“Electronic Techtonics: Thinking at the Interface” Conference April 19, 2007

“Electronic Techtonics: Thinking at the Interface” will be one of the culminating events for the In|Formation Year that began in June 2006 and extends through May of 2007. (See the HASTAC website for a calendar of In|Formation Year events, plus open source archived materials suitable for downloading for courses or campus events.)

The keynote address will be delivered at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke by visionary information scientist John Seely Brown (The Social Life of Information; formerly Chief Scientist of Xerox Corporation and Director of its Palo Alto Research Center/PARC). Other events include a talk by legal theorist James Boyle (co-founder of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain, Creative Commons, and Science Commons), a conversation among leaders of innovative digital humanities projects led by John Unsworth (chair of the ACLS “Cyberinfrastructure and the Humanities and Social Sciences” commission), and a presentation by media artist and research pioneer Rebecca Allen. The conference will also include refereed scholarly and scientific papers, multimedia performances, an exhibit hall of innovative software and hardware, plus tours of art and scientific installations in virtual reality, learning-game, and interactive sensor space environments.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Six sessions will be devoted to panels with refereed papers on aspects of “interface” spanning media arts, engineering, and the human, social, natural, and computational sciences. Panels will be topical and cross-disciplinary; they will be comprised of papers that are themselves interdisciplinary as well as specialized disciplinary papers presented in juxtaposition with one another.

We will consider proposals for full panels (three or four papers), for paired cross-disciplinary papers on a shared topic, or for single papers.

Topics: Panels might address interfaces between humans and computers, mind and brain, real and virtual worlds, science and fiction, consumers and producers, text-archives and multi-media, youth and adults, disciplines, institutions, communities, identities, media, cultures, technologies, theories, and practices.

Other possible topics: the body as interface, neuroaesthetics and neurocognition, prosthetics, mind-controlled devices, immersion, emergence, presence, telepresence, sensor spaces, virtual reality, social networking, games, experimental learning environments, human/non-human situations and actors, interactive communication and control, access, borders, intellectual property, porosity, race and ethnicity, difference, Afro-Geeks and Afro-Futurism, identity, gender, sexuality, credibility, mapping and trafficking, civic engagement, social activism, cyberactivism, plus all of the other In|Formation Year topics: in|common, interplay, in|community, interaction, injustice, integration, invitation, innovation.

Proposal Submissions: Please send 500-1000 word paper and/or panel proposals to info@hastac.org.

Deadline for Proposals: December 1, 2006.

Full-length papers or power-point presentations will be posted on the HASTAC website prior to the conference. The sessions themselves will be devoted to synopses of the work, followed by a response designed to elicit audience participation. Attendees whose papers are not accepted will be encouraged to display their work at a digital poster session.

CONFERENCE REGISTRATION

Registration will be limited to 150 people. HASTAC will announce a priority registration period for HASTAC In|Formation Year site leaders, followed by open registration.

SCHOLARSHIPS

Some scholarship funding will be available to graduate students to help defray fees and conference costs.



For additional information as well as copies of the In|Formation Year poster, contact Jonathan Tarr, HASTAC Project Manager (info@hastac.org or call 919 684-8471).

HASTAC uses Creative Commons licenses for all of its endeavors. All conference sessions will be webcast, archived, and made available for non-profit educational purposes.

Official Website: http://www.hastac.org/informationyear/conferenceRFP