[ecrea] CfP The Versatile Image: Photography in the Era of Web 2.0

>  Call for papers
>
>
> 24-26 June 2011
>
> Photography, Film and Digital Imaging Department
>
> Faculty of Art, Design and Media, University of
> Sunderland
>
>
> The Versatile Image: Photography in the Era of Web 2.0
>
>  
>
> The 21st century digital universe is undoubtedly a
> “hypervisual” environment with photographic images dominating every
> aspect of our life. The “digital revolution”, as professed with awe and
> skepticism some twenty years ago, has come to stay, and, together with
> the developments in mobile-phone technology and the overwhelming
> possibilities of Web 2.0, has ushered in a rapid transformation of
> photographic practice across the board. 
>
>  
>
> Far from being “over”, as was the central hypothesis in a recent
> conference about the current state of the art, photography, a slippery
> medium by definition, has expanded, transgressing anew set boundaries
> between media and disciplines, practices and functions. In this
> “expanded” (and still expanding) field, what has been most appositely
> called “Photography 2.0” has revolutionized image making. Being more
> ubiquitous and accessible, some say even “democratic”, than ever, the new
> photographic technology, paired with micro-publishing platforms and
> social networking media, has introduced a whole different culture of
> producing and consuming photographs. It is the diverse manifestations of
> this new and significantly larger in scale second phase of photography’s
> so-called “democratization” that this conference endeavours to
> examine.
>
>  
>
> Cutting across disciplinary borders, we welcome papers from researchers,
> visual artists and curators working in the areas of art history, visual
> culture studies, museology, media studies, visual anthropology and
> sociology that may reflect upon the following questions:
>
>  
>
> Are these developments purely a case of technological expediency?
>
> What are the ontological, conceptual or other commonalities and/or
> differences with photography as we knew it? 
>
> What novel currency does the photographic vernacular acquire against the
> new contexts of viewing and (re)distribution that social networking media
> and photo-sharing platforms offer? Where is the line between the private
> and the public drawn and what is the social currency of such private
> imagery? 
>
> What is the new urgency that the eye-witness record taken by “citizen
> journalists” has acquired in reporting news events among peers and
> targeting a wider public? 
>
> How are issues of objectivity, subjectivity, authenticity and originality
> relating to the document being challenged anew? 
>
> How can this predominantly non-art imagery be appropriated in material
> and conceptual terms in contemporary art practices? 
>
> Can these amateur practices be conventionalized and/or institutionalized
> in the mass media and the art scene? 
>
>  
>
> All papers will be considered for publication.
>
>  
>
> Please send abstracts of ca. 250 words for twenty-minute papers to
>
> (alexandra.moschovi /at/ sunderland.ac.uk) with the indication ‘The
> Versatile Image’ by 30 November 2010. For further information you may
> visit the conference website at
>
> http://www.photography-at-sunderland.co.uk/.