Curating Media and Design

Recent attempts to categorize remix are limiting, mainly as a result of their reliance on the visual arts and cinema theory as the gauge by which remix is measured. A more valuable view of remix is as a digital argument that works across the registers of sound, text, and image to make claims and provides evidence to support those claims.

Author: Virginia Kuhn, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, United States.

Access article here, open access: http://journal.transformativeworks.com/index.php/twc/article/view/358/279

Abstract

The affordances of digital technologies increase the available semiotic resources through which one may speak. In this context, video remix becomes a rich avenue for communication and expression in ways that have heretofore been the province of big media. Yet recent attempts to categorize remix are limiting, mainly as a result of their reliance on the visual arts and cinema theory as the gauge by which remix is measured. A more valuable view of remix is as a digital argument that works across the registers of sound, text, and image to make claims and provides evidence to support those claims. After exploring the roots of contemporary notions of orality, literacy, narrative and rhetoric, I turn to examples of marginalized, disparate artifacts that are already in danger of neglect in the burgeoning history of remix. In examining these pieces in terms of remix theory to date, a more expansive view is warranted. An approach based on digital argument is capable of accounting for the rhetorical strategies of the formal elements of remixes while still attending to the specificity of the discourse communities from which they arise. This effort intervenes in current conversations and sparks enhancement of its concepts to shape the mediascape.

Kuhn, Virginia. 2012. “The Rhetoric of Remix.” In “Fan/Remix Video,” edited by Francesca Coppa and Julie Levin Russo, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 9. doi:10.3983/twc.2012.0358.

This paper examines the role of narrative in the process of interactive experience design, focusing on the potential uses of narrative in prototyping and iteration efforts to uncover deeper and more meaningful responses from users.

Authors: Eric Spaulding, School of Design, Carnegie Mellon University; Haakon Faste, Human-Computer Interaction Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, USA.

Paper presented at DIS 2012. Access full article here, open access: http://creativesystems.cs.cmu.edu/sites/default/files/DDN_DIS_1.6%20final_insubmission.pdf

ABSTRACT
This paper examines the role of narrative in the process of interactive experience design, focusing on the potential uses of narrative in prototyping and iteration efforts to uncover deeper and more meaningful responses from users. We created a series of transmedia design fictions with embedded design concepts, and then built low-fi prototype artifacts for talk aloud sessions. We engaged twelve members of our [anonymous campus] community for these user evaluations, synthesized our findings, and conclude with a model that shows where reader misalignments occur in either the narrative or design, and propose points at which designers could use narrative methods or designed ambiguity to manipulate reader experiences and feedback.

Author Keywords: Narrative-driven design, design evaluation, reader-response theory, transmedia, prototyping, scenario building

Access full article here, open access: http://creativesystems.cs.cmu.edu/sites/default/files/DDN_DIS_1.6%20final_insubmission.pdf

This book offers a coherent set of articles on sustainable and creative cities and addresses modern theories and concepts relating to research on sustainability and creativity. It analyzes principles and practices of the creative city for the formulation of policies and recommendations towards the sustainable city. It brings together leading academics with different approaches from different disciplines to provide a comprehensive and holistic overview of creativity and sustainability of the city, linking research and practice.

Authors: Luigi Fusco Girard, Universita degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Napoli, Italy, Tuzin Baycan, Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey and Peter Nijkamp, VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.ca/Sustainable-City-Creativity-Promoting-Initiatives/dp/1409420019

About the book

The notion of ‘creative cities’ - where cultural activities and creative and cultural industries play a crucial role in supporting urban creativity and contributing to the new creative economy - has become central to most regional and urban development strategies in recent years. A creative city is supposed to develop imaginative and innovative solutions to a range of social, economic and environmental problems: economic stagnancy, urban shrinkage, social segregation, global competition or more.

Cities and regions around the world are trying to develop, facilitate or promote concentrations of creative, innovative and/or knowledge intensive industries in order to become more competitive. These places are seeking new strategies to combine economic development with quality of place that will increase economic productivity and encourage growth.

Against this increasing interest in creative cities, this volume offers a coherent set of articles on sustainable and creative cities and addresses modern theories and concepts relating to research on sustainability and creativity. It analyzes principles and practices of the creative city for the formulation of policies and recommendations towards the sustainable city. It brings together leading academics with different approaches from different disciplines to provide a comprehensive and holistic overview of creativity and sustainability of the city, linking research and practice. In doing so, it puts forward ideas about stimulating the production of an innovative knowledge for a creative and sustainable city, and transforming a specific knowledge into a general-common knowledge, which suggests best future policy actions, decision-making processes and choices for the change towards a human sustainable development of the city.

