Conference on Paying Attention: Digital Media Cultures and Generational Responsibility

[Michel Bauwens]

06 September 2010 — 10 September 2010 European Science Foundation

Conference on Paying Attention: Digital Media Cultures and Generational Responsibility

• Location: Linköping
• Venue: Scandic Hotel Linköping Väst
• Call for submissions: http://www2.esf.org/asp/esfrcaf.asp?confcode=316&meetno=1

More info via http://www.esf.org/conferences/10316

"Paying Attention" concerns the politics, ethics and aesthetics of the attention economy. This is the social and technical milieu in which web
native generations live much of their lives. It will address key
questions like: What architectures of power are at work in the
attention economy ? How is it building new structures of experience?
What kinds of value does this architecture produce? "Paying Attention"
encourages dialogue between researchers from the fields of Cultural and
New Media Studies, Education, Communications, Economics, Internet
studies, Human Computer Interface Studies, Art and Design. It also
seeks the input and insights of creative practitioners exploring
critical and alternative uses of new media forms and technologies.

Through an ever-burgeoning technical apparatus of surveying, data mining and internet search-tailoring the attention of individual minds is estimated, costed, marketed, bought and sold. The "attention
economy" is enabled by technologies like Google’s web-crawler and
search algorithms and agents and all kinds of metadata production. The
dominance of this mode of conceiving and calculating attention, above
all that of the young, can be seen to be bearing fruit in many
national, regional and global phenomena. The traditional values of the
public sphere are unmistakably reshaped though these processes.

"Paying Attention" is also interested in how practices such as videogaming, P2P
Filesharing, pervasive media experimentation, and mobile phone activism
create detours, reinventions and reimaginings of the cultural program
to which younger generations are recruited. While there is a concerted
effort to commercialise and exploit these spaces according to the
demands of the global media industries, web 2.0’s reorientation of
social communication practices remains charged with an indeterminate
techno-cultural potential which the conference seeks to explore.

Applications are invited for research paper contributions on any subject relevant to
the conference’s aims. These may include the areas listed below to
indicate the broad scope of relevant topics or subjects. The conference
also seeks through its poster section contributions of an experimental
kind from digital media artists and developers that engage with the
conference theme of attention and experiential design in critical
and/or creative ways. These may take the form of demos, animatics,
ethical or critical design projects, installation treatments or
concepts in progress. These will form a major part of the program as
key elements in the articulation of viable technocultural futures. We
will be seeking submissions that can engage and develop the themes of
the event through the summer of 2010 through the online community of
conference delegates. Practice based researchers should apply under the
poster programme using the 400 word abstract to describe their plans
for the event.

Key themes will include:

• Education, Technique & Responsibility
• The Political Economy of Digital Experience
• Emerging forms of knowledge and value transmission
• Ethical design, trust and security
• Experiments with mediated attention and experience
• Value in the new social spaces of digital culture
• Records, archives and digital memories
• Metadata, search algorithms and politics
• Entertainment, marketing and attention technologies
• Web 2.0 : Playbour and Grammatisation
• Profiling Data Mining and Control
• Pervasive media and remediated living spaces

Conference format:

• lectures by invited high level speakers
• short talks by young & early stage researchers
• poster sessions, round table and open discussion periods
• forward look panel discussion about future developments

Invited speakers will include:

• Michel Bauwens, Foundation for Peer-to-Peer Alternatives
• Ruth Catlow, Furtherfield .org Independent Net Art collective, UK
• Jonathan Dovey, University of the West of England, UK
• Aphra Kerr, National University of Ireland Maynooth, IE
• Simon Poulter, Independent Digital Artist and Curator, UK
• Stanza, Independent Digital Artist, UK
• Bernard Stiegler, Institut de recherche et d’innovation, Centre Georges Pompidou, FR
• Tiziana Terranova, University of Naples, IT

Chair: Jonathan Dovey, Digital Cultures Research Centre, University of the West of England, UK

& Patrick Crogan, Department of Culture, Media and Drama, University of the West of England, UK

http://www.esf.org/conferences/10316