ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

October 13-14, 2023

University of the Arts (UdK) Berlin (Hardenbergestraße)

Deadline: June 15, 2023

A symposium

This international symposium engages with the concept of domestication as it stands today. It celebrates on this occasion the first ever international Routledge Handbook of Domestication of Media and Technology, scheduled for release in summer of 2023.

(https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Media-and-Technology-Domestication/Hartmann/p/book/9781032184142). The conference brings together authors from the book with other researchers as well as interested colleagues and students from the UdK. The symposium focuses on questions such as:

• What is the domestication concept’s potential value for future research? 

• How does it differ from other concepts - or where are the overlaps? 

• How does domestication work in times of surveillance capitalism?

The concept of domestication of media and technology is not new. In fact, it was first formulated in the late 1980s, early 1990s. While it has never managed to take center stage, researchers in media and communication studies have used it ever since and the application and development of the concept are still thriving. Additionally, it has been used in other fields, such as technology assessment studies, in design studies, in management studies. 

It focuses primarily on the question of what users (of media and/or technologies) do with these, especially when they are new. How do they adopt them into their everyday lives, how do they adapt to the technologies (and vice versa)? These practices are seen to relate to values that are developed over time (the moral economy of the household), both individually as well as socially. The concept also offers an emphasis on the combined notion of media as technology (object) and content (double / triple articulation). At the time of its first development, the emphasis on the users’ ability to act and interpret was high. Since then, this has seen quite a bit of differentiation. Today, the question of the relationship between users and producers as well as technologies is facing new challenges, to which the domestication concept is seen to contribute important notions.

A keynote by Prof. Maria Bakardjieva (University of Calgary, CAN) will introduce some of the key concerns. Throughout two days, the symposium’s contributors will delve into the above-mentioned questions both theoretically as well as with reference to current empirical material. 

The symposium will take place at the University of the Arts (UdK) Berlin (Hardenbergestraße).

It will begin with a book launch on Thursday, the 12th of October 2023. This will be followed by a symposium on Friday and Saturday (13-14 October), ending mid-day on Saturday.

Interested parties are invited to submit an abstract (300-500 words) to Maren Hartmann (hartmann@udk-berlin.de) until the 15th of June, 2023.

Feel free to contact us with any additional questions/ comments you might have - and feel free to circulate amongst domestication lovers :-)

November 15-17, 2023 

TU Dresden, Germany, hosted by the Chair of Digital Cultures

Submission deadline: 14 July 2023

Format: in-person presentations

Confirmed keynote speaker: 

Dr Iván Chaar-López, University of Texas Austin 

The conference is organized in collaboration between the Chair of Digital Cultures at TU Dresden, Germany, and the Department of Media and Communications at The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), UK. The event is funded by the Internationalization Strategy of TU Dresden and the LSE Global Research Fund. 

Organizing team:

Dr Michelle Pfeifer (TU Dresden): michelle.pfeifer1@tu-dresden.de 

Dr Philipp Seuferling (LSE): p.seuferling@lse.ac.uk 

The buzzword “smart borders” commonly captures the widespread digitalization and automation of migration control and the expansion of racial capitalist security regimes by technological means. Yet, the term describes only the most recent instance of media technologies constituting and enabling state bordering. While states around the world rely on and invest in ever newer “smart” technologies to control migration, these developments stand in longer historical continuities, not least hailing from projects of mobility and population control of colonialism, racism, eugenics, or carceral regimes (Chaar-López, 2019; Weitzberg, 2020; Pfeifer, 2021; Leurs & Seuferling, 2022; Tazzioli, 2023). 

This conference aims to address the international research field on temporalities and histories of smart borders, to trace genealogies and longue durées of media, communication, and information technologies in the control of borders and migration. Such histories can be traced on different levels: materialities of media technologies, uses and practices around them, struggles against bordering tactics and technologies, as well as socio-technical imaginaries of what these technologies can and cannot do – all of which are characterized by continuities and change. While media shape borders across time, media technologies are also shaped by and emerge from projects of bordering. In this sense, borders can be better understood by attending to their media, and vice versa, media histories more generally can be explored at the border – a “technological testing ground” (Molnar, 2022) historically and today. 

