[Commlist] CFP – Diagramming digital image ecologies

Deadlline approaching, Friday 4th April 2025: CFP –
    Diagramming digital image ecologies @LCCT 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.


    If you have any questions about the conference stream, 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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