CFP: Interacting with Immersive Worlds

Interacting with Immersive Worlds:
Second Brock University Conference on the Interactive Arts & Sciences
BROCK UNIVERSITY, ST. CATHARINES, ONTARIO
JUNE 15-16, 2009

The primary focus of the conference is to explore the growing cultural importance of interactive media. All scholarship on, and creation of digital
interactive media (including but not limited to computer games and interactive fiction) will be considered in one of four broad conference
streams:

• The Challenges at the Boundaries of Immersive Worlds stream features creative exploration and innovation in immersive media including ubiquitous computing, telepresence, interactive art and fiction, and alternative reality.
• The Critical Approaches to Immersion stream looks at analyses of the cultural and/or psychological impact of immersive worlds, as well as theories of interactivity.
• The Immersive Worlds in Education stream examines educational applications of immersive technologies.
• The Immersive Worlds in Entertainment stream examines entertainment applications of immersive technologies, such as computer games.

We welcome the submission of abstracts for a 20-minute presentation plus a 10-minute discussion. Send a 500-word abstract plus a brief biographical statement. Please include a separate cover page with the following:

• Author’s name and affiliation
• Email
• Mailing address
• Title of presentation
Since all abstracts will be anonymously reviewed, include the title of the paper on the abstract but not the author’s name, affiliation, email or mailing address.

Deadline extended – deadline for receipt of abstracts is February 2, 2009

CFP: Visions of Humanity in Cyberculture, Cyberspace and Science Fiction

4th Global Conference
Visions of Humanity in Cyberculture, Cyberspace and Science Fiction

Monday 6th July – Wednesday 8th July 2009

Mansfield College, Oxford

Call for Papers

This inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary project aims to explore what it is to be human and the nature of human community in cyberculture, cyberspace and science fiction. In particular, the project will explore the possibilities offered by these contexts for creative thinking about persons and the challenges posed to the nature and future of national, international, and global communities.

Papers, short papers, and workshops are invited on issues related to any of the following themes:

* the relationship between cyberculture, cyberspace, science fiction

* cyberculture, cyberpunk and the near future: utopias vs. dystopias

* science fiction and cyberpunk as a medium for exploring the nature of persons

* humans and cyborgs; the synergy of humans and technology; changing views of the body

* human and post-human concepts in cyber arts and cinema

* bodies in cyberculture; from apes to androids – electronic evolution; biotechnical

advances and the impact of life, death, and social existence; the impact on individuality

* gender and cyberspace: new feminisms, new masculinities

* electronic persons, community and identity;

*cyberspace, cybercommunities, virtual worlds

* digital culture and interactive storytelling

* old messages, new medium: cyberspace and mass communication

* nature, enhancing nature, and artificial intelligence; artificial life, life and information systems, networked living

* human and post-human politics; cyborg citizenship and rights; influence of political technologies

* cyberpolitics, cyberdemocracy, cyberterror; old conflicts, new spaces: elections, protest and

war in cyberspace; nationality and nationalism in cyberculture; the state and cyberspace: repression vs. resistance

* cybercultures: the transnational and the local

* boundaries, frontiers and taboos in cyberculture

* religion and spirituality in cyberculture, science fiction and cyberpunk

* technology vs. the natural? Cyberculture and the green movement

Papers will be considered on any related theme.

300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 6th February 2009. If your paper is accepted for presentation at the conference, an 8 page draft paper should be submitted by Friday 5th June 2009.

300 word abstracts should be submitted to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following this order:

author(s), affiliation, email address, title of

abstract, body of abstract

We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

For further details about the project please visit:

http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/ati/Visions/vhccsf.htm

For further details about the conference please visit:

http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/ati/Visions/v4/cfp.html

Virtual Reality International Conference

There is a full day symposium titled “THE PHILOSOPHY OF IDENTITY IN THE VIRTUAL” (April 23). It is part of the 3 day conference on Virtual Reality. Although there is a design / technical slant, I am absolutely excited about the potential of the symposium.  Directly from the symposium’s website, here is the preamble:

Topic:
Difference, Relation and Identity are three notions that are fundamentals for the success of Virtual Reality technologies (VR and AR). The aim of this symposium is to conceptualise the Identity of an individual as a scientific concept whilst acknowledging the fact that Identity cannot be studied without considering the other two notions. The pros and cons of designing identities for or within VR become obvious upon admitting that representating any Self will be interpreted at some point by someone having his own values, opinions and experience in life. Members of our society that self-procure, attribute or redistribute Identity in the Virtual World bring about psychological enquiries in relation to user intentionality, specific uses of VR applications or general modifications to our ways of communicating. Usability issues addressing the problem of Identity have not yet been integrated into long-term visions of society and our needs. The Chair of the session is thus open to all existential, ethical and epistemological issues having to do with Identity in Virtual Communities.

Please Note: New Page for CFP’s

Just added a new page in the sidebar with the About and CV pages for Call for Papers. Although there are often way more than I can keep track of – this will be the place I will post new CFP’s that come to my attention. This way, the information will be static – and not get lost as I blog.

With that bit of news, please check out the upcoming CFP for Kinephanos. In brief, the aim of their inaugural issue:

… aims to explore and understand how digital technologies change the communication relations between the object and the subject. As a double issue, “Digital imageries: culture and reception” will also be devoted to the different influences digital technologies have brought to cinema and other forms of audiovisual expression, such as television, animation and video games. In addition the articles must incorporate ideas pertaining to the spectator’s and/or gamer’s reception.

Looking at the end of February

And I ask myself how did this happen? I cannot believe that it is almost March! the semester hardly feels underway. This whole loosy goosy deadlines at the PhD are killing me – I have such a hard time working when there is no pressure! I wonder if that ever changes? For all the times I TALK about working, that’s usually as far as I get! 

At the moment, I am working on a submission for a call for papers for an edited collection called New technologies of the self, mobilities and (co)construction of identities. For this, I am gutting an old course paper I had written for a theory class and refreshing it with more relevant materials directly related to the call. In the end, I am really only salvaging the general concept and some of the bibliography, but it is helpful to have something to tear apart in such cases. I am hoping that working on this project will jumpstart my other less interesting projects.