Questions guiding the conference are: 

How can we understand histories of the “smart border” within histories of media technology and digitalization, as well as within histories of territorialization, biopolitics, racial capitalism, colonialism, and bordered states? How are technological innovation as well as processes of digitalization and computation historically tested, developed, and trialed in the context of border and migration control?How has the entanglement of media technologies with borders evolved over time?How can historical perspectives on smart borders advance critiques of violence and discrimination enacted by smart border regimes today?  

We explicitly welcome papers that engage with queer, feminist, decolonial, postcolonial, abolitionist, and critical race perspectives on the histories of mediated bordering.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

Theoretical perspectives on “smart borders” across time Methodological approaches to historicizing “smart borders” Histories of digitalization and automation, in contexts of mobility, migration, and border controlStudies of historical empirical contexts of mediated borders Histories of border and technological regulation, policy-making, and law The role of risk, uncertainty, and security in genealogies of border and migration controlGenealogies of datafication of people on the moveHistories of biometrics, surveillance, policing, and carceralityMediated containment, surveillance, and control of people on the move, mobility, and movement concerning imperatives of digitalization, automation, and artificial intelligenceHistories of struggles against and contestations of “smart border” regimes 

Submission guidelines:

Submissions should include an abstract (300-400 words), as well as a short biographical note (100-150 words). Please use this form: https://forms.office.com/e/fmhfvNQE5T 

The submission deadline is 14 July 2023. We plan to notify applicants about proposal acceptance by 4 August 2023. 

Funding will be available to support travel and accommodation of invited speakers. Please note whether you need financial assistance in the submission form. 

Koen Leurs, Utrecht University

https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/digital-migration/book269996#description

“A revelation for digital researchers and a provocation for migration scholars… It introduces an insightful, inspiring, and inviting way of making sense of the messiness without losing hope of changing things.”

- Nishant Shah, Chinese University of Hong Kong

“A must read for everyone who is concerned with questions of human mobility, media and communications and the digital border.”

- Myria Georgiou, LSE

“A much-needed addition to scholarship on mobility, technology, and migration… The book is poised to become a touchstone text.”

- C.L. Quinan University of Melbourne

In contemporary discussions on migration, digital technology is often seen as a 'smart' disruptive tool. Bringing efficiencies to management, and safety to migrants. But the reality is always more complex.

This book is a comprehensive and impassioned account of the relationship between digital technology and migration. From 'top-down' governmental and corporate shaping of the migrant condition, to the 'bottom-up' of digital practices helping migrants connect, engage and resist.

Taking an interdisciplinary approach, Digital Migration explores:

• The power relations of digital infrastructures across migrant recruitment, transportation and communication.
  
• Migrant connections and the use of digital devices, platforms and networks.
  
• Dominant digital representations of migrants, and how they’re resisted.
  
• The affect and emotion of digital migration, from digital intimacy to transnational family life.
  
• How histories of pre and early-digital migration help us situate and rethink contemporary research.
  
• The realities of researching digital migration, including interviews with leading international researchers.
  

Critical yet hopeful, Koen Leurs opens up the unequal power relations at the heart of digital migration studies, challenging us to imagine more just alternatives. 

Koen Leurs is an Associate Professor in Gender, Media and Migration Studies at the Graduate Gender Program, Department of Media and Culture, Utrecht University, the Netherlands.

All author royalties for this book will be donated to the Alarm Phone, a hotline for boatpeople in distress. 

November 9 - 10, 2023

Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic (conference will be held onsite with inclusion of 1 online panel)

Deadline (EXTENDED): June 19, 2023

Conference of the ECREA Temporary Working Group "Communication and Sport"

The myriad technological, economic, and social changes that have been going on in contemporary societies have had a dramatic impact on sports communication, bringing new issues to deal with and new actors coming into what was previously in a European context considered to be mainly a domain of journalism. In this conference, hosted by the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague on November 9 - 10, 2023, the ECREA Temporary Working Group on Communication and Sport calls for papers exploring the transition of sports communication from various perspectives. We would like to help expand the contemporary research on topics from different scholarly fields like media studies, cultural studies, sports journalism studies and sports strategic and PR communication, and sports audience studies, not necessarily only from Europe. 

