*CFP* "LGBTQIA+ FANTASTIKA GRAPHICS", A DIGITAL SYMPOSIUM

“Fantastika” – a term appropriated from a range of Slavonic languages by John Clute – embraces the genres of Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror, but can also include Alternate History, Gothic, Steampunk, Young Adult Dystopic Fiction, or any other radically imaginative narrative space. Our goal is to bring together academics, independent researchers, creators, and audiences who share an interest in this diverse range of fields with the aim of opening up new dialogues, productive controversies, and critical collaborations.

Following the 2020-pandemic hiatus, we are pleased to re-launch our annual conferences this year as a digital symposium. LGBTQIA+ Fantastika Graphics focuses on the graphic novel medium in its widest possible remit (comic books, manga, and other such productions). We are interested in works that contain representations of the LGBTQIA+ community, relationships, and full spectrum of identities.

We welcome abstracts for 15-minute papers or panels of 2-4 people on LGBTQIA+ Fantastika as they occur in the graphic form.

Some suggested topics are:

*CFP* "AFFECTING GAME SPACE: THEORY AND PRACTICE", VIRTUAL CONFERENCE

Affecting Game Space: Theory and Practice

3rd September 2021

Virtual conference

 

From claustrophobic confines to sublime vistas, game spaces have conjured affects since the medium’s inception. Whether it be nostalgia for the remastered landscape, the vertigo of free diving in VR, or the conviviality of gathering around landmarks in Pokémon GO, affect reciprocally connects players to physical and virtual spaces. Haptics, ray tracing and photogrammetry are allowing us to ‘feel’ game worlds in new and increasingly tangible ways. As Nitsche observes: “Video game spaces stage our dreams and nightmares and they seem to get better at it every year” (2008: 2). How then do we (co-)design, feel, construct and play with affect in game spaces?

As the inaugural event of the ‘Game Worlds’ research cluster connecting theory and design at the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Data, Culture and Society, the ‘Affecting Game Space’ online conference will be built around quickfire presentations followed by breakout groups, with the potential for demo/exhibition space. We hope to welcome you to a network of like-minded academics and practitioners based at The University of Edinburgh virtually through the spatial video conferencing platform ‘Gather,’ facilitating free movement, conversation and networking.

*CFP* "BETWEEN THEORY AND PRACTICE", SUMMER SCHOOL: MULTIDISCIPLINARY GAME RESEARCH

Between Theory and Practice

Summer School: Multidisciplinary Game Research

16-20 August 2021

Utrecht University [online-only]

 

This summer course provides an overview of contemporary research perspectives on games and play, bringing together perspectives from the humanities, educational sciences and social sciences. It provides participants with a holistic perspective, including aspects of analysis, critical design and validation, which is necessary to employ games and play meaningfully and productively within contemporary academia as well as society at large. The program comprises workshops by senior researchers from the Center for Game Research (Utrecht University/UU), the Departments for “Media and Culture Studies” and “Information and Computing Sciences” (UU), the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development (UU), Palacký University Olomouc and Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Each day is dedicated to a different angle, starting with game analysis, moving on to games for sustainability and environmental communication, games for learning, scenario-planning games and finally interactive narrative design.

*CFP* "(IN)TANGIBLE HERITAGE(S)", A CONFERENCE ON DESIGN, CULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY - PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE

(In)tangible Heritage(s):

A conference on design, culture and technology – past, present, and future

15-17 June 2022

University of Kent in Canterbury, UK

 

The buildings, towns and cities we inhabit are physical entities created in the past, experienced in the present, and projected to inform the future. The same can be said of the artefacts we use daily: designed furniture in the home, the mobile devices in our hands, the vehicles we see on our streets. However, each of these places, buildings and products had, at their inception, social and cultural roles beyond their ‘object’ status. They continue to have them today. What we understand a designed object to be then, is a complex question of material and social import, and an intricate play of the tangible and intangible identities. Increasingly, it is also a question of hybrid experiences and overlaid histories. This conference address the range of issues connected to this scenario.

*CFP* "SECONDHAND CULTURES AND UNSETTLED TIMES", INTERDISCIPLINARY VIRTUAL SYMPOSIUM

Secondhand Cultures in Unsettled Times

Interdisciplinary Virtual Symposium

School of Journalism, Media & Culture, Cardiff University

15-16 June 2021

 

Secondhand cultures and practices, from reselling sites to charity shops and thrift stores to waste picking, have expanded and transformed over recent decades, with profound social, political, and environmental implications. Despite vibrant and growing research into secondhand worlds, opportunities to share and discuss this research across interdisciplinary boundaries have been rare. Further, secondhand cultures have been unsettled by the global pandemic in ways that are not yet well understood.

