| Vladimir Todorovic on Tue, 8 May 2007 16:25:00 +0200 (CEST) |
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| <nettime-ann> ISEA2008 - open call for Artist in Residency program - Singapore |
.Dear friends,
The oft-heard rhetoric of recent media technologies is that it complicates traditional
notions of spatial and geographical location insofar as these technologies are said to attend
to one's technological needs without regard to where one is; for example, one common myth
goes like this: 'one can access information about anything and communicate with people on
the net without regard to which country one is in'.
Such postulations of location-neutrality, however, are based on a fallacious assumption that one's
location is merely a secondary aspect of one's experiential environment and thus can be
phenomenologically simulated or even negligibly circumvented by the mediation of communication,
information and experiential technologies.
Location, however, is a complex experience constituted by one's cultural, economic, political and
technological environment that is differentially distributed and conceived in different parts of
the world. Thus, new technologies, even while purporting to surmount location, seem to be merely
following the contours of the location-specific 27 variables that operate in any particular space.
While many recent technologies also present themselves as 'location-aware' that enable one's ability
to address these location-specific variables in some ways, it is noteworthy that such experiences
very often rely on simulating only an indexical notion of location through a series of sensory cues
related to a particular space.
In the light of the centrality of location as a critical problematic
and possibility, this theme seeks to examine how the specificities of location mediate and are
mediated by both old and new technologies of information, communication and experience.
We invite academic research, design and artistic explorations that explore the possibilities and
problems of addressing location through media technologies. We are especially keen on works that
address the complex historical, cultural, socio-political and economic contexts that affect
location-specific interactions with such technologies.
It is interesting that the Hawaiian word, 'wiki wiki', meaning "quick" has become co-opted to
label the revolutionary systems and practices that support the easy and speedy tele-collaborative
authoring of knowledge online - i.e., wiki.
Wiki is an extremely easy-to-use authoring system for online content that cannibalizes on the
HTML protocols with additional facilities to monitor all the changes being made, revert to
content prior to editing as well as a space to discuss the evolving content. The fact that
users are able to access the pages and change content without any restrictions, defies the
development of a notion of single authorship and thus also the possibility of authorial
responsibility for such content.
The relative ease in developing online content with a
community of 'at a distance' presents wiki as a model tool for tele-collaborative production.
Wiki is yet another example of how technologies are changing the ways in which creative
knowledge production is being transformed by enabling collaboration between diverse individuals.
In this theme, we seek to initiate discussion, deliberation and development in collaborative
creation using new technologies. How have new and old technologies contributed to the
development of collaborative making? What are some of the issues raised by collaborative
creation; for example, authorship, artistic responsibility, claims to intellectual property,
conflicts and confluences of disciplinary knowledge and practices, etc. What are the spaces
of such collaborative work - what are the transitional spaces between the artists' studios
and scientific labs?
We invite artistic and academic work that addresses and/or exemplifies the problems and
possibilities of collaborative creative work that are enabled by technologies. Works that
are created by collaborations between diverse and geographically diverse communities are
especially encouraged.
The infantilization of play, that is, the historical association of playing with children
and non-serious activities, has led to the systematic exclusion of play and fun from 'serious'
creative, scientific and technological investigations. While the ludic (i.e., play-related)
dimensions of artistic creativity have been variously explored recently in both art works
and in scholarly research, the interactions between technological developments and the
pleasures described as 'fun', are few and far between.
In fact, the history of technological development has more instances of people enjoying technologies
than of those willing to acknowledge or systematically deliberate on such pleasures. It has been
argued recently that the phenomenal development of the game and entertainment industries, primarily
driven by various technologies that engender the expanded exploration of embodied pleasures, has
highlighted the potential of technologically-driven experiences of fun.
However, there are those who
assert that there is still much more need to investigate the complicities between technology and
pleasure in these experiences and to develop alternative modalities of exploring the technological
possibilities of pleasure and vice versa. In this theme, we seek to address the ways in which fun
and enjoyment interact with and complicate new media technologies both in its design, creative
development, everyday uses and discursive articulations.
We especially encourage works that critically explore the entertainment industries and their use of
recent technologies.
While the reality effects of photography had forced a re-evaluation of the conventions and
concerns of painting as well as of perception in the mid 19th century, the realistic
aspirations of recent visualization and experiential technologies (e.g., in animation,
gaming, immersive environments, mixed / augmented reality) are forcing us to reconsider our
registers of the 'real' in our media and our everyday lives.
The confusing of the real and the virtual through seamless transitions and the perpetual obfuscation
of the edges that demarcate them are increasingly the focus of scientific research as well as of
creative works. The improvisational nature and interference potential of such 'reality jamming' - i.e.,
this pressing together of the real and virtual in a context where their distinctions are deliberately
obscured - open further possibilities for research, scholarship and creative production.
In this theme, we also seek to encourage artists and researchers to explore the ways in which the
'virtual' presences and experiences of folklore, religious beliefs, magical rituals and science and
media-fiction interact with and counteract the lived experiences of the 'real'. Scholarly presentations,
art works and research in the areas of virtual, mixed and augmented reality, not restricted to the
technological platforms and equipment that enable such experiences, are especially encouraged.
The 'borderless world' and the 'global village' are different imaginaries of a world
seemingly transformed by the speed and efficiency of information, communication and
experiential technologies - of a world where the political borders of nation states were
considered to be either irrelevant or difficult to sustain.
The age that announced the 'borderless world' is, however, ironically also the one that has
displayed the greatest anxiety about this breakdown and invested the largest amount of
resources and time in the increasing surveillance and control of these borders. While these
borders historically have been permeable to certain kinds of economic, socio-cultural,
political and military transactions (i.e., trade, cultural objects and experiences, religious
missions, etc.), the development of technologies that facilitated greater communication and
transportation across them has only increased the anxiety to control these transactions.
The contestation over these borders and of the transmissions across them continues to be a
struggle as much determined by technological developments as it is by the politics, cultures
and socio-economic systems that mediate within and between these borders. The question of
how one negotiates technological developments that simultaneously contribute to the increasing
opening and ossification of borders is of utmost significance and in this theme, we invite
artistic and scholarly work that engages this question.
We seek to showcase research and creative interventions that deal with the strategic and tactical possibilities of networking, communication and experiential technologies in ways that enable the emergence of different conceptions of borders, nation-states and of the infectious transmissions that problematize these demarcations.
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