CFP: HASTAC International Conference

We are now soliciting papers and panel proposals for "Electronic Techtonics: Thinking at the Interface," the first international conference of HASTAC ("haystack": Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory). The interdisciplinary conference will be held April 19-21, 2007, in Durham, North Carolina, co-sponsored by Duke University and RENCI (Renaissance Computing Institute). Details concerning registration fees, hotel accommodations, and the full conference agenda will be posted to www.hastac.org as they become available.

ABOUT THE CONFERENCE
"Electronic Techtonics: Thinking at the Interface" is one of the culminating events for the In|Formation Year that began in June 2006 and extends through May of 2007. (See the HASTAC website for a calendar of In|Formation Year events, plus open source archived materials suitable for downloading for courses or campus events.)

The keynote address will be delivered by visionary information scientist John Seely Brown (The Social Life of Information) at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke. Other events include a talk by legal theorist James Boyle (co-founder of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain, Creative Commons, and Science Commons), a conversation among leaders of innovative digital humanities projects led by John Unsworth (chair of the ACLS "Cyberinfrastructure and the Humanities and Social Sciences" commission), and a presentation by media artist and research pioneer Rebecca Allen. The conference will also include refereed scholarly and scientific papers, multimedia performances, an exhibit hall of innovative software and hardware, plus tours of art and scientific installations in virtual reality, learning-game, and interactive sensor space environments.

CALL FOR PAPERS
Six sessions will be devoted to panels with refereed papers on aspects of "interface" spanning media arts, engineering, and the human, social, natural, and computational sciences. Panels will be topical and cross-disciplinary; they will be comprised of papers that are themselves interdisciplinary as well as specialized disciplinary papers presented in juxtaposition with one another.

We will consider proposals for full panels (three or four papers), for paired cross-disciplinary papers on a shared topic, or for single papers.

Topics: Panels might address interfaces between humans and computers, mind and brain, real and virtual worlds, science and fiction, consumers and producers, text-archives and multi-media, youth and adults, disciplines, institutions, communities, identities, media, cultures, technologies, theories, and practices.

Other possible topics: the body as interface, neuroaesthetics and neurocognition, prosthetics, mind-controlled devices, immersion, emergence, presence, telepresence, sensor spaces, virtual reality, social networking, games, experimental learning environments, human/non-human situations and actors, interactive communication and control, access, borders, intellectual property, porosity, race and ethnicity, difference, Afro-Geeks and Afro-Futurism, identity, gender, sexuality, credibility, mapping and trafficking, civic engagement, social activism, cyberactivism, plus all of the other In|Formation Year topics: in|common, interplay, in|community, interaction, injustice, integration, invitation, innovation.

Proposal Submissions: Please send 500-1000 word paper and/or panel proposals to [log in to unmask].

Deadline for Proposals: December 1, 2006.

Full-length papers or power-point presentations will be posted on the HASTAC website prior to the conference. The sessions themselves will be devoted to synopses of the work, followed by a response designed to elicit audience participation. Attendees whose papers are not accepted will be encouraged to display their work at a digital poster session.