Category Archives: Conferences

HLS2018: Hybrid Labs Symposium at Aalto

Hybrid Labs Symposium

The Third Renewable Futures Conference

May 30 – June 1, 2018,
Aalto University, Otaniemi Campus, Espoo City
Venues: Otakaari 1X (30–31 May), Otakaari 7 (1 June)

Rooms in Otakaari 1X: A1 (1st floor) and A2 (2nd floor)
Rooms in Otakaari 7: Studio Kipsari and Meeting Room 283 (1st floor)

Hybrid Labs is the third edition of Renewable Futures conference that aims to challenge the future of knowledge creation through art and science. The HYBRID LABS will take place from May 30 to June 1, 2018 at Aalto University in Espoo, Finland, in the context of Aalto Festival. Celebrating 50 years of Leonardo journal and community, the HYBRID LABS conference will look back into the history of art and science collaboration, with an intent to reconsider and envision the future of hybrid laboratories – where scientific research and artistic practice meet and interact.

Our three-day media event medley includes:

May 30, 2018 – Exhibition Opening 

Opening Programme features Oslofjord Ecologies Extended exhibition opening. The exhibition is based on results of artistic research processes following common workshops, field trips and earlier exhibitions and performances linked to the Creative Europe project Renewable Futures and the Nordic collaboration Hybrid Labs. Curated by Kristin Bergaust on behalf of Art in Society research group at HiOA, this cross-disciplinary exhibition includes contributions from visual arts, art and science,  theatre, performance, design, visual culture, art didactics and urban research. See more.

May 31, 2018 – Renewable Futures Conference

Renewable Futures conference will begin with keynotes addressing HYBRID LABS topic from different broader perspectives. Parallel tracks of presentations will discuss the future of HYBRID LABS, art and science collaboration, focusing on five main topics: hybrid practices (in art and science), hybrid storytelling, hybrid fabrication, hybrid reality, and hybrid economies.

June 1, 2018 – Collaboratory Day, Celebrating Leonardo’s 50th Anniversary  

Collaboratory day and Leonardo birthday celebration includes guided tours of several of the Otaniemi campus laboratories and a workshop on collaboratory methods during the morning followed by afternoon keynote, sauna, and dinner. The topic of the keynote will be about Arts and Science collaboration and planetary healing. Also throughout the Lab tours, we want to stress the heritage aspects of the spaces, the campus and innovative aspects of art and science collaboration.

See programme Hybrid Labs Symposium 2018.

Keynote Speakers:

  • Roger MALINA / Physicist, Astronomer / Executive Editor, Leonardo Publications at M.I.T Press / Professor, the University of Texas at Dallas, USA
  • Gediminas URBONAS / Professor, the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT-MIT) / Associate Professor in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Architecture, Cambridge, USA
  • Nina CZEGLEDY / Artist, Curator and Educator on Art, Science and Technology / Leonardo Community, Toronto, Canada
  • Judith VAN DER ELST / Anthropologist, Independent Researcher, Netherlands
  • Vladimir IVANOV / Professor, St. Petersburg Technical University, Collaboratory methods/heritage workshop
  • Toni KONITK / Professor of Design of Structures, Aalto University, Department of Architecture, Finland
  • Saara HACKLIN / Curator, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland
  • Pia FRICKER /Adjunct Professor, Department of Architecture, Aalto University, Finland

Click for more information on Keynote speakers and their presentations.

On-the-door tickets available at the registration desk (Otakaari 1X, 1st floor):

30 May: 12:00–14:00, and 16:00–18:00
31 May: 8:00–9:00

Price: 48 € / 25€ students
Payments only with card.

The fee allows for participation in the whole programme excluding Friday 1 June Dinner and coffees and snacks.

Call for Proposals: RF 2018: Hybrid Labs Symposium

Call for Proposals

RF 2018: Hybrid Labs Symposium

May 30 – June 1, 2018
Aalto University, Espoo, Finland
– – – – – –
Deadline – extended to 5 March, 2018
APPLY NOW: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=hls2018
– – – – – –
http://hybridlabs.aalto.fi
Hybrid Labs is the third edition of Renewable Futures conference that aims to challenge the future of knowledge creation through art and science. The HYBRID LABS will take place from May 30 to June 1, 2018 at Aalto University in Espoo, Finland, in the context of Aalto Festival. Celebrating 50 years of Leonardo journal and community, the HYBRID LABS conference will look back into the history of art and science collaboration, with an intent to reconsider and envision the future of hybrid laboratories – where scientific research and artistic practice meet and interact.

