1 Between the Seams Mobile Media Practice, Presence and Politics Kathleen M. Cumiskey and Larissa Hjorth INTRODUCTION Once solely a mode of telephonic communication, the mobile phone has grown to encompass numerous forms of communication and media. 1 As an example of convergence par excellence, the mobile phone—especially in the form of the smartphone—is now ushering in new promises of seamlessness between engagement with technology, Internet access and everyday common experiences. 2 Up until now, the terms “convergence” and “seamlessness” have been used relatively unproblematically in industry to highlight design in- novation in mobile technology. Seamlessness has been focused on as a means of making communication more efficient and the coordination of tasks more streamlined. Yet design innovation has also yielded social and psychological consequences of the engagement with technology, just as existing forms of media practice and intimacy have informed design features. 3 Here conver- gence is not just a technological phenomenon, but it also has social and cul- tural dimensions. This volume attempts to expand upon understandings of “seamlessness” as a mode for negotiating various forms of presence, identity, politics and place in an age of so-called smartphones through cultural, psy- chological and media studies perspectives. When one encounters seamlessness from a user’s perspective is it often experienced as a feeling of co-presence. Co-presence has been defined as a locative and social experience of two or more humans feeling “accessi- ble, available, and subject to one another” 4 . The design of mobile media has offered the potential of co-presence while, at the same time, rehearsing older mediated intimacies. 5 This phenomenon is so pervasive that debates about intimacy today are often conflated with the introduction of mobile media. 6 From affording burgeoning locative-based services to allowing for the creation of new social media micronarratives while on the go, mobile media present particular questions about the nature of “mobile seamlessness” today. What it means to be mobile, with a dialectical relationship to immobil- ity, takes various forms. Mobile media reflect technological, social, cultural and economic mobilities at the same time as amplifying older intimacies and communicative rituals. 7 When combined with the idea of seamlessness, 6244-104-001-1pass-r04.indd 1 6244-104-001-1pass-r04.indd 1 3/14/2013 1:38:41 AM 3/14/2013 1:38:41 AM