Ubiquity: a paranoid manifesto
M. Phillips and C. Speed

‘Ubiquity’, the ability to be everywhere at the same time, a potential historically attributed to the occult is now a common feature of the average mobile phone. This journal anticipates the consequences for design and research in a culture where everyone and everything is connected, and offers a context for visual artists, designers, scientists and writers to consider how ubiquity is transforming our relationship with the world.

Ubiquity is a peer reviewed journal for creative and transdisciplinary practitioners interested in technologies, practices and behaviours that have the potential to radically transform human perspectives on the world. The title refers explicitly to the advent of ubiquitous computing that has been hastened through the consumption of networked digital devices. The journal anticipates the consequences for design and research in a culture where everyone and everything is connected, and will offer a context for visual artists, designers, scientists and writers to consider how ubiquity is transforming our relationship with the world.

In embracing these aspirations Ubiquity recognizes the transgressions and trauma that are implicit in the inevitable cultural shifts that will follow. As well as providing opportunities for enriching human experience these technologies and entangled practices bring with them neurosis and paranoia.

Ubiquity focuses on contemporary practices that engage with these technologies and behaviours within the creative arts (design, architecture and art) but more importantly explores the impact these technologies are having on synergies between disciplines and the broader cultural context. We envisage the journal as an instrument that seeks to establish critical and creative frameworks and methodologies that effectively articulate and nurture innovation in this field.

Ubiquity adopts a networked publishing strategy that is underpinned by creative practice and the reflexive application of these technologies through workshops, collaborations, commissions, seminars, field work, documents, conversations, interviews, media archaeology and data streams. Built around heavily illustrated articles, Ubiquity adopts a pragmatic and open approach to the dissemination of practice within this emergent field. The journal offers a context for experimentation through interdisciplinary collaboration and access to ‘instruments’ that encourage a reflexive reinterpretation of disciplinary practices.

In response to this the journal is structured in reflexive interplay between people and technologies, histories and futures and thinking through making. Each journal begins with three core complementary articles.

The journal invites contributions on subjects such as:

• The evolution of media forms as they seep off the page and screen and into the environment
• The emergence of the ‘Internet of Things’ and the advent of spimes, blogjects and ambient intelligence
• The consumption of networked digital devices and the transgressions and trauma implicit in the cultural shift that follows
• The behaviours and technologies that cultivate a networked culture
• New inter-disciplinary vocabularies for understanding a social, environmental and technical sense of ‘place’

Guidelines for contributors are available on the Intellect website:
http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/page/index,name=journalresources/

Editors

Mike Phillips, Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts, University of Plymouth, School of Arts & Media, Faculty of Arts. mike.phillips@plymouth.ac.uk.

Chris Speed Chair of Design Informatics School of Design
Edinburgh College of Art University of Edinburgh. c.speed@ed.ac.uk

Editorial and Production

Jane Macdonald Edinburgh College of Art, at the University of Edinburgh. jane.macdonald@ed.ac.uk

Editorial Board

Peter Anders, Architect, Kayvala Consulting, USA.
Gianni Corino, Plymouth University, UK
Elisa Giaccardi, Professor, TU Delft
Paul Green, Senior Lecturer Media Communications, Cork Institute of Technology, Ireland.
Andy Hudson-Smith, Director of CASA, Lecturer and Senior Research Fellow in Urban Planning and Geographic Visualisation, University College London, UK.
David McConville, Elumenati.com, USA
Rocio von Jungenfeld, Researcher / Artist, University of Edinburgh, UK
Jon Rogers, Senior Lecturer, Mechanical Engineering and Mechatronics, University of Dundee, UK.
Jen Southern, Independent Artist / Researcher, Lancaster University, UK.
Paul Thomas, Curtin University / University of New South Wales, Australia
Claudia Westermann, XLarch, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China