Our three-day media event medley includes:

May 30, 2018 – Exhibition Opening
Opening Programme features Oslofjord Ecologies Extended exhibition opening. The exhibition is based on results of artistic research processes following common workshops, field trips and earlier exhibitions and performances linked to the Creative Europe project Renewable Futures and the Nordic collaboration Hybrid Labs. Curated by Kristin Bergaust on behalf of Art in Society research group at HiOA, this cross-disciplinary exhibition includes contributions from visual arts, art and science, theatre, performance, design, visual culture, art didactics and urban research.

May 31, 2018 – Renewable Futures Conference
Renewable Futures conference will begin with keynotes addressing HYBRID LABS topic from different broader perspectives. Parallel tracks of presentations will discuss the future of HYBRID LABS, art and science collaboration, focusing on five main topics: hybrid practices (in art and science), hybrid storytelling, hybrid fabrication, hybrid reality, and hybrid economies.

June 1, 2018 – Collaboratory Day, Celebrating Leonardo’s 50th Anniversary
Collaboratory day and Leonardo birthday celebration includes guided tours of several of the Otaniemi campus laboratories and a workshop on collaboratory methods during the morning followed by afternoon keynote, sauna, and dinner. The topic of the keynote will be about Arts and Science collaboration and planetary healing. Also throughout the Lab tours, we want to stress the heritage aspects of the spaces, the campus and innovative aspects of art and science collaboration.
– – – – – –

Keynote Speakers:

  • Roger MALINA / Executive Editor, Leonardo Publications at M.I.T Press / Professor, the University of Texas at Dallas.
  • Nina CZEGLEDY / Artist, Curator and Educator on Art, Science and Technology / Leonardo Community, Toronto, Canada
  • + others – to be confirmed

– – – – – –

More info: http://hybridlabs.aalto.fi/hls-2018-cfp-hybrid-labs-symposium-2018/

– – – – – –

Registration:

Early Bird fee until 15 April, 2018.

Early Bird Full Price: 68 EUR (normal price 86 eur).
Early Bird Student Price: 42 EUR (normal student price 56 eur).

Included: Coffee and Snacks, Sauna and Dinner (Lunch is not included).

REGISTER AT: https://eage.aalto.fi/?f/en/HLS2018

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CALL FOR PROPOSALS

We welcome submissions by academic researchers, designers, artists, scientists, students, social entrepreneurs, visionaries and other creative thinkers and practitioners to submit their proposals related to the topics (below).

List of Topics

  • hybrid practices – combining art and science, technology and ecology, digital and biological in research and education
  • hybrid storytelling – heritage and storytelling for linking virtual with the material domain of everyday life
  • hybrid fabrication – innovative maker trends in art and design practices
  • hybrid reality – interventions into the uncritical excitement about virtual reality, artificial intelligence and machine learning
  • hybrid economies – artistic practices in-between sharing and selling, networking and fabricating

Submission Guidelines

The proposals could be submitted for the following forms of presentations:

  • academic papers (full / short)
  • artistic presentations (performative lectures / performances / participatory sessions)
  • poster sessions

The conference proposals should include:

  • Title and abstract (250 words max – text fields ‘Title’ and ‘Abstract’), mandatory;
  • five to six keywords (text field ‘Keywords’), mandatory;
  • short biography: 100 words (text field ‘Comments’), mandatory;
  • you can also upload a file containing any additional relevant information, optional;
  • please indicate in your abstract if you want to submit pictures or videos (max 100Mb) as part of your final submission.

Deadline for Conference Proposals (Abstracts) – February 19, 2018
Notifications of acceptance – March 2, 2018
APPLY NOW: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=hls2018

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Conference Submissions – for Selected Abstracts:

After receiving the notifications, the selected participants will be asked to submit their Full/Short Papers (working version – for pre-review), Posters (layout) and Artistic Presentations (Slides) by May 14, 2018.

