The National Popular Culture and American Culture Associations are planning a joint conference on the theme of “internet culture.” The organizers invite proposals for themed sessions, special panels, and individual papers. Proposals or abstracts are due October 15, 2005 to George Lewis. The conference will be held in Atlanta, Georgia, April 12-15, 2006. Visit PCA/ACA for more information about the conference.
2nd Beijing International New Media Arts Exhbition & Symposium
The 2nd Beijing International New Media Arts Exhibition and Symposium opened June 21 and continues through July 11 in Beijing. Hosted by Tsinghua University and co-presented by numerous new media organizations around the world, the event theme, “In the Line of Flight: Transcending Urbanscapes,” takes on the rapid changes, anxieties, exhilarations, and disjunctions that modernization and new media are bringing to Chinese culture.
Call for Contributions: Cultural Futures
Cultural Futures: Place, Ground and Practice in Asia Pacific New Media will take place in Hoani Waititi Auckland/Tamaki Makaurau, December 1-5, 2005. This event, affiliated with the International Symposium for Electronic Arts (ISEA 2006), will include a symposium, exhibitions, and workshops aimed at developing international awareness of local work in new media arts, and to link international practices in new media arts to dialogues in Aotearoa’s cultural identity. The organizers invite submissions of new media texts in any genre of less than 1,500 words/2 MB. A book or themed journal issue is also under consideration. The deadline for submissions is August 30, 2005. For more information, visit the Cultural Futures website or send inquiries to the the organizers.
Blogwalks
One of the ideas that emerged out of the Blogtalk 2.0 conference in July 2004 was Blogwalking. Blogwalks are face-to-face conversations that provide smaller-scale opportunities for weblog researchers and practitioners to meet and talk on a more informal basis. So far, there have been eight Blogwalks in cities around the world. Blogwalk 9.0 will take place in Innsbruck, Austria, and two more Blogwalks are tentatively planned in coming months for Dresden, Germany and Salzburg, Austria. Participation is by invitation only. If you are interested in joining upcoming Blogwalks in Dresden or Salzburg, or would like to propose other cities for future Blogwalks, visit the Blogwalk site.
if:book Blogging Transliteracies
The folks over at if:book are blogging live from the Transliteracies conference. The first post includes a discussion by Alan Liu, laying the purpose of the project and some of the questions it intends to explore.
I’ve started a project (combining humanists, social scientists, and computer scientists) called Transliteracies to look into “online reading.” It’s my hypothesis that there are hidden complexities and intelligences in low-attention modes of browsing/surfing that we don’t yet know how to chart. Google, after all, is making a fortune for algorithms enacting this hypothesis. Or to cite a historical googler: Dr. Johnson, sage of the Age of Reason, was famous for “devouring” books just by browsing them instead of reading “cover to cover.”
Digital Tools Summit at UVA
The University of Virginia Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities invites applications for participation in its “Summit on Digital Tools,” September 28-30, 2005. The purpose of the summit is to assess the state of the development of digital tools for humanities research, as well as the effectiveness of the supporting and integrating infrastructure. The summit will begin with a keynote speech and discussion, followed by sessions whose structure and content will be shaped by the issue papers submitted by participants. Participation includes room and board, paid for by the Institute. Some limited travel funds are also available. Visit the Summit website for more information. The deadline to submit a 1-page position paper is June 30, 2005.
CFP: “The Futures of New Mediascapes” at ISA World Congress
Markus S. Schulz, chair of the Joint Session of RC07 Research Committee on Futures Research and RC14 Research Committee on Sociology of Communication, Knowledge and Culture, at the 2006 World Congress of the International Sociological Association, invites submissions of papers on “The Futures of New Mediascapes: Communication, Knowledge, and Culture in a Globalizing World”. The session’s purpose is to provide a forum for scholars working on communication, knowledge, and culture to discuss the processes by which the new global mediascapes are being shaped, and their future implications and social consequences. The deadline for paper proposals is October 15, 2005. The World Congress of ISA will take place in Durban, South Africa, July 23-29, 2006. For more information on the ISA World Congress and this session, visit RC07on the web. Contact Markus S. Schulz with inquiries.
Bill Mitchell Lectures on “The Interactive City” at UCLA
Bill Mitchell, professor of Architecture and Media Arts and Sciences at MIT, will give a talk on “The Interactive City” at UCLA’s Royce Hall, Room 362, on Thursday, June 9, at 7:00 p.m. This event is free and open to the public. RSVP appreciated, but not required: call 310.794.5358. This event is part of UCLA’s EXP lecture series. For more information, visit EXPLectures.
6th Annual Media Ecology Association Convention: “The Biases of Media”
A staggeringly diverse and rich program is in place for the 6th Annual Convention of the Media Ecology Association, set f or June 22-26 at Fordham University in New York City. Featured speakers will include Paul Levinson, Eric McLuhan, Frank E. X. Dance, Sara van den Berg, Robert White, and James Carey. Visit the MEA website to download the convention program and get details on registration and location.
Computers and Writing Online 2005, May 31st-June 14, 2005
Computers and Writing Online 2005, hosted by kairosnews, May 31-June 14, 2005, will feature a different online presentation each day on such topics as Wikipedia, networked archives, the future of MOOs, the web and student learning, weblogs as deictic systems, and “Feedback, Motivation, and Collectivity on del.icio.us”.