CFP: Annual Sensorium Grad Student Symposium – York University, Toronto

Frequencies: Patterning Interconnectivity & Networked Temporality

In both historical and contemporary contexts, the development of new technology has been pivotal in establishing and modulating global patterns of connectivity, and in setting the rhythm and pace of interaction through asynchronous flows of material and information. In our current moment, the capability of algorithmic processes to further mediate meaning and integrate networks of sensorial and computational content offers the possibility for connections to be performed with new timing, layering multiple presents and mixing potential realities. These changes in techno-social dynamics shape artistic, scientific, and cultural practices, and have a profound impact on the ways in which we singularly and collectively construct meaning through a shifting relationship to temporality and interconnectivity.

For its third annual Graduate Symposium- “Frequencies: Patterning Interconnectivity & Networked Temporality”- the Student Caucus of Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts & Technology is currently inviting cross-disciplinary proposals which consider presence, permanence, and performativity in digitally mediated contexts, and which critically engage with the ways that these concepts challenge contemporary notions of causality, authorship, and intentionality. We are interested in global resonances and emerging properties that reflect an ever-growing distribution of process across biological, technological, and social systems, and how these may be viewed from a variety of cultural perspectives. We seek proposals which situate these trends in relation to artificial intelligence, telepresence, and augmented reality, and emerging scholarship which explores structures of consciousness and modes of perception through the lens of both human and non-human interaction. We encourage presentations that reflexively consider process, research-creation, and collaboration, and link academic and performative modalities.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the impact of algorithmic mediation on:

  • Networks, webs, infrastructures, and their expansions
  • Time consciousness in relation to globalization
  • Continuity and discontinuity, flows, and streams
  • Temporal aesthetics
  • Authorship, memory, and narrative
  • Human/machine agency in creative practice
  • Archives and artifacts
  • Live, recorded, and mediated presence
  • Instrumentality and technologies of performance
  • Technics of representation and perception
  • Sensory substitution
  • Emerging sense theories, esp. in relation to time
  • Sonic materiality
  • Listening and embodied cognition
  • Ontological politics
  • Transcorporeality and posthumanism
  • Improvisation and distributed creativity
  • The ‘work-concept’
  • Emergence in the creative process
  • Popular conceptions of time in film, media, art, and literature

This one-day symposium will offer a unique symbiotic opportunity for researchers, scientists, and artists to gather, exchange, bond, and cross-fertilize future landscapes for research that is currently materializing across disciplinary boundaries.

Presentation formats: Papers, poster, workshops, round tables, performances, presentations- traditional and experimental- and other emerging forms will all be considered. We encourage cross-disciplinary interpretations, variations and unforeseen mutations of our working themes.

Submissions: We invite papers and presentations that critique, consider, and construct the intersections of art, science, temporality, technology, and iterations therein. Please send a 300-word abstract, along with a working title, short biography, and contact information. If you would like to submit a joint proposal with several researchers/artists, please send only one application that includes collective biographical and contact information. Specify the format of your presentation, keeping in mind it should be no more than 20 minutes in length (90 minutes for panels and/or roundtables). The final date for submissions is March 1st, 2017 at 11:59pm EST. Send to: sensoriumsymposium@gmail.com

Keynote Speaker: We are pleased to welcome David Rokeby as our speaker for the 2017 Symposium. From David’s website: “David Rokeby is an installation artist based in Toronto, Canada. He has been creating and exhibiting since 1982. For the first part of his career he focussed on interactive pieces that directly engage the human body, or that involve artificial perception systems. In the last decade, his practice has expanded to included video, kinetic and static sculpture. His work has been performed / exhibited in shows across Canada, the United States, Europe and Asia”

Fee: Registration fee for the conference is $25 pending acceptance – fee includes boxed lunch, coffee, and evening reception.