Call for papers : special issue of Media-N journal

median

Seeing Systems faculty Terri Weissman and Kevin Hamilton are co-editing the second of two issues of Media-N, the Journal of the New Media Caucus of the College Art Association. The 2014 edition of the journal will be themed around the theme of Art & Networks: Revealing, Critiquing and Composing Global Infrastructures.

Weissman and Hamilton will co-edit the Fall issue, themed around the idea of software (broadly interpreted), following the Spring issue that explores the year’s theme through the topic of hardware.

Deadline for submissions for the Spring issue is November 15. Deadline for submission to the Fall issue is June 15, 2014.

For the full CFP, see the New Media Caucus site. Here’s a brief description of the issue to be edited by our own contingent:

—- CFP —-

Edition Two / Software
Co-Guest Editors:
Kevin Hamilton (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
Terri Weissman (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)

Whereas the first edition of this series on Art and Networks seeks papers that examine the physical components—cables, satellites, and other built structures—that make global telecommunication transmissions possible, the second edition seeks essays that focus on the seemingly invisible conventions, protocols, languages and knowledge structures that shape contemporary networked life. The storage and retrieval of digital files, multiple forms of instant communication, remote monitoring of international events, 6.5 trillion in daily foreign exchange transactions—all of these actions also depend on technologies that are intrinsically intangible: graphical user interfaces, norms of use, knowledge taxonomies, mathematical algorithms, and so on. While artists, scholars and critics of digital media have addressed these aspects of digital life as modes of representation, they have spent less time understanding how these intangible components function within larger flows of commerce and communication.

Part II of this series of Media-N thus seeks to address these issues by turning attention, for example, to the way the jpeg image compression format functions not only as a particular approach to visual phenomena, but also as a way of facilitating the flow of such phenomena between users. Or, how, for instance, have artists visualized the linguistic dynamics of online social space? What have we learned from artists about the influence of software development protocols and processes on everyday consumer experience? Visualization designers such as Wattenberg and Viegas showed us the knowledge structures and taxonomies at work over time in Wikipedia editing processes; who is doing the same for the filters at work in search algorithms? Artists such as Stephanie Rothenberg or Andrew Norman Wilson have brought to light the hands of labor in global digital trade—who else is making tangible the routinely intangible components of virtual exchange? We welcome submissions that address these or other related topics, histories, or critiques.

TIMELINE for Submission for Edition Two / Software
June 15, 2014: Deadline for submission of abstracts/proposals.
July 15, 2014: Notification of acceptance.
September 15, 2014: Deadline for submission of final papers.

ABSTRACT GUIDELINES
Please send your submission proposal with the following information, by
email to: kham@illinois.edu AND tweissma@illinois.edu with ‘Media-N
Submission’ and your name(s) in the subject line.

Include your Email(s), Proposal Title, 300-500 word Proposal Description, up
to 3 page Resume, and your Title/Affiliation (the institution/organization
you work with ­ if applicable, or independent scholar/practitioner.)