[ecrea] CFP - CODE: A Media, Games & Art Conference

Call for Papers and Creative Works
CODE - A Media, Games & Art Conference
21-23 November 2012
Swinburne University of Technology
Melbourne, Australia

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Jussi Parikka – Reader, Winchester School of Art
Christian McCrea – Program Director for Games, RMIT University
Anna Munster – Associate Professor at the College of Fine Arts, UNSW

DESCRIPTION
Code is the invisible force at the heart of contemporary media and 
games, routinely obscured by the gadget fetish of breathless tech 
marketing and scholarly focus on more visible social and technical 
interfaces. With the recent material turn in media studies and the 
refinement of new approaches including software studies and platform 
politics, which emphasise interrogating the formal characteristics and 
underlying technical architecture of contemporary media, the time has 
come to bring code out into the open.

Code can be defined in two distinct but related ways: as an underlying 
technological process, a set of rules and instructions governing, for 
instance, the permutations of all those 0s and 1s obscured behind user 
interfaces, but also as a cultural framework navigated and understood 
socially and performatively, as is the case with legal, social and 
behavioural codes. As an operative principle, code’s significance thus 
extends far deeper than its current digital manifestation. For this 
conference, we invite submissions of papers and creative works that 
consider the role of code as a simultaneously material and semiotic 
force that operates across the wider cultural, social and political 
field, with particular emphasis on media, games and art.

The conference theme is also an opportunity to reflect on how, as 
academics and creative practitioners, we often participate in but can 
also challenge the disciplinary and institutional codes that can 
arbitrarily separate these domains. CODE will be a transdisciplinary 
event that brings media studies, media arts and games studies into 
dialogue through individual papers, combined panels, master classes and 
an included exhibition.

THEMES
We welcome submissions related to any aspect of code in all its 
diversity. Possible considerations might include, but are not limited to:

- Code and the in/visible: what are the technical, ideological and 
academic aspects that work to obscure codes? And what might be the 
strategies for making codes visible again? Topics: ‘screen essentialism’ 
(Kirschenbaum 2008); race and/as technology (Chun 2009); glitch and 
error; programming activism; DIY coding; game exploits.

- Code and/as ideology: as something that both carries and obscures 
meaning, what is code’s relationship to ideology? Topics: Black-boxing; 
the fetish of visualisation (Chun 2011); ‘there is no software’ (Kittler 
2005); code as social frame; encoding/decoding.

- Coding the disciplines: media and games studies. How do these closely 
related disciplinary formations account for their existence? What 
epistemological and methodological insights might they share or 
contribute to one another, perhaps through emergent fields like software 
studies and platform politics? Or should they remain distinct?

- The deeper history of code: as a principle of information exchange, 
code’s centrality in media and communications technologies goes beyond 
the digital. What is the role of code in the deeper history of media, 
and what are the media archaeological resonances or links between ‘old’ 
and ‘new’ forms of code? Can their emergence often be traced back to the 
military-industrial complex? Topics: Prehistory of code; Morse code and 
semaphore; encryption and cryptography; cybernetics and early computing; 
pre- and non-digital games.

- Code and the public/private: What are the historical, legislative, 
technological and cultural settings for the emergence of ‘public 
privacy’, in which public signifying systems are vehicles for highly 
personal messages? Topics: public, private and intimate spheres; 
epistolary networks; social media; reality programming; celebrity; 
geolocating identity, meaning and destination.

- ‘Code and other laws of media’: the continuities and discontinuities 
of different codes. Just as legal codes embedded in technical protocols 
like digital rights management may disastrously overextend copyright 
protections (Lessig 1999), how else do different codes meet, overlap, 
extend and come into conflict with one another? Topics: Copyright and 
intellectual property; distribution; technical, legal, social and 
behavioural codes.

- Security codes: Though code often serves to secure and obscure 
authority, it remains vulnerable to hacking, raising the spectre of a 
whole new form of risk society operating at the level of code and 
through its breaches and accidents – how does this play out across 
networked information, communication and entertainment environments? 
Topics: phone hacking; Wikileaks; Anonymous and software-based protest; 
gaming hacks and cracks; data theft.

- Code and agency: Interactive media, games, art and cultural practice 
can all deal with the relationship between the interacting participant 
and the coded system. What aesthetics and politics are at work when the 
participant’s presumed agency and the coded constraints are in tension? 
Topics: aesthetics of code-based media; interface; participant 
experience; emergence/counter-play; proceduralism and performativity.

- Bodies in code: how do information and code, not only interfaces and 
devices, reconfigure the social, political and corporeal body, and vice 
versa? How might we conceptualise the materiality and ontology of code 
in relation to phenomenologies of embodiment and new materialism? 
Topics: post-humanism (Hayles 1999); new and vital materialism (Bennett 
2010); genetics and other codes for the body; disembodiment and 
immateriality.

- Failures of code: Much of code’s power lies in its invisibility, a 
transparency that allows it to be embedded as the ‘common sense’ of 
everyday life, but what happens when code fails, socially culturally, 
politically or technologically, or is exploited? Topics: rules and 
disobedience; comedy; subversion; disruption; revolution.

:: For further discussion, please view the conference website: 
http://code2012.wikidot.com

CREATIVE WORKS
Code operates, as if by stealth, beneath the materiality of networked 
media performances, software art, games, mobile apps, locative and 
social media. But code also presents artists, performers and creative 
practitioners with opportunities to construct innovative hybrid media 
forms that can extend our understanding of contemporary art practice. 
From video installations in the 1960s, through to sophisticated 
interactive media and augmented reality applications, artists have 
arguably been at the forefront of innovation, adopting the language of 
the computer to forge new creative frontiers. We invite contributions 
that examine the creative potential of code, including but not limited 
to, the implications of code for contemporary art/ists, code as art 
and/or performance, code as avant-garde, virus and anti-art.

The CODE conference will include a thematic exhibition. We are seeking 
submissions of screen-based works, pervasive games, and locative media 
projects that respond to the conference themes. Projected and 
performance works will also be considered.

SUBMISSIONS
- Individual 20 minute paper presentations: 300 word abstract.

- Panel submissions: panel submission should include three/four 
individual abstracts of 300 words, a panel title, and a 200 words 
rationale for the panel as a whole.

- Artists should submit a 250 word outline of the proposed creative work 
including links to supporting documentation (10 stills or up to 3 
minutes of video).

All submissions are due 31 May 2012 and should be emailed to 
(codeconference /at/ groupwise.swin.edu.au) 
<mailto:(codeconference /at/ groupwise.swin.edu.au)>

Please include your name, affiliation, contact details, and a brief bio.

A special journal issue or edited collection on the conference theme is 
planned.

FURTHER INFORMATION
- Conference website: http://code2012.wikidot.com (includes venue and 
registration information, venue, thematic discussion, reading list, etc.)
- Contact: (codeconference /at/ groupwise.swin.edu.au) 
<mailto:(codeconference /at/ groupwise.swin.edu.au)>