[ecrea] CFP - Technologies of Wonder, CAA NYC 2015

Call for Papers – TECHNOLOGIES OF WONDER

New Media Caucus Special Session at the College Art Association
New York, February 2015

http://www.newmediacaucus.org/cfp-caa-new-york-2015-new-media-caucus-special-session/

Technologies are often remembered for the sense of fear they originally 
provoked: photography, cinema, and the history of media technologies on 
the whole, is filled with accusations of magic and wizardry, while 
reactions to inventions such as the hot air balloon and telescopy were 
those of both wonder and terror (Holmes 2009). Discovery and innovation 
continue to bring this sense of both hope and dread into the world. 
While the contemporary condition is marked by information overload, we 
still reach limits of comprehension and imagination. For example, 
nanotechnologies innovate at what has been described as the 
“incomprehensible” scale of the nano (Robinson 2012) where the future 
becomes “unimaginable” within the limits of human perception (Milburn 
2008). And yet these building blocks of all things are becoming 
reachable and controllable, and we must find ways to access and join the 
conversation, and creation, of this unknowable future.

This panel is an inquiry into wonder as a fruitful mode through which 
artists and the worlds of the non-scientist engage with the 
technological, and explores the question of whether there is value in 
approaching technologies as ‘wonderful’. How do we comprehend, 
represent, manipulate, imagine and question the ‘wondrous’? To what 
extend is wonder still possible, and what is its relationship to mystery 
and knowledge? Can it generate something outside of itself to provide 
entry points towards critique and beyond skepticism? As the frontiers of 
media art are pushed and artists are working with increasingly complex 
technologies like 3D printing, AR, AI and developing fields like bioart 
and molecular aesthetics, how do we engage with the feelings of ‘wonder 
and terror’ that emerge in the push towards ‘progress’?

Possible areas or subject matters:

– Projects that engage with ‘wondrous’ technologies or generate 
‘wondrous’ experiences
– Spaces of technological contemplation and the future of wonder
– Wonder as a category of engagement, tool, value, process
– Wonder in collaborative/transdisciplinary work; the wonder of 
different worlds
– Wonder in relation to participation, interactivity, immersion, play
– Wonder in relation to mystery, discovery, imagination, enthusiasm, 
criticism, skepticism, knowledge
– The productive value of the other, the unknown and the misunderstood
– The fear/wonder of the new and the old (e.g. old techniques, processes 
and technologies)
– The wonder of scales, systems, infrastructures
– Technologies that explain and technologies that conceal; technologies 
of invisibility or ephemerality
– The materiality and archaeology of wonder
– Wonder in the context of the ‘mainstream’ and ‘media’ art worlds

Please send a 350-word abstract for a 15-18 minute paper, along with 
affiliation and short bio by October 15, 2014 to (aleks.kaminska /at/ gmail.com)

Acceptance notifications: November 1, 2014
Final Paper due: January 30, 2015



--
Aleksandra Kaminska, Ph.D.
Mitacs Elevate Postdoctoral Fellow, Simon Fraser University
Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts & Technology, York University 
http://sensorium.info.yorku.ca
Managing Editor, PUBLIC Journal: Art Culture Ideas 
http://www.publicjournal.ca

http://aleksandrakaminska.com | (aleks.kaminska /at/ gmail.com)







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