[Commlist] CFP: 4S 2023 Open Panel: "The politics and aesthetics of synthetic media"

Fabian Offert and Thao Phan are organising an Open Panel on the "The 
politics and aesthetics of synthetic media" for 4S 2023 Honolulu, 8 - 11 
November <https://www.4sonline.org/meeting.php>.

We're interested in papers that take a cultural studies/media studies 
approach to the topic of synthetic media (i.e. large language models, 
large visual models, foundation models, synthetic data, simulations). We 
are especially interested in questions of feminist, 
anti-colonial/decolonial, and critical race perspectives on these topics.

Full panel details below.

---
*
*
*CFP: 4S 2023 Open Panel: "The politics and aesthetics of synthetic media"*

Submissions open: end April 2023
Deadline: May 26, 2023

Organisers: Thao Phan, Monash University & Fabian Offert, UC Santa Barbara

What is synthetic media? While born-digital objects have existed since 
the 20th century, the current AI revolution has put a new spin on the 
question of digital remediation, in both scientific and cultural 
knowledge production. Large visual models are able to emulate 
established media like photography without simulating any particular 
optical apparatus. Large language models are able to extrapolate text 
based on minor prompts, an approach that literalises the cybernetic 
maxim of communication as information processing. In what is either the 
dream or nightmare of media archaeology, established media become 
infinitely remixable, as just one 'style' among others. Synthetic media, 
then, represents a turn from an aesthetics and politics governed by 
semiotic, ideological and other forms of symbolic meaning, to an 
aesthetics and politics driven by statistical correlations and 
probabilistic determinations. Here, the 'stuff' of culture, such as 
images and words, are not produced through systems of human meaning and 
intention but through opaque computational processes that ontologically 
flatten the ineffable qualities of culture into operational data points. 
This panel invites STS scholars interested in these new ways of seeing, 
listening, reading, producing, consuming and other ways of being with 
media. It includes topics like large language and visual models, but 
also extends to practices such as the use of artificially manufactured 
datasets (synthetic data) and artificial environments (training 
simulations). We are especially keen to receive submissions that engage 
with questions of aesthetics and politics as articulated through 
feminist, critical race, and other frameworks grounded in material 
analyses of power.

See: https://4sonline.org/news_manager.php?page=31391 
<https://4sonline.org/news_manager.php?page=31391>

---------------
The COMMLIST
---------------
This mailing list is a free service offered by Nico Carpentier. Please use it responsibly and wisely.
--
To subscribe or unsubscribe, please visit http://commlist.org/
--
Before sending a posting request, please always read the guidelines at http://commlist.org/
--
To contact the mailing list manager:
Email: (nico.carpentier /at/ commlist.org)
URL: http://nicocarpentier.net
---------------