The Fabrication of Art and Beyond: Making and Inventing in Digital Culture
CHArt 2015 conference, part of the FABRICATION Arts & Humanities Festival
King’s College London, Strand
17 October 2015 (provisional)

Synopses due: Tuesday, 14 April 2015

Art intersects with fabrication. Art as a site of making has been drastically affected by digital and network technologies. The border between being online and offline, if one still exists, has become blurred. This has implications for the ways in which diverse elements are combined to create art. Yet, fabrication also means to devise or construct something new and “more troublingly” to fake and to forge. Does art involve simply the innovation of changes in what is already established by introducing new methods, ideas, or products? Perhaps more radically it should be understood as that which disrupts what previously was or could be known and invites the arrival of what was unforeseen? What are the implications for art of digital technologies, which enhance the possibilities for it to operate through illusion, manipulation, subversion, and falsification? Or is art is an event where truth is displaced by invention?

The CHArt 2015 conference wishes to explore what digital and network technologies mean for the intersection of art and fabrication. CHArt invites theoretical papers and demonstrations of academic and artistic work addressing “metaphorically or literally” questions of the fabrication, meaning and value of art as viewed through the various lenses of digital practices and technologies across a variety of genres.

Themes might include:

• The making of art and the use of digital technologies in its fabrication.
• Artifice: art as trickery or deception.
• Art as experimentation and innovation: creating new methods, ideas, or products.
• The value of art and its falsification: originality, authenticity and authentication.
• Art and falsity: can art be false?
• Art and fabrication: legal and ethical constraints, implications and consequences.
• Art as innovation or invention?
• Wearable art: digitally and network enabled fabrics.
• Art and the arrival of the unforeseeable.
• Art and the skill of fabrication in digital culture.

Contributions are welcome from all sections of the CHArt community: art historians, artists, archaeologists, architects and architectural theorists and historians, philosophers, archivists, museum professionals, curators, conservators, educators, scientists, cultural and media theorists, content providers, technical developers, users and critics.

Submissions should be in the form of a 300-400 word synopsis of the proposed paper or demonstration, with brief biographical information (no more than 200 words) of presenter/s, and should be emailed to chart@kcl.ac.uk by Tuesday, 14 April 2015.

Postgraduate students are encouraged to submit a proposal. CHArt can offer assistance with the conference fees for up to four student delegates. Priority will be given to postgraduate students whose proposals are accepted for presentation. An application form and proof of university enrolment will be required. For further details about the Helene Roberts Bursary please email anna.bentkowska@kcl.ac.uk.

Please note that submissions exceeding the stated word count will not be considered.

CHArt | Computers and the History of Art (www.chart.ac.uk) was established in 1985. CHArt’s mission is to examine and raise awareness of innovative digital techniques that support the study, administration, curation and display of all forms of art and design. CHArt acts as an independent forum for new discussion. The scope of CHArt is necessarily broad to encompass all aspects of the history of art and design, but is also constrained by a focus on how technology supports engagement with this field. Membership of CHArt is open to anyone, but CHArt particularly welcomes those who devise, use, support, research or teach relevant digital processes.

The Arts & Humanities Festival at King’s College London is an annual event, which brings together academic practices across the College with external partners. It showcases the research going on throughout the Faculty of Arts and Humanities with an emphasis on practical applications and public engagement.

A range of events takes place across the Festival, including exhibitions, performances, lectures, readings, roundtables, debates, film screenings, Q&A sessions and guided walks/ tours. More information.