1. Full/Short Paper Submission:
If your abstract for full/short paper will be selected, you will be asked to submit full/short paper for pre-review before the conference (working version). All papers must be original and not simultaneously submitted to another journal or conference:
– Full papers are up to 6000 words long including references and the presenter must prepare 20+10 minutes presentation.
– Short papers are up to 3000 words long including references and the presenter must prepare 10+5 minutes presentation.

2. Artistic Presentations:
Presentations should be prepared as powerpoint or keynote slides.

3. Posters:
Posters should be made in A1 format, and submitted as PDF.

Publication

Shortly after the conference, the selected participants will be asked to submit their final version of the paper for peer-review. The submitted papers will undergo the double-blind peer-review process to be published in Acoustic Space journal series (Vol. 18, 2019).

– – – – – –
When submitting your final papers, you should keep in mind the following:

  • Your name. Delete your name from the first page or where ever it is mentioned in the paper.
  • Acknowledgements. Please delete or mark “Acknowledgements removed”, if you have acknowledgements or thanks to those who helped you with the paper.
  • Document properties. Please don’t send word or similar documents, because it might include personal information in the document (for example in Word, go to file à properties).
  • Send your paper in pdf-format.
  • Self-citation. Please anonymize your references or citations to your previous works.
  • Images and Videos. Please hide all such information that can reveal you in videos or images you are sending along with your paper.

More info about the Acoustic Space, peer-reviewed journal series:
http://acousticspacejournal.com

– – – – – –

Conference website http://hybridlabs.aalto.fi
Submission link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=hls2018
Proposal submission deadline February 19, 2018
Notifications of acceptance March 4, 2018
Deadline for selected abstracts May 14, 2018
REGISTRATION TO CONFERENCE: https://eage.aalto.fi/?f/en/HLS2018

– – – – – –

COMMITTEES

Conference Chair
Prof. Lily Díaz

The Local Conference Organisational Board
Prof. Lily DIAZ-KOMMONEN / Head of Research Department of Media, Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Espoo, Finland
Prof. Rasa SMITE / Liepaja University / RIXC / Riga, Latvia
Prof. Kristin BERGAUST / Oslo and Akershus University, Norway
Nina CZEGLEDY, Leonardo Community, Toronto, Canada
Juhani TENHUNEN / Aalto Studios, Espoo, Finland
Saara MÄNTYLÄ / Department of Media, Aalto University, Espoo, Finland.

The International Scientific Board of Renewable Futures Conference
Prof. Lev MANOVICH / Cultural Analytics Lab / The Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA
Ph.D. Jussi PARIKKA / Winchester School of Art / University of Southampton / UK
Ph.D. Geoff COX / School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University, Denmark
Assoc. Prof. Laura BELOFF / IT University, Copenhagen / Finnish Bioart Society, Helsinki, Finland
Prof. Ursula DAMM / Bauhaus University Weimar, Germany
Dr. Vytautas MICHELKEVICIUS / Nida Art Colony, Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania
Ph.D. Margrét Elísabet ÓLAFSDÓTTIR / Art Education at the University of Akureyri, Iceland
Assoc. Prof. Ilva SKULTE / Riga Stradins University, Latvia
Dr. art. Piibe PIIRMA / Tallinn University / Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn, Estonia
Ph. D. Raivo KELOMEES / Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn, Estonia
Prof. Miško ŠUVAKOVIĆ / Faculty for Media and Communication, University Singidunum, Belgrade, Serbia
Dr. Ellen PEARLMAN / Parsons / New School University, New York, USA
Ph.D. Chris HALES / Assist. Prof. and Study Director of New Media Art Doctoral Programe, Liepaja University, Liepaja, Latvia
Raphael KIM / PhD Student, Media and Arts Technology, Queen Mary University London, UK

Venue
Aalto University, Otakaari 1 x, Espoo Finland

Contact
lily.diaz@aalto.fi / saara.mantyla@aalto.fi

Sponsors
NORDPLUS
Aalto University

– – – – – –
Please note that this call was updated after its first publication.