The conference will feature one online panel that will allow participation of a select number of researchers who are unable to travel to Prague. 

With regard to the overarching topic of the conference, here are many issues that have arisen in recent years, including:

• the massive development of so called in-house or team media, which in combination with direct usage of social media and many access restrictions, partially enforced by COVID-19 pandemics, but welcomed by major sports organisations, resulted in sports journalists struggling to find an original and interesting story more than ever; 
  
• the strategic and often performative use of new media platforms by hitherto marginalized individuals or groups in sport 
  
• the cases of cross of interest, when underpaid journalists have to start with moonlighting at PR positions; 
  
• the wide reach and independence of successful athletes with their own channels (specially social media);
  
• the increase of sports bloggers that was enabled by the technological development when everyone can create their successful website or podcast and enrich the sports journalistic field from its peripheries, sometimes even heading directly to its centre, reversing existing power balance; 
  
• the discussions whether sports journalists and athletes should or should not speak up when for example the sports events are organised by countries where human rights have been repeatedly violated and their leaders only want to whitewash their reputation, or female athletes or spectators are not allowed to participate; 
  
• the audiences (e.g., increasingly fragmented sports media repertoires in high-choice media environments and massive uncertainty about audience's expectations of sports media content) 

This list is not exclusive, and we call for papers which in a broad sense deal with shifts in sports communication, including both theoretical and analytical perspectives on the tensions, conflicts, many dilemmas and negotiations involved, focusing on the sports communication creators, the sports media content itself or its audiences.

We invite abstracts between 300-500 words (excluding references) submitted in English language by June 19, 2023 via email to the main organiser Dr. Veronika Macková (veronika.mackova@fsv.cuni.cz). The submission should be anonymized.

The abstracts can be both for individual papers and panel proposals. Each panel proposal must include an abstract of the cover topic and the titles of 4-5 involved papers with the names of the authors. Each paper in the panel needs to be presented by people from different universities. Please indicate clearly whether the abstract is for individual paper or a panel proposal.

To support the integration of as many scholars as possible, we will hold approx. 5 onsite panels and 1 online panel for the colleagues who have difficulties travelling to Prague on the dates of the conference. Please indicate clearly whether the abstract is for onsite or online presentation. 

Edited by: Manuel Puppis & Christopher Ali 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.48335/9789188855756 (open access) 

Public Service Media (PSM) across Europe and beyond are increasingly under pressure, with both their role in a digital environment and their funding widely scrutinised. As a result, PSM organisations are constantly in a defensive position. Following attempts to demonstrate their "public value", discussion is now turning towards PSM's "contribution to society", a concept pushed by the European Broadcasting Union. Yet, to be meaningful for society and to influence PSM organisations, the concept must be more than just an instrument of legitimacy management. While communicating the valuable contributions of PSM is important, the concept is useless if limited to the question of how to better sell the contribution of PSM to citizens instead of guaranteeing that PSM actually serves the public interest and makes a contribution worth funding and discussing.  

This volume critically engages with the analytical value and usefulness of the contribution to society concept, related both to the EBU's conceptualisation and to the larger, normative question of contribution. Such critical analyses are not only a worthwhile task for communication and media scholars, but also for practitioners and policy-makers involved in debates about PSM's future. The first section of this volume defines and refines how PSM can serve the public interest by meeting the communication needs of society in unique ways that commercial media cannot. The second section discusses what PSM can be beyond broadcasting, touching upon personalised on-demand services, new forms of mobile distribution, and public service bots. The third section focuses on organisational change and innovation, ranging from citizen participation to transparency.  