Available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.ca/Sustainable-City-Creativity-Promoting-Initiatives/dp/1409420019

This article  examines the history, role and functioning of Denmark’s MindLab, an innovation lab that today is part of the Ministries of Business & Growth, Taxation, and Employment. We emphasise how the development of MindLab over time reflects a typology of different generations of innovation labs. Finally, we reflect on potential future directions for platforms for collaborative innovation in the public sector.

Authors: Helle Vibeke Carstensen, Director of Innovation, Ministry of Taxation, Copenhagen; Christian Bason, Director of Innovation, MindLab, Copenhagen.

Published in The Innovation Journal: The Public Sector Innovation Journal, Volume 17(1), 2012, article 4.

Access the article for free: http://www.innovation.cc/scholarly-style/christian_bason_v17i1a4.pdf

Abstract
There is nothing inherently new in the idea of cross-cutting collaboration, “joined-up government‟ and “networked governance‟ (Pollitt, 2003; Hartley, 2005; Mulgan, 2009). However, in the last decade, new forms of internal units have been set up within public sector organisations with the explicit purpose of supporting innovation efforts. And in at least one case, such a unit has evolved into a permanent governance network – designed to foster crossgovernmental innovation. We start by discussing the underlying change logic of innovation labs.

The article then examines the history, role and functioning of Denmark’s MindLab, an innovation lab that today is part of the Ministries of Business & Growth, Taxation, and Employment. We emphasise how the development of MindLab over time reflects a typology of different generations of innovation labs. Finally, we reflect on potential future directions for platforms for collaborative innovation in the public sector.

Keywords: Innovation labs, collaboration, governance, policy development

Access the article for free: http://www.innovation.cc/scholarly-style/christian_bason_v17i1a4.pdf

Conference that wants to, e.g., develop critical frameworks and methodologies that enable the reception, consumption and impact of new technologies, specifically the conference focuses on human-computer interaction, computer-mediated communication, social interaction and networking, organizational contexts and cultural contexts.

Abstracts due May 10, 2012. Istanbul, Turkey, May 16-18, 2012.

The principal objectives of International New Media Conference are:

• to develop critical frameworks and methodologies that enable the reception, consumption and impact of new technologies, specifically the conference focuses on human-computer interaction, computer-mediated communication, social interaction and networking, organizational contexts and cultural contexts.
• to contextualize the environments, discourses, ideologies, and uses of new media technologies, and to address the specific implications of the increasing convergence of media forms
• to analyze the conditions of emergence of new media technologies, and the development of new cultural forms and media productions
• to promote discussion and analysis of the creative and educational potentials of those technologies, and to contextualise those cultural practices within wider cultural and political debates.
• to attempt to reveal inter- and intra-disciplinary research of new media texts and technologies.

The themes of the conference will cover but not be limited to:

• The mobilization of local, national, and transnational social movements through the use of social network sites, tweets, texting, and other forms of networked and instantaneous communication forms.
• The rhetoric of digital equality and unequal access to digital culture: class, race, region, and gender, and access to social media and digital communication technologies.
• The impact of digital culture on collective memory, conceptions of the historical, historical research methods, and the writing of history.
• The role of history in digital humanities: archival practices, collecting history online, historical text mining, and digital storytelling.

Details for attending, for paying registration, and for submitting abstracts and papers are now available on the website: http://www.inm-c.net/

To submit your papers to this conference, you must first log into the INMC2012 site or create a login account 

For more information, please contact inmconference2012@gmail.com

Have you ever wondered how organizations decide which news is important? This insightful book portrays in detail everyday work in three news agencies: Swedish TT, Italian ANSA and the worldwide Reuters. This unique study is about organizing rather than journalism, revealing two accelerating phenomena: cybernization (machines play a more and more central role in news production) and cyborgization (people rely more and more on machines). Barbara Czarniawska reveals that technological developments lead to many unexpected consequences and complications. Cyberfactories will prove essential to researchers interested in contemporary forms of organizing, studies of technology, and media. It will also appeal to a lay reader interested in how news is produced.

