Helsinki Photomedia is a big (140 participants) international photography research conference which is now organized here for the first time, and will continue every second year. We hope that it will become an important venue for photography researchers.

Open keynote lectures:

Charlotte Cotton: Media and Mediums: photography’s place in culture.
Wednesday, March 28, 13:15 – 15:00, Sampo Auditorium.
This lecture considers the contemporary impact of the past forty years of advocacy for photography’s place in cultural institu- tions. This lecture considers the mitigating circumstances that shape the possible future of photography as a museological subject including the rise of amateur or crowd-sourced image-making, the popularity of ‘interdisciplinary’ working methods in cultural institutions and the impending retirement of the first generation of photography curators. Cotton explores the redundancies and potential offered at this distinctly mercurial epoch in photography’s history.

Ariella Azoulay: Un-photographs
Thursday, March 29, 17:00–18:30, Sampo Auditorium.
The encounter between the photographed persons and the person holding a camera is no less important than the one between the spectators and the photograph. These two encounters take place in two different realms. Although the link between them is far from linear – and sometimes circular – to hypothesize about its existence is extremely helpful in situations where photographs are missing. In my lecture i’ll present two types of missing images – “untaken photograph”, “unshowable photograph”.

David Bate: The Distribution of the Face
Friday, March 30, 9:00-10:30, Sampo Auditorium.
The new modes of distributing photographic images offer an expanded forum in which to re-consider the representational value of the human form. Whether it is in the different images of ‘the people’ or the ‘individual’, the face is enmeshed in a politics of visibility, and conflictual identificatory practices. Given the long and now vast history of the photographic description of human bodies and, in particular, the human face, this paper will focus on particular case studies, contemporary and historical, to draw out the critical issues of their production in relation to their circulation.

The lectures are in Sampo auditorium and open for public, while the conference workshops are only for registered participants. For more information about lecturers and the conference, see:

http://helsinkiphotomedia.aalto.fi/

Mlab Doctor of Arts programme, MA students are more than welcome as well.

Angela Dalle Vacche is a specialist in the intersection of aesthetic theory and film history, Angela Dalle Vacche was born in Venice, Italy and came to the United States in 1978. She has graduate degrees in American Studies and in Film Studies from Mount Holyoke College and the University of Iowa. She has been the recipient of a Fulbright Travel Grant, a Mellon Fellowship, a Rockefeller Bellagio Grant, and a Leverhulme Distinguished Professorship at the University of London, Birkbeck College, History of Art. Her retrospective: Italian Silent Divas: Passion and Defiance, for the 2000 New York Film Festival was voted as “Best Event Of The Year” by Art Forum. Dalle Vacche regularly works with the Cineteca di Bologna, The Nederlands Film Museum, Anthology Film Archive in New York, and DAMS/Gorizia in Italy. She has also lectured in Dublin, Vienna, Paris, and Portugal.

Dear colleagues and friends,

We would like to thank everyone who responded to our survey on Mobile Music Interfaces, and we would like to inform you that one of the outcomes is a workshop we will organise at the Designing Interactive Systems (DIS) conference 2012; a one day workshop on Designing Musical Interactions for Mobile Systems on Tuesday 12th June 2012 at Culture Lab, Newcastle University. This might be of interest to some of you.

We are inviting submissions for participation in the workshop, below. For further information on the workshop, including details on how to register, please see the workshop website: http://sopi.media.taik.fi/mobilemusic/ Please forward this call to people you think might be interested.

Workshop at Designing Interactive Systems (DIS) conference 2012:
Designing Musical Interactions for Mobile Systems
Tuesday 12 June 2012, Culture Lab Newcastle

Mobile music technology is a vast growth area, and has emerged as a field in which many of the specific design challenges and affordances of mobile technologies can be explored. The mobile is not just a smaller computer, and requires different tactics and strategies for user interaction. This workshop will discuss the specific interaction design challenges for building engaging and creative musical activities on mobile devices. Participants will share knowledge on interface design models that push the limits of what a mobile can offer for creating rich musical interactions. The workshop will culminate in an evening event, a public concert of mobile music.

SUBMISSION
Please download the position paper template from the workshop website,
http://sopi.media.taik.fi/mobilemusic
Email the 2-pager position papers submission in PDF format to: mobilemusic2012@gmail.com

Deadline for submissions is March 16, 2012.
Notification of acceptance by April 16, 2012.
** All workshop participants must register for both the workshop and for at least one day of the main conference. For some early indication on prices, please see the last year’s workshop & conference pricing: http://www.dis2010.org/index.php?registration

Organizers:
Koray Tahiroglu, Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture (FI)
Atau Tanaka, Goldsmiths Digital Studios, University of London (UK)
Adam Parkinson, Culture Lab, Newcastle University (UK)
Stephen Gibson, School of Design, Northumbria University (UK)

best,
Koray