[spectre] read_me 2004> software art and cultures conference> call for papers

[olga goriunova]

Please, distribute

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                        READ_ME 2004
                   software art festival
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    Software Art and Cultures      Runme-Dorkbot 
           conference               city camp


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The third edition of the Read_Me software art festival will be held at the end of August 2004 in
Aarhus, Denmark. Read_me 2004 will consist of the conference at Aarhus University and the city camp
organized by two friendly entities: Runme.org and Dorkbot. The conference and the city camp will be
held consecutively.

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This is an announcement concerning the Software Art and Cultures conference. The information on the
Runme-Dorkbot city camp will follow later.

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Software Art and Cultures conference aims to provide an opportunity for people researching
software art and culture to share their findings.
The art movement known by the name "software art" has been active for a few years, and similar
phenomena under different names have been developed and researched for a few decades. It is our
belief that there is a sufficient body of thinking in this and related areas taking place that
there should be a platform for aiding further discovery and enrichment. 

Software art is a practice that regards software as a cultural phenomenon that defines one of the
significant aspects of our lives today. Thus, software is not regarded as an invisible layer, but
rather as a significant entity contributing to reproduction or change of certain orders, whether
aesthetic, cultural, social or political.  Software art creatively questions and redefines software
and its ways of functioning.

Software art embraces a wide range of practices: from formalist experiments with code and its
execution to software manipulation that does not require any specific knowledge, from alternative
tools built from scratch to add-ons and deconstructions, from real software to projects not written
in programming languages at all, but which deal with issues relevant to software criticism or
culture. Software art deals with a wide range of topics, including social, political, and aesthetic
issues. In many cases, it addresses and becomes part of software culture itself.

Software cultures - cultures generated by programmers, designers and software users - are generous
sources of thinking on digital culture and society. Software cultures define the way software is
created and functions, thus influencing the composition and function of the basic infrastructures
of digital society. In this way, software cultures become inseparable (though largely
underestimated) from the forms digital work, social institutions and cultural manifestations take
today. Software cultures initiate social change, act in political spheres, create and discover new
artistic realms and methodologies.

The conference encourages participation of specialists in various disciplines: multi-disciplinary
researchers including non-academics, art theorists, and other thinkers and learners interested in
the effects of software and software cultures on art, culture, and society - and in ways to analyze
them and challenge existing patterns. 

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This is a call for submissions of abstracts (up to 2500 characters). Authors of accepted abstracts
will be asked to submit the full paper before 1 of June, 2004 (up to 25000 characters) and present
it during the conference. The papers will be published prior to the conference. We aim to provide
grants for travel and lodging for speakers without institutional backing.

Deadline for abstracts: 1 of March, 2004
Deadline for notification of acceptance: 1 of April, 2004

Abstracts may be submitted to: Olga Goriunova  <og at dxlab.org> and Soeren Pold
<pold at multimedia.au.dk>

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Organized by: Read_Me, Digital Aesthetics Research Centre (www.digital-aestetik.dk) (Aarhus
University), Det Jyske Kunstakademi (The Jutland Academy of Fine Arts), Runme.org, Dorkbot.

Supported by: IT-Vest, Aarhus Kommune