[Commlist] CFP: Arts and Humanities in Digital Transition

CFP -- ARTS AND HUMANITIES IN DIGITAL TRANSITION

Conference | 6-7 July 2023 | NOVA University of Lisbon (Portugal)
Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities – NOVA Institute of Communication

Invited Keynote speakers:
Yuk Hui, City University of Hong Kong (confirmed)
Claire Bishop, City University of New York

Conference website: ah-digitaltransition.fcsh.unl.pt 
<http://ah-digitaltransition.fcsh.unl.pt/>

Transformations stemming from digital technologies are growing with 
every passing
decade, even if the newness of new media is gradually fading. The idea 
of digital
transition evokes a feeling of disruption, but also of inevitability and 
becoming, mixing the
voluntarism or the design of the artificial with new evolutionary 
narratives. Between a
lingering post-historical atmosphere and the spectre of an era of 
extinctions, the certainty
of the digital transformation stands out as the only truly foreseeable 
future - a future
where not only capitalism but the co-evolution of nature, culture and 
technology seem to
take the place of history itself. The question concerning the digital 
(Krämer, 2018; Hui,
2019; Galloway, 2021), which has only begun, is crucial for 
understanding the
anthropological, ecological and cosmological crisis (Latour, 2021) of 
the present and
resisting a one-way universalisation of technology. This crisis makes it 
urgent that we
image alternative futures but also that we concern ourselves with the 
digital (Stiegler
2010, 2019) and explore this transient temporality, the transformative 
and transgressive
possibilities opened up by this very being in transit.

The crossovers between cybernetics and environmental sciences, molecular 
biology and
informatics, neurology and robotics expand our knowledge of the human 
being and lead,
at the same time, to the questioning of the singularity and centrality 
of the Anthropos in
all his/her dimensions – perception, cognition, agency and creativity. 
Media theory, digital
studies and the philosophy of technology have been the source of a 
fundamental
anthropological questioning (Stiegler, 1984; Kittler, 1997; Hayles, 
1999) by showing the
co-constitution of the human and the technical environment, namely 
concerning
cognition and other superior capabilities of the human spirit. They are 
joined today by
ecological thinking in the claim of a post-humanist turn of the 
humanities (Braidotti,
2019). Accordingly, one of the main challenges of the social sciences 
and the humanities is
that of conceiving a critical cosmology, where a techno- or media 
ecology, which
inevitably sets a cognitive ecology or an “ecology of spirit” (Stiegler, 
2010), might be
included in the general ecological task. (Hörl, 2013; Hayles, 2017).

The initiative of this conference is indebted to these interrelated 
questionings as well as
to the paths opened up by the digital humanities and the digital arts, 
which have
increasingly surpassed a mere disciplinary view of their own fields. In 
the last decade, the
discussions about the cognitive and epistemological implications of the 
widespread use of
AI and computation have cast new critical themes within Digital 
Humanities themselves
(Burdwick et al. l, 2016, Berry and Fagerjord, 2017; Dobson, 2019). 
Likewise, discourses
and practices around digital arts moved beyond the aim of establishing a 
mere genealogy
and procedural field to think how the digital is penetrating aesthetic, 
affective and
political experience, as well as creative and collaborative practices in 
ways more
fundamental or also more indirect (Zielinski, 2006; Bishop, 2012; 
Weibel, 2019).
The scope of this conference is that of a broad epistemic, cultural, 
political and artistic
reflection on the transformation of knowledge, creativity, design, 
literacies, cultural
techniques and institutions in an era increasingly characterized by the 
distribution of
capabilities and agencies between humans and technology.

Adding to a new stage of the industrialisation of culture and the arts, 
we are now
witnessing the emergence of an industry of knowledge built on the 
accumulation of data,
automatic analysis, AI, machine learning, and information visualisation 
(Negri &
Vercellone, 2008; Boutang, 2012; Zuboff, 2019; Manovich, 2021). The new 
cognitive
industries threaten to trigger a general dispossession of cognitive 
practices, learning and
“savoir vivre” (Stiegler, 2019), and the replacement of the civic 
mission of institutions and
practices related to knowledge transmission by infrastructures, 
platforms and algorithms
(Bratton, 2016; Srnicek, 2016). However, the digital condition and the 
new cognitive
ecology allow, in turn, for an explosion and dissemination of knowledge 
on a scale that is
unprecedented in human history, the strengthening of diverse forms of 
connectivity and
collaboration (Castells, 2012; Gerbaudo, 2017) and, for the first time, 
the sharing of a
common language between the sciences, the humanities and the arts.

Establishing a political cosmology and ecology for the digital 
transition emerges as a new
task of critical thought in the XXI century. This call for proposals 
invites participation in
this task through topics such as, and not restricted to, the ones below. 
In addition, we
welcome the exploration of themes from the extensive work of Bernard 
Stiegler in
homage to his intellectual legacy and his influential contribution to 
the understanding of
the relationship between culture and technique and of the digital condition.

* Digitality, post-digital and digital transition
* Tecno-ecology, digital ecology and cognitive ecology
* Post-human and post-humanities
* Digital Humanities: theory, methodologies and practices
* Digital arts, design, post-media aesthetics and artivism
* Cognitive and creative economy and industries
* AI, Machine Learning and automation
* New literacies, cultural techniques and skills
* The university and the digital
* Bernard Siegler’s philosophy of technology and contribution for 
digital studies
(mnemotechnics and organology, pharmacology and care; disruption and 
bifurcation;
etc.)

Submission: Abstracts for individual papers should be written in English 
and have a
maximum of 300 words, including a title and up to 5 keywords. The 
submission form
allows the upload of a short biographical note (word file, max. 100 
words). The
conference is primarily in-person but admits some online participation, 
to be
requested in the abstract.
Please submit your proposal to AH-DT 2023| Arts and Humanities in 
Digital Transition
at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ahdt2023 
<https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ahdt2023>

Deadline for submissions: 6th March
Notification of acceptance: 30th March
Early Bird Registration: until 15th April (120 €)
Deadline for Registration: 30th April (200 €)
Publication: After the conference, authors will be invited to submit 
full papers to a
special edition of a journal indexed in Scopus.

For further information, please send us an e-mail: 
(digitaltransition /at/ fcsh.unl.pt) <mailto:(digitaltransition /at/ fcsh.unl.pt)>
Conference website: ah-digitaltransition.fcsh.unl.pt 
<http://ah-digitaltransition.fcsh.unl.pt>


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