By Barbara Czarniawska, Professor of Management Studies, GRI, School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

Available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Cyberfactories-How-News-Agencies-Produce/dp/0857939122

This year, HCI 2012 will return to the founding theme of the conference: “People and Computers”. This is to encapsulate and highlight the growing diversity of our field of HCI in one event. Technology is now common in all walks of life and HCI practitioners and researchers have more areas of impact than ever before. We want the conference to reflect this growing importance and diversity.

Full papers due March 30, 2012. HCI 2012, September 2-14, 2012; Birmingham People and Computers XXVI. http://hci2012.bcs.org/

HCI 2012 is the 26th Annual Conference of the Specialist HCI group of the BCS, the BCS Interaction SG. Since its establishment in 1985, the conference has become the leading annual HCI conference in Europe. As well as being a leading venue for dissemination, the conference has a history of nurturing research careers- many of the leading HCI researchers published their early papers here and it is recognised for helping students and new academics as much as being a leading forum for established researchers. We want to carry on this well-established tradition into 2012.

Conference Theme
This year we have returned to the founding theme of the conference: “People and Computers”. This is to encapsulate and highlight the growing diversity of our field of HCI in one event. Technology is now common in all walks of life and HCI practitioners and researchers have more areas of impact than ever before. We want the conference to reflect this growing importance and diversity.

Relevant topics areas include but are by no means limited to:

• Persuasive Technology
• Mobile Interactions
• User Experience
• Touchtable interactions
• Affective Computing/Interactions
• Usability Engineering
• Accessibility
• Child Computer Interaction
• Interaction Design
• UCD4D
• Recommender Systems
• Annotation
• Brain Computer Interfaces
• Technology and Culture
• E-Government

Read more: http://hci2012.bcs.org/

The Urban Communication Foundation has funded dozens of research projects and now solicit public research reports on issues that have a direct bearing on public policy and/or the everyday life for people within cities; e.g. the relationship between open data, communication infrastructures, and better government.

Proposals due April 30, 2012. Urban Communication Foundation (UCF). http://urbancomm.org/

Urban Communication is the study of communication within an urban context. The built environment is rich with information and physical architectures that manifest unique social situations. From traffic patterns to sidewalks, to mobile computing and surveillance technologies, the issues presented by the rapidly changing communication context constructed through urban environments are vast and varied.

The Urban Communication Foundation (UCF) has been a leader in promoting scholarship in this general area. The Foundation has funded dozens of research projects and acknowledged dozens of scholars that have advanced the field of study. We now seek to extend this influence by focusing in on particular issues or areas of research. As such, will be soliciting public research reports on issues that have a direct bearing on public policy and/or the everyday life for people within cities.

These reports should be between 8000-10000 words in length and present original research on the topic. The end product should aim to have some influence on policy makers, community leaders and scholars and contribute to basic research and practical solutions. The author(s) of the top rated proposal will receive a stipend of $10,000. The money can go to individuals or institutions to provide various forms of research support.

The UCF is proud to announce the first call for research reports on the topic of Digital Networks and Urban Public Space. Interested researchers should submit a proposal outlining the research problem and how it intersects with established urban questions or problems that have yet to be adequately addressed. (See guidelines below).

Topics might include but are not limited to:

• how urban architecture can use digital scaffolding to enhance public spaces
• how Federal or municipal communication policies can positively impact municipal governments or civic life
• the relationship between open data, communication infrastructures, and better government
• communication technology-focused citizen engagement
• how digital networks alter sense of place and change the shape and role of cities

Guidelines for Submitting Proposals/Applications

Proposals should address each of the following

1. Identification of the communication problem or opportunity
2. Description of the research project and methodology employed
3. Desired impact

Each of these three sections of the proposal should be limited to approximately 500 words. Please include a cover page with the name, position, institution, and contact information for all authors. Please adhere to a standard citation form.

*Applications should include a short itemized budget and a concise statement providing a rationale for the expenses listed in the budget. Funds may be expended in a variety of ways (e.g., to hire a research assistant or for a course buy-out), provided that it is clear how doing so will enable the researcher(s) to complete the proposed work. Funds may not be used to purchase computer hardware. Funds awarded by the UCF may be utilized to offset fringe costs (such as those often involved in hiring a research assistant), but the Foundation will not cover overhead expenses (i.e., indirect costs). In any case, the total amount of the award will not exceed $10,000.

