on feminism, art and technology. Her most recent publications include “Uncanny Figures and Mean Bodies: nichola feldman-kiss” and "Ironic Empiricism: The Photographs of Theodore Wan." She is the co-author of "Leave it to beavers: animals, icons and telecommunications in Canada" and “The Spectral Politics of Mobile Technologies: Gender, Infrastructure and International Policy” with Barbara Crow.

Researchers

is an industrial designer and a Ph.D. student in the Special Individualized Programs (SIP) at Concordia University . He has worked for the Neil Squire Foundation Brain-Computer Interface Lab, the Mobile Digital Commons Network (MDCN), and other Hexagram projects. A rural upbringing in the Yukon Territories and British Columbia motivated him to pursue his interests in ecological sustainability and rural healthcare. His research explores design ethics related to the development of intelligent textile based wearable biomedical instruments for telehealthcare. His design practice is centered around 3D digital design: modeling, rapid prototyping, digital scanning, molding, and CNC milling.

is a Doctoral Candidate in Communication at Concordia University. Her dissertation examines how cellphone use intersects with visuality. It is entitled Cell: A Cultural History of Cellphone Use in North America from Dick Tracy to Abu Ghraib and Beyond. She is recipient of a doctoral fellowship from FQRSC, a graduate scholarship from the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association, and a J.W. O'Brien Fellowship from Concordia University. Her research interests are reflected in the courses she has taught on popular culture, mass communication, and race and gender at Concordia University and Ryerson University.

has worked as a researcher for Interactive Parks, the Mobile Digital Commons Network (MDCN) and Evaluation Mobility Usability (EMU), the evaluation arm of MDCN. Her research considers the cultural meanings and political significance of locative media and seeks to intervene in debates concerning the political direction of new media theory and practice. She is completing a Ph.D. in Communication Studies at Concordia University