Chris Joseph

Journal of Media Practice Call for Papers

Special Issue: A Decade of Media Practice: Changes, Challenges and Choices

The Journal of Media Practice is celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2009!

To mark this anniversary, the Journal is looking for contributions from colleagues involved in media practice around the world, whether as teachers or practitioners.

The current decade is witnessing vast changes in the production, consumption and forms of media. With digital technology, video art, documentary, film and other visual media are all going through interesting changes at the institutional, artistic and audience levels. Web 2.0 is blurring the lines between the production and consumption of media, and is opening up new spaces of expression in societies where state censorship hinders freedom of speech in traditional media. It is also instigating changes in web design. Satellite television is consolidating itself as the primary medium in places like the Middle East. Digital radio is opening up new possibilities for broadcasting. More synergies are being created between different media forms, whether between the internet and television, the internet and documentary, or any number of other possibilities.

The Journal invites international contributions responding to the changes and challenges in the media practice landscape over the last decade, be it television, radio, video art, documentary, film, screenwriting, the internet, the press, or any other form of print, audio, visual or audiovisual media, and the choices that those changes and challenges have created for media practitioners, institutions and audiences.

In addition to academic articles, the Journal encourages the submission of:

- Interviews with key media personnel and artists

- Reflections by media practitioners on their own practice (whether within institutions or as independent practitioners)

- Reviews of exhibitions and other media events

- Critical pieces about changes in technology, content and delivery of media products and tools, or the work of media institutions around the world

Articles should be 5000 words, reviews 500-1000 words, and critical pieces and reflections between 1000-3000 words. The Editor is happy to discuss other possibilities with potential contributors.

All submissions are subject to peer review. Please send all submissions to jmp [at] rhul.ac.uk.

Informal queries can be sent to the Editor Lina Khatib: lina.khatib [at] rhul.ac.uk

The deadline to receive all material is October 17, 2008.

Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing (0.5 FTE)

£29,138 - £41,545 pa (pro rata)

Humanities

Department of English & Creative Writing

You should be a published creative writer with teaching experience, who can contribute to the development and teaching of our lively and innovative creative writing programmes, particularly at undergraduate level. Interested in a range of forms and genres, you will be sympathetic to experimentation and be able to help students acquire a range of craft and practical skills. Expertise in prose fiction and familiarity with digital/new media writing would be an advantage, as would an ability to contribute to teaching in genres not currently covered by the teaching team. It is anticipated you will start in September 2008.

http://www.jobs-dmu.co.uk/academicmoreinfo.asp?JID=1849

Come along to hear about practical interventions to support UK games developers innovate and grow through funding of specific business development initiatives, the creation of an industry wide database to facilitate recruitment, cooperation and job swapping, funded internships, and public service commissioning of content.

Register here

Speakers include:

* Rory Cellan-Jones, BBC Technology Correspondent - Key Note Address
* Richard Wilson, TIGA - a pilot in shared staff resourcing and job swaps
* Adam Gee, Channel 4 - as a public service commissioner of content
* Paul Durrant, Dare to be Digital - funded innovation internships
* Chaired by Charles Cecil, MD, Revolution Software

Date: Monday, 7 July 2008
Time: 11.30am-12.45pm
Registration from 11.00am; presentations at 11.30am followed by a networking lunch until 1.30pm

Venue: NESTA, 1 Plough Place, London, EC4A 1DE

FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology), Liverpool UK
From Friday 27 June - 31 August 2008

One of the world’s most celebrated artists, Pipilotti Rist, draws together a body of work that explores what it is to be human. In her trademark heady mix of bright light, lush colours and zany feminine energy, the work in this exhibition explores the loss of innocence. It challenges viewers to look at art differently: whether lying on the floor, peering into a small dark crack in the floor or perched on oversized furniture.

Exploring the third element of FACT’s 2008 Human Futures programme: my world, Pipilotti Rist examines our relationship with the natural environment. Often playing the lead within her films, she re-works the well-worn cliché of woman as a symbol of nature, andman as a symbol of culture.

Address: 88 Wood Street Liverpool L1 FDQ

Opening times: Mon - Fri: 10.00am - 6.00pm Sat & Sun: 11.00am - 6.00pm

For further details please visit: www.fact.co.uk

OPEN CALL FOR PROJECTS & PROPOSALS

The Thursday Club is an open forum discussion group for anyone interested in the theories and practices of cross-disciplinarity, interactivity, technologies and philosophies of the state-of-the-art in today’s (and tomorrow’s) cultural landscape(s). The Club is supported by the Goldsmiths Digital Studios (GDS) and the Goldsmiths Graduate School.

