Curating Media and Design

Aca-articles: Crafts critical value as a "change-maker"

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 10:11:30 +0200

The Making Futures programme, run by Plymouth College of Art, seeks to explore crafts critical value as a “change-maker”. A boatload of papers dealing with this topic is now freely available online.

The themes are on:

Craft As Social Process
Craft in an Expanded Field
Critical Perspectives on Post-Industrial Futures
Local Global Translations & Dialogues
Practice-based (Re) Definitions & Positions
Endangered Subjects - Ethical Minds

All papers can be accessed here.

CFP: Service Futures – Service Design and Innovation (Lancaster, UK, April '14)

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 09:51:22 +0200

The Service Design and Innovation conference aims to explore how Service Design is contributing to ‘Service Futures’ and, by doing so, to reflect on its directions as a design field. This conference is the premier international research conference exploring service design and service innovation.

All contributions due Oct 31, 2013.

Details: April 9-11, 2014, Service Design and Innovation (ServDes), Lancaster, UK.

The conference welcomes contributions that reflect on the ‘Service Futures’ theme and its implication for Service Design as a field of enquiry. Four topics with related sub-questions are suggested as a possible focus: service innovation, transformative services, service logic, and service science.

Read all about this conference on http://www.servdes.org/

Papers from the Governing Algorithms conference is now online

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 09:40:12 +0200

The Governing Algorithms conference set out to explore the recent rise of algorithms as an object of interest in scholarship, policy, and practice beyond computer science.

Many interesting discussion papers have been submitted:

Governing Algorithms – A Provocation Piece
The Relevance of Algorithms
The Emperor’s New Codes: Reputation and Search Algorithms in the Finance Sector
Algorithms, Performativity and Governability
Bearing Accountable Witness to the Ethical Algorithm

All papers can be accessed here: http://governingalgorithms.org/resources/discussion-papers/

Seminar: How can design labs contribute to societal development? (June 14, Malmö, Sweden)

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 08:27:30 +0200

During the past decade, design has been recognized as a powerful innovation driver and has proven to be useful when approaching complex societal challenges. This Forum for Social Innovation panel brings together researchers with extensive experience in participatory design and social innovation to discuss how design labs can contribute to societal development.

People from all sectors are invited to two sessions that address the notion of design labs and how they potentially could contribute to societal development. During the first session, the discussion will be on a general level that easily could attract anyone that are interested in the issue. In the afternoon it will be slightly more academic but everyone is still welcome to join.

Date and time: June 14, at 10-12 & 13-16

Location: Medea, Malmö University, Sweden.

Read all details about this event.

Organizers: Forum for Social Innovation Sweden, Malmö University, and The TEMPOS project at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts School of Design, Denmark.

CFP: Symposium Mediating Cityscapes (The Hague, Sep, due June 14)

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 13:45:16 +0200

“If urban space has historically been defined by the relation between static structures and mobile subjects, this dichotomy is fast giving way to hybrid spatialities characterized by dynamic flows which not only dissolve the fixity of traditional modes of spatial enclosure, but problematize the unified presence of the subject traversing their contours.”

(Scott McGuire, The Media City 2008)

Abstracts due June 14, 2013.

Symposium: Mediating Cityscapes, The Hague, Sep 27-28, 2013.

ABOUT – As Scott McGuire suggests, the contemporary city is marked by a number of tensions found between fixity and flow and the resulting hybrid spatialities which are shaped by a multifarious range of mediations. Historically, certain of these mediations, such as film, photography, music, art, and more recently, mobile and locative media, have helped shape the diverse strata which compose both the material and immaterial dimensions of the contemporary city. In form, and as practices and discourses, they have also afforded opportunities to critically engage with and creatively intervene in the city. As part of the annual arts festival Two Days Art, held in Den Haag, this interdisciplinary symposium will focus on creative and artistic responses to the mediated cityscape. We encourage papers and submissions from academics, artists and practitioners that consider the multiple ways in which various media (film, music, photographic, digital, etc.), creative practices, and technologies put in to play a diverse array of encounters and interfaces that engage with, interrupt, reconstitute, or resist the hybrid spatialities which define the contemporary cityscape.