CFP: The Literary in Life (LILI18): The Social, Affective and Experimental in Narratives across Media

venue and date: University of Tampere, Finland, 13–15 June 2018

LILI18 targets the social, affective and experimental in literature, and explores literary forms of mediation in everyday life. How are literary conventions and devices, both narrative and poetic, employed in social and cultural meaning-making? We investigate the use of stories and metaphors, affective tone and emotion-expressions, as well as literary experimenting, in literature and social life. This approach will allow literary scholarship to regain its focus on literary works and literariness, and open up the boundaries that in many research traditions have isolated artworks from the world of everyday life and routine textual practices. These boundaries are medial in nature, which means that the traffic between art and the everyday is mediated in the form of social, affective and experimental uses of narrative and poetic modes. We are consistently exposed to media platforms, both old and new, that sustain and challenge our perceptions of the world, and employ similar narrative and poetic, as well as rhetorical and aesthetic, means across the board. In this way, we are presented with medial representations that engage us both affectively and in terms of cultural knowledge. In effect, private experiences are mediated as a public process we may have little control over.

Confirmed keynote speakers:

· Prof. Amy Shuman, Department of English (folklore, narrative, and critical theory), The Ohio State University, US

· Prof. Winfried Menninghaus, Director of Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

· Dr. Jan-Noël Thon, Department of Culture, Film and Media, University of Nottingham, UK

Topics may address but are not limited to (listed alphabetically):

· affects, emotion-expressions and effects in poetry and narrative

· experience and affectivity in mediation / demediation / remediation

· experiencing the experimental: affects, feelings, politics

· experimenting with the print medium: uses and misuses

· means of representing vicarious narrative experience

· medialities, modalities, and the concept of medium-specificity

· new media platforms and affective phenomena (e.g. virality)

· relationship between form and ideology, poetics and rhetorics

· representation of mind, emotions and consciousness in narrative and poetic environments

· representation of the everyday and everyday affects

· shifts between narrative media, intermedial blends and allusions

· situational affects and emotional scripts in life and literature

· traffic of literary modes and means between artistic and everyday storytelling

· types of narrative and narrativity in literature and new media

The length of your proposal for a 20-minute presentation should not exceed 300 words.
Add a bio note (max. 150 words) that includes your affiliation and email address.
Name your file [firstname lastname] and submit it as a pdf.
If you wish to propose a panel of 3–4 papers, include a description of the panel (max. 300 words), papers (max. 200 words each), and bio notes (max. 150 words each).

Submit your proposal at https://www.lyyti.fi/reg/lili2018_callforpapers by 15 Nov 2017.
Decisions on all proposals will be made by 15 Dec 2017.

Conference website: https://events.uta.fi/lili2018/

The Academy of Finland research project “Literary in Life”
https://www.uta.fi/ltl/en/plural/projects/ongoing/LILI.html

Call for Proposals: DHN 2018

Digital Humanities in the Nordic Countries calls for submissions for its 2018 conference in Helsinki, Finland, 7–9 March 2018.

In 2018, the conference seeks to extend the scope of digital humanities research covered, both into new areas, as well as beyond the Nordic and Baltic countries. In pursuit of this, in addition to the abstracts familiar from humanities traditions, we also adopt a call for publication ready texts as is the tradition in computer science conferences. Therefore, we accept the following types of submissions:

  1. Publication ready texts of length appropriate to the topic. Accepted papers will be submitted to the CEUR-WS proceedings series for publication in a citable form. Layout for the papers is not absolutely mandated, but we suggest you use the Springer LNCS templates to ensure a uniform look for the proceedings.
    – Long paper: 8-12 pages, presented in 20 min plus 10 min for Q&A
    – Short paper: 4-8 pages, presented in 10 min plus 5 min for Q&A
    – Poster/demo: 2-4 pages, presented as an A1 academic poster in a poster session.
  2. Abstracts of a maximum of 2000 words. Proposals are expected to indicate a preference between a) long, b) short, or c) poster/demo format for presentation. Approved abstracts will be published in a book of abstracts on the conference website.

Submissions to the conference are now open at ConfTool!

Im­port­ant dates
The call for proposals opened on 28 August 2017, and the deadline for submitting proposals is 25 October 2017. Presenters will be notified of acceptance by 8 January 2018. For papers accepted into the citable proceedings, there is an additional deadline of 5 February 2018 for producing a final version of your paper that takes into account the comments made by the reviewers.

This year, the conference welcomes in particular work related to the following themes:

History

While the number of researchers describing themselves as digital historians is increasing, computational approaches to history have rarely captured the attention of those without innate interest in digital humanities. To address this, we particularly invite presentations of historical research whose use of digital methods advances the overall methodological basis of the field.

