[Commlist] Digital Ecologies II: Fiction Machines - conference

  Digital Ecologies II: Fiction Machines (one day symposium)


*Confirmed Keynote Speakers:**

Professor Simon O’Sullivan, Professor of art, theory and practice,
Goldsmiths College, London

Dr Tony David-Sampson, Reader in Digital Media Culture and 
Communication, University of East London*

*Other Confirmed Participants include:*
*
*Ami Clarke, Jennet Thomas, Rod Dickinson, Charlie Tweed, Andy Weir, 
Harry Meadows, Ada Hao, Ramon Bloomberg, Bjørn erik Haugen, Hugh Frost, 
Annabelle Craven-Jones, Monika Oechsler, Garfield Benjamin, John Wild, 
Alberto Micali, Maud Craigie, Michelle Atherton, Rebecca Smith, 
Stephanie Moran and Alex Hogan and Teodora Fartan.


The Centre for Media Research at Bath Spa University is proud to host 
the second Digital Ecologies symposium: Fiction Machines and it will 
take place on Tuesday July 16th 2019.

In the introduction to his book Fiction as Method (2017) Jon K Shaw 
identifies a fictional place called ‘Null Island’, a fiction that is 
located at a point in the centre of the earth, amongst the lava that no 
one can travel to.

‘From this unreal centre the machines can tag our photos to map our 
memories and images onto the material world, can align our satellites to 
coordinate and connect us across the planet. Whenever we perform one of 
these actions, we pass through this fiction. We are transported home via 
the fictional island.’ (Shaw, 2017: 7)

Our vision of the earth and of each other is increasingly filtered 
through the operations of a complex assemblage of networked 
computational writing machines and as Shaw implies, these exist at the 
centre of our world and our daily experience. As a result the planet 
itself is increasingly becoming computational, Nigel Thrift describes 
how the ‘real’ as we know it is the result of multiple simultaneous 
‘writing machines’ using a continuous looping process of algorithms. 
(2005, loc.2879)

As a result, humans now exist within complex informational spaces that 
produce affects, simulate, analyse and respond to user and environmental 
data. Within these conditions, fiction and reality become increasingly 
blurred, machine and human voice, difficult to distinguish.

These machines allow for the generation of complex webs of fabulation 
which exist in a plethora of contexts from corporate identities to 
labyrinthine brand stories, to political propaganda and the operations 
of the derivatives market.

Furthermore our understanding of the ecological is itself increasingly 
filtered through multiple layers of networked technologies, sensors, 
algorithms and data visualisations. Jennifer Gabrys discusses the notion 
of ‘planetary scale computerisation’ and how this leads to the 
generation of ‘new living conditions, subjectivities, and imaginaries’. 
(Gabrys, 2016)

Within this context new fictional strategies within creative practice 
emerge as important weapons for critique, intervention, speculation and 
change. As Simon O’Sullivan notes: fiction can be used not as a matter 
of ‘make believe but rather in a Ranciere sense of forging the real to 
better approximate historical and contemporary experience’. (O’Sullivan, 
2016: 6)

In the symposium we ask how fictional methods are being employed to 
rethink and renegotiate our relationship with current and future 
technologies; how such methods can be used from activist and political 
perspectives; how they can address and critique post-truth conditions; 
how they can reveal forgotten histories and non-human perspectives; and 
how they can be used to speculate on, and design, new futures.

As Benjamin Bratton notes: ‘Our shared design project will require both 
different relationships to machines (carbon based machines and 
otherwise) and a more promiscuous figurative imagination.’ (Bratton, 
2016, loc.283)

*Symposium Strands:*

• Activist fictions

• Speculative design fictions

• Non-human fictions

• Post-truth fictions

• Machinic fictions

The event will culminate with a series of performances by artists 
including: *Ami Clarke, Harry Meadows & Andy Weir, and Annabelle 
Craven-Jones*.

Throughout the event artist *Rod Dickinson's* project */Fear Filter/ 
*will feed images to our *Media Wall.*

*_TICKETS:_*

Tickets are now available from the link below and include lunch, coffee 
and wine reception, with a special discount for students.

https://www.bathspalive.com/Online/default.asp?doWork::WScontent::loadArticle=Load&BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::article_id=C7EA82EC-2FD7-4C2F-BF0B-CC1AE4A4584D&BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::context_id=D70272D5-9DE8-48B8-A750-A8AB1D88536E 
<https://www.bathspalive.com/Online/default.asp?doWork%3A%3AWScontent%3A%3AloadArticle=Load&BOparam%3A%3AWScontent%3A%3AloadArticle%3A%3Aarticle_id=C7EA82EC-2FD7-4C2F-BF0B-CC1AE4A4584D&BOparam%3A%3AWScontent%3A%3AloadArticle%3A%3Acontext_id=D70272D5-9DE8-48B8-A750-A8AB1D88536E&fbclid=IwAR16C9DPpskUM2O5armJYutlNjCtLwJudk-zJPBmjH6zL4cCbKPFAwPBiN0>

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