TRANSFORMING CULTURE IN DIGITAL AGE: Call for papers

September 8, 2009

Tartu, Estonia, 14-16 April, 2010, transformingculture.eu

Increasingly, we see new forms of culture being born in the variety of online environments. Users have become producers taking over production of online content and traditional hierarchies of users and producers are collapsing. At the same time, traditional memory institutions like museums, archives, libraries and acknowledged artists struggle to make sense of the transformations that are coming together with new technologies. In this interdisciplinary conference we aim to look at the questions as how such developments influence culture – how is culture transformed in the digital age with a specific focus on the intersection of individuals and institutions. We hope to look at the notion of culture and transformations of the cultural heritage through a variety of disciplines ranging from arts and history to heritage studies and from museum studies to sociology and from media and literature studies to archival studies. The conference calls for variety of people both researchers and practitioners to discuss and analyze how digital culture is produced and consumed both in traditional and new forms.

This conference aims to explore the questions above through wide variety of themes. Possible paper topics are (but not limited to):

CONFERENCE THEMES

I ROLE OF INDIVIDUAL IN THE CULTURAL TRANSFORMATION
1. Changing User
• User, consumer, creator, producer?
• User as a creator of the content
• Role of the user in the heritage world
• Cultural participation
• Using globalised content
• Global or local user practices?
• Digital libraries and user preferences
• User in the archives: practices and expectations
• Museum collections in the hand of the visitor
2. Re-Mediating Personal Memory
• New forms of storytelling and expression
• Blogging your own history
• Digital photos and videos as part of self
• Re-imaging self in the digital age

II CULTURAL MEMORY AND MEMORY INSTITUTIONS
3. Rewriting Cultural Memory
• Rewriting the histories of arts
• Changing hierarchies: canon, centre and periphery
• New cultural history and the reception strategies
• Role of the audiovisual archives
• Archive as a creator of the content of memory
• Digital resources of the cultural memory
4. Cultural Heritage
• Questioning and interpreting the concept of heritage
• From national to global: collections as a determining power
• Collecting heritage today
• The role and the future of the original
• Future perspectives on different memory institutions
• Making digital content available
• Cultural heritage and Web 2.0 strategy

III LANGUAGE OF ART
5. Digital Literature
• The perspectives of digital literature
• Hypertext and cybertext theory
• Author and the cyberspace
• Reader and the cyberspace
• Electronic poetry and electronic narratives
• Blogging and literature
• Fan culture in Internet
• Creating new canons: questioning the borders of literature
6. Digital Art
• Digital creativity
• Immaterial art and real artists
• Creativity in surveillance environment
• Artworks between locations
• New media art and problems of reception
• Digital art and authorship
• New media art education

Confirmed Keynote Speakers (alphabetically listed):
Marju Lauristin – Marju Lauristin is a professor of social communication at University of Tartu, she has studied cultural changes from the user’s perspective since 1960s and has closely observed the changes related to new media.
Edward Shanken – Edward A. Shanken writes and teaches about the entwinement of art, science, and technology with a focus on interdisciplinary practices involving new media. He is Universitair Docent in New Media, University of Amsterdam, and a member of the Media Art History faculty at the Donau University in Krems, Austria.
Additional keynotes will be announced on the conference website.

Please submit a 500-word abstract with the name and institutional affiliation of the speaker (mailing address & email address) through our conference website: www.transformingculture.eu

Schedule:
Deadline for abstracts: November 23, 2009.
Deadline for acceptance information: December 14, 2009.
Deadline for submitting the completed full-papers (approx 4000 words): March 1, 2010.

Deadline for Early Bird registration: March 1, 2010
Deadline for late registration: April 1, 2010

Conference takes place April 14-16, 2010.

Based on completed papers ISBN-numbered and edited e-book will be published by the time of the conference. Negotiations for publishing the proceedings or selection of extended papers in a paper version of a book or special issue of a journal are under way.

For further details about the conference please visit: transformingculture.eu

If you have further questions about the conference, please do not hesitate to contact our conference staff: Agnes Aljas and Maarja Savan.
E-Mail: transformingculture.conference@gmail.com
Conference organizing committee:

M.A. Agnes Aljas, Estonian National Museum and University of Tartu
Prof. Raivo Kelomees, Estonian Academy of Arts, Tartu Art College
Dr. Marin Laak, Estonian Literary Museum
M.A. Piret Noorhani, Estonian Literary Museum and Baltic Audiovisual Archival Council
Dr. Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt, University of Tartu and Estonian National Museum
M.A. Pille Runnel, Estonian National Museum
Dr. Jaak Tomberg, Estonian Literary Museum
Prof. Piret Viires, Tallinn University and Estonian Literary Museum

Conference secretary: Maarja Savan, Estonian Literary Museum; e-mail: transformingculture.conference@gmail.com

Conference is jointly organized by Estonian Literary Museum, Estonian National Museum, University of Tartu Institute of Journalism and communication, Baltic Audiovisual Archival Council, and supported by Estonian Science Fund Grants no: 7162, 7679, 8006.

Associated organizations: Tallinn University and Estonian Academy of Arts