We at mediastudies.press are happy to announce the opening of our annual proposal window from 1 June to 30 July, 2023. During this date window, authors are encouraged to submit a proposal for review.

mediastudies.press welcomes submissions from scholars across media, communication, and film studies. We currently publish in four series:

• Media Manifold series — monographs and other book-length works of contemporary media scholarship
  
• Public Domain series — reprints of neglected classics, in new critical editions anchored by framing introductions
  
• Open Reader series — themed collections of openly licensed, public domain, and linked materials curated and introduced by leading experts
  
• History of Media Studies series — monographs and other original scholarly works centered on history of media, communication, and film studies
  

We are small and artisanal by mission, and aim to publish just five books a year. Given the volume of proposals that we receive—and with our production schedule in mind—we maintain an annual proposal window (1 June to 30 July), for the review of manuscripts slated for publication in the following calendar year. You are welcome to send informal queries outside these dates, but our general practice is to only consider proposals within the annual window. Each year, we review proposals with an initial reply by August 15, with the aim to conduct peer review of proposals of expressed interest by the end of September.

mediastudies.press is an open-access publisher for the media and communication studies fields. The press is nonprofit and scholar-led. We publish living works, with iterative updates stitched into our process. And we encourage multi-modal submissions that reflect the mediated environments our authors study. 

Publishing with mediastudies.press is free on principle. Our aim is to demonstrate, on a small scale, an open-access publishing model supported by libraries rather than author fees. Open access for readers, we believe, should not be traded for new barriers to authorship. 

All our published works are rigorously peer-reviewed, and receive unusual editorial attention. We prioritize discoverability through careful metadata, library records, and directory listings. As a scholar-run operation, our publicity outreach is uncommonly informed by the fields’ intellectual contours. 

We kindly ask that proposals be submitted as a single PDF (at this link). Proposals should include the following elements, in addition to at least one draft chapter:

• Proposed title and subtitle
  
• A 500- to 1000-word narrative description of the book
  
• Short bios of author(s) and/or editor(s)
  
• Proposed series (see above)
  
• Tentative table of contents, preferably annotated
  
• Estimated word-length
  
• Multi-modal components, if any
  
• Status of the book (i.e., expectation of completion date, the portion now complete)
  
• At least one draft chapter
  

To submit your work to mediastudies.press please follow our submission link.

If you have any questions at all about the proposal process for books, please contact us at press@mediastudies.press

Jeff Pooley, director of mediastudies.press

Dave Park, associate director of mediastudies.press

June 12-13, 2023 

Loughborough University, UK

As the PANCOPOP Symposium 2023 is just one week away, we invite you to take a look at the schedule and register for the event. The symposium will take place on 12th and 13th June 2023 and will be held in person (Loughborough University) as well as streamed online. Further details will be sent to registered participants. Whether you are attending online or in-person, PANCOPOP Symposium 2023 is free of charge.  

To register and view the symposium schedule, simply visit: https://www.pancopop.net/pancopop-symposium-2023/.  

Also, you can access the full programme for our upcoming symposium on our website. 

About the PANCOPOP project: 

The PANCOPOP project develops the first comprehensive, comparative study of health crisis communication in the context of populist politics, bringing significant advances in knowledge at the intersection of political communication and public health. The focus is on four countries that were led by populist leaders during the pandemic, and which capture different types of populist responses to the pandemic: Brazil, Poland, Serbia, and the USA. The project is led by Professor Sabina Mihelj, Loughborough University, and involves a team of five Principal Investigators, six researchers and a project administrator, working across three continents. 

For further information please visit the project website https://www.pancopop.net/ and follow us on Twitter @pancopop. 

VIEW Issue #26

Deadline: July 31, 2023

Guest editors: Giulia Taurino (Northeastern University), Georgia Aitaki (Karlstad University) 

https://viewjournal.eu/announcements#cfp-view-issue-26-archive-television-storing-structuring-and-accessing-content-in-the-time-of-algorithmic-curation

