GAZING INTO THE 21st CENTURY: CONFRONTING IMAGE NAIVETÉ - Second international conference on Image Science in Göttweig :: April 24 - 26, 2008 :: Göttweig Monastery near Krems on the Danube, Austria :: CALL FOR PAPERS :: DEADLINE: October 21, 2007 :: Conference Languages: German / English.

Never before has the world of images changed so fast, have we been exposed to so many different image forms and never before has the way images are produced transformed so drastically. Images are advancing into new domains: Television became a global zapping field of thousands of channels; projection screens enter our cities, and cell phones transmit micromovies in real time. We are witnessing the rise of the image into a virtual spatial image. Science, politics and entertainment profit from new dimensions in the creation of images and their emotive effects. Since the 60s, arts and sciences are connected in the fundamental research media art undertakes, whose roots lie in partially unknown traditions.

A multitude of new possibilities in producing, projecting and distributing individual images has led to the formation of new image genres. The spiral movement of image history from innovation, understanding and iconoclasm results in the 21st Century in a global interweaving. These major transformations have hit society to a large extent unprepared and as we gradually start to recognize the demand to address the current knowledge explosion appropriately, we face the challenge to expand our forms of visualization, our “orders and systems of visibility”, and to reflect critically and scientifically on them. While our written culture has produced a differentiated and dedicated pedagogy, our society still lacks a conscious education concerning images - up to a degree that we can speak of visual illiteracy.

A central problem of current cultural policy, aside from poor knowledge on image procedures, stems from serious lack of knowledge about the origins of the audiovisual media. This stands in complete contradistinction to current demands for more media and image competence. The conference therefore explores the thinking space and the utopias, which were initiated by artists again and again - now on the expanded terrain of image science - and searches for the inspirations these new worlds receive from the arts. What influence does the medium have on the iconic character of the image? What chances and challenges do museums and image dealers face with the “liquidity” of the image?

The interdisciplinary conference aims to step up to the challenge of building a “visual inventory”. One goal of the Conference therefore is to build cross disciplinary exchange between the Humanities AND the Natural Sciences.

PROPOSALS are welcome to the following topics and fields:

NEW IMAGE FORMS AND TECHNIQUES (New visualization techniques in Nano-, Bio-, Neurosciences, Architecture, Photography, Digital Collections Management, etc.)

NEW STRATEGIES IN VISUAL ARGUMENTATION (in the Arts, Sciences and Humanities, Politics, Advertising, Comics, Diagrams & Models, Visual Music, etc.)

NEW PRACTICES OF IMAGE TRANSFER (Global economy, Tagging, Micromovies, Flickr, Second Life, You Tube, Google Earth etc.)

PAPERS: One-page abstract or complete paper must be submitted by email. Upon acceptance, complete papers must be submitted by March 21, 2008 as PDF to andrea.kaufmann[at]donau-uni.ac.at. All rights will remain with the author. Papers will be selected for presentations. Proposals for panel discussions are encouraged and individual papers may be grouped by the Department for Image Science in panel discussion format. Panel proposals should include names of prospective panelists and topics, which should address the general themes of the symposium.

The DEPARTMENT FOR IMAGE SCIENCE is situated near Vienna in the UNESCO World Heritage Wachau, in the Goettweig Monastery. The DIS is housed in part of the fourteenth century castle. It is the platform for the international projects: Database of Virtual Art, Goettweig Print Collection Database, MediaArtHistory.org

ADVISORY BOARD MEMBERS OF THE DEPARTMENT FOR IMAGE SCIENCE (DIS) AND ITS PROJECTS

* DIS * VirtualArt.at * MediaArtHistory.org *

Carl, AIGNER (St. Pölten), Roy ASCOTT (Plymouth), Sean CUBITT (Melbourne), Brigitte FELDERER (Wien), Felice FRANKEL (Boston), Beryl GRAHAM (Newcastle), Erkki HUHTAMO (Los Angeles), Douglas KAHN (Davis/California), Martin KEMP (Oxford), Harald KRÄMER (Bern), Machiko KUSAHARA (Tokyo), Jorge LAFERLA (Buenos Aires), Timothy LENIOR (Duke), Gunalan NADARAJAN (Penn State), Christiane PAUL (New York), Götz POCHAT (Graz), Martin ROTH (Dresden), Wolf SINGER (Frankfurt), Christa SOMMERER (Linz), Paul THOMAS (Western Australia), Wolfgang WELSCH (Jena), STEVE WILSON (San Francisco)