Originally set up in October 2005 by GDS as a more informal setting for research discussions, it has grown to include 193 members: artists, technologists, scientists – in fact, a growing diversity of people from different communities worldwide, that are connected via a mailing list and online forum.

Most importantly, there are regular meetings in ‘real’ space at the Ben Pimlott site of Goldsmiths, University of London. Anyone can attend these events. By keeping these meetings free, informal and open to all, we provide a platform for diverse and open ended discourse, for people who perhaps would not have the opportunity to discuss ideas outside of their chosen discipline.

The Thursday Club brings together people from diverse fields and degrees of expertise, aiming to initiate discussion and debates among postgraduate students, researchers, academics, artists, theorists, and other cultural practitioners.

Since it focuses on interdisciplinary practices, the Club is interested to experiment with innovative formats of presentation that are appropriate to the nature of the subject. We particularly welcome the proposal of round table discussions, panels, screenings, ‘hearings’, live gigs and performance lectures. We are also interested to platform experimental work-in-progress of both practical and theoretical nature.

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Creative Writing and New Media MA showcase

The Online MA in Creative Writing and New Media at De Montfort University is designed for writers interested in experimenting with new formats and exploring the potential of new technologies in their writing. This first annual CWNM Salon is a unique opportunity to enjoy the best work from the first two years of the course with installations and talks from the following authors:

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Interrupt 2008, to be held at Brown University from October 17-19, is a three-day festival of readings, performances, and symposia organized around the theme of “interruption” in digital art and programmable literary practices. Why “Interrupt”? In computing, a hardware interrupt request or IRQ is used to prioritize the execution of certain processes over others. It is a command sent to the processor to get its attention, signaling the need to initiate a new operation.

In the context of contemporary art, the act of interruption is a performance that redirects threads of process and lines of thought into fields of new expression. Interrupts trigger the moment when a process of creation yields a public manifestation. The cycle of ongoing work is paused by a challenge, calling for the attention of a provisional community: just as we read ICQ as “I seek you,” we can read IRQ as “I argue.” In this sense, interrupts articulate critical thresholds at which formal expressions are offered up to (or forced into) new circuits of communication, countering that which came before and making a case for new artistic and political futures.

We ask you to attend and participate.

Artists in Residence:
* Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries *

Confirmed Headliners:
* Alan Sondheim & Foofwa d’Imobilité *
* Laetitia Sonami *
* Eugenio Tisselli *
* Marko Niemi *

Details and arrangements to be confirmed:
* cris cheek *
* Abigail Child *
* Chris Funkhouser *
* Loss Peque?o Glazier *
* Talan Memmott *
* Bill Seaman and Penny Florence *
* Patricia Tomaszek *

Critics, theorists, artists and students who would like to attend are asked to contact John_Cayley (at) brown.edu. We will be organizing two or more round table sessions during the festival, and we invite brief presentations intended to spark critical discussions relating to the work of interruption within the context of digitally mediated language practices. Participants will also be invited to instigate discussion at these round tables.

If you would like to attend, and particularly if you have institutional backing, we ask you to consider supporting Interrupt with a registration contribution of $50 (checks only please) made out to ‘Brown University’ and sent to:

Interrupt 2008
Brown University
Literary Arts Program
Box 1923
Providence RI 02912

For letters of invitation, please contact John_Cayley (at) brown.edu. Register now.

To read more about what we mean by Interrupt and for other details about the festival – including the preliminary program, schedule, location, venues, and accommodation information – please refer to our website: http://interrupt2008.net

Organized and hosted at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design by graduates and undergraduates from Literary Arts, Modern Culture and Media, MEME, RISD D+M, and other departments.

Funding and support for Interrupt currently includes the following sources: Brown Creative Arts Council, the Literary Arts program, RISD Digital+Media, MEME, the Brown Graduate School, the Comparative Literature department.

(french version below)
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MAKE ART 2008 - OpenOS
CALL FOR PROJECTS

Make Art is an international festival dedicated to the integration of
Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) in digital art.