Cultural Heritage

Libraries, galleries, archives and museums are making vast amounts of cultural heritage openly digitally available. However, tapping into these resources for research requires cultivating co-operation and trust between scholars and heritage institutions, due to the cultural, institutional, legal and technical boundaries crossed. We invite proposals describing such co-operation – examples of great resources for cultural heritage scholarship, of problems solved using such data, as well as e.g. intellectual property rights issues.

Games

Humanities perspectives on games are an established part of the game studies community. Yet their relationship with digital humanities remains undefined. Digitality and games, digital methods and games, games as digital methods, and so on are all areas available for research. We invite proposals that address high-level game concepts like “fun”, “immersion”, “design”, “interactivity”, etc positioned as points of contact with the digital.

Future

We also invite proposals in the broad category of ”Future”. Accepted proposals will still fit in the overall context of the conference and highlight new perspectives to the digital humanities. Submissions may range from applications of data science to humanities research to work on human-machine interaction and ecological digital humanities. We also welcome reflections on the future of the digital humanities, as well as the societal impact of the humanities.

Finally, the overarching theme this year is Open Science. This pragmatic concept emphasises the role of transparent and reproducible research practices, open dissemination of results, and new forms of collaboration, all greatly facilitated by digitalisation. All proposals are invited to reflect on the benefits, challenges, and prospects of open science for their own research.

Call for work­shops/pan­els and tu­tori­als
In addition to individual papers, the conference calls for interested parties to submit proposals for workshops/panels and tutorial sessions to be held preceding the conference. Workshops/panels gather together participants around a particular subtopic, while tutorials present a useful tool or method of interest to the digital humanities community. Either can take the form of either a half or a full day session, and they generally take place the day prior to the conference.

Proposals should include the session format, title, and a short description of its topic (max 2000 words) as well as the contact information of the person/s responsible. Proposals should also include the following: intended audience, approximate number of participants, and any special technical requirements.

Submit your workshop/tutorial at the conference ConfTool.

 

MORE AT: https://www.helsinki.fi/en/helsinki-centre-for-digital-humanities/dhn-2018/call-for-proposals?

Surveillance beyond borders and boundaries

Call for Papers for a conference organised by the Surveillance Studies Network in Aarhus (Denmark) 7 – 9 June 2018. This will be their 8th conference.

Call for Papers for a conference organised by the Surveillance Studies Network in Aarhus (Denmark) 7 – 9 June 2018. This will be their 8th conference; the banner above is ripped from their 6th in 2014.

You can download the full CfP (from which I’ve extracted the details below) here.

SURVEILLANCE BEYOND BORDERS AND BOUNDARIES

Recent years have witnessed the increasing scope, reach and pervasiveness of surveil- lance. It now operates on a scale ranging from the genome to the universe. Across the spheres of private and public life and the spaces between, surveillance mediates, documents and facilitates a wide range of activities. At the same time, surveillance practices now reach beyond the corporal and temporal boundaries of life itself, no longer resting on the individual as subject, but instead falling both within and beyond it. This emphasises the porosity of such categories. Pervasive surveillance produces new articulations of power and animates ows of people, information and capital, harbouring potential for myriad opportunities as well as harms. With this growth of surveillance comes in- creasing complexity and paradox.

Within this milieu, these issues are particularly pronounced, controversial and prescient in relation to borders and boundaries. Surveillance practices have long been associated with shoring up territorial and categorical borders, yet in the digital age such practices become accelerated, in many cases beyond the speed of human comprehension. Highly dynamic inscriptions of difference, abnormality and undesirability are now commonplace. At the same time, surveillance practices transcend and challenge erstwhile articulations of borders and boundaries, including enabling mobility for some, uniting formerly fractured assemblies of information and the capacitating borderless passage of data.

The conference

Since 2004 the Biennial Surveillance Studies Network conference has become established as the world’s most significant gathering of surveillance studies experts. The Surveillance Studies Network is a registered charitable company dedicated to the study of surveillance in all its forms, and the free distribution of scholarly information, and con- stitutes the largest association of surveillance scholars in the world. The Surveillance Studies Network owns the leading surveillance-focused peer-reviewed journal Surveillance & Society, which has held long association with the conference. We encourage presenters to submit fully formed papers to the journal to be considered for publication.