Abstracts of no longer than 250 words can be sent to geoff.stahl@vuw.ac.nz

Closing Date: Friday, June 14th 2013.

Participants will be notified by July 1st, 2013.

CFP: Perspectives on participatory HCI research (due Aug 31)

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 13:29:17 +0200

Participation is a research area of sustained interest to the HCI community. Traditionally, the term has been used to suggest a democratized approach to the design of technology that calls for end-user involvement in the design process.

Papers due Aug 31, 2013. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies.

TOPICS

Empirical studies collaborating with organizations and communities in the design or evaluation of new technologies.
Studies of participatory HCI that target specific populations or communities, such as older people, young people, activist groups, charities, rural communities, among others.
Theoretical and conceptual frameworks that unpack the questions and related problems of participation as a process.
Critical reflections on existing and historical examples of participation in HCI.
Strategies for documenting and eliciting reflection from both researchers and participants engaged in research.
Considerations of the ethical, moral and political implications of designing technologies with communities of users and stakeholders.
Interdisciplinary perspectives on participatory HCI research.
Case studies discussing experiences of beginning, reflecting on or sustaining participatory HCI research.

Full call.

CFP: Reflecting Connectedness – PDC 2014 (due Jan 15)

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 13:22:42 +0200

The theme of the 13th Participatory Design Conference is Reflecting Connectedness.

Full papers due Jan 15, 2014.

PDC 2014, Reflecting connectedness, Oct 6-10, 2014, Windhoek, Namibia.

ABOUT – The conference theme of the PDC 2014 is “Reflecting connectedness”. We are currently experiencing a technologically pushed trend in ‘being always connected’. This is manifested in a number of designed artifacts, such as smart-phones, social networks, computer supported cooperative work and distributed working tools. By ‘reflecting connectedness’ in PD, we acknowledge influential relations across continents, societies, people, disciplines and time, beyond the direct involvement of stakeholders. … We invite authors to deliberate on these relations within and beyond the field of PD, which affect its conceptualization and practices all over.

Read full call(s): http://www.pdc2014.org/

Aca-articles: Unlike Us – Understanding Social Media Monopolies

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 13:09:47 +0200

This issue of online open-access journal First Monday is dedicated to setting out a research platform that overcomes both the dominant quantitative analyses and the privacy paradigm in current social media research.

INTRO – The ubiquitous presence of social media in everyday life has not been met by equally pervasive research efforts for their critical understanding, due mostly to the increasing specialization and fragmentation of academic research. Unlike Us: Understanding Social Media Monopolies attempts to set out a research platform that overcomes both the dominant quantitative analyses and the privacy paradigm in current social media research.

Table of contents: http://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/fm/issue/view/380/showToc

Aca-article: Getting into the Game – Doing Multi-Disciplinary Game Studies

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 13:04:00 +0200

This article focuses on interdisciplinary dialogue and multi-methodology research as an inherent characteristic of game studies. It was originally published in Bernard Perron and Mark J.P. Wolf (eds.) The Video Game Theory Reader 2, New York: Routledge.

Author: Frans Mäyrä

INTRO – This essay will focus on interdisciplinary dialogue and multi-methodology research as an inherent characteristic of game studies. Drawing from the author’s experience as the leader or partner in numerous research projects in games and digital culture, it is pieced together as a travelogue of an ongoing trip into conducting game studies within the contemporary, highly competitive and often project-based academic environment. In practical terms, it aims to provide some advice on how to avoid the pitfalls waiting for those venturing into interdisciplinary games research, as well as to point out some of the benefits that can be obtained from such approaches. The essay will conclude by providing some recent examples from interdisciplinary game studies, highlighting the associated methodological challenges and their solutions, followed by summaries of the key findings.

