Welcome to the international conference There and Back
Again... Cultural Perspectives on Time and Space. The conference is
organized by the doctoral student council, Department of Culture and
Media Studies. More information will be available shortly on this
website.
Call for Papers is now open - please submit your abstracts by February 15, 2013. Hope to see you in Umeå this spring!
The
concepts of time and space are intrinsic parts of the factual and
fictional experience. No matter where (or when) we look at the
humanities temporality and spatiality form the basis of our research;
implicitly or explicitly. However, questions regarding space and time
are often overlooked as potential points of theoretical departure or a
basis for methodological tools. The aim of this conference is to explore
the possibilities of time and space within the diverse fields of the
humanities.
We invite paper proposals from doctoral students from all
disciplines of the humanities that address (but are not limited to) the
following aspects:
Identity and (inter)subjectivity.
Narratives and narrativity.
Representation/-s and creation of space and time.
Theoretical perspectives on temporality and/or spatiality.
The future and the fantastic.
Transgressing bodies.
Geography and migration.
History and politics. Papers on all other topics pertinent to the conference’s scope of interest are also welcome.
INFORMATION: Send electronic submissions to the organizers, Tamara Andersson, Märit Simonsson and Josefine Wälivaara: taba@kultmed.umu.se.
Abstract,
maximum 300 words should be submitted by February 15, 2013. Please
state whether you would like to make an 8 or 20 minute presentation.
Specify any technical requirements. Note that we only accept papers in
English.
The conference aims
to investigate how we might understand and theorise space in relation to
the digital image. Building on the recent 'sensory turn' in visual
scholarship, the meanings, materialities and values of the image
suggested through the interconnectedness of visual and other sensorial
relations have revived discussion of the image's transcription of space.
Part of this discussion concerns a shift in thinking about visual
production and consumption, particularly from mobile media, as happening
in movement. At the same time, this shift coincides with the
development of digital imaging technologies as digital photography and
cinema facilitate new experiences and consumption in movement, in the
process encouraging new ways of understanding space and images. The
objective of this conference is to bring together scholars in the fields
of digital media, architecture, anthropology, design, visual studies,
cultural studies, game studies, and any others who are interested
in space and digital media to expand on what has so far largely been a
'visual discourse' and to facilitate a dialogue from diverse
perspectives about questions of space, movement, the sensorial and
the digital.
Confirmed speakers
Alan Blackwell, University of Cambridge
William Brown, University of Roehampton, London
Sean Cubitt, University of Goldsmiths
Seth Giddings, University of West
of England
Asbjørn Grønstad, University of Bergen
Markos Hadjioaonnou, Duke University
Monique Ingalls, University of Cambridge
Trond Lundemo, Stockholm University
Lisa Purse, University of Reading
Aylish Wood, University of Kent
Sponsors
Supported by the Centre for Research in the
Arts, Humanities and Social
Sciences (CRASSH), University of Cambridge.
Frankenstein’s Monster Comes Home: Digital Remix and the Ends of Origin
“The
labours of men of genius, however erroneously directed, scarcely ever
fail in ultimately turning to the solid advantage of mankind. ”
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus.
“One
text that shows the disaster of the divorce between science and poetry
would be the one by Mary Shelley whose name is Frankenstein.”
Avital Ronell, Body/No Body (in conversation with Werner Herzog)
Frankenstein
by Mary Shelley (published 1818) represents a historical and literary
divergence between the poetic and the technical, and is a significant
reaction against this split as part of English Romanticism. It is the
contention of my presentation that in contemporary digital works of art
and narrative we are witnessing a re-marriage of science and poetry.
However, this union should be no automatic cause for romantic joy, as
the present situation in the education sector of most Western
democracies indicates. Today, the natural sciences are separated from
and weighted favorably in relation to the production and analysis of
culture. There is little to indicate that this is an effective strategy
in light of present global ‘network culture’ initiatives. Today, the
union of science and poetry in digital media is felt most acutely in
reading, or the performative interpretation of imaginative works.
