[ecrea] CFP: Digital Ecologies and the Anthropocene

_CALL FOR PROPOSALS_
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*Signal Effects:*
*Digital Ecologies and the Anthropocene*
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*Media Convergence Research Centre, Bath Spa University*
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*One-Day Symposium: Friday April 28th 2017*
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*/Confirmed Keynotes:/*
*/Professor Charlie Gere, Lancaster University/*
*/Dr Ele Carpenter, Goldsmiths College, London/*
*/Professor Owain Jones, Bath Spa University/*


The Media Convergence Research Centre at Bath Spa University is proud to 
host the first /Signal Effects/ symposium titled /Digital Ecologies and 
the Anthropocene/, which will take place on Friday April 28th 2017. We 
are interested in receiving submissions from researchers, artists, 
filmmakers, writers and theorists whose work connects with the overall 
themes and strands of the symposium.

In August 2016 the International Geological Congress declared that a new 
geological epoch known as the Anthropocene needs to be declared due to 
the fact that the human impact on the earth is now so profound. Timothy 
Morton uses the term ‘hyperobjects’ to discuss some of the 
characteristics of the anthropocene and why it is often invisible to the 
human: he notes that hyperobjects are 'so massively distributed in time, 
space and dimensionality' that they defy our perception, let alone our 
comprehension, therefore the condition of the anthropocene is easily 
ignored. Among the examples Morton gives are climate change and 
radioactive plutonium. 'In one sense [hyperobjects] are abstractions,' 
he notes, 'in another they are ferociously, catastrophically real.'

Another of these ‘hyperobjects’ relates to the human relationship with 
machines and we can trace their impact on the earth back to the 
invention of the steam engine in 1781 by James Watt and its deposits of 
carbon on the earth’s crust. But today’s contemporary technologies 
appear to be different and are crucial to enabling human life and 
culture to function as well as realising  the production and 
distribution processes of capital. They also provide us with useful 
tools for visualising processes such as climate change and tracking the 
earth’s own movements and seismic activity.

However, the notion of these technologies being ‘clean’ or ‘virtual’ is 
soon unraveled by tracing their material realities which are made up of 
complex meshes of human and non-human moving parts. Today’s machines are 
heavily enabled by the extraction of raw materials, the use of fossil 
fuels and the production of material waste at sites such as Guiyu, China 
which has been called ‘the electronic graveyard of the world’.

In her book /Digital Rubbish/, Jennifer Gabrys notes that the electronic 
extends from technologies to markets and to modes of waste, decay and 
disintegration, articulating the relation between the signal and the 
thing and how they are bound into a shared material process. The history 
of the internet and today’s pervasive media technologies is also closely 
tied to the study of the earth and an observation of the ecological. It 
emerges from the development of military and nuclear technologies, the 
conception of cybernetics and the design of self-governing computer 
systems with built in feedback loops. These machines and systems end up 
as actors within a complex mesh of networks, hyperobjects, production 
processes, waste disposal and notions of deep time.

In terms of responses to these conditions Christophe Bonneuil describes 
the 'shock of the Anthropocene' as a space for generating new political 
arguments, new modes of behaviour, new narratives, new languages and new 
creative forms and this symposium is focused on bringing some of these 
emerging discourses to the surface across theory and practice.

Building on these issues, proposal topics may address, but are not 
limited to:

  * The Anthropocene and forms of waste
  * Digital ecologies, hyperobjects and new materialities
  * Deep time and new temporalities
  * Creative strategies and approaches


Please send proposals (300 words approx.) for all papers, artworks or 
screenings – outlining their aim and form – along with a short biography 
to the symposium coordinator: Charlie Tweed ((c.tweed /at/ bathspa.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(c.tweed /at/ bathspa.ac.uk)>) by no later than *Friday 24th February 
2017*.

More information about the symposium is available here: 
https://www.bathspa.ac.uk/liberal-arts/research/media-convergence-research-centre/digital-ecologies-and-the-anthropocene/

The Media Convergence Research Centre 
<https://www.bathspa.ac.uk/liberal-arts/research/media-convergence-research-centre/> 
at Bath Spa University interrogates the creativity, culture and 
enterprise of the media in the changing landscape of convergence, 
re-thinking the potentials of merging media practices, representations, 
technologies, industries and audiences everywhere. The Centre operates 
around four research clusters: Digital Materialities, Film & Social 
Context, Play, and Transmedia Industries.


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