[spectre] Fwd: CfP Conf. “Aesthetics of Machine Vision” (15-16 September 2022, Odense, DK)

[Andreas Broeckmann]

Betreff: 	Conference CfP at SDU
Datum: 	Thu, 10 Mar 2022 10:00:23 +0000
Von: 	Lila Lee-Morrison <lile at sdu.dk>


Call for Papers: “Aesthetics of Machine Vision” Conference

University of Southern Denmark (Odense, Denmark)

September 15-16, 2022

Deadline for Abstracts: April 6, 2022

This conference aims to bring together a wide range of scholars, 
researchers and artists who explore the phenomenon of machine vision and 
the aesthetics of its modes of perception. Machine vision refers to 
advanced technologies which have been developed to carry out operations 
of visual automation in areas of inspection and observation in wider 
society. In referring to “machine” we include not only the software 
which underlies contemporary algorithmic systems but also reference the 
hardware and wider concurrent material relations, which constitute its 
operations. An increasing reliance on these technologies and its modes 
of seeing have far reaching cultural and socio-political repercussions.

In investigating the aesthetics of this phenomenon, we aim to engage 
with these repercussions critically, analytically as well as 
speculatively. Within this context a recurrent question within the
sciences and in visual culture theory thus appears again: Can we see, 
seeing? In examining the aesthetics of machine vision, we aim to reveal 
a machinic seeing, thus allowing us to scrutinize the ways in which it 
intervenes in the world through “more-than-human” perspectives.

We are interested in the “aisthesis” of machine vision, in the broadest 
possible sense of its aesthetic-experiential aspects, its affectivities, 
bodily entanglements, materiality, and the speculative reflections of 
such sensoria. We invite scholars, artists, and practitioners to engage
with how aesthetics/artworks/sensoria as imaginaries can reflect on the 
power of machinic sensing within the wider contemporary arenas of 
cultural, ethical, environmental, and sociopolitical realms.

Exploring the aesthetics of machine vision, we raise the following 
questions: How can machine vision engage new epistemic practices? Does 
the non-human view provide the possibility to overcome ocularcentric 
modes of seeing the world, and what are the social implications? What 
can we learn about “non-human” modes of visual sensing which provide 
perspectives on the human and our environments? In which ways are these 
operative machinic forms of visions embedded in socio-political 
structures which execute, disrupt and/or uphold certain power relations?

This conference is organized in four primary directions:

1. Artistic engagements with machine vision
This direction invites artists and art scholars to discuss artistic 
engagements with technologies of machine vision that foreground the 
speculative. We especially invite machine vision appropriations that 
deal with the cultural and socio-political contexts of its 
implementation including satirical and critical interventions.

2. Sensing and automation
This direction invites analyses on the sensorial aspects of machine 
vision technologies engaging with issues around remote–sensing, data 
sensing, and the architecture of machine vision sensing and its 
underlying logic. This direction invites submissions that investigate
capacities of non-human sensing and machine-human assemblages.

3. Operations and contexts
This direction invites analyses that critically explore the specific 
applications that machine vision systems have been designed to operate 
within. The expansion of its systems and the increasing dependency on 
machine vision systems in various areas of social, economic, and 
political realms lead to further examination of its use in these wider 
contexts. It is important to not only look at the architecture and logic 
behind machine vision processes but also the wider socio-political 
contexts which these systems engage. This includes examining the 
distributed forms of labor behind its design and operation and its 
regional and situated contexts.

4. Histories
Machine vision is not only about computational modes of vision but also 
about the analogue apparatus that capture the world visually. This 
direction invites submission that engage with the historical legacies 
which anticipate machine vision, further examining continuities and 
disruptions of its logic and technology and how they may relate to 
historical discourses within but not limited to photography, film, 
architecture, philosophy, art practices and visual culture.

Venue:
The conference will be held physically at the University of Southern 
Denmark, Odense.

This conference is organized by Lila Lee-Morrison and Dominique Routhier 
and members of the research cluster “Drone Imaginaries and Communities” 
(www.sdu.dk/diac) which is led by Prof. Kathrin Maurer, leader of Center 
for Culture and Technology (www.sdu.dk/en/culttech).

Please send an abstract of up to 300 words, with a short bio and if 
there is a particular direction you would like to be included in, to: 
lile at sdu.dk and dominique at sdu.dk

Deadline for Abstracts: April 6, 2022
Notification and Invitations: April 20, 2022