*Applicants should include a current CV and one letter of recommendation. The referee should be able to assess the significance and viability of the project described in the proposal, as well as the qualifications of the applicant as they pertain to the proposed work.

*Proposals should be submitted to Eric Gordon at Eric_Gordon [at] emerson [dot] edu no later than April 30, 2012. Funding decisions will be made  by  June 1, 2012. White papers should be completed no later than May 1, 2013. White papers will be published on the UCF website and disseminated widely.

Evaluation of Proposals and Awarding Funds

• A committee consisting of two Urban Communication Foundation members of the Board of Directors and the Board of Advisors, as well as an external reviewer will evaluate all applications submitted by the specified deadline.
• UCF will contact the author(s) of the top-rated proposal to ascertain their commitment to the proposed research project and will subsequently release funds to the researcher(s).
• The UCF will announce the proposal selected on the Foundation’s web site. The author(s) will be recognized as Urban Communication Foundation Fellows.

By exploring how ideas and practices of publicness and democracy are being constituted, enacted, related and reconfigured in different settings, this workshop aims to investigate the modes of public action and democracy being invoked, imagined and struggled over around the world.

Abstracts due March 16, 2012. London, June 18-19, 2012.

That there is a relationship between publicness and democracy has often been taken for granted. However, at this time of widespread instability, political upheaval and experimentation, when publics are increasingly being called upon to act, it is sometimes in the name of democracy, but not always. By exploring how ideas and practices of publicness and democracy are being constituted, enacted, related and reconfigured in different settings, this workshop aims to investigate the modes of public action and democracy being invoked, imagined and struggled over around the world.

We welcome paper proposals from a diversity of approaches, particularly research and works in progress that help us to collectively consider:

• How issues become matters of public concern and how, where and when public practices intersect with forms of democracy, or other forms of politics?
• How actors (individuals, groups, institutions, networks, materials, devices) become public and whether forms of democratic politics emerge as a result?
• How public spaces are assembled and how they become spaces of democratic or other forms of politics?
• How relations between modes of public action and forms of democratic politics are being mediated and how methodologically such relations can be traced, mapped, analysed, theorised and better understood?

Building on the success of the July 2011 interdisciplinary workshop, Creating Publics, we seek working papers from fields including (but not limited to): anthropology, politics and public policy, cultural studies, environmental studies, sociology, science and technology studies, information studies, geography, planning and media studies. We hope that through engaging with empirical and/or conceptual works together, this workshop will serve as an opening for conversations about the creation of publics and democracies.

Read more: http://www8.open.ac.uk/ccig/events/creating-publics-creating-democracies-call-for-papers

With original and re-published contributions from Jenkins, Lessig, Rosen and O’Reilly etc., this reader looks like a great introduction to the collective transformation we are all part of: social media, peer production, copyright politics, and other aspects of contemporary internet culture.

Edited by Michael Mandiberg. Table of contents: http://www.nyupress.org/webchapters/Mandiberg_TOC.pdf

Published by NYU Press. Purchase: http://nyupress.org/books/book-details.aspx?bookId=7999

With the rise of web 2.0 and social media platforms taking over vast tracts of territory on the internet, the media landscape has shifted drastically in the past 20 years, transforming previously stable relationships between media creators and consumers. The Social Media Reader is the first collection to address the collective transformation with pieces on social media, peer production, copyright politics, and other aspects of contemporary internet culture from all the major thinkers in the field. Culling a broad range and incorporating different styles of scholarship from foundational pieces and published articles to unpublished pieces, journalistic accounts, personal narratives from blogs, and whitepapers, The Social Media Reader promises to be an essential text. It covers a wide-ranging topical terrain, much like the internet itself, with particular emphasis on collaboration and sharing, the politics of social media and social networking, Free Culture and copyright politics, and labour and ownership. Theorizing new models of collaboration, identity, commerce, copyright, ownership, and labour, these essays outline possibilities for cultural democracy that arise when the formerly passive audience becomes active cultural creators, while warning of the dystopian potential of new forms of surveillance and control.
 
Michael Mandiberg is an artist and Associate Professor of Media Culture at the College of Staten Island/CUNY. He is the co-author of Digital Foundations: an Intro to Media Design and Collaborative Futures.

The combination of haptic and audio for interaction design is a challenging research area, and we invite researchers and practitioners interested in these non-visual modalities to come to HAID to exchange designs and research findings.

