creativity/machine

I’m going to be presenting at this - should be an interesting collision of practitioners and researchers (and people who are both):

First Person: International Digital Storytelling Conference
Friday 3 February - Sunday 5 February 2006
The Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne, Australia

First Person will showcase Digital Storytelling as a new cinema of personal portrait, engage with story as an interactive practice and investigate the use of technology to share meaningful stories as a global community.

CALL FOR PAPERS

IR 7.0: INTERNET CONVERGENCES
International and Interdisciplinary Conference of the Association of Internet Researchers

Brisbane, Australia
28-30 September 2006

Pre-Conference Workshops: 27 September 2006

INTERNET CONVERGENCES

The Internet works as an arena of convergence. Physically dispersed and marginalized people (re)find themselves online for the sake of sustaining and extending community. International and interdisciplinary teams now collaborate in new ways. Diverse cultures engage one another via CMC. These technologies relocate and refocus capital, labor and immigration, and they open up new possibilities for political, potentially democratizing, forms of discourse. Moreover, these technologies themselves converge in multiple ways, e.g. in Internet-enabled mobile phones, in Internet-based telephony, and in computers themselves as “digital appliances” that conjoin communication and multiple media forms. These technologies also facilitate fragmentations with greater disparities between the information-haves and have-nots, between winners and losers in the shifting labor and capital markets, and between individuals and communities. Additionally these technologies facilitate information filtering that reinforces, rather than dialogically challenges, narrow and extreme views.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Our conference theme invites papers and presentations based on empirical research, theoretical analysis and everything in between that explore the multiple ways the Internet acts in both converging and fragmenting ways - physical, cultural, technological, political, social - on local, regional, and global scales.

Without limiting possible proposals, topics of interest include:

- Theoretical and practical models of the Internet
- Internet convergence, divergence and fragmentation
- Networked flows of information, capital, labor, etc.
- Migrations and diasporas online
- Identity, community and global communication
- Regulation and control (national and global)
- Internet-based development and other economic issues
- Digital art and aesthetics
- Games and gaming on the Internet
- The Net generation
- E-Sectors, e.g. e-health, e-education, e-business

We call for papers, panel proposals, and presentations from any discipline, methodology, and community that address the theme of Internet Convergence. We particularly call for innovative, exciting, and unexpected takes on and interrogations of the conference theme. However, we always welcome submissions on any topics that address social, cultural, political, economic, and/or aesthetic aspects of the Internet and related Internet technologies. We are equally interested in interdisciplinary proposals as well as proposals from within specific disciplines.

SUBMISSIONS

We seek proposals for several different kinds of contributions. We welcome proposals for traditional academic conference papers, but we also encourage proposals for creative or aesthetic presentations that are distinct from a traditional written ‘paper’. We welcome proposals for roundtable sessions that will focus on discussion and interaction among conference delegates, and we also welcome organized panel proposals that present a coherent group of papers on a single theme.

This year AoIR will also be using an alternative presentation format in which a dozen or so participants who wish to present a short overview of their work to stimulate debate will gather together in a plenary session involving short presentations (no more than 5 minutes) and extended discussion. All papers and presentations in this session will be reviewed in the normal manner. Further information will be available via the conference submission website.

- PAPERS (individual or multi-author) - submit abstract of 500-750 words

- SHORT PRESENTATIONS - submit abstract of 500-750 words

- CREATIVE OR AESTHETIC PRESENTATIONS - submit abstract of 500-750 words

- PANELS - submit a 250-500 word description of the panel theme (and abstracts of the distinct papers or presentations)

- ROUNDTABLE PROPOSALS - submit a 250-500 word statement indicating the nature of the roundtable discussion and interaction.

Papers, presentations and panels will be selected from the submitted proposals on the basis of multiple blind peer review, coordinated and overseen by the Program Chair. Each person is invited to submit a proposal for 1 paper or 1 presentation. People may also propose a panel of papers or presentations, of which their personal paper or presentation must be a part. You may submit an additional paper/presentation of which you are the co-author as long as you are not presenting twice. You may submit a roundtable proposal as well.

Detailed information about submission and review is available at the conference submission website http://conferences.aoir.org. All proposals must be submitted electronically through this site.

PUBLICATION OF PAPERS

All papers presented at the conference are eligible for publication in the Internet Research Annual, on the basis of competitive selection and review of full papers. Additionally, several publishing opportunities are expected to be available through journals, again based on peer-review of full papers.

Details on the website.

GRADUATE STUDENTS

Graduate students are strongly encouraged to submit proposals. Any student paper is eligible for consideration for the AoIR graduate student award. Students wishing to be a candidate for the Student Award must also send a final paper by 31 July 2006.

PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOPS

Prior to the conference, there will be a limited number of pre-conference workshops which will provide participants with in-depth, hands-on and/or creative opportunities. We invite proposals for these pre-conference workshops. Local presenters are encouraged to propose workshops that will invite visiting researchers into their labs or studios or locales. Proposals should be no more than 1000 words, and should clearly outline the purpose, methodology, structure, costs, equipment and minimal attendance required, as well as explaining its relevance to the conference as a whole. Proposals will be accepted if they demonstrate that the workshop will add significantly to the overall program in terms of thematic depth, hands on experience, or local opportunities for scholarly or artistic connections. These proposals and all inquires regarding pre-conference proposals should be submitted as soon as possible to the Conference Chair and no later than 31 March 2006.

