[ecrea] Rethinking Intermediality in the Digital Age

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CALL FOR PAPERS

RETHINKING INTERMEDIALITY IN THE DIGITAL AGE

International Conference: 24-26 October, 2013, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, 
Sapientia University
deadline for applications: 20 May, 2013.

In the past decades "intermediality" has proved to be one of the most 
productive terms in the domain of humanities. Although the ideas 
regarding media connections may be traced back to the poetics of the 
Romantics or even further back in time, it was the accelerated 
multiplication of media themselves becoming our daily experience in the 
second half of the twentieth century that propelled the term to a wide 
attention in a great number of fields (communication and cultural 
studies, philosophy, theories of literature and music, art history, 
cinema studies, etc.) where it generated an impressive number of 
analyses and theoretical discussions. "Intermediality is in" 
(„Intermedialität ist in"), declared one of its pioneering theorists, 
Joachim Paech, at the end of the 1990s. However, we may also note, that 
since then other theoretical approaches introduced even newer 
perspectives that have not only revitalized the study of media phenomena 
in general but have specifically targeted the emerging new problematics 
raised by the new electronic media. Facing the challenge of the daily 
experiences of the digital age, discussions of media differences or 
‘dialogues' highlighting the ‘inter,' the ‘gap,' the ‘in-between,' the 
‘incommensurability' between media are currently being replaced by 
discourses of the ‘enter' or ‘immersion,' and the ‘network logic' of a 
‘convergence culture' in which we have a "free flow of content over 
different media platforms" (Henry Jenkins). At the same time the turn 
towards the corporeality of perception in all aspects of communication 
has also shifted the attention from the ‘interaction of media' towards 
the ‘interaction with media,' from the idea of ‘media borders' towards 
the analysis of the blurring of perception between media and reality, of 
humans and machines - media being perceived more and more not as a form 
of representation but as an environment and as a means to ‘augment' reality.
Nowadays media continuously mutate, relocate and expand, while 
connections between ‘old' and ‘new' media are being established with 
incredible fluidity. Accordingly, we may ask: what are the new 
perspectives for intermedial research in the digital age? While media 
are continuously changing and expanding, how can we relocate the 
"in-between"? If we consider ‘intermediality' first and foremost - as 
suggested by Jürgen E. Müller - as a "research concept" (Suchbegriff), 
how can this concept be effectively applied to the media we see around 
us today? And if we believe that the "ecosystem" of contemporary media 
can be understood not as a unified digital environment that nullifies 
differences, but as a thriving and highly diversified, "multisensory 
milieu" (Jacques Rancière) that poses new challenges both for the 
consumer/producer and the theorist, how can we address these challenges? 
How do media differences persist and how do these differences still 
matter despite voices advocating the so called "post-medium condition"?
As the former Nordic Society for Intermedial Studies launches its own 
expanded, international format (International Society for Intermedial 
Studies/ISIS), we think it is timely to address once more the major 
issues for which this society exists, and to invite participants to 
examine new forms of ‘intermedialities.' In doing so participants may 
address a broad range of questions relating to ‘old media' and ‘new 
media,' and their possible interactions, focusing on the wide array of 
intermedia phenomena and new type of relationships that new media have 
produced, but also on how pre-digital media relations can be 
re-evaluated, and how historical paradigms of intermediality may already 
be distinguishable viewed from the standpoint of the contemporary media 
landscape.

Proposals may address (but are not limited to) the following questions 
either from a theoretical point of view or through concrete analyses:

* Media on the move? Media relations produced by expansions and 
relocations of media (e.g. "the virtual life of film," the expansions of 
the "photographic" and of the "cinematic" over other media, 
e-literature, etc.), the emergence of mobile screens, the fact that 
media use is more and more related to moving in the literal sense of the 
word: mobility and navigation.

* Relocating the ‘in-between': intermediality, inter-sensuality, 
multimodality and interactivity, assessing the contribution of cognitive 
theories (and neuroscience), phenomenology and post-phenomenology to the 
study of understanding interactions of media and interactions with 
multiple media.

* Performing in (new) intermedial spaces: intermedial performance in art 
and society. Being ‘in touch' with reality - being ‘in touch with 
media:' researching new (trans)media practices.

* Intermediality and new forms of digital storytelling: new perspectives 
in transmedial narratology, new media and narratology (e.g. narrativity 
and e-platforms, games versus "old" media etc.), the aesthetics of the 
intermedia flow, of complex, network narratives generated by the 
experiences of the new media age.

* Modelling and mapping intermedialities: historical paradigms of 
intermedial relations (pre-modern, modern, post-modern intermediality); 
the aesthetics and ‘politics' of intermediality before and after the 
digital age; historical research on intermediality related to media 
migration, cultural heritage and changing relationships between 
production, distribution, and perception.


Confirmed keynote speakers:

* HENRY JENKINS, University of Southern California (USA), author of 
Convergence Culture: where Old and New Media Collide (2007), currently 
co-authoring a book on "Spreadable Media."

* JOACHIM PAECH, University of Konstanz (Germany), author of Menschen im 
Kino. Film und Literatur erzählen (2000), Literatur und Film (1997), 
PASSION oder Die EinBILDungen des Jean-Luc Godard (1989), as well as 
several seminal articles on the theory of intermediality in film, 
literature, and new media.

* MARIE-LAURE RYAN, independent scholar, Colorado (USA), co-editor of 
Intermediality and Storytelling (2010), author of Avatars of Story 
(Electronic Mediations) (2006), Narrative across Media: The Languages of 
Storytelling (2004), Narrative as Virtual Reality. Immersion and 
Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media (2001), etc.


Deadline for the submission of proposals: 20 May 2013.
We will notify you about the acceptance of your proposals by: 1 June 2013.

Submission of proposals: please complete the submission form that you 
can download from the conference website: 
http://film.sapientia.ro/en/conferences/rethinking-intermediality-in-the-digital-age 
and send it as an attachment to the following address: 
(2013.rethinking.intermediality /at/ gmail.com)

More information at: 
http://film.sapientia.ro/en/conferences/rethinking-intermediality-in-the-digital-age

Best regards to everybody, and looking forward to an exciting conference!
Feel free to circulate this call!

...

Dr. AGNES PETHO, Head of Department
Sapientia University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Department of Film, Photography, and Media,
http://film.sapientia.ro/en
Executive editor: Acta Universitatis Sapientiae: Film & Media Studies
http://www.acta.sapientia.ro/acta-film/film-main.htm


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