The third edition of make art - OpenOS - will take place in Poitiers (FR), from the 24th to the 30th of November 2008.

make art offers performances, presentations, workshops and an exhibition, focused on the blurred line between art and software
programming.

We’re currently seeking new, innovative FLOSS based works and projects: music and audiovisual performances, presentations, software demos, and installations.

This year make art focuses on the *OpenOS*: artistic, free, creative use of the Operating System, hackability and modularity of FLOSS and GNU/Linux, scripts as digital glue between applications, enhanced possibilities for the technical expression of ideas, user empowerment and artistic freedom.

For more details, please visit http://makeart.goto10.org/call

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Hi there,

4mations loves animation and we hear you’re pretty good at making them, so how about we pay you to make some for us?

You’ve got till the 2nd July to send us your killer idea for a mini-series, a viral one-off or a game and then until 8th September to make it. Simple.

4mations wants to be the centre of your animated universe. There are cash rewards & other stuff for uploaded animations - but that’s to come, here’s what we’re looking for right now…

Web: www.4mations.tv
Blog: blog.4mations.tv
Twitter: @4mations

YOUR CHALLENGE:
We’d like you to produce either a:

1 MINI-SERIES

Length: Between 1 and 3 minutes per episode

Format: A comedy mini-series that should be either a) narrative, sitcom style OR b) sketches on a theme.

2 VIRAL ONE-OFFs

Duration: Between 15 and 90 seconds

Format: Funny films with great punch lines or a comic payoff. We want something to make us chuckle.

3 GAME

If you have ideas for flash games, why not throw those in too? It could be a stand-alone game idea or a spin-off from your mini-series or viral film.

You don’t even have to know how to code a game, if it’s a good idea, we’ll bring in our crack team to make it work.

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How to Talk to Images
Exhibition by Richard Wright
4th July - 3rd August 2008
Opening Reception: Friday 4th July 6-9pm
Exhibition open: Fri-Sun 12noon-5pm
www.http.uk.net

No one is sure how many images there are on the Internet. Google has nearly a billion. Some say it is hundreds of times more than that.

For “How to Talk to Images”, Richard Wright has compiled a database of 50,000 random Internet images as the raw content for two artworks. “The Internet Speaks” and “The Mimeticon” use this database to create a world where we can “read” pictures, browse “libraries” of endless images or learn to draw with alphabets.

MAIN

In this era, finding our way through the world of images is so overwhelming, that the dominant mode is to “search” rather than to “see”. An image is an answer to a question, a search query. The Internet Speaks gives us one of the simplest imaginable ways of searching this set of images, stepping through them, one by one in random order, without context. In contrast, The Mimeticon is a wilfully complex and ‘baroque’ search engine that allows us to search for images by visual similarity rather than by typing in keywords. These ’search images’ are ‘drawn’ using letters from the history of the alphabet.

As part of How to Talk to Images, Richard Wright’s first solo exhibition in London, a selection of Wright’s animated films demonstrates the development of his current interest in the Baroque. The exhibition is also the occasion of publication of a limited-edition poster featuring an essay by the artist illustrated by the entire visual history of the Western alphabet – from its pictorial Egyptian origins 5,000 years ago to its perfected form under the Romans, as well as a new book documenting the artists twenty year long practice.

Richard Wright has been making digital animation and interactive pieces since the eighties. Heliocentrum, an animation about Louis XIV, was described by writer Hari Kunzru as “…an amazingly effective way of showing how a sovereign manipulated power” and The Bank of Time was nominated for a BAFTA in 2001. Richard was most recently a member of artists group Mongrel and is currently working on an urban media project called “decorative surveillance”. Since summer 2007 he has been Artist in Residence at Furtherfield.org.

Opening Reception
Your chance to meet Richard Wright, to enjoy a few drinks and conversations about the exhibition.

Contact:
Lauren Wright, HTTP Gallery
lauren [at] furtherfield.org

HTTP Gallery
Unit A2, Arena Design Centre
71 Ashfield Road
London N4 1LD
+44(0)79 8129 2734
www.http.uk.net

Click here for map and location details

Further info:
www.futurenatural.net

HTTP Gallery is Furtherfield.org’s dedicated space for exhibiting networked media art. Furtherfield.org is a not-for-profit, artist-led organisation. Based in Harringay, North London, we provide an online and physical platform for creating, exhibiting, commissioning, and discussing networked media arts.