Given recent technological advancements, media scholars have been discussing a digital, computational, algorithmic turn in television (Berry, 2011; Hansen & Paul, 2017; Housley et al., 2022), pointing at the rising network of infrastructures, content-host and delivery platforms and other forms of techno-cultural adaptation that influence television production, distribution, and reception. The implications of streaming television and its reliance on algorithms have been explored in relation to its economy, geography, regulatory practices, social uses, and power relations (Evens & Donders, 2018; Lobato, 2019; Lotz, 2022; Chalaby, 2023). In these academic studies, particular attention is given to the scale of audiovisual transmission, as well as the unprecedented increase of television content, with streaming companies able to service several countries and regions all over the world, and store hundreds or thousands of titles at the same time, ready to show on demand. Considering the overall archival tendency of contemporary media ecologies, we propose to investigate algorithmic television first and foremost as an attempt to archive television, a medium that for the historical fragility of early formats and constant exposure to technological transitions has faced an uneven evolution in what concerns practices of record-keeping.

In this issue, we would like to bring scholarly attention to the primary role of streaming platforms as content repositories, virtual places for storing, structuring, and accessing television content via complex library systems designed to organize, filter, and retrieve audiovisual records, making them available for simultaneous distribution. As television archives address similar issues of cataloging and sorting large collections, we are presented with an interesting scenario. Due to a lack of well-established curatorial protocols for the management of audiovisual material, television had to overcome data storage challenges since its early years, sometimes leading to non-archival practices, such as overwriting or unrecorded live-reporting. Over the years, media corporations adopted somewhat dis-homogeneous, temporary solutions for content archival and classification while searching for more sustainable options. By the time non-commercial television archives were created, the content acquired was likely to be either unlabeled, mislabeled, incomplete, disorganized or following “non-standardized” labeling systems. More recently, the need of streaming platforms to prioritize content classification for their economic sustainability made a consistent contribution to tackling the issue of cataloging televisual records – namely, by investing in the creation of queryable databases, scalable media metadata systems and in the development, and implementation of algorithms for content indexing. Relying on computationally demanding systems, streaming services were able to develop semi-automated solutions for information filtering and retrieval that might offer a response to the longtime challenge of archiving audiovisual content.

In the time of algorithmic media, where algorithmic television (Shapiro, 2020) counts as an archive in its own right, particular attention is given to filtering and recommendation systems and the ways they dictate our access to television production. With this issue, we hope to gain further insight in the relation between algorithmic curation and archive-based curatorial practices, accounting for the intersection between coding, programming, and editorial practices, infrastructural and operational logics, commercial aspects, copyright licensing, and acquisition regulations that affect the ways television is received. We invite proposals dealing with the interaction between emerging algorithmic technologies and more traditional archival work – whether maintained by media corporations for internal profit or by non-profit, academic, cultural institutions for heritage preservation purposes –, with a focus on forms of curatorship adopted in television archives across Europe. We are particularly interested in exploring how audiovisual archival practices, infrastructures, and geographies of storage have been redefined by the introduction of algorithmic-based methods for content classification and data management, and how streaming platforms have, in turn, integrated former archival approaches. Potential contributions might encompass, but are not limited to, the following questions:

• How did archival science transition to streaming libraries in algorithmic television?
  
• How did early European television broadcasting tackle the storing and ordering of content outside of the programming schedule?
  
• How are present-day recommender systems influencing the way media archives curate audiovisual records?
  
• How can we understand the spatial logics of archive television practices from a historical perspective, considering the transition from analog to digital records in archival settings?
  
• What is the role of the organizational, infrastructure, and subscriber geographies in storing, structuring, and accessing content in the era of algorithmic media?
  
• What are the possibilities emerging and the challenges posed by algorithmic curation from the practitioners’ point of view?
  
• Which future developments do we envisage in the practice of building and preserving television collections?
  

The goal of this issue is to cover the pre-history, current evolutions, and future consequences of classification, selection, and recommendation practices in algorithmic television, drawing a connection with pre-existing archival practices and other ways of sorting audiovisual records that influence the socio-cultural understanding of televisual media and content. 

Submission details

We invite submissions from broadcast historians, media/television studies scholars, audiovisual archivists and television professionals, as well as researchers in the field of computer science and information systems. 

