[Commlist] Call for Papers: *Connessioni Remote* N. 6 Special Issue

Call for Papers - Connessioni remote. Artivismo_Teatro_Tecnologia N. 6 2023

Special Issue: “O.T.O.N.I.: Online Theatrical Objects Not (yet) 
Identified - expanded identity, virtual platforms, and user experience 
design.”

https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/connessioniremote/announcement/view/830 
<https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/connessioniremote/announcement/view/830>

Abstracts Due: 15th October 2023

Full Paper Due: 15th November 2023

Before and after the pandemic, advanced virtual environments emerged as 
critical sites for social and cultural experiences. They extended 
conversations, creative projects, collective endeavors, and commercial 
exchanges into a growing augmented ecology. The rise of the metaverse 
represents a fundamental shift in the current notion of digital presence 
toward one of mass interconnectivity, universal interoperability, and 
persistent synchronicity. Some recent hypermedia proposals seem to force 
a reevaluation of the nature of being online, along with a 
recontextualization of the concepts of reality, presence, and 
simulation, following Eva and Franco Mattes' historical "Reenactments" 
interventions (2007-2010) in Second Life. Tracing the recent history of 
online digital performance (Dixon, 2007) and events in virtual 
environments, their legacies, and future projections is the theme of the 
5th Remote Connections open call.

The completion of the metaverse is still a long way off. Today, it could 
be described as a system of interconnected applications, devices, 
products, tools, and infrastructures; the Metaverse experience is mainly 
represented by its 3D online gateways, such as Decentraland, Meta, 
Sandbox, Somnium Space, VR Chat, etc. - Platforms that allow the user to 
explore architecture, landscapes, immersion and movement in space-time 
through VR, XR, AR technologies. Sandbox, open-world games, and online 
3D collaboration platforms are increasingly used to create simulations 
and immersive augmented exhibition and performance experiences: perfect 
virtual "stages."

Gaming technologies are becoming the fundamental infrastructure for the 
realization of these visions; this ecosystem of virtual worlds in 
eXtended Reality (Floridi, 2022) seems to be shaped primarily by the 
interests of large corporations and mass markets, which, however, see 
active participation as one of the main economic assets for development. 
Forms of DIWO (do it with others) collectives raise the quality of the 
user experience to increasingly immersive levels, enticing direct 
participation in activities to create, share, decide, learn, and trade 
collectively. Over the past three decades, interactivity, conceived as a 
two-way relationship between humans and machines (Löwgren, 2008), has 
given users increasing power to manipulate and transform the art object 
with which they interact (Bazzichelli, 1999).

User experience itself refers to how people experience their encounter 
with a system. UX design embraces and extends traditional human-computer 
interaction design to increase satisfaction and loyalty through improved 
usability. The most widely used classification of UX is based on the set 
of users' feelings, perceptions, motivations, preferences, beliefs, 
attitudes, and emotional reactions to an interactive technological 
artifact at a given time and context of use (Park, 2015; Mkpojiogu, 
2018, 2019; Hassenzahl, 2004).

The dramaturgical importance of the UX and affordances of a platform in 
online digital performance is rarely acknowledged: Do these kinds of 
interactions engage the user? Does the chosen technological system and 
its features influence these virtual events' performative, 
participatory, and community-building purposes? And if so, how? Do the 
artists rely on pre-established criteria, or do they exploit and hack 
them to create different, more inclusive narrative dynamics? 
Furthermore, how does this intervention affect the UX itself? Can art 
practice in the digital environment be a resocializing context, a 
"laboratory of transformation" (Youngblood, 1991), a gym/community gym, 
an alternative creative model for adopting active, non-extractive, 
decentralized modes, apart from speculative and hype dynamics?

This sixth issue of Remote Connections aims to map the recent production 
of online performance events and actions and the modes of realization, 
participation, and design associated with them over the past thirty 
years and are associated with them today. Submissions may address but 
are not limited to, the topics related to OTONI and online digital 
performance:

- essays on the extended, augmented, posthuman body and identity; Dance 
and XR/VR performativity;

- hybrid experiences in augmented space;

- ethnographic explorations of environments, communities, and online 
platforms;

- documentation and testimonies of live online events;

- case studies of artists, theater companies, and historical webcam 
theater productions; streaming, real-time, and the declinations of 
digital liveness (Gemini, 2023);

- Review of studies and research on world-building and live simulation;

- From Life Forms to Perception Neurons: Performance Capture, Mocap, 3D 
Scanning, 3D Sculpture, Photogrammetry, and Biosensors in the Performing 
Arts.

Authors are invited to submit abstracts of up to 1000 characters, 
including spaces, on the above topics in Italian or English, along with 
4-5 keywords. Abstracts must be sent to 
(rivistaconnessioni.remote /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(rivistaconnessioni.remote /at/ gmail.com)> by October 15, 2023.

The Editorial Board will select a maximum of 10 abstracts based on 
thematic and methodological innovation for the ongoing critical debate. 
The Editorial Board will contact authors via email to submit the final 
abstract through the OJS platform by registering online. Full articles 
must be between 30,000 and 40,000 characters, including spaces, notes, 
and bibliography, and must be unpublished. Authors are asked to consult 
the article graphics guidelines and editorial standards in advance. 
Articles that follow these guidelines will be accepted. Articles of 
appropriate quality and adherence to the journal's objectives will be 
reviewed and double-masked.

Connessioni Remote is an open access journal and does not charge Article 
Processing Charges (APC) or any other publication fees.

For further information: (rivistaconnessioni.remote /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(rivistaconnessioni.remote /at/ gmail.com)>

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