Dear list,

This is the final Call for Participation for the symposium that I am organizing
at York University in Toronto on March 26, 2012: "interPLAY."  Please note, the
final deadline for receipt of proposals is *Dec. 5*.  I have received a lot of
very interesting proposals from faculty, librarians and students all across
Canada as well as from the US and France.  I encourage you all to consider
applying... get creative and critical -- turn "information" upside down and
inside out! Creative interventions and demonstrations of
projects/systems/software are also welcome, so long as they meet the basic goal
of symposium, which is in some way other other to challenge or reconsider
conventional understandings of "information" in the broadest sense (e.g., as
neutral, linear, logical, cognitive, disembodied, gender-neutral,
context-independent, etc., etc.).

Do not hesitate to contact me with questions,


Adam


*Call for Participation*
interPLAY between creativity & information
A One-Day Symposium March 26, 2012,
York University Libraries,
Toronto, Canada

Keynote speaker: Professor Richard A. Cavell,
University of British Columbia,
author of McLuhan in Space: A Cultural Geography

Our extended senses, tools, technologies, through the ages, have been closed
systems incapable of interplay or collective awareness. Now, in the electric
age, the very instantaneous nature of co-existence among our technological
instruments has created a crisis quite new in human history. Our extended
faculties now constitute a single field of experience which demands that they
become collectively conscious. Our technologies, like our private senses, now
demand an interplay and ratio that makes rational co-existence possible.
(McLuhan 2002 [1962]: 5)

Inspired by Marshall McLuhan’s transformation of information theory, from a
“matching” model of communication to one of active “making,” in 1966 Canadian
conceptual artist IAIN BAXTER& began to explore the creative possibilities of
“information” as a medium (Cavell 1999: 349).  A 45-year process of exploration
has led BAXTER& (a.k.a. Iain Baxter, a.k.a. N.E. Thing Co.) to engage with, and
creatively reinterpret, shifting definitions of information across a range of
disciplines, including business, computing, linguistics and theoretical
biology.  Like McLuhan, BAXTER& challenges us to re-conceive binary code as the
stuff of dialogue and sensation.  In the most recent work of BAXTER&, the
Boolean operator “&” and DNA code are ciphers for what theoretical biologist
Stuart A. Kauffman (2008: xi) has termed the “ceaseless creativity” of complex
systems.  The ongoing publication of the IB&raisonnE—an experimental online
catalogue raisonné being developed at York University Libraries, that seeks to
expand and transform traditional reference formats through exploratory methods
of social production—provides the ideal occasion for responding to the
visionary information art of IAIN BAXTER& with fresh approaches to information,
information technology, and library and information science.

Notwithstanding the critical and creative models of information proposed by
BAXTER&, McLuhan and others, Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver’s influential
“transmission” model of communication (1962) continues to dominate approaches
to, and uses of, information across the disciplinary spectrum.  A relative
absence of critical and creative approaches to information is particularly
notable in the field of library and information science, even as libraries face
radical transformations in the information behaviours of users and to the
overall information milieu.  Setting out to challenge conceptualizations of
information as linear, quantitative, neutral and context-free, interPLAY will
probe the “resonant interval” between creativity and information as a noisy
space for transdisciplinary and social experimentation, insight and
intervention through a program of participants drawn from the digital
humanities, information and library science, communication and cultural
studies, art history and studio art.

interPLAY invites submissions for short (10-minute) and long (20-minute)
presentations and creative interventions that respond to the themes below.
Student submissions are encouraged.

*Themes*

Noisy Information – Information is as much about noise, entropy and complexity
as it is about pattern and precision: can the “noisy” character of information
be harnessed as a creative and constructive force within the academic
environment? Can information be conceived as non-linear, situated, embodied,
physical or material, etc.?

The “Information Landscape” – How are information technologies transforming how
creators, researchers and students conceive and intervene within the social and
natural environment?  What are the new information ecologies produced by the
social media?

Social Information – How are information behaviours changing in response to
social media?

Interdisciplinary Information – How are information and information technologies
reconfiguring disciplinary boundaries, methodological tools as well as
approaches to teaching and learning, both within the academy and beyond?

*Submission Guidelines*

*All proposals must include the following information*:

• Name, title and affiliation of each author (please indicate student authors)
• An extended abstract (500 words) describing the presentation, including
illustrations or   diagrams for installation as needed
• Requirements for technical support (e.g., AV, space, electrical) required for
presentation or   installation, if needed
• First author’s name and page numbers on all proposal pages   Please send
proposals (as attachments to email) and other inquiries to:  [log in to unmask]

*Deadlines*
• FINAL deadline for receipt of proposals: *December 5, 2011*

References

Cavell, Richard. 1999. McLuhan and Spatial Communication. Western Journal of
Communication 63(3): 348-63.

Kauffman, Stuart A. 2008. Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason,
and Religion. New York: Basic.

McLuhan, Marshall. 2002 [1962]. The Gutenberg Galaxy. Toronto: University of
Toronto.

Shannon, Claude E. and Warren Weaver. 1962 [1948/1949]. The Mathematical Theory
of Communication. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.


-- 
Adam Lauder
W.P. Scott Chair for Research in E-Librarianship
Rm. 105E Scott Library
York University
4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, CANADA, M3J-1P3
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Phone: 416-736-2100 x55974
IAINBAXTER&raisonnE: http://archives.library.yorku.ca/iain_baxterand_raisonne/


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