DEADLINES

Submission site available: 1 December 2005

Final date for proposal submission: 7 February 2006

Presenter notification: 21 March 2006

Final workshop submission deadline: 31 March 2006

Submission of paper for publication/student award: 31 July 2006

Submission of paper for conference archive: 30 September 2006

CONTACT INFORMATION

Program Chair: Dr Fay Sudweeks, Murdoch University, Australia,
sudweeks@murdoch.edu.au

Conference Chair: Dr Axel Bruns, Queensland University of Technology,
Australia, a.bruns@qut.edu.au

President of AoIR: Dr Matthew Allen, Curtin University of Technology,
Australia m.allen@curtin.edu.au

Association Website: http://www.aoir.org

Conference Website: http://conferences.aoir.org (from 1 December)

I haven’t really got the heart to involve myself in yet another round of cultural-studies-defensiveness-and-infighting just at the moment, but the discussion at Mel’s blog has prompted me to think that maybe it’s time for another set of Keywords, in the tradition of Grand Hegemon Raymond Williams. If I were brave and energetic enough to do it, I’d start with the knee-jerk terms that keep popping up in these debates - terms that are astoundingly multivalent, but seldom recognized as such. So for a start:

1. “populism”
2. “critical”
3. “theory” (and theorised, as in “theorised work”)
4. “political”
5. “engaged” (which is usually preceded by the adverbs “politically”, “theoretically”, or “critically”, but not by the adverb “popularly”)

And like the well-trained, rigorous cultural studies practitioner I am supposed to be, in another, more energetic, universe, I’d maybe trace the contexts in which these terms are used, and the cultural and political work they are made to do in each of those contexts.

Anyway, this latest article by one of cultural studies’ inhouse critics is kinda relevant as an input to the politics of the popular in cultural studies, and so is handy for my thesis:
Jim McGuigan, The Cultural Public Sphere, European Journal of Cultural Studies 8 (4)

…let us identify three broad stances regarding the politics of the cultural public sphere: uncritical populism, radical subversion and critical intervention. Uncritical populism is associated with populist cultural studies, the credibility of which derives not so much from its intellectual acuity but from its affinity with currently conventional wisdom. The domain assumption here is that consumer capitalism is culturally democratic. Consumer sovereignty goes unquestioned. What we get is what we want. The consumer is consulted and permitted to speak. In any case, consumption is an active phenomenon. Consumers are not the passively manipulated recipients of commodity culture and mediated experience: they choose, and woe betides any business that fails to respond efficiently to its customers’ demands.

[…]

The value of uncritical populism – the kind of position that would regard Big Brother as a vehicle of the public sphere – is its debunking of the critical idealization of a public sphere that is never present but always absent in favour of a ‘realistic’ attention to what actually goes on.

[…]

Radical subversion is the exact obverse of uncritical populism. Instead of apologetics, it offers total transformation whether people want it or not. In this sense, it is elitist and, to many, either downright offensive or simply unintelligible. The third position regarding politics and the public sphere, critical intervention, combines the best of uncritical populism – an appreciation of the actually existing cultural field – with the best of radical subversion, producing a genuinely critical and potentially popular stance.

Speaking of engagement and critical populism and the politics of research (and researching cultural politics), somewhere or other Glen noted that UWS cultural studies types did quite well in the last round of ARC grants: list of projects here.

One of many interesting discussions about the affordances, limitations and possible uses of the video iPod is happening at Adrian Miles’s blog. As I say in the comments, I’m quite positive about the implications of the iPod for small-format, visually humble and sonically rich cinema - like what my team had in mind with the prototype digital story we produced in the masterclass last week, or this kind of videoblog post. Once I get clearances sorted, I hope to post a version of our “story” (which is not so much a story as an impression, since it didn’t have a script and instead used remixed location sound and stills) soon.

A frequently overlooked, but incredibly important innovation from that point of view is that the new iPod records audio at 44.1 khz, which is CD quality, instead of the lame 8 khz the previous models limited you to. Not only that, but it records in stereo, which makes an enormous difference for recording anything other than lecture notes.

I want one.

Who wants to buy me one for Christmas? Sigh. I’ve been blessed with gadgets from heaven…

[edit]: Nice article on the new iPod in relation to audio recording at iLounge, and another lengthy discussion at music thing.

CafePress now has black t-shirts!

My friend Marcus got an Australian Postdoctoral Fellowship as part of an ARC Discovery Grant largely based around his PhD research!! (and Axel and Jo’s ARC grant got up too!!!)

My UK fieldwork is looking all au-go-go for January!!!!

On a less exclamatory note, the Digital Storytelling masterclass I’ve been immersed in is nearly finished, and we’ve produced some very interesting tweaks, subversions, and extensions of the BBC model - I will post some proper field notes and reflections shortly.

I am sitting in our digital storytelling masterclass, where Daniel is showing us some of the work of the Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players - this is a bona fide family of three who scavenge boxes of slides from garage sales, make up wacky suburban post-folk punk 3 chord rock songs to go with them, and turn them into even wackier movies.

From Maximum Ink:

…a couple of years ago in Seattle…Tina found and bought some old slide photos at a yard sale. The box was marked “Mountain Trip to Japan 1959 and that was what was on the film, someone’s color slide photos of a trip to Japan in 1959. Jason, who was a mild mannered struggling singer/songwriter in a city filled with aggressive and thriving singer/songwriters, put his talent to work and wrote songs around the slideshow and The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players were born.

Their songwriting technique has not failed them yet. “We found these slides with eggs on them, so we thought well obviously this song is going to be called “Eggs,” said Jason.

Daniel showed us “eggs”. It was v. good.

I like the idea of cultural “junk” being repurposed in this less-than earnest way. There is plenty of joyful parody going on, but without taking the piss out of the anonymous authors of the “found” photographs.