Computer games, websites, digital works of literature, apps, virtual
worlds, interactive art, and spatial media (GIS, Kinnect, GPS, Wii) are
interpreted as they are performed and often require some knowledge of
the medium by the user in order for the work to function. This situation
represents a form of reading that has not been practiced widely in
Western academic and literate circles for several centuries. We are not
witnessing a return to what Walter J. Ong famously terms a “secondary
orality” (10-11), but rather we are seeing a form of inscription rapidly
emerge that is spatial, multi-temporal, performed, place-bound, visual,
sonic, and navigated. Two central concepts are important for
understanding how digital works are generally interpreted, and these are
simulation and remix. Representation has become the domain of mediating
objects, both virtual and physical, while reading is as much about
arranging and appropriating as it is about reference, symbolism,
iconography and interpretation. Based on a relatively small selection of
digital works this presentation examines reception practices involving
digital media, which suggest an expanded concept of reading where the
material technology of a work determines meaning as much as its
representative elements do. In this examination I demonstrate how
performance, participation, co-authoring, and remix make the reading of
the digital works. These works are
Patchwork Girl by Shelley Jackson (1995)
Last Meal Requested by Sachiko Hayashi (2004)
Façade By Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern (2006)
Second Life http://youtu.be/9g-kYvK3P-Q
CONSTRUCT by salevy_oh (2011)
The Celebration by Iris Piers (2011)
Patchwork Girl is a work of electronic literature by American author
Shelley Jackson. It was written in Storyspace and published by Eastgate
Systems in 1995. It is often discussed along with Michael Joyce's
'Afternoon, a story' as an important work of hypertext fiction.
"Shelley Jackson's brilliantly realized hypertext Patchwork Girl is an
electronic fiction that manages to be at once highly original and
intensely parasitic on its print predecessors."
The actions of the avatar, which is the identity of its operator in SL,
conform to the traditions of Varjrayana Buddhism. The combination of the
actions of the avatar and the audio is a two fold signifying structure,
with the operator of the avatar at the center. In a simulative sense
the operator of the avatar is enacting a practice that is firmly
contextualized in religious and social contexts.
Last Meal Requested is an interactive net art work by Japanese/Swedish
artist Sachiko Hayashi. It deals with themes of gender, state power,
violence and the rhetoric of the image. The original work can be
accessed at http://www.e-garde.net/lmr/lmr2.html
Selavy: What happens when you write in a diary? Of course, some people
write down “got up at 7am, drank a coffee, had lunch with Jim, went to
bed early”, but that’s not the type of diary I’m referring to. It is
rather the idea of keeping a record of selected thoughts, feelings,
moods, ideas, etc. The important part is, of course, that you do that
regularly. And that is exactly what I did in CONSTRUCT: I added one room
each day. Every one of the 75 days of the residency has its own room,
often relating to the topic of the residency itself, a time capsule of
ideas, artifacts, or reference to other work. If you read a diary, you
may get an idea about the writer and her life. If you visit CONSTRUCT,
you may get an idea about Selavy Oh and her residency.
The Celebration "combines a circular display of flatscreens, reminiscent
of a giant zoetrope, containing amateur film footage from the
1910's-1940's with different soundscapes that can be manipulated by the
audience" (Piers).
How the audience manipulates the various audio and images, and how they
combine to create an interactive and immersive space, makes The
Celebration an engaging work of interactive digital art.
The visitor enters a darkened space, where the only available light
comes from the 10 screens showing the films of The Celebration. By
moving around the space and judging their own distance, speed of
movement, posture and height in relation to the (largely invisible)
Arduino trackers, a dance begins with the audio and the cracked black
and white images from almost a century ago.
Each of the screens that make up The Celebration has an Arduino tracking
sensor attached, which maps the movements of the body of a visitor, and
implements pre-programmed changes in the presentation of images and
sound.
Unknown faces stare out from the screens, mostly laughing, talking
(unheard) and often looking straight at the camera, and at the audience.
As these faces watch, the visitor dodges and weaves, hops and slides,
while the images and sounds change. At the same time the visitor is
watching the faces, along with their bodies, their families and friends,
competitors at sports events and classmates, neighbors and colleagues.
It is according to this arrangement that a circuit of movement and gaze
is achieved by the programming of The Celebration.
Façade is a prototype of interactive drama, a new genre of character and
story-intensive interactive entertainment. Façade is freely
downloadable at interactivestory.net. In Façade, you, the player, using
your own name and gender, play the character of a longtime friend of
Grace and Trip, an attractive and materially successful couple in their
early thirties. During an evening get-together at their apartment that
quickly turns ugly, you become entangled in the high-conflict
dissolution of Grace and Trip’s marriage. No one is safe as the
accusations fly, sides are taken and irreversible decisions are forced
to be made. By the end of this intense one-act play you will have
changed the course of Grace and Trip’s lives – motivating you to re-play
the drama to find out how your interaction could make things turn out
differently the next time.