Read the full paper: http://people.uta.fi/~frans.mayra/Mayra_Multidisciplinary_Game_Studies_2009.pdf

Paper: Doing Research on Value of Visual Practice

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 12:58:36 +0200

In this paper, Heidi Forbes Öste define the visual practice as real-time graphics generation used to help people communicate, collaborate and make decisions”.

Forbes Öste continues:

To visualize or “see what you mean” through imagery and metaphors is the base approach. We can see from prehistoric cave paintings that this is not a new form of communication for humans. The formal application and refining of this practice, nevertheless is relatively new. It is rapidly evolving beyond communicating hunting and war strategies to events, meetings, classrooms and coaching.

Read the full paper: http://forbesoste.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/ForbesOste-721R-ResearchVisualPractice.pdf

CFP: Digital Culture – Promises and Discomforts (due Apr 19)

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 16:37:54 +0200

The ongoing mediatisation process is subject to social transformations as well as technical innovation processes and creative practices. We endorse digital technologies with the promises of a better way of life, solving our problems of managing the world’s complexity, allowing better participatory policies and helping us in our daily life.

In this workshop we want to critically discuss the promises and discomforts of digital culture taking into account the tensions raised by different material practices, understandings and social orders around the role of digital media in performing social change. Special focus lies on the three aspects of Digital Culture: Digital imaginations and narratives , Digital Neighbourhoods and Citizenship, and Digital Engagement and Social Change.

Call for Papers for the DCC Workshop: Digital Culture – Promises and Discomforts. Department of Media Studies of the University of Bonn, Germany, Poppelsdorfer Allee 47, 53115, Bonn. October 2-5, 2013.

Extended abstracts due April 19, 2013.

Read full call: http://dccecrea.wordpress.com/2013/01/11/call-for-papers/

Book: Mediation and Protest Movements

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 16:29:50 +0200

Over the past year, international and national media have been full of stories about protest movements and tumultuous social upheaval from Tunisia to California. But scholars have not yet fully addressed the connection between these movements and the media and communication channels through which their messages spread.

Correcting that imbalance, Mediation and Protest Movements explores the nature of the relationship between protest movements, media representation, and communication strategies and tactics. By covering online and offline contexts, as well as mainstream and alternative media, Mediation and Protest Movements bridges the gap between social-movement theory and media and communication studies, making this an important text for students and scholars of the media and social change.

Editors: Bart Cammaerts, Alice Mattoni, and Patrick McCurdy

Publisher: Intellect, 2013

Conference: Governing Algorithms – computation, automation, and control

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 16:22:58 +0200

Algorithms are increasingly invoked as powerful entities that control, govern, sort, regulate, and shape everything from financial trades to news media. Nevertheless, the nature and implications of such orderings are far from clear. What exactly is it that algorithms “govern”? What is the role attributed to “algorithms” in these arguments? Can we turn the “problem of algorithms” into an object of productive inquiry?

This conference sets out to explore the recent rise of algorithms as an object of interest in scholarship, policy, and practice beyond computer science.

GOVERNING ALGORITHMS: A conference on computation, automation, and control. New York University, May 16-17, 2013.

Read more: http://governingalgorithms.org

Book: Producing the Internet – Critical Perspectives of Social Media

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 16:17:50 +0200

Should contemporary media culture be understood as a culture that offers unprecedented freedom for producing participators – so-called “produsers”, or should it rather be understood as a culture in which various forms of user participation in fact are conditioned, or even manufactured, by organized, professional producers?

The contributions to this book add to our critical understanding of these new forms of media. They all draw on various theoretical concepts – such as producers, community, and participation – used when analysing media culture. But they also share a critical interest in problematizing and analysing the forms of power built into this culture.