*CFP* "DESIGN", SPECIAL ISSUE, M/C JOURNAL

Between its broader sense of intent and that of making a drawing or plan, design appears to be expanding in both meaning and its application. Design is well understood when related to our material culture, where the medium often bears the imprint of the designer/s. Design has moved relatively seamlessly from the physical into the digital world. It makes sense that someone designs the applications that we use and that digital content, just as much as a poster, requires design. Design activities are rarely inseparable from a market economy, but the language of design has infiltrated business more broadly. Design processes are used in seemingly novel ways across business and governments seeking to improve their digital and real-world services. New usage related to users, perhaps unknowingly, replicates the interests of designers in the 1960s who sought a more equitable solutions to social problems experienced in the physical world. What loosely unites these disparate design disciplines diachronically and today is a shared sense that design improves the world we live in. But even with the best intentions, design does not inevitably lead to a better world. Our desire for stuff, and the social status this might bring, has helped to elevate designers into celebrities, but also heightened distinctions between the copy and the original. Design, either analogue or digital, has unintended consequences. These include, among other examples, the environmental degradation that emerges from design consumption through to the carbon footprint of the digital world.

*CFP* "THE MULTIPLE DIMENSIONS OF MAGAZINE JOURNALISM", THEMATIC ISSUE, ANIMUS: INTER-AMERICAN JOURNAL OF MEDIA COMMUNICATION

It is open until April 30, 2021, the call for papers for the thematic issue "The multiple dimensions of magazine Journalism” to be published in Animus – Inter-American Journal of Media Communication (ISSN 2175-4977), a publication of the Postgraduate in Communication from UFSM Federal University of Santa Maria (POSCOM / UFSM), Brazil. Manuscripts must be written in Portuguese, Spanish or English with a length between 30.000 and 45.000 characters, to be considered for peer-review. The thematic issue will be published in the last trimester of 2021. This CFP aims to bring debates and reflections about news production in the magazine support, whether in physical or digital structure, through contributions from researchers in Social and Human Sciences, such as Communication, Journalism, Media Studies, History, Sociology, Studies Cultural, among others.

 

Contributions that address the following themes are encouraged:

• Magazine journalism in the digital environment / cybermagazine journalism;
• Migration from the printed to the digital environment;

*CFP* "RETURNING TO THE PAGE: VISUALISING DESIGN AND DESIRE IN FAN MAGAZINES", ONLINE 2021 CONFERENCE

Returning to the page: Visualising Design and Desire in Fan Magazines

February 8th-13rd, 2021

Online conference

This conference is designed as a sequel to our 2015 event Turning the Page: Digitization, movie magazines and historical audience studies.

 

That conference focused on the development of the study of historical fan magazines in recent decades, with a particular emphasis on the impact of increased digitization (by the Media History Digital Library, among others) on this development. In this context, we particularly emphasised the importance of “reclaiming” the fan magazine – an ephemeral and often academically neglected object – as an important research tool for the study of stars, fans, Hollywood and non-Hollywoodfilm industries and cultures, and more.

 

*CFP* "THE FICTION THAT EXPLODED: SPECULATIVE WAYS OF DIGGING DESIGN", VOL. 6, Nº 1, INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF FILM AND MEDIA ARTS

Speculative Design, Fiction Design, and Critical Design are all expressions for a common approach which grasps design practice, not as a problem-solving tool, but as a wider human activity which comprehends artefacts in societal contexts. Speculative Design considers design objects as a result of social interaction, which implies narrative devices and storytelling practices, to build new contexts or understand previous ones. A Speculative design raises more questions than offers solutions, becoming an ongoing knowledge model, it is a self-reflexive and self-critical practice (Dunne, A; Raby F, 2012).

Fiction Design operates in a broad field of media and technology, engaging explorative means to become a discursive space. Fiction Design appeals to several operations and multiple methodologies, some of them borrowed from other disciplines like cinema screenplays, storytelling techniques, game prototypes, animation principles, digital applications, videos, short stories, comics, fictional documentaries, among others (etc…). This methodology, described as diegetic prototypes, implies a narrative thread beneath its process, where tangible objects are read into wider panoramas. It concerns more extensive world narratives rather than small and contingent stories, it cares for processes where speculative realities may become closer and tangible experiences, where the future may become a present condition to drawn better devices and artefacts. As a result, Fiction design opens a way to a more profound inquiring of social and political values.

*CFP* "MULTIMODAL COMICS: THE EVOLUTION OF COMICS STUDIES", CHAPTER BOOK

Multimodality is of increasing relevance to daily human life. Comics are a unique and informative site in which to study this concept, as they rely on complex interactions between word and image. This collection will bring together leading international research on this theme, developing comics theory and speaking to additional media and disciplines.

