Category Archives: Dance and Technology

CfP – DRHA Conference 2016 Place, Ecology and the Digital

Call for Submissions for the Forthcoming
Digital Research in the Humanities and Arts
Conference
University of Brighton, September 4th – 7th 2016.

Website: 

DRHA 2016 will take place in Brighton for the 20th anniversary of the network and conference. The annual conference has become one of the foremost in the world in facilitating dialogue between academics and practitioners from:

•       Digital Arts and Humanities,
•       Creative Industries,
•       Digital Libraries and Archives

Submission system opens:  1st April 2016
Deadline for submissions:  15th May 2016. Abstracts should be between 600-1000 words.
Notification of accepted papers:  30th June 2016.
Conference Dates: 4th–7th September 2016

CENTRAL THEME

Place, Ecology and the Digital

The ‘digital’ can imply a sense of everywhere and at the same time nowhere in particular. The combination with place and ecology invites reflection on what it is to be: situated; embedded in complex nested systems; to be in relationship to place and, further, how the digital may challenge or facilitate this. Place could refer to ideas of localism; to community and to geographical base, or equally it may refer to more abstract, distributed or virtual realms or networks.

DRHA 2016 continues where the conference in 2015 (Dublin) left off in asking how we can engage with some of the ‘wicked problems’ and grand challenges of our time. The conference will offer a platform to ‘labs’ that offer insights into approaches and methods for facilitating interdisciplinarity.
Complex contemporary issues resist single-disciplinary enquiry and require hybrid or emergent methods. The conference will also bring together lab curators and facilitators so that the network can collaboratively reflect upon, evaluate and refine methods for resolving grand challenges. You are invited to submit a proposal – as a paper, workshop, roundtable or panel – that showcases work that offers insights into pedagogical and methodological approaches to facilitating interdisciplinary labs, or the resulting research outputs and case studies

The University of Brighton is proud to be hosting the conference and invites new and challenging papers, panels, installations, performances, workshop sessions and other events from the arts and humanities. We are particularly interested in research that crosses, or works between disciplines, and in work that specifically responds to the conference theme.

The conference and wider programme is likely to be of particular interest to those involved with:

•       Big data
•       Interdisciplinary labs
•       The Digital economy
•       Open access and open source
•       Playable cities
•       Climate change mitigation
•       Smart cities
•       Digital museums, archives and engagement programmes
•       Community-led planning processes
•       Social media and active citizenship
•       Sustainable cities, communities and urban agriculture
•       Placemaking
•       Performance and embodied experience of place
•       Rapid urbanisation and mass migration
•       Conflict and climate change
•       Leadership in the arts and cultural sector
•       The intersection between the arts, business and the digital economy

Keynote speakers will include:
– Roger Malina: Physicist, Astronomer, Executive Editor of Leonardo Publications at M.I.T Press and Distinguished Professor of Arts and Technology, and Professor of Physics at the University of Texas at Dallas. He is also a Directeur de Recherche of the C.N.R.S. at the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille. His current work focusses on connections between science and art.
– Gillian Youngs: Professor of Digital Economy at the University of Westminster. She is an applied theorist, actively engaged in knowledge exchange, business and policy-related processes, and adopts an interdisciplinary approach to digital economy.

COMMISSIONS and CURATED PROGRAMME
DRHA comprises an academic conference and a curated programme. Along with the call for papers proposals for creative work that responds to the theme are particularly welcomed and may also be eligible for inclusion in the co-curated Brighton Digital Festival that will take place at the same time as DRHA2016. The curatorial panel will be comprised of representatives of DRHA and cultural partners in the city of Brighton. There will be opportunities to create/install work thought the city in partnership with Brighton Digital Festival, Fabrica Gallery, ONCA Gallery and the University of Brighton Gallery.

CONFERENCE PUBLICATIONS
There will be opportunities to have work published in conference proceedings.

CONTACT
Any queries about the conference should be directed to: 
For regular updates follow us on Twitter: @DRHA2016

CONFERENCE PARTNERS
DRHA2016 has established partnerships with:
•       Brighton Digital Festival (BDF)
•       Fabrica Gallery
•       ONCA Gallery
•       Brighton Photo Biennial
•       Leonardo Education and Art Forum (LEAF)

OPEN CALL InShadow 2016 > submissions until 31st of May

The submissions for the InShadow Festival 2016 are officially open in the areas of Video Dance, Documentary, Animation, Performance, Installation and Exhibition.

InShadow has the label of EFFE – Europe for Festivals, Festivals for Europe, 2015-2016 placing it among the best video dance festivals in the world. Your application counts to this position! Apply and seize the opportunity to win one of InShadow’s awards and have your work recognized internationally.