Deadline for submissions: April 30, 2012. Lund, Sweden. August 23-24, 2012. http://www.haid.ws

The combination of haptic and audio for interaction design is a challenging research area, and we invite researchers and practitioners interested in these non-visual modalities to come to HAID to exchange designs and research findings. This year’s HAID has a particular  (but not exclusive) focus on the mobile setting – while on the move the haptic and audio combination has great (but sadly under-exploited) potential.  More non-visual interaction designs will make applications and devices easier to user for everyone.

We invite contributions on the appropriate use of haptics and audio in interaction design: how do we design effectively for mobile interaction? How can we design effective haptic, audio and multimodal interfaces? In what new application areas can we apply these techniques? Are there design methods that are useful? Or evaluation techniques that are particularly appropriate?  We also welcome artistic exhibits and commercial design cases for our exhibition.

Read more on Designcalls.wordpress.com

This call for papers is about where the story starts and where it ends, about who writes the story and who reads it and whether any of these definitions apply when we are in the story itself. This then is about world making and about the media, mediums and machinery that converge to make it possible.

Abstracts due May 4, 2012. Conference November 13-15, 2012, Salzburg, Austria.

View all details: http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/ethos/immersive-worlds-and-transmedia-narratives/call-for-papers/

THE CALL
This call for papers is about where the story starts and where it ends, about who writes the story and who reads it and whether any of these definitions apply when we are in the story itself. This then is about world making and about the media, mediums and machinery that converge to make it possible. The rhizomic qualities of a smart phone that enmesh us into the real world also connect and implicate large parts of ourselves in imaginary and virtual spaces; with people we have never met and places we will never see other than through the app, the blog or the social networking site.

“In the final decade of the 21st Century, men and women in rocket ships landed on the moon. By 2200 AD, they had reached the other planets of our solar system. Almost at once there followed the discovery of hyperdrive through which the speed of light was first obtained and later greatly surpassed. And so, at last, mankind began the conquest and colonization of deep space” (The Forbidden Planet)

THE EXAMPLE
True Blood. Originally from Charlene Harris’ Southern Vampire Mysteries series of novels. Now a hit television show. It has a facebook page and characters from the series produce You Tube videos (Jessica- Baby Vamp). The stars from the show share tweets with fans and each other but not as themselves but the characters they play. Viral marketing spreads adverts and teasers for products that come from the show, not just simple merchandising but items such as Tru-Blood, the synthetic blood substitute that bases the premise of the show where vampires can become part of society. The graphic novel, written by the television series creator Allan Ball and which extends storylines from the show. Fangtasia, the vampire bar from the series is recreated in actual real life venues and where people can dress as vampires. At each point of entry the “reader’ can choose which parts and to what level they want to engage, or participate, in the narrative enabling various levels of emersion and ways to influence and change the world that one is entering. Who writes the story and what story are they writing and who consumes what and who and is everyone welcome?

“Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own will!” (Dracula)

But who can enter this world and how does it impinge on our own? Is it only for the wealthy, the westernised, the capital-ised? How does it purposely exclude and include certain groups and why? What is the future of the technologies and the types of narratives involved? Will it become a world that people never want to leave or one that will expand to consume our former notions of what constituted reality. Where does the story end and real life begin?

(Keywords: Transmedia, Convergence, Participatory, Affinity, ReMix, Hypersocibility, Techologies, Medium, Narrative, Story, Play, Interaction, Immersive, Virtual)

View all details: http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/ethos/immersive-worlds-and-transmedia-narratives/call-for-papers/

Via @fernandocarrion

With the introduction of images, animations, audio, and the procedural into the area of literary practice it is perhaps no longer sufficient to consider electronic literature within the domain of traditional concepts of rhetoric or poetics. As such, it is important that both practitioner and scholar understand how these attributes of digital media operate poetically and rhetorically, how they facilitate and sometimes undermine meaning-making in electronic literature.

By: Talan Memmott, Faculty of Culture and Society, Malmö University, Sweden.

Access full-text version of this disseration here.

Abstract

The dissertation explores computational and media-based signifying strategies in electronic literature from the point of view of reading, writing, programming and design, with a focus on the rhetoric and poetics of heavily mediated, multi-modal digital artifacts. With the introduction of images, animations, audio, and the procedural into the area of literary practice it is perhaps no longer sufficient to consider electronic literature within the domain of traditional concepts of rhetoric or poetics. Signification in media-rich electronic literary work occurs across semantic and semiological systems, and technological paradigms. As such, it is important that both practitioner and scholar understand how these attributes of digital media operate poetically and rhetorically, how they facilitate and sometimes undermine meaning-making in electronic literature.

