[Commlist] CFP – Diagramming digital image ecologies

CFP – Diagramming digital image ecologies @LCCT 2025. Deadline: Friday 
4th April 2025



The Call for Presentations is now open for the 12th annual London 
Conference in Critical Thought (LCCT), which will be hosted and 
supported by Birkbeck, University of London on 20th-21st June, 2025.

Proposals are invited for the stream: *“Diagramming digital image 
ecologies: material articulations of invisual relations”*

**About the Stream:**

The technologies that produce and disseminate images structure visual 
culture, both as social practice and at the level of individual 
perception. Digital images, which predominate in contemporary platform 
environments, have a complex ontology: as digital objects, they are 
composed of nonsensuous data and metadata, regulated by structures or 
schemas that formally define them in a computational sense (Hui, 2016); 
as visual objects, they are instantiated materially in a heterogenous 
perceptual form (Drucker, 2001). Trevor Paglen (2016) draws attention to 
the increasing agency of unseen algorithmic processes in visual culture, 
suggesting that ‘what’s truly revolutionary about the advent of digital 
images is the fact that they are fundamentally machine-readable: they 
can only be seen by humans in special circumstances and for short 
periods of time.’ He argues that machine-vision and AI image generation 
systems enact formal abstractions that are alien to human perception, 
raising both epistemological and ethical questions. Thus, innovative 
methodological approaches are needed to theorise digital images – if the 
computational infrastructures that shape networked digital culture 
resist visibility, then new forms of cognitive mapping are needed to 
‘augment… our phenomenological experience in such a way as to make clear 
the structural elements determining it, thereby making them visible and 
open to transformation’ (Srnicek, 2015: 310).

This stream proposes that diagramming can be used as a method to 
navigate the complexities of this terrain – revealing hidden relational 
structures (technical, political-economic, social, cultural, etc.) and 
potentially articulating resistance to them. It departs from Adrain 
Mackenzie and Anna Munster’s (2019) exploration of ‘platform seeing’ – a 
mode of algorithmic perception that extracts sense from images by 
aggregating them into ensembles. This ‘invisual’ perception renders 
visuality operative in a computational form that ‘operates 
diagrammatically, re-flowing relations in … image ensembles, generating 
materialities and experiences in their wake’ (Ibid.: 13). Diagrams are 
understood, after Deleuze, not as representational figures but as 
mechanisms that actualise new assemblages (Deleuze 1999, 2005; Zdebik 
2012). As Rocco Gangle notes, diagrams are ‘essentially iconic’, 
implying a partial blurring between object and sign – they ‘represent 
systems of relations and at the same time instantiate … those relations 
directly’ (2020: 6). They thus engender a performative immanence. Not 
located in a common-sense ‘visual space’ (Vellodi, 2018), diagrams 
constitute an abstract topology that enables us to articulate the 
transformations that occur as corporeal and incorporeal elements 
interact. As such, they are useful for mapping the material effects of 
algorithmic processes.

Proposals are invited that use diagrammatic approaches to explore any 
aspect of digital image culture. Contributions may include:

-       Theoretical applications of diagrammatology (e.g. Peirce, 
Deleuze, Châtelet, etc.) to digital image ecologies
-       Practice-based mappings or counter-mappings of relational 
assemblages in platform environments
-       Critical visualisations of algorithmic bias, data colonialism, 
or other ethical problematics in contemporary visual culture
-       Artistic research revealing processes or latent spaces of 
machine-vision or AI image-generation systems
-       Methodological experiments in spatialised thinking
-       Participatory diagramming workshops
-       Performative iterations of diagrammatic transformation/plasticity.

Contributors to this stream will have the opportunity to submit papers 
for publication in a special issue of the *Leonardo Electronic Almanac* 
(MIT Press), following the conference < https://www.leoalmanac.org/ 
<https://www.leoalmanac.org/>>.

If you have any questions about the conference stream or publication, or 
would like an informal discussion prior to submitting a proposal, please 
get in touch with me at (Hannah.Lammin /at/ gre.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(Hannah.Lammin /at/ gre.ac.uk)>.


**About LCCT:**

The LCCT is an annual interdisciplinary conference that provides a forum 
for emergent critical scholarship, broadly construed. The event is 
always free for all to attend and follows a non-hierarchical model that 
seeks to foster opportunities for intellectual critical exchanges where 
all are treated equally regardless of affiliation or seniority. There 
are no plenaries, and the conference is envisaged as a space for those 
who share intellectual approaches and interests but who may find 
themselves at the margins of their academic department or discipline.

**Please note that LCCT is an in-person conference.**

You can find details about the conference, and other streams, here: 
<https://www.londoncritical.co.uk <https://www.londoncritical.co.uk>>

If you would like to participate, please send an abstract for a proposed 
presentation with “Diagramming Digital Image Ecologies” indicated in the 
subject line to (hello /at/ londoncritical.co.uk) 
<mailto:(hello /at/ londoncritical.co.uk)>. [Please note the change of email 
address and URL from previous conferences, which are both no longer 
monitored.]

Abstracts should be submitted as Word documents of no more than 250 
words and must be received by Friday 4th April 2025.


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