Introduction

“At the digital edge – innovations and challenges,” the seventh annual International Media and Arts Conference (iDMAaC) was held at Ball State University in November 2009. Given the ubiquity of digital media in our culture, the conference theme seems somewhat at odds with the state of the world. It’s not that the subject matter of the conference is really marginal or being written from the margins, although interdisciplinary programs and work seem to be marginalized by the taxonomies of our silo dominated world.

Reflecting on this theme and ubiquity, to say that we’re “at the edge” brings to my mind my disjointed, dim memories of junior high geometry class and of the Euclidean plane. The only edge of a plane is essentially the area of the plane itself, a vast projection dividing space. So to, the “digital edge” of media and arts is everywhere.

No, rather than placing the works presented at iDMAaC 09 at the edge (or vexingly ask the question, “at the edge of what?”), I’d argue that our writing and work is placed on the “edge” of a vast Euclidean plane, a plane that forms a portion of the foundation of the modern world as we know it and is as nearly universal as the awkwardness of those middle school years. That this plane intersects nearly all aspects of our culture is seen in the disparate disciplines demonstrated in the selected papers presented in these conference proceedings.

Jeff Ritchie, @ some point along a plane

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In this issue

• V7N1: Adapting Craft, Adopting Technology, Expressing Nature

  By Richard Elaver | March 4, 2013

  The natural evolution of craft With opposable thumbs and capacity for abstract thought, we primates have the ability to hold and manipulate tools to achieve imagined ends. Through symbolic representation, man has the added capacity […]

• V7N1: Browsing the Data Narrative: Affective Association and Visualization

  By Elise Takehana | March 4, 2013

  The personal computer is perhaps the most significant invention of the 20th century, altering our daily lives and cognitive patterns. Much more than a tool of convenience the computer introduces a new lifestyle metaphor that […]

• V7N1: Creating Smartphone Interactive News and Advertising Content: A Study Testing A Graphically Enhanced Multimedia Application for the iPhone

  By Jennifer George-Palilonis, Kirsten Smith, Michael Hanley, Suzy Smith, Chris Flook, Vinayak Tanksale | March 4, 2013

  With the emergence of new mobile devices, a need exists to test new design, functionality, and presentation strategies for news and advertising content for mobile media. This paper offers the results of a four-week study that presented iPhone users with a graphically enhanced multimedia news and advertising application.

• V7N1: Designing a proactive multi-touch display to support professional networking and planning at an interdisciplinary conference

  By Paul Gestwicki, Carrie Arnold, Joshua Gevirtz | March 4, 2013

  We present the design of Confluence, a system that enables conference attendees to explore the conceptual space of a multidisciplinary conference, to make deliberate decisions about the relative values of sessions with respect to personal interests, and to promote impromptu mutual revelation in a fluid social context. It is a novel proactive interface whose main components are a multi-touch tabletop interface, radio frequency identification, and custom information visualization software.

• V7N1: Locus Communis: Twitter as Digital Commonplace

  By Brian J. McNely | March 4, 2013

  This article considers the pedagogical import and application of digital common placing practices, seeing Twitter in particular as a way to foster invention and creativity through writing and rhetorical practice which is aggregable, searchable, persistent, and collaborative in ways that the analog commonplace book never could be.

• V7N1: Smart Montage: The New Mobile Dialectic

  By Brigid Maher | March 4, 2013

  Smart Montage is a new-media visual language development, building off of, and integrating, a number of existing concepts and technologies such as video mashups, cluster video, intellectual montage and spatial montage and can be output to both traditional devices, web and mobile devices utilizing the latest semantic technologies.

• V7N1: The O Mission

  By Mike Fry | March 4, 2013

  The Omission is a branded entertainment webisode targeted at sexually active 18-25 year olds who are potentially at risk for STDs/HIV and AIDS. The creative goal was to engage the demographic by creating a story […]