Throughout the text many of the complex issues around electronic literature are exposed, and through this reading strategies and potential avenues for new or alternative critical methods are offered. In its breadth of considerations, this dissertation provides a  substantial overview of my research interests and involvement in the field of electronic literature for many years. In addition, the dissertation provides something of a chronology of the field from 2000 to 2011, tracing the evolution and emergence of different manifestations of digital rhetoric and poetics.

We’re in a fast-developing world of downloads, streaming video and Swedish pirates. Anyone remotely interested in the future of cinema should read this book.

Edited by Dina Iordanova and Stuart Cunningham. For more information or to order, visit: http://stafs.org/books/digital-disruption/
 
Table of Contents

Digital Disruption

• Dina Iordanova, Digital Disruption: Technological Innovation and Global Film Circulation
• Stuart Cunningham and Jon Silver, On-line Film Distribution: Its History and Global Complexion
• Michael Gubbins, Digital Revolution: Active Audiences and Fragmented Consumption
• Michael Franklin, Internet-enabled Dissemination: Managing Uncertainty in the Film Value Chain
• Marijke De Valck, Convergence, Digitisation and the Future of Film Festivals

Cinema Moves On-line

• Jon Silver, Stuart Cunningham, Mark David Ryan, Mission Unreachable: How Jaman Is Shaping the Future of On-line Distribution
• Alex Fischer, ‘IMDb Helps Me Sleep at Night’: How a Simple Database Changed the World of Film
• Alex Fischer, ‘The Fully Clickable Submission’: How Withoutabox Captured the Hearts and Minds of Film Festivals Everywhere
• Spotlight on MUBI: Two Interviews with Efe Cakarel, Founder and CEO of MUBI, talking to Paul Fileri and Ruby Cheung,
• Ben Slater, ‘What Do You Do with What You See?’: Patterns and Uses of Cinéphilia, Then and Now

Resources

• Timeline – On-line Distribution of Feature Films
• A Selection of (Mostly Legal) VOD and On-line Content Providers
• Comparative Internet Rankings: 40 International On-line Movies-on-demand Sites
• Comparative Deal Terms in 2009

What they said about Digital Disruption:
 
‘It’s hard to overstate the importance of this collection of essays. Ever since digital technology began to transform the media landscape, various self-appointed pundits – myself included – have been predicting the final outcome, with results that have ranged from a utopian belief that film is finally being democratised to various versions of the end-of-the-cinema-as-we-know-it scenario. Now, at last, we have what we needed: some rigorous academic thinking on the subject combined with detailed analysis of what exactly is going on in the fast-developing world of downloads, streaming video and Swedish pirates. The people who really need to read this book – the Hollywood studios – probably won’t. But anyone else remotely interested in the future of cinema should do so.’ - Nick Roddick, Sight & Sound’s ‘Mr Busy’
 
‘Digital Disruption is a must read for all researchers and practitioners interested in the changing shape and circulation of filmed content. This book amounts to much more than the sum of its parts by addressing compelling and highly relevant areas of enquiry and employing fine research delivered in a transparent and accessible writing style. Digital Disruption enables the reader to leap onto a fast moving train without being knocked off balance by the rush of the wind. Highly recommended.’ - Angus Finney, consultant and industry executive, Film Business Academy, London and author of The International Film Business: A Market Guide beyond Hollywood

The aim of this conference is to explore emerging challenges at the interface between advanced visualisation technologies, truth and trust; we want to stimulate talk, interaction and collaboration between the arts, humanities and (natural, medical, engineering, computer) sciences, in a context where both science and (visual) art are increasingly converging and, at the same time, disciplinary boundaries still separate those working across them.

Deadline June 6, 2012. 17-21 September 2012, Norrköping, Sweden.

Both Leonardo da Vinci and John Constable claimed that painting is a science. This science has been explored extensively in traditional aesthetics and art history. Given recent advances in science and visual engineering, creating images for science, of science and for the translation (interpretation) of science has become at one and the same time commonplace, even easy, and even more scientific.