We call for papers and panels from all areas of critical enquiry that seek to examine such complex articulations and impacts of surveillance in contemporary society. We invite participants to discuss, develop or demolish the borders and boundaries of surveillance. In particular, we welcome interventions that are truly interdisciplinary, multi-disciplinary, or transdisciplinary in scope and reach, from academics, activists, artists, and policy-makers, especially those who sit on the borderlands between academia and practice-based knowledge production.

Key themes include, but are not limited to:
Authority, democracy and surveillance
Surveillance and everyday life
History of surveillance
Surveillance and digital/social media
Art, action and surveillance
Surveillance infrastructures and architectures
Managing borders and uncertainty
Theories of surveillance
Ethics, philosophy, trust and intimacy in and of surveillance
Regulation, politics and governance of surveillance
Algorithmic surveillance and big data
Resistance to surveillance
Non-technological and interpersonal surveillance

Paper Proposals

Paper sessions will be composed by the Organising Committee based on the individual Paper Proposals submitted. Paper Proposals should consist of: Name(s) of Author(s); Affiliation(s) of Author(s); Proposed Title of Paper; An abstract of up to 150 words.

On acceptance paper proposers will be invited to submit an extended abstract, presentation summary, paper outline or developed paper draft of at least 2000 words for publication in the delegates area of the conference website ahead of the event. This can be submitted anytime up until the May deadline.

Visual or other artistic submissions

We welcome and encourage alternative formats, including but not limited to visual dis- plays and other artistic installations. These may include but are not limited to lms, documentaries, photographic exhibitions, architectural modeling and digital-mediated artistic forms. Artistic submissions should consist of: Name(s) of proposer/artist; Affiliation(s); An overview of the proposed submission of up to 250 words.

Panel Proposals

Panels are sessions that bring together a diverse group of panelists with varied views on a topic related to the conference theme. The session format should engage the panelists and audience in an interactive discussion. Panels should be designed to fit in a 90-minute session. Panel Proposals should consist of: Name(s) of Organiser(s); Affiliations; Proposed Title of Panel; An abstract of up to 300 words describing the panel, including why the panel is of interest to the conference, and the proposed format of the panel; Name(s) and Affiliation(s) and abstracts for all included papers (150 words) of all proposed panelists. Speakers included in successful panel proposals also will be required to later submit the more developed extended abstract, presentation summary, paper outline or developed paper draft of at least 2000 words as per the instructions for paper proposals above. NB: Organisers must secure the agreement of all proposed panelists before submitting the Panel Proposal.

Deadline

All proposals should be submitted by December 31st 2017.  Decisions will be returned by January 31st 2018.

 

All extended outlines/presentation summaries/paper drafts to be submitted by May 1st 2018

Submissions should be made through the EasyChair submission webportal here.

 

Contact: ssn2018@cc.au.dk

 

Niklas Kullström

CfP: Helsinki Photomedia Conference 2018

Call for Papers

Helsinki Photomedia 2018

March 26 -28, 2018
Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland

helsinkiphotomedia.aalto.fi

Deadline for 500 word abstracts: October 31, 2017

Theme: Reconsidering the “Post-truth Condition”: Epistemologies of the photographic image.

Contemporary photography takes place in a world where the relation between facts and values is a social and political issue which has repercussions in art and education as well. The public discussions on information warfare, fake news and manipulated media contents have shaken the epistemology of news media and generally revitalized the questions of trustfulness of media representations. Problematic statements about the ‘post-truth condition’ symptomatically reflect this situation and pose new challenges to our understanding of the epistemology of the photographic image.

It is vital to reconsider the ‘post-truth condition’ as a discursive and imaginary formation. This implies that its claims cannot be taken at face value. At the same time, however, as a socially seducing phenomenon, it arranges new settings for old questions of photographic knowledge, authenticity, veracity and truthfulness. It postulates a political and social terrain where photographic images circulate and participate in the formation of socially efficient visual knowledge.

Hence, the controversial notion of post-truth actualizes questions of the quality of photographic information, knowledge and data. Rich in detail, photographs are able to communicate in a constative, laconic manner. Photographs are “dense data” and their mute appearances are malleable material for various information structures.

