[ecrea] final CFP: technologies of transmediality

>TECHNOLOGIES OF TRANSMEDIALITY
>6-8 January 2011
><http://www.wun.ac.uk/events/technologies-transmediality>
>
>DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS: 29 OCTOBER 2010
>Abstracts should be between 150 and 200 words in 
>length, plus full contact details and any 
>affiliation, and emailed to (deborah.gibbs /at/ bristol.ac.uk) by Friday 29th October.
>
>What happens when films, television programmes 
>or live performances adapt, translate or 
>incorporate material which originates in a 
>different medium, migrating across media or 
>involving combinations of media? Technologies of 
>Transmediality explores the impact of a range of 
>different technologies on performance and screen 
>media in the broadest sense, involving film, 
>television and theatre histories, but also 
>literature and language studies, historians of 
>technology as well as researchers in digital 
>technologies from computer sciences and 
>engineering. Theoretical, practical and 
>interpretative contexts will be deployed in 
>relation to the theme, provoking dynamic 
>comparisons and the sharing of different 
>disciplinary insights and perspectives.
>
>Organised by Prof Sarah Street and Prof Simon 
>Jones, the symposium brings together researchers 
>from the Worldwide Universities Network from the 
>USA and UK in an intensive three-day event 
>focused around four keynote addresses from Prof 
>Mike van den Heuvel (Wisconsin), Prof Jeff Smith 
>(Wisconsin), Prof Sarah Street (Bristol), and 
>Prof Phillip Thurtle (Washington). There will 
>also be a performance by Bodies in Flight 
>exploring the use of photography in live 
>performance, directed by Prof Simon Jones 
>(Bristol), and a screening of extracts from 
>films and television programmes which involve 
>the import/impact of popular music as 
>transmedial experience, compiled and introduced 
>by Dr Kevin Donnelly (Southampton).
>
>The discussion will be developed through four 
>themed panels on transmedial forms and texts in screen and performance:
>o       Historical and contemporary examples
>o       Comparative issues arising from multiple frames of reference
>o       Theoretical models for technologies and transmediality
>o       The practice of transmedial art and technologies
>
>We particularly welcome contributions that work 
>through a range of modalities and media. 
>Presentations can take the form of 20-minute 
>papers, 10-minute position statements with 
>responses, multimodal practices and so on.
>
>Abstracts should be between 150 and 200 words in 
>length, plus full contact details and any 
>affiliation, and emailed to 
>(deborah.gibbs /at/ bristol.ac.uk) by Friday 29th 
>October. In order to keep the event focused and 
>maximize dialogue, numbers will be limited to 
>panel presenters only, who will be notified by 
>8th November. There is a registration fee of £50 
>which includes lunches, an evening meal and refreshments.
>
>
>Technologies of Transmediality symposium: plenary abstracts
>
>
>The Performance of Science
>
>Prof Mike van den Heuvel (Wisconsin)
>
>
>Screening of extracts from films and television 
>programmes which involve the import/impact of 
>popular music as transmedial experience
>
>Dr Kevin Donnelly (Southampton)
>
>The interaction of film and music is one of the 
>clearest examples of intermediality. The film 
>and popular music industries developed side by side since the end of the
>Nineteenth Century and have had vigorous 
>interaction over time. Their points of 
>intersection mark some of the most striking and 
>memorable as well as some of the most rapidly forgotten moments on cinema.
>
>In some cases the aesthetics of one medium 
>dominates or obliterates the other, while on 
>other occasions a strong sense of merged 
>aesthetics through accommodation is evident. 
>This illustrated talk will focus on a number of 
>examples of intermedial aesthetics demonstrated 
>by films that incorporate popular music, running 
>from isolated appearances of singers to full 
>attempts at integration with music-led narratives and pop star actors.
>
>
>Popular Music, Intermediality and the Screen
>
>Prof Jeff Smith (Madison)
>
>The parallel histories of film and popular music 
>in the postwar era are replete with anecdotes 
>about each medium's influence on the other: 
>songs that eulogize movie stars, songs that 
>sample lines of dialogue or snatches of movie 
>music, movies that take their tone and mood from 
>the songs that inspired them, etc.  Such 
>anecdotes indicate that recent scholarship on 
>intermediality may provide a useful framework 
>for analyzing the connections between these two 
>preeminent forms of American popular culture.
>
>My paper examines two particular ways in which 
>intermediality is articulated in film and 
>popular music: multimodality and ekphrasis. 
>Drawing upon the work of Annabel Cohen and Lars 
>Elleström, the first part of the paper uses a scene from Kickass
>(2010) to consider ways in which cinema's 
>multimodal address supports particular kinds of 
>intermedial relations between film and popular 
>music. The second part of the paper examines 
>ekphrastic descriptions of film in popular music.  By briefly
>surveying examples of ekphrasis in the work of 
>Scott Walker, the Pixies, the Drive-By Truckers, 
>Thomas Dolby, and others, I will analyze the 
>different strategies that musicians use to 
>overcome the challenge of conveying aspects of the cinematic
>in an almost purely aural medium.
>
>
>Technicolor and Transmediality
>
>Sarah Street (Bristol)
>
>As the most commercially successful colour 
>process for motion pictures for many years, 
>Technicolor came to signify a particular 'look', 
>brand and philosophy of screen colour. One of 
>the ways it sought to differentiate itself from 
>cheaper, black and white films, was via the 
>'value added' of colour which frequently 
>involved being very much at the forefront of 
>processes of adaptation, re-presentation and 
>re-invention of related forms and media. The 
>intermediality of Technicolor will form the 
>basis of this paper, focusing on texts in which 
>colour was used to enhance and extend 
>intermedial exchange between cinema, novels and 
>films, for example Gone With the Wind (1939) and 
>Blithe Spirit (1945). Discussions of 
>colour-film-music will also be drawn upon to 
>investigate the claim that colour pushed cinema 
>towards greater integration with other medial 
>forms. In this instance the fusion of forms 
>evident in films such as The Red Shoes (1948) 
>and The Tales of Hoffmann (1951) will be 
>discussed. The examples of Technicolor, and 
>colour in general, provide an opportunity to 
>think about the complex intentions, forms and impact of intermedial exchange.
>
>Animating transmediality: The surprising depth of the uncompositable image
>
>Prof Phillip Thurtle (Washington)
>
>Transmedia environments often juxtapose images 
>to create immersive environments of astonishing 
>depth and immediacy. This is surprising from a 
>theoretical perspective, since our current 
>conception of surfaces, borrowed from 
>photography, often place ssurfaces at odds to 
>depth of experience. The indexical quality of a 
>photograph, for instance, best indicates a world 
>of greater depth existing outside the frame of 
>an image. A theory of transmediality built on 
>animation, however, provides a very different 
>model to think about the relationship between 
>depth and surface and, consequently, the depth 
>of transmediality. Animation creates depth by 
>layering surfaces on top of each other. 
>Consequently, the same conditions that indicate 
>a loss of depth in photography provide the 
>necessary components to an experience of depth 
>in animation. This is especially apparent in 
>animations that aren't composited into seamless 
>wholes. For instance, the fine art animations of 
>William Kentridge and Stephanie Maxwell, 
>shimmer, morph, and move, creating worlds 
>saturated with vitality and suggestive of 
>constant change.  This talk will explore the 
>metaphysical and aesthetic consequences of a 
>theory of transmediality based on the 
>uncompositable image and its relationship to music, motion, and immersion.
>

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