Proposals (max. 500 words) should be submitted by email to journal@euscreen.eu by July 31, 2023. Article proposals can (optionally) mention if they will take the form of a “discovery” (audiovisual-driven case study) or “exploration” (more traditional academic approach; for further info see https://viewjournal.eu/about/). Authors are encouraged to send in a short biography with their proposal. 

A notice of acceptance of abstracts will be sent to authors in September 2023.

Articles (between 3,000 – 6,000 words) will be due on December 29, 2023. Longer articles are welcome, provided that they comply with the journal’s author guidelines (https://www.viewjournal.eu/about/submissions/).

All articles will be peer-reviewed. The issue will be published in November/December 2024.

Questions about the issue can be directed to: g.taurino@northeastern.edu    

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. No payment from the authors is required. 

Each article is copyrighted © by its author(s) and is published under license from the author(s). When a paper is accepted for publication, authors will be requested to agree with the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

December 14-16, 2023

Tallin, Estonia

Deadline: July 24, 2023

We invite submissions for the Cultural Data Analytics Conference 2023 / CUDAN 2023, organized by the ERA Chair project for Cultural Data Analytics at Tallinn University, generously funded by the European Commission. Inspired by initial large gatherings of the cultural analytics community, including UCLA/IPAM 2016, and multidisciplinary conferences such as NetSci, IC2S2, or CSS, we aim to bring together researchers, practitioners, and stakeholders using methods of cultural data analytics to understand cultures and cultural production. This particularly includes multidisciplinary combinations of quantification, qualitative inquiry, computational analysis, and visualization to make sense of large cultural datasets, including visual, audiovisual, linguistic, and other genres of socio-cultural materials.

The conference is scheduled to happen in Tallinn, Estonia from December 13 to 16, 2023, including a number of leading invited practitioners, peer-reviewed talks, and poster contributions from the community.

Key Dates #

Abstracts due: July 24, 2023 (23:59 CET)

Notification of acceptance: September 14, 2023

Conference: December 13-16, 2023

Pre-conference workshops: December 13, 2023

Main conference: December 14-16, 2023

More information here: https://cudan.tlu.ee/conference/ 

November 2-4, 2023, Prague,

Prague, Czech Republic; DOX: Centre For Contemporary Art, Poupětova 1, 170 00 Praha 7-Holešovice

Deadline: July 15, 2023 (presentations)

Topic:

• Dimensions of Empathy. How Empathy and the Concept of Ethics Changed between the Holodeck and the Metaverse?
  
• How our trust and sense of criticism shapes the ways we understand old and novel interactive digital narratives?
  

The concept of the Metaverse embodies a boundless and interconnected sense of compatibility and engagement, which amplifies our expectations for immersive forms of media. In the early days, visionaries already envisioned fully realized immersive environments akin to those depicted in the Star Trek: The Next Generation TV series and described in Janet H. Murray's influential book, Hamlet on the Holodeck. Social VR platforms - by allowing creators to adapt theatrical performances to their platforms - have ventured into exploring shared experiences and collective activities that influence both our physical and virtual realms. Productions designed to be experienced in VR HMD’s  are experimenting with diverse narrative structures, while the announcement of each new AR headset generates additional anticipation. The growing integration between the physical and digital domains holds the potential to create experiences resembling those depicted in the Holodeck, characterized by enhanced visual fidelity, expanded interaction possibilities, and greater individual agency. However, the emergence of new publicly available text, image, and video generators that rely on existing content raises concerns about the originality of artistic expression. Furthermore, it raises crucial questions about data security and the ethical handling of user-provided information. Hence, it becomes imperative to reimagine the concept of empathy—how it is fostered—and establish ethical guidelines for utilizing these technologies in the creation of artworks or practical applications.

There are various interpretations of empathy, such as the target of our empathetic feelings. Madary and Metzinger (2016) introduced the concept of a code of conduct for VR research, suggesting that it could potentially manipulate behavior significantly, particularly when "illusions of embodiment are misused" (ibid.). They raise broader ethical concerns about research, including the limitations of a code of conduct and the boundaries of experimental environments. But should we consider a similar approach for artistic interactive digital narratives or VR productions?

