6th Global Conference

Videogame Cultures and the Future of Interactive Entertainment
Thursday 17th July – Saturday 19th July 2014
Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

Call for Presentations:

This inter- and multi-disciplinary conference aims to examine, explore and critically engage with the issues and implications created by the mass use of computers and videogames for human entertainment and focus on the impact of innovative videogame titles and interfaces for human communication and ludic culture. In particular the conference will encourage equally theoretical and practical debates which surround the cultural contexts within which videogames flourish.

Proposals, presentations, workshops and reports are invited on any of the following themes:

1. Videogames and Gaming

Theories and Concepts of Gaming. Identifying Key Features and Issues. Videogames as Text. Videogames as Interactive Media. Space of Videogames. Multidisciplinary Approaches to Videogame Analysis. Gamification.

2. Videogame Cultures

Trends and Emerging Practices in Online and Offline Gaming.… read more. “Call: 6th Global Conference: Videogame Cultures and the Future of Interactive Entertainment”

Call for Papers:
Social Robots: Form, Content, Critique
Special issue of The International Journal of Social Robotics

Co-editors:
Michaela Pfadenhauer (Karlsruhe University / Karlsruhe Institute of Technology)
Satomi Sugiyama (Franklin College, Switzerland)
Charles Ess (University of Oslo)

We invite papers from scholars and researchers across the disciplines (including philosophy, robot ethics, Artificial Intelligence, cognitive science, media/sociology, information science, art history) that examine and explore social robots through three distinct but inextricably interwoven frameworks:

• Form/appearance (e.g., human/animal likeness in appearance; everyday media forms and robotic functions; cultural attitudes toward robot forms, etc.)
• Content/AI/applications (e.g., implications of artificial intelligence in everyday human experiences such as memories, relationships, and conceptions of the self and self-understanding; applications that shape human-robot interactions; applications of mobile media and their implications in human’s robotic experiences, etc.)
• Critical issues that undergird the above, including; ethics, intimacy, emotions, authenticity, etc.

Merging Media: An Interdisciplinary Conference on the Study of Hybrid Arts

Call for Papers

Saturday 1st February 2014
University of Kent, Canterbury

Although we naturally recognise different artistic media as distinct forms – music, painting, sculpture, film, dance, theatre, architecture, animation, and so on – we also understand that these mediums can nevertheless have a meaningful dialogue in the creation of new artworks. Over the course of art history there have been numerous occasions when different media forms have merged or been juxtaposed for artistic purposes. These intermedial examples have seen word and image intertwined on the page in the illuminated books of William Blake; experimentation with the partnership between painting and music in Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition; performance and music mixed in Variations by John Cage; the deconstruction of paintings through digital visual manipulation in Peter Greenaway’s lectures; and the recent National Theatre Live and Royal Opera House theatrical performances being broadcast onto cinema screens.… read more. “Call: Merging Media: An Interdisciplinary Conference on the Study of Hybrid Arts”

Call for Papers: Unnatural Futures Conference

Dates: 3 & 4 July, 2014
Venue: Centre for the Arts University of Tasmania, Hobart

From genetically modified foods to zombie apocalypse, concerns about the future are increasingly reflected in contemporary media, policy and culture. An “unnatural future” is being shaped by rapidly escalating anxieties about the social, cultural, environmental and technological risks that now pervade everyday life. This climate of fear and uncertainty about the future requires careful consideration around how best to respond and intervene in debates, discussion and media representations around our “unnatural future”.

This conference brings together researchers from a range of academic disciplines, including those from the social sciences, humanities, and agricultural and environmental studies, to address the following questions: how do we imagine the future? What are the methodologies or theories that may help navigate these potential futures? The intention is to share and explore views of the possible natural and unnatural futures that loom large on the horizon.… read more. “Call: Unnatural Futures Conference”