[artinfo] [spectre] CFP - Perforations 26: Kismet, my love...

[Charles Kriel]

Call for papers:

Kismet, my loveŠ
Perforations 26

Guest editor ­ Charles Kriel <journal at kriel.tv>
Senior editor ­ Robert Cheatham <zeug at pd.org>
http://www.perforate.org/

Theme:
Kismet, my loveŠ is concerned with the growing phenomena of the mediation of
personality and the marketing of the self via new tools for communication:
text and multimedia messaging; 3G video phones; mobile and stationary email;
web pages; web logs; networked software agents and others. It is concerned
with both the technical workings of any new innovations with potential use
in this context, as well as the social implications and the theoretical
issues surrounding them. As Perforations is an e-journal with impact beyond
the theoretical, we are interested in works that express their ideas through
a variety of media, including sound, video, visual art, performance, etc.,
as well as the written paper.

George Myerson¹s Heidegger, Habermas and the Mobile Phone, is a one possible
starting point in this exploration. To quote John Bird on Myerson: [M]obile
phone communication is, essentially, the provision of information through a
technology which does not really require a person on the other end of the
handset.

The MIT AI Lab robot, Kismet, built by Dr. Cynthia Breazeal, is another
source. Although Kismet speaks nonsense, it will engage you in conversation.
Through gesture and vocal inflection, it will make clear that it understands
that you have said something to it, it will speak non-demanding nonsense
back to you, and then indicate that it is your turn to speak again. It
insists only that you keep it at the right level of stimulation, and that
you keep a reasonable distance.
Finally, blogs play a role in this work. Certain Frankfurt School theorists
critiqued the wearing of one¹s personality externally and materially,
whether through fashion or some other inscription into the corps of
collective expression; the more democratic the language of expression, the
more banal. Blogs, which typically express individual personality via a
collection of links and a display of friendships (I am what I reference),
are ripe for evaluation within this framework, whether pro-Adorno, anti-, or
viewed within more contemporary theoretical parameters.

This particular trend of expression of the individual via selection from the
collective belies a drift in culture in general: the arrogation of the
curator over the artist, the DJ over the musician, the blogger over the
journalist. Kismet, my loveŠ privileges neither voice, but seeks to evaluate
this shift in culture.

Format:
There are no limits to media formats, other than that which can (reasonably)
be placed on the web. There are preferences, however: PDF & Word files will
be converted into HTML and be made available for download in either format.
Papers and artworks are equally encouraged.

Submissions:
Submissions should be sent to Charles Kriel, at journal at kriel.tv

Deadline: 31 August 2003
Abstracts: 31 May 2003
Perforations is an affiliate of Public Domain, Inc, a 501-c-3 organization
unaffiliated with any other organization.




Charles Kriel
Guest editor

Charles has been creating film/video and media works since relocating from
Atlanta ten years ago; first to Prague, then Venice and London. Born a
third-generation circus performer, Charles is a viva away from PhD in media
art from Central Saint Martins, and has received awards/grants/commissions
from Prix Ars Electronica, ICA, MOMA-Oxford, London Institute, Royal
Festival Hall, British Council, Dance on Screen, and London Arts. As a media
artist, he has exhibited in the gallery of Tomato Design, at the 1999 Venice
Biennale, and throughout the Middle East, Europe, Russia, the US and
Australasia. As a composer, he has composed by commission an opera and
several song cycles, and his work is released by ÖRF (Austria) and
Electroshock (Moscow). As a filmmaker, writer and photographer, he is
regularly commissioned by BBC Radio 1 and BBC 1Xtra and has also been
commissioned by MTV, ITV and Channel 4.

Also a media theorist synthesising the works of McLuhan, Lacan and Freud as
they apply to digital media in his recent work Noise and the Uncanny, he has
delivered papers and talks at University of Westminster, Institute of
Education, London Institute, Oxford Brookes, and a slew of conferences.

Charles (VJ Kriel) is also a VJ, and has been called ³the world¹s leading
VJ² by the NME, and is resident VJ for BBC Radio 1, BBC 1Xtra and Pete
Tong¹s Essential Selection. He has been cited by The Times as ³club
culture's first superstar VJ,² and regularly performs in Ibiza, Ayia Napa,
and across Europe and SE Asia. Since Spring 2000, he has performed for
nearly 1.5 million clubbers internationally.




______________________________________________
SPECTRE list for media culture in Deep Europe
Info, archive and help:
http://coredump.buug.de/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/spectre