Conference

From the conference website:

Ubiquitous and indispensable, media technologies have taken on an epistemological or even ontological significance:we learn what we know, and we become what we are, through print, tv,digital, mobile and other communications. “No part of the world, no humanactivity,” as Sonia Livingstone says, “is untouched . . . Societies worldwide arebeing reshaped, for better or for worse, by changes in the global media and informationenvironment.” Seeing media as a lens or even as an a priori conditionfor understanding historical, social and cultural change has become increasinglyprevalent and urgent on both sides of the Atlantic. However, with somenotable exceptions, this work has been developing independently, producing awide-ranging if fruitful heterogeneity. On the one side are the interdisciplinaryand theoretically-engaged Medienwissenschaften (media studies), with oversixty programs in universities in Germany alone. On the other side is work developingout of the Toronto school and a variety of theoretical and disciplinarytraditions. The purpose of this conference is to deepen and expand transatlanticdialogue between North America and German-speaking Europe (Germany,Austria and Switzerland) in the area of media theory.

The conference website provides audio-files of the talks.

The third conference in the Digital Arts and Culture series was held at the University of Bergen. The conference chair was Jan Rune Holmevik. In addition to the electronic literature-related events, there were a number of digital arts performances not listed here as well as presentations on digital culture in a broader sense. Please see the conference website for a full list. Abstracts are not available for most presentations. Conference Chair Jan Rune Holmevik, University of Bergen (Norway) Program Committee Espen Aarseth, University of Bergen (Norway) Mary Flanagan, State University of New York, Buffalo (USA) Anita Hammer, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Norway) Cynthia Haynes, University of Texas at Dallas (USA) Michael Joyce, Vassar College (USA) Raine Koskimaa, University of Jyvaskyla (Finland) Gunnar Liestøl, University of Oslo (Norway) Lone Malmborg, Malmö University College (Sweden) Adrian Miles, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University (Australia) Phoebe Sengers, German National Research Center for Information Technology (GMD) (Germany) Ragnhild Tronstad, University of Oslo (Norway) Local Arrangements Committee Jan Rune Holmevik, University of Bergen (Coordinator) Inger Marie Berntzen, University of Bergen (Treasurer) Torill Mortensen, Volda College (Social Events) Lidunn Mosaker, University of Bergen (Registration) Frank H. Pierce, University of Bergen (Database design and implementation) Johan Utne Poppe, University of Bergen (Technical Support) Elin Sjursen, University of Bergen (Public Relations) Sindre Sørensen, University of Bergen (Technical Support) Jill Walker, University of Bergen (Social Events) Marius Hanssen, University of Bergen (Registration)

MelbourneDAC, the 5th International Digital Arts and Culture Conference.

This gathering was organized by Thom Swiss and Dee Morris. The conference focused on poetry composed for digital environments, explored cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural accounts of this work in the broader context of contemporary arts and culture. 

The aims:

• to look at the possibilities for poetry offered by the electronic convergence of words, images and sound
• highlight the changing contexts in which literature is produced as a result of the electronic word
• examine emergent reading possibilities and strategies
• consider some of the new forms of distribution and archiving made possible by the Web.

The website comes along with an online gallery.