[ecrea] CFP - Udine - filmforum conference 2019 - "Moving Pictures, Living Machines"

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*Moving Pictures, Living Machines*

*Automation, Animation and the Imitation of Life in Cinema and Media*

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/FilmForum 2019. //XXVI Udine International Film Studies Conference – 
March 21//^th // – 23//^th //, Gorizia (Italy)/*
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At the end of 2017, computer scientist Andrew Yan-Tak Ng labelled 
Artificial Intelligence as “the new electricity” (and with it, he 
referred more broadly to automation, robotics, computer vision, big data 
collection and analysis, etc.). AI becomes, then, the core engine of a 
forthcoming revolution in many industrial, socio-cultural, scientific 
and educational realms. On the one hand, this “provocative” reference 
aims to include these new assets within a complex social, technological 
and industrial framework, on the other hand, it aims to defuse those 
dangerous arguments concerning misoneism and technophobia. Moreover, 
this sensationalist metaphor could represent a paradoxical starting 
point for our conference: it underscores that every historical research 
concerning technology must pinpoint (first of all) the “conditions of 
possibilities” of a media technological network, and that even 
linear/evolutionist perspective could inspire unusual and brand new 
excavations.

Thus, the 2019 Udine/Gorizia International Film Studies Conference will 
investigate the interrelationships between automation, representation 
and “viewing/listening dispositives” from early to late 
modernity/postmodernity. In doing this, we would draw on the “1900 
episteme” (which is the main feature of the “technical society that come 
into being in the 17th century and became the flourishing industrial 
society of 19th century”) and the tripartition spectator (or 
user)-machine-representation” (Albera and Tortajada, 2010). More 
precisely, we aim to stress the function of automatism in long-term 
dynamics of dispossession, integration, training, disorientation, 
deprivation, proletarization, and rejection of the human being/“subject” 
as a creator/producer and as a consumer/viewer/listener: how do these 
dispositives imitate human faculties? And how do they imitate the world 
that surrounds us? How do they imitate life?

Not by chance, with the rise of an emerging “machine agency” and a new 
“subject of history” (Anders, 1980) between the 17th and 21th Century, 
“technologies took over”: automated cultural activities and daily 
routines “were increasingly imagined as living entities” (Parikka, 
2010). For being capable of recording movement over time, the cinema and 
the media double the world that surrounds human beings.

Concerning these issues, since the late 19th century cinema played of 
course a key role. As Jackey Stacey and Lucy Suchman explained: 
“cinema’s history of bringing things to life lies in this twofold 
manifestation of automata on the screen. As both the instantiation of 
the foundational drive behind the medium and the condensation of its 
animating capacity” (2012: 15). Drawing on the cultural series that 
binds cinema to the realm of automatic technologies of 
animated/enlivened images (“living” machines producing “lively” 
representations), we would like to focus on its crossing points: from 
mechanization to electronification and from electronification to 
digitization. Analysing these crossing points, we would like to stress 
three distinct but strictly intertwined areas of inquiry:


*Automation and machinery:* i.e. the ways in which the machine is 
“brought to life” (with a specific focus on pre-cinematic automata; 
mechanical optical toys; automatic cameras; automatic recording systems; 
the inner mechanics and components of cinematic machines; video signal 
transmission etc.). How did the different techniques of making an 
apparatus move and “operate by itself” change our understanding of the 
technical media? How do “machine-animism” and the subjectification of 
non-human organisms relate to the different stages in the history of 
automata? Do the capabilities of recording media of “seeing and hearing 
for us” create a new form of ‘non-human’ subjectivity? Can the material 
encounter with media-technological apparatuses from the past enrich our 
knowledge about the cultural logics behind automation? Drawing on Edgar 
Morin’s /The Cinema, or The Imaginary Man/ (1956; 2005) and Jentsch’s 
theories, how can we pinpoint the uncanny power of viewing and listening 
dispositives to re-produce human perceptual qualities?


*Automation and representation:* i.e. the ways in which machines 
automatically produce optical representations/the ways in which 
automatic machines are discursively and visually represented. In the 
former sense, starting from the notions of /bildakts/, visual agency, 
the mutual relationships between /tableaux vivants/ and automatic 
procedures of inscription (as described by Horst Bredekamp [2010]), we 
can reconstruct the ways in which schemata and mechanized actions have 
historically informed the production of images and visual 
representations. The relation between image and movement, which lies at 
the core of any cine-apparatus, can be applied to different modes of 
automated viewing, from animation (moving panoramas; mechanized 
dioramas; filmstrips/“/le film fixe/”; film/video loops; GIF etc.) to 
“vision-in-motion” (self-moving cameras; mobile screens; portable screen 
media; drones; surveillance camera; gait analysis devices; medical, 
automotive, military devices, etc.) and visual/cinematic representations 
generated by AI.

Concerning the discursive and visual representation, we aim to foster a 
reflection on how cinema, visual arts and audiovisual media have 
referred to their own “machine-driven” nature by staging metaphorical 
self-representation (visual contents and films about AI, automotive 
systems, cyborgs, robotics, machine-driven bodies and systems etc.) and 
producing replicas, hyperrealism effects, etc. Moreover, we aim to focus 
on the production of a wide discursive corpus on screen and in other 
enunciation spaces, which contributes to inform the collective 
imagination on “living machines” and  “haunted media”.

*Automation and users:* i.e. the ways in which automatic labour 
reconfigures the agency of the user (the spectator’s “innervation”; the 
changes in the projectionist’s and technicians’ work; the notion of 
“media gesture” and the user’s technological expertise; the “new 
spectators” for contents created by algorithms; the automatic 
recommendation systems used by digital streaming platforms; automation 
for data/metadata management, etc.). How do we change our 
media-competences and how do we interact with the machines whenever a 
new automated technology is introduced? Does the mechanization of human 
life imply a reverse process of “humanization of the machine”, whereby 
technological apparatuses are reframed by anthropocentric criteria? How 
do the hopes and threats of a “fully-automated society” re-address the 
dichotomy between the human and the machine, giving way to the 
discursive regimes of ‘technophobia’ and ‘technophilia’? Which are the 
political/institutional entailments of automation regarding film and 
media archives? Can we critically reassess the deep implications brought 
by automation to the preservation of the cultural heritage by taking 
under serious scrutiny the visualization tools we are used to operate 
with (e.g. film restoration and film materials visual atlases)? Finally, 
how does the adoption of automatic tools and algorithms challenge the 
role of human creativity in the narrative processes and practices?

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*We encourage contributions addressing any of these areas or the 
interrelationships occurring between them. We invite you to send us 
proposals for papers or panels. Proposals should not exceed one page in 
length. *

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*Please make sure to attach a short CV (10 lines max). The deadline for 
their submission is October, 25th 2018.*

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*A registration fee (160 euros) will be applied. Moreover travel costs 
(tickets, etc.) will not be refunded. On the other hand, we will 
partially cover the costs of your accommodation (2 nights in the best 
accommodation solutions available). Special rates are available for 
additional nights. For more information, please contact us at 
**(udineconference /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(udineconference /at/ gmail.com)>**. *

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*info: *https://filmforumfestival.it

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