The aim of this conference is to bring together experts from across the natural and social sciences, with curators, artists, producers and users of images based on advanced visual engineering. By exploring emerging challenges at the interface between advanced visualisation technologies, truth and trust we want to stimulate talk, interaction and collaboration between the arts, humanities and (natural, medical, engineering, computer) sciences, in a context where both science and (visual) art are increasingly converging and, at the same time, disciplinary boundaries still separate those working across them.

Learn more about this conference: http://www.esf.org/index.php?id=9115

Increasing access to the internet has resulted in an array of new strategies and success stories for contemporary activism, in particular with regards to mobilisation. But, we are still groping in the dark when it comes to understanding the place of digital participatory activities in the shifting landscapes of power in late modernity. This special issue of eJournal of eDemocracy & Open Government addresses this problem.

Full papers due June 11, 2012. Call for Papers: Special Issue of JeDEM (eJournal of eDemocracy & Open Government): Vol. 4 (1). Digital Citizenship and Activism: Questions of Power and Participation Online. http://www.jedem.org/

Nowadays, when citizens, activists and participants in social movements want to voice their opinions and negotiate their political identities they increasingly do so in hybrid media environments that are particularly suitable for mobilisation, organisation and discussion. With a massive increase in online social networking, digital infrastructures are lowering the threshold for political involvement. This, in turn, is considerably shifting the power dynamics of participation. Digital storytelling, for example, has become part of the strategies used by contemporary political activists. While strategies in the past revolved mainly around the attempts to influence the mass media and gatekeepers, today more and more citizens are becoming reporters and commentators themselves, often providing first-hand, real-time coverage of offline political activities.

However, some have questioned the notion of social networking platforms as tools for social change and/or horizontal power structures, in particular in relation to issues of surveillance and data privacy. These sorts of critical views have been voiced in public debates on the implications of corporate ownership of social networks. Another question that has been raised is whether “clicktivism” is eroding the physical or embodied participation constituting traditional offline activism. It must be also taken into account that very few movements have succeed through mediated activism alone.

Hence, on the one hand we are witnessing how increasing access to the internet has resulted in an array of new strategies and success stories forcontemporary activism, in particular with regards to mobilisation. On the other hand, we are still groping in the dark when it comes to understanding the place of digital participatory activities in the shifting landscapes of power in late modernity.

For this special issue of JeDEM, we invite scholarly research to shed light on the issues of power and participation online.

TOPICS CAN INCLUDE, BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO:

• Digital divides, hierarchy and marginalisation in political collectives, citizen networks and social movements
• Identity negotiation in digital activism and online collective action
• The intersections of individual, collective and connective identities in political movements online
• Socio-psychological aspects of political communication online
• Slacktivism, clicktivism, micro-activism and socio-political change
• Empirical accounts of shifting power relations and citizen/community empowerment in contemporary political participatory initiatives
• Mappings of power relations in online political networks
• Online platforms for mediated sociability and social capital creation and their role in civic mobilization
• The politics of privacy and surveillance in a networked world
• New governmental policies and networks
• Examples of new media strategies, real-time coverage and networked organisation in social and ad-hoc movements
• Implications and criticism of corporate ownership of social networks
• Social media activism in emerging and transitional democracies
• Multimedia configuations and citizens involvement in the public sphere

Relevant articles from different national and disciplinary perspectives are welcome. We also encourage authors to submit policy papers and case studies, as well as critical essays analyzing existing methods and approaches.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Articles submitted for consideration must be written in English. Length of paper: 7,500-12,000 words, including footnotes. Template and guidelines are available at http://www.jedem.org/about/submissions#authorGuidelines

GUEST EDITORS
Dr. Maria Bakardjieva (University of Calgary, Canada)
Dr. Jakob Svensson (Karlstad University, Sweden)
Dr. Marko M. Skoric (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)

IMPORTANT DATES
Call for papers 01.03.2012
Submission deadline 11.06.2012
Editor decision 16.07.2012
Camera ready paper 06.08.2012

CONTACT
Judith Schossböck, Managing Editor
Centre for E-Government, Danube University Krems
Email:judith.schossboeck@donau-uni.ac.at
Phone: +43 (0)2732 893-2309

This article examines recent developments in southern China commonly described as shanzhai. It also describes the fuzzy boundary between formal and informal culture and notes the interaction between three spheres of activity: official culture, the market and grassroots culture.

Authors:Michael Keane & Elaine Jing Zhao, Queensland University of Technology. Published online as part of the Asian Creative Transformations’ Work-in-progress paper series.

