IMAG2018: Imagining Machines Paris 8 University Saint-Denis, France, December 11-13, 2018 |
Conference website | http://www.labex-arts-h2h.fr/mondes-interfaces-et.html |
Submission link | https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=imag2018 |
Abstract registration deadline | October 21, 2018 |
Submission deadline | October 21, 2018 |
“Imagining Machines as Mediators for Fiction) — December 11th-13th, 2018
These workshops are organized by Pierre Cassou-Noguès, Gabriel Tremblay-Gaudette, Arnaud Regnauld and François Sebbah as part of the project entitled « Mondes, interfaces et environnements à l’ère du numérique ». This project has received the support of Labex Arts-H2H (which has now merged with ArTeC graduate school : http://www.labex-arts-h2h.fr/communique-artec.html?lang=en)
The purpose of these workshops will be to question the role of machines as mediators for fiction. In other words, it will be a matter of questioning contemporary fiction as it is mediated by machines. We take the term imagination, or fiction, in the broadest sense including literary, artistic, theoretical and speculative forms.
Machines can be listed in at least four categories.
- As objects, when the main object of fiction is a machine whether it exists in the real world, or not.
- As subjects invested with an inner life, when one lends an imagination to machines or when the work intends to show a form of imagination specific to a machine - its dreams, for example. This implies admitting that machines dream, or that it is possible for the artist to succeed in making a machine dream.
- As media, when fiction unfolds in a medium structured by a machine whose constraints it is then forced to respect: the content of a novel initially published on Twitter could not escape the limit of 140 characters per tweet, while a work on Facebook should logically play with the publication and referencing methods specific to this social media, as well as rely on its iconography and graphic interface.
- And finally, as intermediaries, when the reference to a machine, whether it exists or not, serves as an operator to set up a certain situation, which can for instance raise a speculative issue in the form of a thought experiment.
It should be noted that these categories are not very stable or mutually exclusive. It may be that the machine is never just an object but always a means. Or the artist who represents a machine’s dream produces a fiction that is de factostructured by a machinic medium. Or, conversely, an artwork or literary piece about a machinic medium could appear as the very dream of that machine that would then become a subject proper. And suffice that the dream’s content should be about the dreaming machine itself, the machine would then be an object as well, that is to say, a means.
In short, the question will be to determine how these categories, which are mainly intended to illustrate the various ways in which machines intervene in fiction, can crosspollinate and interact with one another other. Anyone should feel free to suggest other categories as well as new mediating machines for our imagination - algorithms, cameras, screens, rockets, nano-robots, computers, neural networks, companion robots, industrial robots, satellites, to name a few... - and fictions in which these machines play a mediating role. While it would be difficult to conceive a work of fiction rooted in the contemporary world from which machines would be entirely absent, one of the objectives of these workshops is precisely to make manifest the omnipresence of these works rendered invisible by their banality but reinvested through fiction.
The fictions under study may be in the fields of literature, the arts, philosophy, humanities and social sciences. We would like to bring together researchers and artists from different backgrounds around such mediating machines.
Participants whose proposals will be shortlisted will be notified by email within two weeks of receipt of the proposal.
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=imag2018
Contact
All questions about submissions should be emailed to gabrielgaudette@gmail.com