[ecrea] Transformations Journal Call for Pape rs: ³Slow Media²

> Transformations Journal Call for Papers: “Slow Media”
>
>  
> Given the contemporary fascination with and, indeed, addiction to
> real-time media dispatch and commentary, what would it mean to speak of
> “slow media”? Dare we even think such a thing when everything around us
> screams of increased speed, increased bandwidth, and increased
> convergence? We are 24-7, we are always-on, we are connected; we are
> locatable, we are X/Y coordinated, we are plotted; we are status updated,
> we are tweet-fed, we are real-time media junkies and we don’t have time
> to slow down. 
>  
> “Slow media” is surely inimical to the age of social media and 24-hour
> news channels, where we live immersed in a mediascape dedicated to
> reducing to nothing the temporal division between the occurrence of an
> “event” and its reportage. In such a scenario, “slow media” appears
> either heretical or retrogressive, a wanton disregarding of the patent
> necessity of instant information dissemination, or just another Luddite
> reaction-formation. Indeed, “slow media” as a term has already been
> spun-off from the “slow” movement more generally, and is used to describe
> the reduced media diet of people turning off the email, closing the
> facebook, and going outside for a sniff of the flowers.
>  
> But while “slow media” as a term may appear primarily to describe a mode
> of resistance, it allows us to think about the speed of the media as
> such. Have our popular media always been increasing in speed? What is the
> end point of all of this, the apotheosis of real-time: are we, as Bernard
> Stiegler suggests, approaching the “time barrier”? And, what happens when
> we break it?
>  
> For this issue of Transformations, we invite papers that meditate on the
> speeds and slownesses of the contemporary moment. Papers could address,
> but would need not be limited to, any of the following themes:
>  
> -       real-time and the news
> media
>
> -       social media and the status
> update
>
> -       new media explorations of speed and
> slowness
>
> -       artistic responses to speed and
> time
>
> -       the “slow” movement and
> resistance
>
> -       histories of speed in the
> media
>
> -       tweet-streams and
> data-feeds
>
> -       bandwidth, access and
> connectivity
>
>
>  
> Abstracts (500 words): due 1st July 2010, with a view to submit articles
> by 1st October.
>  
> Abstracts should be sent to Grayson Cooke at
> (grayson.cooke /at/ scu.edu.au)
>
> <
> mailto:(grayson.cooke /at/ scu.edu.au)>
> .
>  
> View Transformations online:
>
> http://www.transformationsjournal.org
>
> <
> http://www.transformationsjournal.org>
> .

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Nico Carpentier (Phd)
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Vrije Universiteit Brussel - Free University of Brussels
Centre for Studies on Media and Culture (CeMeSO)
Pleinlaan 2 - B-1050 Brussels - Belgium
T: ++ 32 (0)2-629.18.56
F: ++ 32 (0)2-629.36.84
Office: 5B.401a
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European Communication Research and Education Association
Web: http://www.ecrea.eu
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E-mail: (Nico.Carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
Web: http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~ncarpent/
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