Call for Participation for an International Research Conference and PhD Workshop

to be held at Kunsthal Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark, 7-9 October 2013

Organised by:

Digital Aesthetics/Participatory IT Research Centre, Aarhus University

reSource transmedial culture berlin/transmediale festival

The deadline for the call for participation is now closed. Thanks for your submissions!

"Post-digital Research" aims at exploring what, in the afterglow of digital art and culture, lies beyond the digital as a form of existence. We are witnessing fundamental changes: not only do we no longer distinguish between online and off-line or analogue and digital practices, the medium of digital technology also seems to hold less fascination. It has become embedded in almost every contemporary aesthetic practice. In this, our focus of attention somewhat shifts: we become interested in the mechanisms of commercialisation (e.g. how Amazon, Google, Apple, etc. influence the way we read, write, draw, perceive, etc.), and also in the renewed significance of the technologies we left behind (the role of print, magnetic tapes, floppy disks, etc.).

Addressing “Post-digital Research”, the conference and workshop relates to the artistic call of transmediale 2014, and asks how to formulate research questions, research methods, and research dissemination in the light of an "afterglow" of the digital revolution. Following this, we do not wish to claim a research interest in a future predetermined by the digital, nor do we want to do away with the digital. Instead we will attempt to explore how to practice research in a culture where the digital has become a cultural residue that consumes resources, even producing new forms of trash and overloaded forms of existence. As the transmediale 2014 call for works states, an ambivalent and junky afterglow is what characterises the aesthetics and politics of the digital "during the transition to new cultural forms that are still unknown to us". In other words, with this call for "Post-digital Research" we do not wish to set a particular direction for research, but rather provide a speculative and experimental framework for research in a post-digital culture. We therefore invite proposals that take diverse perspectives to open up some of the paradoxes of contemporary thinking and technologically-informed artistic practice after the digital.

Since 2011, we have organised events that form a template for future work: Public Interfaces, Aarhus University (2011); In/Compatible Research, Universität der Künste (Berlin) (2011); Researching #BWPWAP, Leuphana University of Lüneburg (2012). Each of these workshops has resulted in the publication of a peer-reviewed newspaper, and also recently a peer reviewed journal (www.aprja.net); themselves experiments in new forms of scholarly publication. “Post-digital Research” will further explore new frameworks for collaborative research, and the outcome will be published in a journal and newspaper issue to be presented and distributed at transmediale 2014.

The workshop also forms part of a series of events initiated by reSource transmedial culture berlin, which is an initiative of transmediale based on continuous network knowledge development and community involvement around the festival throughout the year.

Our overall aim for the workshop is to provide a forum for emerging researchers (including artist-researchers, and particularly PhD students), for speculation, critique, exchange and dialogue on their research topic and on its wider dissemination. The aim is to develop participants' individual research projects as well as foster networking. PhD students can be awarded 5 ECTS for their participation. Although the workshop is primarily aimed at international PhD researchers, it is also open to researchers who are pursuing research without institutional support.

We are seeking proposals consisting of a biography (500 characters), a statement on current research/description of PhD project (1000 characters), and an abstract for a short presentation (1500 characters).

The deadline for submissions is 22 August 2013.

> Submit your proposal here.