Helsinki Photomedia 2018 invites critical examinations, artistic reflections and presentations of educational projects of photography after the ‘post-truth condition’, especially work which addresses the variety of ends that photographic truth, authenticity, indexicality, manipulation and suspicion have to stand for. Photomedia 2018 will take up the multifaceted question concerning the photographic epistemology by focusing on topics including (but not limited to):

  • Evidence and testimony
  • Photography and knowledge
  • Technical aspects of photographic data
  • Visual information and counter-information
  • Strategies of authentication
  • Photography and education

 

———

Keynote speakers 2018:

Professor Robert Hariman (Northwestern University)

Professor John Lucaites (Indiana University)

Professor Barbie Zelizer (University of Pennsylvania)

Artist Keynote Professor Walid Raad (The Cooper Union, NYC)

Hariman and Lucaites are authors of The Public Image, Photography and Civic Spectatorship (2016) and No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy (2007).

Zelizer’s work on photography includes the books About to Die: How News Images Move the Public (2010) and Remembering to Forget: Holocaust Memory through the Camera’s Eye (2000).

Artist keynote speaker Walid Raad is a contemporary media artist who’s works include The Atlas Group project about the contemporary history of Lebanon.

———
Helsinki Photomedia is a biennial photography research conference organized by four Finnish universities since 2012. The conference offers various platforms where artistic, philosophical, social, cultural, economical and technological approaches to photography meet. We welcome submissions from all areas of photography research. Since 2016 photography education has been one of the areas and we welcome submissions for the educational panel for presenting educational projects and related research. The conference language is English.

Important dates:

31 October 2017 – Deadline for submissions (500 word abstracts) by 23.59 Finnish time (UCT +2:00)

1 December 2017 – Notifications of Acceptance

1 March 2018 – Deadline for Registration

26–28 March 2018 – Conference in Helsinki

———

helsinkiphotomedia.aalto.fi

Reimagining video conferencing – a design workshop with MIT MediaLab and Aalto MediaLab

Reimagining video conferencing is a co-design workshop aiming to create alternative solutions for virtual panel discussions, video conferencing and other kinds of group meetings online. In this participatory session we will think and discuss about user experiences for a tool that would extend user engagement over physical location and achieve a rich ecology for participation online. The layout and user interface of a tool for group video conferencing would be challenged and reimagined also. This event is organised and led by the Learning Environments research group in MediaLab, department of Art, design and architecture, Aalto University, FI in collaboration with MIT Media Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA.
It is free and open for participation for students and non-students.

Sign up by sending an email to jana.pejoska@aalto.fi including your name, department, study focus, skills (design, development, etc.) and a short description why you are applying.
Thu 14 September
13:30-16:30
Johanna, Learning Centre
Public event

6th International Conference on Communication, Media, Technology and Design

www.cmdconf.net

October 06 – 08, 2017 – Famagusta – North Cyprus

Abstract Submissions Deadline: August 31, 2017

This conference aims for the exchange of information on research, development, and applications are categorized under main headings as Communication Technologies, Social Media, Visual Communication and Design, Integrated Marketing Communication, Communication Education, Film Studies, Communication Barriers, Health Communication, Media Management and Economics, Political Communication, Discourse Analysis, Communication in Education, and Communication and Media Studies in General.

We invite you to attend The International Conference on Communication, Media Studies and Design and submit proposals for papers.

Accepted papers will be included in the Conference Proceedings (Soft Copy) and published in the conference website. Besides, all papers will be published in one of the following supporting journals.

– Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies (OJCMT)

– Contemporary Educational Technology (CEDTECH)

– Online Journal of Art and Design (OJAD)

– The Online Journal of Communication and Media (TOJCAM)

CFP: iXDA and Civic Design

2 CfP’s:

1) iXDA call open due 13 Sep 17 at 11.59 CET; LYON FRANCE 3-8 Feb 2018
Interaction18.ixda.org
Lyon France
Call for Proposals due 13 Sep 2017 at 11.59 CET
———————————-
2) Call for Participation: Civic Design | On the Theory and Practice of the Social and Political in Design

14. Annual Conference | German Society for Design Theory and Research (DGTF) | Burg Giebichstein University of Art and Design, Halle | 01.-02.12.2017

We are currently experiencing a new discursive and practical shift toward the political and social dimensions in design. In close interaction to social transformations of the last few decades, the discipline of design is currently seeking to redefine itself in its relationship to socio-political complexity. The plethora of terms such as social design, transition design, transformative design and design for social innovation could be seen as a new “social turn” for design, which now increasingly understands its tasks to include programmatic transformation of societal realities. Design competency is gaining ground in transdisciplinary contexts and is consulted ever more on a practical as well as a discursive level, at the interface between business, civil society and politics, in the proverbial elevator of the bottom-up and the top-down. New questions arise regarding how roles are to be understood, depth of impact and fields of activity for design in sociopolitical transformation processes. And the disciplinary borderlines are being redrawn for design’s political realm of action.