In this video Facade is used to promote an abstinence program.
From the gardens of Versailles to interactive architecture. HUMlab will host a conference in December on the interplay between media, technology and location. The conference "Media Places" is about everything from how our homes and culture changed when television came, to research into new forms of dynamic materials and interactive architectures. The conference takes place from noon on Thursday 9th December to Saturday afternoon on December 11th 2010.
Among the international guests will be prominent media scholars Chandra Mukerji (UC San Diego) and Lynn Spigel (Northwestern University) and architect Miles Kemp (co-author of the Interactive Architecture, Princeton University Press), Jesus de Francisco (art director at the company Motion Theory), Carter Emmart (American Museum of Natural History), Erica Robles (New York University) and Molly Steenson (graduate student in architecture at Princeton). From Stanford University Zephyr Frank professor of Latin American history and one of the leaders of their Spatial History Project will be presenting. The conference will be a close collaboration between Umeå University and Stanford University on "media places".
From Umeå University presenters will include Simon Lindgren (Sociology), Anna Johansson (Culture and Media Studies), Michael Frango (postdoctoral researcher HUMlab and Language Studies) and Mikael Wiberg (Design School). Both Umeå University Vice Chanceller Lena Gustafsson and Deputy Vice Chacellor Kjell Jonsson will also participating in the program.
Jennie Olofsson from Luleå University of Technology (formerly Cultural Analysis program and HUMlab), who defends her doctoral thesis on 10 December, will give a luncheon lecture on December 11 at the conference on the thesis entitled "Welding Robots, Space and Gender".
Registration for the conference can be made via its website. Seating is limited. Information about notification procedures and programs can also be found on the website.
My presentation at Association of Internet Researchers 11th conference 2010
The representation of place and space are powerful narrative tools in digitally mediated stories today. Virtual online worlds are one example of how space and place is realized in stories using avatars and navigation. In a seemingly distant tradition, the narrative systems that are collectively referred to as the Dreamtime Stories of the Australian Aboriginal peoples, with their constructions of space and place, are also highly developed and complex multimedia networks that rely on navigation. In both of these systems, along with place and space, performance and participation are the means to relating to the narrative. The individual contributions to narrative creation that are part of these systems are based on participant agency. The potential empowerment granted with participation in the narratives suggests a resistance to what M. M. Bakhtin terms single voice, of monologic narrative discourse (Bakhtin 1984). In the global perspective, the recognition of narratives from indigenous (often marginal and silenced) cultures can be argued to have democratizing and inclusive effects for the global community. That these societies have witnessed long-term survival also supports their status as sustainable, and by implication, that these practices are passed on through their narrative traditions. By paying attention to such old stories, and in particular how they integrate place and space into their transmission, we can re-purpose vocabularies for what are often described as the ‘new media’ stories of the digital age. A direct relationship to place, through narrative, is proposed as one of the positive results of this attention to old stories in the new media. An awareness of the interconnectedness of elements in ecology, for example, is a further possibility from these narratives, which set both characters and places on equal footing.
Sunday 11th July 2010 – Tuesday 13th July 2010 Mansfield College, Oxford
Reading with the Body: Interpreting Three Dimensional Media as Narrative James Barrett Umeå University/HUMlab, Sweden
This paper argues that virtual online worlds are complex sites for the realization of narrative, in a form of embodied reading that is posthuman and performative.
The in-world avatar is the embodiment of an interpreting agent in the virtual world. Such devices accomplish a number of functions in terms of the narrative realisation. The avatar contributes to the posthuman realisation of narrative through the navigation of the spatial attributes, the setting up of perspective in terms of Point of View (POV) in the reading, and the introduction of a character agent into the narrative architecture of the virtual world. Such a series of characteristics results in a cybernetic relationship between the virtual world, as a text, and its reception, interpretation and responses that can be offered to it. Such a relationship is based in the performative possibilities represented in the virtual world. Architecture becomes the grammar of reading in the virtual world, with design and code, copyright and the address of its objects and inhabitants, that which makes the narratives.