For instance, Fisher (2019) argues that the experiencer empathizes more with the VR production creators rather than with the people affected. However, should we explore and implement new ethical practices when presenting interactive and immersive artworks, especially if they are contrasting old and new creative practices? While Fisher questions the direction of empathy, both e.g. Camilleri et al. (2017) and Owais and Yaacoub (2020) contend that the experiencer can indeed feel a sense of empathy. The key question is how this empathetic experience can be ethically harnessed in VR productions that tackle pressing issues like war or mental health.

Another pressing concern regarding ethical perspectives arises in the context of social VR platforms, where community management and moderation raise further questions about interpersonal empathy.

How can we effectively convey complex subjects such as history using cultural heritage in immersive productions? How can we ensure transparency regarding the “the existence of intersectional regimes of oppression” (see Koenitz et al. 2023)? Moreover, how do we establish a framework for the ethical responsibilities of both the creators and participants of these experiences? While authors may have more stringent guidelines to follow, as suggested by Koenitz et al. (2023), the responsibilities of experiencers can also be a debatable point, as it can either impede or encourage active involvement based on the experience's design or technical limitations. Nonetheless, certain theater performances already address this ethical aspect of audience interactivity, but there may be instances where creators or organizers fail to provide room for civic engagement, as highlighted by Mühlfoff (2018). It is crucial that this issue is promptly addressed.

To better grasp the changing world and the complexity of the changes, it is important to improve emerging artistic and scientific practices to enable critical reflection. Virtual Environments and the Metaverse provide particular opportunities in this regard, provided we embrace the changing relations between creators, audiences and scientists they bring about. Virtual Environments could also be described as interactive design fictions (Sterling, 2012), virtual sandboxes to try out novel ways of communicating, interacting and expressing, in the sense of “Playful Utopias” (Koenitz 2019). This notion connects VEs to the long tradition of literary and cinematic utopias and their effect on reality (cf Shedroff et. al. 2012) and positions VEs as a more democratic, participatory form of speculative narratives, especially in the realm of Metaverse-like environments. In this year’s conference, we aim to have a special emphasis on how IDN’s and related applications can guide us to a more peaceful future and/or also guide us for taking better care of each other.

The Zip-Scene Conference takes XR/extended reality (VR/AR/MR) and Metaverse-related works seriously and treats them on equal footing to film and performing arts, and wishes to expand its scientific treatment and reflection. On this basis, we are inviting papers that address narrative experiences enabled by digital platforms, especially online and XR or related to the Metaverse. We are also looking for IDN practices and prototypes from medical and mental healthcare practices that could offer new approaches on how storytelling can be embedded in scientific practices. Papers should address either one or several of the following topics:

Conference themes:

• Interactive storytelling methods and authoring
  
• Video games
• Virtual reality experiences & movies

• Augmented reality in interactive storytelling
  
• Interactive performing arts practices
  
• Interactive museums and archives
  
• Immersive environments (media archeology and phenomenological approach)
  
• Special track #1: Empathy in VR creations
  
• Special track #2: Ethical measures and their application possibilities
  

Call for presentation

Proposals may be for a paper/panel and should be related to at least one of the conference themes. Deadline for submitting the proposals is July 15, 2023. Please send us your abstract (max. 350 words) and a short bio (max. 300 words) by filling in this form: https://forms.gle/DXVp6zxc2SQU6m9HA. The papers will be reviewed by the conference committee. If you want to submit a panel, please fill in the sheet for each presentation of the panel and mention the title of panel. If your proposal will be accepted you will be given 20 minutes for your presentation.

Call for workshops (for 4th of November)

Workshop proposals are also welcome: on the 4th of November we offer the space for ca 4-5 hours workshops. Please send you workshop proposal (max 350 words including the detailed schedules) and please also mention what is the maximum participation number. We can provide room for the workshop and a basic technical setup. Please submit your proposal here: https://forms.gle/DXVp6zxc2SQU6m9HA

General information

The conference is intended as an in-person event in Prague, barring complications caused by the pandemic. The organizer reserves the right to make changes to the event program.