Comics have always embraced a diversity of formats, existing in complex relationships to and with other media, and been dynamic in their response to new technologies and means of distribution. This collection explores interactions between comics, other media and both established and emerging technologies, employing a wide range of theoretical and critical perspectives. By focusing on key critical concepts within multimodality (transmediality, adaptation, intertextuality) and addressing multiple platforms and media (digital, analogue, music, prose, linguistics, graphics), the collection expands and develops existing comics theory and also addresses multiple other media and disciplines.

*CFP* "INTERACCIÓN Y VISUALIZACIÓN", NÚMERO ESPECIAL, REVISTA EL PROFESIONAL DE LA INFORMACIÓN

El pasado 23 de marzo Navid Mamoon y Gabriel Rasskin, dos estudiantes de la Carnegie Mellon University lanzaron Covisualizer, una aplicación de visualización interactiva que permite consultar, prácticamente en tiempo real y por medio de un globo terráqueo, el número de víctimas y afectados por el Covid-19 en todos los países. En pocos días llegó a los 70 millones de usuarios. Covisualizer es sólo una de las numerosas interfaces que se han creado para facilitar la comprensión y consulta de los datos estadísticos que constantemente se registran sobre la pandemia. Su éxito se debe a la habilidad mostrada por sus autores en diseñar una interfaz en la que visualización e interacción se combinan eficazmente.  Es decir, por medio de la interactividad, el usuario explora los mapas y establece su propia narrativa visual. A través de mapas interactivos medios de comunicación, agencias estatales y centros de investigación han construido el relato de la epidemia focalizando aquellos aspectos del brote que han considerado más relevantes (Danielson, 2020).

Plantear interactividad y visualización como binomio refuerza la centralidad del usuario en los procesos de acceso, diálogo y relación con datos por medio de interfaces (McKenna et al., 2017). Así, por ejemplo, en comunicación social, frente a los medios clásicos en los que en un artículo periodístico el texto explicaba la historia y las gráficas o imágenes daban soporte o evidencia a lo narrado, en lo nuevos medios digitales se escapan de ese papel secundario. 

*CFP* "MÚSICA, SONIDO Y SILENCIO EN LOS VIDEOJUEGOS", Nº 3, JOURNAL OF SOUND, SILENCE, IMAGE AND TECHNOLOGY

La revista científica Journal of Sound, Silence, Image and Technology (JoSSIT) nace en el seno del grupo de investigación homónimo (SSIT), vinculado al centro universitario del TecnoCampus, adscrito a la Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF). La vocación de esta publicación es recoger el debate académico y la investigación científica sobre la relación del sonido -ampliamente considerado- un contexto audiovisual. Para este tercer número de la revista, tendremos en cuenta artículos sobre la relación entre música, sonido y silencio en los videojuegos.

Los estudios sobre el audiovisual se han ido consolidando a lo largo de las últimas dos décadas, y se puede afirmar que en ese tiempo, se han hecho su merecido espacio en la musicología académica. Sin embargo, dentro de los estudios audiovisuales, los videojuegos siguen siendo hoy en día uno de los temas menos tratados, en parte por los retos y dificultades metodológicas que entraña su estudio. 

Por ello, planteamos este tercer número de la revista desde la necesidad de poner en valor y dar reconocimiento a los estudios sobre la música, sonido y silencio en los videojuegos, e invitamos a enviar artículos sobre los siguientes temas:

*CFP* CALL FOR PARTICIPATION, VIDEOJOGOS 2020, 12TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON VIDEOGAME SCIENCES AND ARTS

Videojogos 2020

12th International Conference on Videogame Sciences and Arts

26-28 November 2020

Videojogos 2020 will be the 12th International Conference on Videogame Sciences and Arts.

It is a joint organization between the School of Public Management, Communication and Tourism – Polytechnic Institute of Bragança (EsACT – IPB) and the Portuguese Society of Videogames Sciences (SPCV).

As in previous editions, this conference will gather researchers, professionals in the extended area of videogames, teachers and students in a forum to discuss videogame related topics and their impact on various aspects such as society, health, heritage, economy or education. The goal is to promote the exchange of ideas, share experiences and results in the areas of interest, through presentations, workshops, interactive demos and panels.

*CFP* "NERD: NEW EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH IN DESIGN", 2020 CONFERENCE

NERD: New Experimental Research in Design

23-24 October 2020

HAW Hamburg, Germany

The particular epistemic and innovative potentials of Design Research are increasingly recognized within the wider academic sphere and are in constantly growing demand by businesses, institutions and politics alike. Yet, design research also is a field and practice that, due to its in-between nature, lacks the clear boundaries and formal dogmatisms of more traditional research disciplines, as well as their implicit notions of secured knowledge and linear progress.

Recognizing this inherent openness as one of its key qualities, the New Experimental Research in Design (in short: NERD) conference aims at providing a genuinely diverse and open platform for discussing, reflecting on and exposing to a wider public the manifold ways in which design’s unique perspective and proficiencies can intelligently be applied as a research competence. It does so by inviting presentations of empirical research projects by researchers from around the world and from all areas of design research with a focus on methodologically and thematically original approaches.