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MORE INFO — 

Perth Screendance Festival

A new programme of events and competition in Scotland UK, dedicated to celebrating the art and creativity of imaginative dance on screen.
Screendance is an expanding genre of artist moving image created by combining choreographic intention and compositional form, with the language of cinema.

We are looking for short works that fit this description for screening in two categories – UK work and International work – that will go forward to be judged in competition. There is a cash prize and the opportunity to be part of the moving image collection of Threshold Artspace, Horsecross, Perth.

This event sits within the Perth Dance Festival with 2 screenings and includes a workshop and facilitated discussion sessions with internationally recognised artists and curators.

Go to the Horsecross website for further information on all events.

Awards & Prizes

Best UK work
Best International work

Rules & Terms

The festival accepts short film submissions of no longer than 15 minutes made in the last 5 years. The works should conform to the genre of screendance also known as videodance or dance film. The festival does not accept documentation of live performance or dance documentary. Music videos maybe considered if the balance between dance and music is even. By submitting your work you acknowledge you own all intellectual property rights and permissions for the work.

All works should be submitted through Film Freeway  .
Incomplete applications may invalidate submissions.

There is a standard submission/ administration fee of $15 (US Dollars) with discounts for students with valid ID proof. Late submissions will be accepted at extra cost.

All films accepted for screening will be put forward to competition and presented to an independent jury panel. The award-winning works will be offered the option to be acquired for the Threshold Arts moving image collection at Horsecross Perth Concert Hall, in a non-exclusive arrangement. A fee will be paid to the artist for this acquisition. Detailed terms and conditions to follow. The judges decision is final.

Who will be the winners of 60secondsdance 2016?

Who will be the winners of 60secondsdance 2016?

the_knowledge_between_us.jpg

Still from The Knowledge between us – finalist in all four Top 10’s

 

Two men fighting over books in a dessert, a young couple kissing in a hallway and a choreographed spaghetti supper…
This year’s edition of 60secondsdance is diverse in expression as well as the films’ origin!

The finalists of the international online competition 60secondsdance 2016 have now been selected.
In April each of the Nordic countries will reveal who will win the competition in Finland, Norway, Denmark and Sweden.
Four main prizes of €1500 are at stake, as well as four prizes of €500 for the runner-ups.

264 films from 39 countries were submitted to the second Nordic edition of 60secondsdance. Once again we have experienced a great variety in dance styles and film genres, as well as a high artistic level. The short 60 seconds format gives the artists an opportunity to experiment and express themselves freely without a heavy production plan or budget. The result this year has been many topical and original works that pushes the boundaries of an ever changing, vibrant art form.

 

Still tendencies could be spotted this year. Many films had:

– Close ups of hands movement and gestures

– Playful use of time, speed and slow motion

– Choreography around, on or at tables

– Nudity

– Social and political commentaries

…AND WHO IS YOUR WINNER?

The national juries have placed their votes, and found the four national Top 10’s. Now it’s your turn! Watch the four Top 10’s on our website and place your vote for the Audience Award of 2016 BEFORE APRIL 9th, 2016.
The Audience Award Winners will receive 2 festival passes for Loikka Dance Film Festival 2017 and be part of the touring Nordic Curated Compilation with all of the winners.

 

Winner announcements:

The Finnish winners: Loikka Dance Film Festival, Helsinki, April 10th 2016

The Norwegian winners: Multiplié Dance Festival, Trondheim, April 15th, 2016

The Danish winners: Cinemateket, Copenhagen, April 21st, 2016

The Swedish winners: ScreenDance Festival, Dansmuseet, Stockholm, April 28th, 2016

BACKGROUND

60secondsdance started out as a Danish competition in 2011 in relation to the international dance day, co-produced by Dansens Dag and ScreenMoves in Dansehallerne. It quickly became known in the international dance film sphere, and slowly spread to the public as well.
The public interest and the continuous artistic growth inspired the organizers to expand the competition across the Nordic region in the fall of 2014.

Since the expansion we have received more than 550 films, 50 international screenings of the Top films and more than 50.000 views online.

60secondsdance is supported by Nordic Culture Fund through 2016.

Facts

-The finalists of the 4 top 10’s are from Denmark, Sweden, Australia, Italy, UK,  India, Israel, Greece, Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, Norway and China.

 

-Some of the competing films have made it to all four Top 10’s.

 

– 60secondsdance is co-organized by Loikka Dance Film Festival (FI), ScreenMoves/Dansehallerne (DK), ScreenDance Festival (SE) and DansiT/Multiplié Dance Festival (NO).

 

Please visit:

twitter: 60secondsdance

 

For more information please contact Maia Sorensen: / ScreenMoves/Dansehallerne

Deadline reminder – ESpace Digital Dance Day

Registration closing on Friday!​

 
Europeana Space Digital Dance Day
 
Wednesday 16th March 2016

10am – 4pm

Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE), ​Coventry University

As part of the EU funded Europeana Space (ESpace) project, C-DaRE will be holding a Digital Dance Day, to showcase two recently developed digital tools for dance practice and scholarship.

