[Commlist] CfA: “En/Countering Tracking”, Computational Culture

Call for Abstracts (Deadline: September 15, 2024)

En/Countering Tracking. Resisting spatiotemporal media operations in 
computational culture

A special issue of Computational Culture, a Journal of Software Studies

Edited by Kathrin Friedrich and Sebastian Randerath

Tracking takes place ubiquitously and at different scales – from 
satellite-based wildlife tracking (Benson 2010) to automated monitoring 
of supply chain workers through radio-frequency identification (RFID) 
(Hayles 2009; Kanngieser 2013) and to ubiquitous self-surveillance 
through self-tracking apps (Lupton 2021). With the expansion of 
sensor-based geomedia as well as embodied computing, tracking also 
becomes a key media operation for environmental sensing or virtual 
reality experiences (Egliston and Carter 2022; Gabrys 2019). The 
computational logics of tracking result in new aesthetic and operational 
regimes that diminish sensory perception and privilege logics of 
calculation, which in turn co-constitute mobile forms of (non-)human 
action and tactical interventions (Crandall 2010; Hansen 2015).

Countering tracking has become a key form of resisting the logics of 
computational culture. Subversive encounters have emerged in recent 
years as counterpoints to the hegemonic logics of web infrastructures 
(Christl and Spiekermann 2016), platform labor (Heiland 2021) and racial 
capitalism (Russell and De Souza 2023). These attempts to counter 
tracking take forms that range from investigative visualizations (Fuller 
and Weizman 2021) or provoking glitches in tracking infrastructures 
(Leszczynski and Elwood 2022) to uncovering web-based tracking (Sharelab 
2015), building counter-infrastructures for labor resistance (Qadri and 
D’Ignazio 2022), or using sensors and satellite images for critical 
investigations (Ballinger 2023; Boyd et al. 2018).

Countering tracking becomes a resistant media operation itself, 
disentangling hegemonic spatiotemporal regimes and their socio-political 
forces. These forms of countering tracking challenge existing 
theoretical approaches to the critical analysis of tracking and open up 
new perspectives on subversion and resistance in computational culture. 
How is countering tracking by means of tracking possible in different 
contexts and in relation to software, infrastructures and aesthetics?

We invite critical encounters through and of tracking, enabling new 
perspectives on computational infrastructures, software, (non-)human 
aesthetics and operative interactions, by means of theoretical 
reflections, critical making or activism. We aim at gathering 
submissions that 1) render existing tracking operations perceivable; 2) 
disrupt tracking infrastructures; or 3) operationalize tracking itself 
for resistance. The special issue invites theoretical, conceptual and 
performative approaches from fields such as media studies, visual 
studies, artistic research, sociology and critical geography to address 
the question of how tracking becomes a repressive, subversive or 
activistic media operation.

Topics and projects might include:

- Inventive methods that repurpose tracking infrastructures, sensors, 
software and data to research computational culture

- Detailed empirical and critical studies exploring the relations of 
en/countering tracking in computational culture

- En/countering tracking in labor resistance and platform capitalisms

- Critical theoretical conceptualization of tracking or countering for 
the study of computational culture

- Critical explorations of the chronopolitics, timescapes and 
spatiotemporal regimes of tracking

- Activist media, countersurveillance, tactical media, decolonial, 
(glitch) feminist and resistant epistemologies of tracking

- En/countering relations between political economy, racialized 
capitalism and tracking

- Visual cultures, (in-)visualities and aesthetics of en/countering tracking

- En/countering tracking in media art and artistic activism

Schedule

750-word abstracts should be emailed to 
(en_countering_tracking /at/ uni-bonn.de) by September 15, 2024. Abstracts will 
be reviewed by the special issue editors and the Computational 
Cultureeditorial board.


Authors of selected abstracts will be notified by October 30, 2024 and 
invited to submit full manuscripts by March 1, 2025. These manuscripts 
are subject to full blind peer review according to Computational 
Culture’s policies. Possible costs for proofreading incurred by the 
authors are not covered by the editors or the journal. There are no open 
access or processing charges for this special issue.

Computational Cultureis an online open-access peer-reviewed journal of 
interdisciplinary enquiry into the nature of cultural computational 
objects, practices, processes and structures.

For the full CfA visit:http://computationalculture.net/cfps-events/ 
<http://computationalculture.net/cfps-events/>

Any queries can be addressed to the special issue editors at: 
(en_countering_tracking /at/ uni-bonn.de)

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