*CFP* "FICTIONAL WORLDS, WHAT-IFS AND SURROUNDINGS", HALF-DAY WORKSHOP DIGRA 2020

Workshop "Fictional worlds, what-ifs and surroundings”

A half-day workshop held as part of DiGRA 2020

2 June 2020, Tampere, Finland

The starting point will be asking ourself "What if…?”

Games inherently deal with exploring alternative worlds. Worlds where we suspend our disbelief for experiencing other roles, being open towards possibilities. But what about play for stimulating designers towards more responsible, aware, inclusive and diversity oriented processes of envisioning, speculation, creation? And what about embedding reflections on the complex challenges we face today, tomorrow, or in the long run?

Today we are witnessing an increasing utilization of game design as an approach for addressing issues that cannot be easily reduced or solved, but are rather complex matters of investigation (Schouten et al. 2017) or even “wicked problems” (Buchanan 1985; 1992; Sicart 2010; Bosman 2019).  As a matter of fact, it is getting more and more frequent to run into games designed for empowering people to explore scenarios representing possible, plausible, or simply alternative presents, but also to speculate about preferable, probable or even undesirable futures (Coulton et al. 2016). From digital games and interactive narratives, to LARP and board games, the field is becoming populated of compelling practices, showing a consistent interest. In parallel, also the literature stream on the topic is increasing, reinforcing how games can be a powerful and engaging medium for speculation.

*CFP* “ITALIAN FILM, COSTUME DESIGN AND FASHION FROM THE SILENT ERA TO THE PRESENT”, SPECIAL ISSUE JOURNAL OF ITALIAN CINEMA AND MEDIA STUDIES

Fashion and film share a highly interactive quality. As two of the most popular and widespread commercial industries to grow out of modernity, cinema and fashion have always had a synergetic relationship, both using the technology of the camera and that of the body and performance. Costume is integral both to the actor’s performance and to the cinematic rendition of visual narratives and experience. Since the birth of cinema in the late nineteenth century, the film scene has constituted a virtual shopping window for clothes, exhibiting and making desirable the newest fashions and goods available at the department stores. Film costume has not only borrowed from fashion and haute couture; it has also inspired the production of the newest fashions. Costumes in cinema have also been used as narrative tools for telling stories on screen that emphasize character identity and development while also attracting a larger audience. More recently, the digital genre of “fashion film” has become a widespread advertising and storytelling tool for fashion luxury brands as Ferragamo, Prada, Louis Vuitton, Dior amongst the others.

*CFP* "EXHIBITION DESIGN INFLUENCED BY CINEMA", ISSUE FIVE CMA JOURNAL

It's all in the movies:

The medium of cinema works through an unfolding process of perception. As a spectator of cinema, one is drawn into a dimensional world, where the experience of spectacle, narrative, and semiosis work together to percolate a film’s interest, context, and purpose. Cinema is affective, engaging, and critically contemplative. Through dynamic relations between the movement and colour of images, ambient, immersive, and musical sound, cultural and human perspective, cinema creates an altered experience of reality. This encourages individuals to reflect, through embodied and cognitive instances, on the fluctuating conditions of the world and human experience. 

Cinema, since its invention, has given visibility to endless objects, circumstances, and concepts including those that may have once remained unseen, unspoken, or unthought. Cinema shapes the human perception of time and space, therefore creating attitudes about history and the future. Consequently, it is a medium that allows for ideas to unfold in an engaging and ruminative way. 

*CFP* "DISEÑO DE MUNDOS-HISTORIA (STORYWORLD DESIGN). PERSPECTIVAS CREATIVAS PARA UN TRANSMEDIA ORGÁNICO", REVISTA ICONO14

La digitalización afecta no sólo al consumo, sino también a la creación. Las historias no deben diseñarse solo para un medio (pantalla). Deben crearse para muchas de ellas de forma simultánea aprovechando las características de cada una, con el fin de enriquecer la historia y aportar nuevas formas de acercarnos a un universo ficcional, que puede convertirse en pervasivo a través del diseño de productos transmedia orgánicos.

Como creadores ya no sólo podemos pensar en un medio, sino que debemos pensar en su relación con el ecosistema de los medios, reflejando todo el potencial creativo en escenarios que se pueden basar no sólo en visiones multimedia, intermedia o crossmedia, mientras avanzan hacia una base que potencie el transmedia. Con independencia del futuro ecosistema en el que nuestras creaciones se desarrollen, hoy en día es necesario pensar la producción narrativa más en términos de universo ficcional y menos en términos de historia cerrada. Puesto que, existe una gran cantidad de posibilidades técnicas, medios y canales de media, que posibilitan y exigen la continuidad, extensión, adaptación y extrapolación de esa historia.