The meeting of an embodied agent in a virtual world results in tensions between phenomenological and hermeneutical conceptions of meaning. Building on the work of Harroway (1991), Aarseth (1997), Hayles (1999), and Jenkins (2003), this paper argues for the posthuman credentials of virtual worlds, as media that is read performatively. In doing so, it is proposed that the reading of virtual worlds has more in common with the role of narrative in pilgrimage, megalithic sculpture and the performance of place bound religious rituals.
From the presentation I did today for the National Association of Librarians of Sweden conference ”Men den var ju min!” – om ny medieförmedling och upphovsrätt (But that was mine! On New Media Connections and Copyright). Nice afternoon spent..
Today in HUMlab the symposium Textual Echoes: Fan Fiction and Sexualities begins. I am looking forward to it, with some really interesting papers being presented. The Cyber Echoes research group, at Umeå University, Sweden consisting of Ph.D. Katarina Gregersdotter, Ph.D. Malin Isaksson, Ph.D. Maria Lindgren Leavenworth, Ph.D. Maria Helena Svensson and Ph.D. Berit Åström have excelled at putting together the program.
On Friday Sept 5, the Second House of Sweden will be live-streaming the eLearning 2.0 Conference from Stockholm. The cost of attending the actual conference is 3000SEK, while the sessions in Second Life, with live stream, are free. Sessions start at 9am and will finish around 6pm, Stockholm time (midnight to 9am, SL time).
Friday, September 5 8:30am: Registration. Coffee and sandwich. 9:00am: Introduction to eLearning 2.0 9:15am: Conference tool kit: Second life, Jaiku, Facebook 9:45am: Web Conferencing Tools – overview for education and effective meetings (Mats Brenner, NSHU) 10:00am: The Best of Both Worlds! Moodle + Second Life = Sloodle (D.I. von Briesen) 12:00pm: lunch 1:00pm: Let’s Web Conference! (Part 1) Angele GIULIANO. Tips and tricks for successful web conferencing 2:00pm: Adobe Connect (Dan Lidholm, WeZupport) 2:20pm: DimDim (Sundar Subramanian, Co-Founder of DimDim and Director of Business Development) 2:40pm: WiZiQ - A free virtual classroom tool that needs no downloads! (Vikrama Dharman) 3:00pm: Coffee & Visit to Kista Science Tower 3:30pm: Let’s Web Conference! (Part 2) Tips and tricks for successful web conferencing 4:30pm: Conclusions / end discussion / evaluation
Barcelona, Spain, 20 March 2008 - - SLanguages 2008 is a 24-hour multilingual conference to celebrate and investigate the use of 3D virtual worlds for language education. The event will be held in Second Life on 23-24 May 2008.
SLanguages 2008 is a 24 hour multilingual conference to celebrate and investigate the use of 3D virtual worlds for language education. The conference will be held within Second Life allowing the participants to exchange ideas and share experiences simultaneously around the world. The online conference is free to attend and includes talks, workshops, discussions and posters on language education using virtual worlds such as Second Life. The events will cover methodologies, teaching tools and experiences.
Second Life is a 3D virtual world that has attracted over 12 million residents worldwide and has become a mainstream phenomenon for education, business and entertainment. Throughout 2007 Second Life has become an important tool for language learning with many universities using the 3D world for language tuition, including Michigan State University and the University of Southampton. “Interest in using Second Life for education has increased exponentially over the last year” says Second Life educational consultant Gavin Dudeney, author of The Internet and the Language Classroom, Longman 2007.
The event is an opportunity for those new to virtual language teaching to learn about the opportunities virtual worlds offer. The conference also allows experienced language educators to share experiences and ideas. "3D virtual worlds such as Second Life offer a unique form of immersive learning not found elsewhere. The SLanguages 2008 conference is the perfect opportunity to see the recent developments in this area and to meet those involved in truly innovative educational projects" says Graham Stanley, who has established the British Council's 'Learn English Second Life for Teens'.
SLanguages 2008 will be hosted within Second Life on the tropical “EduNation” islands owned by The Consultants-E. The conference starts 10am (PST) Friday 23 May and ends 10am (PST) Saturday 24 May. The seminars will continue to also reach a much wider audience through archives of the event on the www.slanguages.net website.