Open access: http://www.creativetransformations.asia/media/wipps/Renegades_on_the_frontier_of_innovation.pdf

Abstract
This article examines recent developments in southern China commonly described as shanzhai. The term translates as “hideaway of mountain bandits”. While shanzhai is often condemned as the embodiment of China’s “knock-off” industries we argue that it might be more appropriately viewed as an instance of China’s emerging creative economy and an example of rapid prototyping. The paper traces the evolution of shanzhai mobile phones and the materialization of the shanzhai ethos in popular culture. In arguing that shanzhai provides inputs into creative industries the paper describes the fuzzy boundary between formal and informal culture and notes the interaction between three spheres of activity: official culture, the market and grassroots culture.

Keywords: shanzhai, creative economy, grassroots culture, regional innovation, second generation innovation, intellectual property

In this paper, we propose a Digital Ecosystem architecture, which combines the social media and Internet-of-Things.

Authors: Tingan Tang, Zhenyu Wu, Kimmo Karhu, Matti Hämäläinen, Yang Ji. Published in the Journal of Emerging Technologies in Web Intelligence.

Open-access article: http://ojs.academypublisher.com/index.php/jetwi/article/view/jetwi0401106115

Abstract
There are an increasing number of information sources and services around us enabling new ways of interacting with our everyday environment. Examples include intelligent devices, sensors embedded in the environment and the emerging Internet-of-Things. Simultaneously users are becoming increasingly involved as information providers and consumers by means of Web 2.0 and social media. While these areas have gained a lot of attention recently and while the research on Digital Ecosystems has also dealt with these phenomena separately there seems to be need for research on the rich and complex ecosystem combining the sensor-based information sources with Web 2.0 and mobile services. In this paper, we propose a Digital Ecosystem architecture, which combines the social media and Internet-of-Things. The architecture is the fruit from the international collaboration between two long-term university Living Lab projects in Finland and in China. It aims at fostering student innovations in their everyday campus lives. We discuss the experiences learnt in the context of this international collaboration and the implications to Digital Ecosystem research.

Keywords: Living Labs, Digital Ecosystems, Internet of Things, Ubiquitous Computing, Web of Things, Social Media

As books increasingly are published as digital artefacts, the margin as we know it is changing. This collection seeks to analyze and theorize the reader’s engagement with the digital book.

Chapter proposals due April 30, 2012

We solicit contributions for an edited collection of scholarly essays entitled In the Margin: e-Text and its readers. Considerable scholarship of the past three decades has addressed the history, readership, and materiality of the book. The architecture of the page, paperstock, font, blank spaces, and readerly annotation have been the subject of economic, material, and theoretical analysis. Attention to how books have been copied, signed, and annotated has illuminated a history of reading and literary activity. The codex, in short, has been invaluable to the material turn in bibliographic and literary scholarship.  But what of the digital turn?

As books increasingly are published as digital artefacts, the margin as we know it is changing. This collection seeks to analyze and theorize the reader’s engagement with the digital book.

Essays will consider what it means to “write in the margin” of a digital hypertext - that space integral to the experience of reading because it is, literally and figuratively, where the reader marks presence, signals engagement, and makes the text one’s own.  We are interested in papers that address the literal margin as it exists in hypertext and also the margin, more figuratively, as the navigable interactive space between the reader and the text.

The collection will cross-disciplinary boundaries and problematise conventional ways of thinking about active reading instantiated in digital culture. Essays are welcome from disciplines such as textual scholarship, hypertext studies, history of the book, pedagogy, theory, computer science, information management, digital humanities, and instructional design.

Topics of interest include:

• Hypertext editions and the margin
• Designing text and apparatus in hypertext
• The expanding apparatus
• Teaching hypertext
• Designing hypertext for the classroom
• Reading, links, and nodes
• The gendered hypertext
• The body and hypertext
• Interactive world in hypertext and game theory, fan fiction, etc.
• Hypertext and philosophies of literature
• The centre and the margin
• Queer hypertext

Proposals of no more than 500 words should be submitted to Drs. Ann-Barbara Graff annbg(at)nipissingu.ca or Kristin Lucas kristinl(at)nipissingu.ca by 30 April 2012.  Please indicate the intended length of the paper and include a brief biography.

Accepted papers (short papers of 1500-2000 words or long papers of 5000 words) will be due by 1 November 2012.