Design has indeed always had its hand in or at least touched upon big social change processes – whether through taking a modernist stance, like the hfg Ulm or the Bauhaus, or its antithesis in disegno radicale or later critical design, but also through applying designerly strategies in the construction of populist folk identities, as with National Socialism. Today, however, a reevaluation seems to be shifting the very object of design: away from the creation of thingly artifacts toward the design of processes in the context of social complexity. Such design must be understood both conceptually and discursively in regards to its dedicated immediacy to change processes, as it is attributed with the capability to contribute to change in conjunction with other actors.

TThis development is not reducible to a broadening of design’s action horizon, rather it extends beyond the discipline itself. For example, policy makers are increasingly taking up design as a promising field for partnerships and methodologies. Complementary, new forms of communities, collectives, civic initiatives and DIY cultures are gaining political significance and are developing new forms of access and participation, drawing attention to design as a planning discipline at the intersection of digital technology, the open source community and cultural & urban studies. Digitization processes initiate and reinforce these developments, e.g. through the diversification of institutions of information, through new avenues of production or through the rising importance of digital platforms for self-organization and opinion forming.

This is the backdrop for the 14th annual DGTF Conference. We wish to more clearly define the fields of action between political decision-making power, civil society and the spheres of everyday life.

Our object of discussion will be the internal and interdisciplinary negotiations of the social and the political in design. We will be addressing both the practical as well as the theoretical and normative approaches to situate and differentiate design’s new relations to politics and society. We will also try to trace the historical developments that have led to this new negotiation in order to form the basis for discussion that synthesizes past theses and goes further.
In probing these dimensions, we will ask the following questions:

– What historical approaches are being referred to, which are we ignoring?
– What models and self-understandings do we assume, how can we contextualize these roles?
– What impact can we have on this context, what contributions can we make, where are the pitfalls?
– How far dare we go in understanding these new developments as “design” and at what point are we talking about something else entirely?

We pursue these issues in moderated panels, short lectures and parallel workshops/roundtables, as well as with an accompanying exhibition. Our three curated panels will

1. look at the origins – by asking what approaches do we refer to when discussing social and political design,

2. situate where the status quo lies in the tension between current design approaches in the area of political     initiatives and at the level of established institutions, and

3. inquire into the role of digitization processes for the evolution of a “civic design.”

In addition to the panels, we extend the invitation to contributions that conform to the following formats:
Short lectures (10 minutes): Lectures may present current practical project examples as well as discursive approaches connected to the conference theme on design practice and research and which fall  within the scope of social or political design.

Roundtables and workshops (90 minutes each): We welcome suggestions for parallel roundtables and workshops for the second half of the last conference day. We are equally open to recommendations for moderation and forms that foster further discussion and brings together themes presented. Roundtables should be an open forum for views on teaching, research and practice. For workshops we invite you to submit ideas with hands-on experiments from the field of civil tech and physical computing.

Exhibition contributions: For the accompanying exhibition, posters, prototypes, videos, objects or other items may be submitted that fit the context of the conference. The entries can be commentaries, approaches to problem solving or documentations of the research and design process. Your submissions should not exceed 500 words and must be submitted as a PDF file to mail@dgtf.de. The deadline for submissions is 31.08.2017. The selection will be made by the conference committee in cooperation with external evaluators. The notification will be sent by 30.09.2017. The “Civic Design” conference will take place on the 1st and 2nd of December 2017. The Burg Giebichenstein, University of Art and Design Halle will host the event. The conference committee consists of Bianca Herlo, Andreas Unteidig and Matthias Görlich. Please contact Malte Bergmann, head of the DGTF secretariat and coordinator of this year’s meeting, with your questions.

Please note the important dates:
31. August: Submission of full papers

30. September: Notification of acceptance