To register for the conference or for further information, please contact Gavin Dudeney of The Consultants-E or visit the website www.slanguages.net. The Consultants-E is an educational consultancy company specialising in online education, offering tailored consultancy in technology for education. Their consultants assist companies and educational institutions to integrate innovative technologies into their teaching practices. The company also offers courses in e-learning tools such as Second Life, wikis, podcasts and Moodle. The Consultants-E own and run three private islands in Second Life that foster education and training.
Today I am taking in the Oil 21 workshop Beyond Intellectual Property: From File Sharing to Distributed Archive at Umeå Art Academy. Some very interesting things are being discussed. The 'leaders' of the workshop are Sebastian Lutgert, and Jan Gerber from Berlin. They created in the first six months of this year the Oxdb film data base and search engine. As an excercise in intergrated visualization of information the Oxdb is a nice piece of work. It pulls in information from online torrent downloads of films. The Oxdb does not offer any sort fo downloads but rather it shows what is in circualtion at any time from what people are downloding. The films are then arranged in stll time lines with director, location, production, and more displayed. There are short samples from the films but no more than 30 seconds. As a research archive the Oxdb has a huge potentail for use. We are now watching the Danish documentry Good Copy Bad Copy (2007) It is of course online and free for all.
This morning in Second Life..horses on the lawn of the Swedish embassy
Busy. The Oil21 workshop began today and I spent a few hours listening to Sebastian Lutgert (an audio file from 2004 here)and Jan Gerber faciltiate conversation and consideration at the Umeå art school. It was an interesting session and I look foward to Thursday when I can return to OIL 21. In other news my delic.icio.us links are multiplying and have just passed 6000.
For all of this coming week I want to spend as much time as I can at the Acadamy of Fine Arts here in Umeå. The are hosting an Oil 21 event this week, The Oil of the 21st Century, Beyond Intellectual Property: From File-Sharing to Distributed Archiving. The first three days (Monday-Wednesday) are open and Thursday and Friday require registration. It seems to be related to the even that took place in Berlin October 26 to October 28 (program and news). The Umeå event will include films, discussions and more:
Beyond Intellectual Property: From File-Sharing to Distributed Archiving" is a workshop and a symposion with Sebastian Lütgert, artist, writer, theorist, and Jan Gerber, programmer and video artist, both from Berlin. Special Guest on Friday, Nov.9: Rasmus Fleischer, Historian, writer, musician and conceputalist; cofounded the collective Piratbyrån in 2003.
Situated at the core of this workshop is an ongoing research project on images and information on the internet: who owns this information - allegedly the most valuable good in this century - and who has the right to produce and distribute it? These question arise from working with images, texts, music and film, and may demand for a set of entirely new artistic strategies. Archive and context – both key words in the arts during the last 15 years – are of particular interest and subject to new definitions.
Questions (in no particular order): - What is the masterplan behind "Rights Management"? - What does file-sharing mean for the relation between production, distribution and consumption? - What do we do now that all files have been downloaded? - What is "Pirate Cinema"? - What can we expect from the "Creative Commons"? - What modes of subjectivation exist beyond the "Small Author"? - What is the answer of the artist / the filmmaker / the fotographer to these emerging questions?
The reading list is an interesting thing in itself and all the texts are online:
If you want to aquaint yourself with what the SI thought of Goddard, I put up a series of Situationist comics on my Flickr site quite a while ago...but they are still here.
My slides from the M3 conference are online (minus the video and other URL links). There a few other presentation on M3.thevirtual's Slidespace as well if you want to check them out.
Two images from my presentation at the M3 Interaction 2007 conference. It was a great experience. I have just got back home, tired but happy. I spent all day today with my two thesis supervisors in Stockholm going over my work in some detail. the title Prefacing Interaction comes from a thesis chapter on copyright, storage and distribution but we thought today that 'Prefacing' needs to be reviewed. On the plane home I thought about "Frames for Interaction: The Implied Respondent in the Digital Preface". My next task is preparing for a seminar presentation of this chapter on 2nd October. Some sleep and then back to work tomorrow. No weekend this weekend.
The M3 conference has been great. Some really interesting people and lots of great presentations. Lisa Nakamura is the keynote speaker today. I blogged a long text of the notes from Jeffrey Bardzell's presentation on the HUMlab blog last night. You can get to it from HERE.
The conference dilemma is when one has lots of interesting things to blog but if one blogs about it then one misses the interesting things. I present my paper in about 30 minutes. All is in readiness. The coffee is good here.