Editor: Tobias Olsson

Publisher: Nordicom, 2013

Selected chapter titles:

Social Media and Capitalism
Dirty Work. Why Journalists Shun Reader Comments
Transmedia Storytelling and a Young Audience. Public Service in the Blogosphere Era

CFP: Perspectives on participatory HCI research (due July 31)

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 16:02:37 +0200

Participation is a research area of sustained interest to the HCI community. As HCI is an interdisciplinary field, there are multiple understandings of what participation in research might mean, from subjects and disciplines such as social science, participatory and performance arts, international development, and action research.

Full papers due July 31, 2013.

Call for Papers: Special Issue of the Int. Journal of Human-Computer Studies – Perspectives on participatory HCI research: Beginnings, middles and endings.

Full call: http://di.ncl.ac.uk/participation/special-issue/

Book: Spreadable Media – Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 15:55:26 +0200

Spreadable Media, by Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford and Joshua Green, maps fundamental changes taking place in our contemporary media environment, a space where corporations no longer tightly control media distribution and many of us are directly involved in the circulation of content.

The authors introduce the concept of “spreadability” to describe the ways content travels through social media.

If you don’t have the time to read the book you can listen to a discussion about it from SXSW Interactive 2013.

Authors: Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford and Joshua Green

Publisher: NYU Press, 2013.

Book: Beyond WikiLeaks – Implications for the Future of Communications, Journalism, and Society

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 10:32:51 +0100

Beyond WikiLeaks opens a space to reflect on the broader implications across political and media fields, and on the transformations that result from new forms of leak journalism and transparency activism.

A select group of renowned scholars, international experts, and WikiLeaks ‘insiders’ discuss the consequences of the WikiLeaks saga for traditional media, international journalism, freedom of expression, policymaking, civil society, social change, and international politics.

Edited by Benedetta Brevini, Arne Hintz and Patrick McCurdy

Published by Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=637302

Authors include: Harvard University’s Yochai Benkler; Graham Murdoch of Loughborough University; net activism scholar, Gabriella Coleman; the Director for International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Jillian York; and Guardian editor, Chris Elliott. The book also includes a conversation between philosopher, Slavoj Zizek, and WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, and its prologue is written by Birgitta Jónsdóttir, Icelandic MP and editor of the WikiLeaks video ‘Collateral Murder’.

Book: Media interventions (essay collection)

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 10:19:44 +0100

This collection of essays, the first book-length treatment of its kind, explicates the concept of “media interventions” herein defined as activities and projects that secure, exercise, challenge or acquire media power for tactical and strategic action.

Edited by Kevin Howley w. afterword by Nick Couldry.

Published by Peter Lang, 2013.

MORE – Drawing on insights from media, communication and cultural studies, contributors offer penetrating analyses of media interventions in a variety of social, political, and cultural settings from culture jamming and DIY media, to public relations campaigns and reality television shows. In doing so, the volume develops an analytical framework for examining the complex and contradictory operation of media power in contemporary society.

CFP: Participatory Cultural Citizenship – When is citizen participation socially transformative? (Denmark, November)

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 10:11:43 +0100

In recent years studies of aesthetic, urban and digital culture have focused on the political potential of user-driven production often referred to by means of concepts such as DIY urbanism and participatory culture, co-creation, produsage, etc. How do we understand and support collective creation, and what new challenges does this change bring forth?

Abstracts due June 20, 2013.

RETHINK Participatory Cultural Citizenship – When is citizen participation socially transformative? Aarhus University (AU), Denmark, Nov 14-16, 2013.

Full call: http://www.aarhus2017.dk/sites/default/files/u7/call_for_papers_for_the_interdisciplinary_conference.pdf

Book: Digital Disconnect – How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 09:57:37 +0100

“In Digital Disconnect, Robert McChesney offers a groundbreaking critique of the Internet, urging us to reclaim the democratizing potential of the digital revolution while we still can.”

Author: Robert McChesney, professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and previous host of Media Matters.

Publisher: The New Press, 2013.

Full details: http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Disconnect-Capitalism-Internet-Democracy/dp/1595588671