Registration fee

Both for papers and workshop leaders: 100 EUR (physical attendance)

(Reduced registration fee is available upon request)

More information about visitor tickets in September.

The organizers cannot cover travel and accommodation costs. Upon request we can provide you with an invitation letter.

For Whom

The conference addresses scientific researchers, game professionals, programmers, artists, scholars and professionals from the fields of performing arts and game studies, as well as interactive storytellers, experience designers, narrative designers, VR-professionals and philosophers and others concerned with the conference topics. The conference aims to bring together emerging scholars, professionals and creators in order to create a joint platform which would help individuals to understand and to develop these types of productions.

This year the conference is organized in cooperation with ART*VR festival. This is the first festival in the territory of the Czech Republic to focus conceptually on the format of art projects in virtual reality (VR). The carefully curated programme aims to present the best in the field of artistic VR creation and immerse the audience in unique, immersive virtual worlds. The programme will showcase the latest projects presented at major festivals such as the Venice Film Biennale, Sundance, Tribeca and SXSW in the USA, and IDFA in Amsterdam. The event also aims to present several projects in international or world premieres.

The festival will have a competitive and non-competitive part and will aim to present VR projects set in physical art installations. The event will take place in the exhibition space of Centre of Contemporary Art: DOX. An important part of the programme is an industry programme for film professionals, a series of lectures on VR and an accompanying programme. A special programme for primary and secondary schools will also take place in the morning of the festival.

ORGANIZERS

Ágnes Karolina Bakk, PhD: narrative designer and researcher at the Innovation Center of Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design. She focuses on immersive storytelling & the science of magic, and currently leads two research projects: 1. on romantic relationships in Metaverse-like environments 2. psychological restoration in a specific VR prototype. She is the founder of the Zip-Scene conference; cofounder of Random Error Studio; co-curator of Vektor VR section. She teaches immersive storytelling, speculative design and offers talks at various conferences from Moscow to Montreal including festivals (Stereopsia, DokLeipzig). She is currently involved in several video games and creates on her own artistic VR production.

Daniela Hanusová has an academic background in film and gender studies (Charles University, Prague) and 7 years of experience working for film festivals as a guest service coordinator (East Doc Platform, Ji.hlava IDFF, One World Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, Mezipatra Queer Film Festival, Marienbad Film Festival, etc.). In 2022/2023, she was a Blue Book Trainee for the European Commission, working on a research of sustainability and gender equality, inclusion and diversity strategies of European film festivals at the Creative Europe MEDIA unit. Her fascination with the artistic and transformative potential of the medium of virtual reality has lead her to become an Executive Director of Art∗VR Festival in 2023.

Ondřej Moravec is an independent director, screenwriter and producer. He closely collaborates with Brainz Studios independent creative group. He worked on his first feature film and VR project Darkening from 2019 to 2022. The world premiere of Darkening was at the Venice Film Festival in 2022 and later it was nominated for the Czech Lion Award in the animated movie category. His new project Fresh Memories: The Look premiered at South by Southwest festival. Since 2014 he has worked as an independent dramaturgist for multiple Czech film festivals. He curates VR movies categories at Anifilm, Letní filmová škola, Febiofest and Zlín film fest festivals.

Organised by:

Zip-Scene

Art*VR Festival

ARDIN – Association for Research in Digital Interactive Narratives

Strategic partner:

Interactive Digital Narratives for Complexity Representations – INDCOR Cost Action

indcor.eu

Code and Soda Company codeandsoda.com

Random Error Studio randomerror.studio

Supported by:

INDCOR COST ACTION/H2020

Consultant on behalf of ARDIN/INDCOR:

Hartmut Koenitz

References:

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J. A. Fisher, “Empathic actualities: Toward a taxonomy of empathy in virtual reality,” in International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling. Springer, 2017, pp. 233–244.

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Koenitz, H. (2015). Towards a Specific Theory of Interactive Digital Narrative. In H. Koenitz, G. Ferri, M. Haahr, D. Sezen, & T. I. Sezen (Eds.), Interactive Digital Narrative (pp. 91–105). New York: Routledge.

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