ESpace is a three-year project, now in its second year, which examines the creative reuse of cultural heritage across a range of art and media forms. As part of the project researchers at C-DaRE have teamed up with partners from New University Lisbon and IN2 to develop two digital tools to facilitate and encourage creative engagement with digital dance content.

Dance Pro is a digital annotation tool, which allows users to inscribe on top of live streamed and recorded footage. It is designed for use during and after the creative process, allowing artists to notate their work and draw attention to key features. The tool allows for aspects of choreographic thinking to be communicated across disciplines and has great potential for use in educational contexts.

Dance Spaces is an online portal that allows users to search, collate and organise dance content. It facilitates the development of virtual exhibitions, specialist educational resources, and expansive collections of online and personal content.

The ESpace Digital Dance Day will introduce the tools through a series of practical workshops led by Sarah Whatley, Rosa Cisneros and Hetty Blades. The morning session (10am – 12.30pm) will explore the potentials of annotation in studio contexts. Participants will have the opportunity to experiment with using Dance Pro in their own practice, and explore the multiple ways in can be used for research and education.

The afternoon session (1.30pm – 4pm) will look at ‘remixing’ dance, using Dance Spaces to source, learn, re-make, and share online content. We will explore embodied interaction with digital dance, developing new works and collections for submission to an online dance exhibition.

Participants are welcome to join us for one or both sessions. The day is suited to dance practitioners, educators, students and researchers, as well as those with an interest in dance working in neighbouring fields.

The event is free, but places are limited and participants must register before 11th March via the following link: 

If you have any questions please email Hetty Blades 

DRHA Conference 2016 Place, Ecology and the Digital – 4th-7th September at the University of Brighton

DRHA 2016

Digital Research in the Humanities and Arts
University of Brighton, September 4th – 7th 2016.

Place, Ecology and the Digital

DRHA will gather in Brighton for the 20th anniversary of the network and conference. DRHA has become one of the foremost conferences in the world in facilitating dialogue between academics and practitioners from:
•       Digital Arts and Humanities,
•       Creative Industries,
•       Digital Libraries and Archives

The University of Brighton is proud to be hosting DRHA2016 and invites you to contribute.

DRHA2016 Theme: Place, Ecology and the Digital
The ‘digital’ can imply a sense of everywhere and at the same time nowhere in particular. The combination with place and ecology invites reflection on what it is to be: situated; embedded in complex nested systems; to be in relationship to place and, further, how the digital may challenge or facilitate this. Place could refer to ideas of localism; to community and to geographical base, or equally it may refer to more abstract, distributed or virtual realms or networks.

DRHA 2016 continues where the conference in 2015 left off in asking how we can engage with some of the ‘wicked problems’ and grand challenges of our time. There will be a number of high profile keynotes as well as a focus on interdisciplinary and intercultural ‘labs’. The conference will offer a platform to ‘labs’ that offer insights into approaches and methods for facilitating interdisciplinarity. Complex contemporary issues resist single-disciplinary enquiry and require hybrid or emergent methods. The conference will bring together lab curators and facilitators so that the network can collaboratively reflect upon, evaluate and refine methods for resolving grand challenges.

CALL FOR PAPERS
DRHA2016: Place, Ecology and the Digital. This announcement is to alert you to the forthcoming event and to invite you to consider developing a proposal. DRHA is a peer-reviewed conference. The call for papers will be released later this month.

COMMISSIONS
DRHA comprises and academic conference and a curated programme. Along with the call for papers we will also be issuing a call for proposals for creative responses to the theme. The curatorial panel will be comprised of representatives of DRHA and cultural partners in the city of Brighton. There will be opportunities to create/install work thought the city in partnership with Brighton Digital Festival, Fabrica Gallery, ONCA Gallery and the University of Brighton Gallery.

PARTNERS
DRHA2016 has established partnerships with:
Brighton Digital Festival (BDF)
Fabrica Gallery
ONCA Gallery
Brighton Photo Biennial
(Leonardo Education and Art Forum tbc.)

THE CITY
Brighton is one of the UK’s most exciting cities with a remarkable number of creative individuals and enterprises. The city was selected to be the focus of internationally significant research looking at creative clusters because of the concentration of creatives engaged with the digital economy: a growing and important part of the local economy comprising more than 15% of employment. College of Arts and Humanities is highly ranked for its world-leading research and impact. The city boasts a great social scene, a historic palace, the North Laine and the Lanes  for great independent stores, cafes, bars and restaurants.  It is a dynamic and creative city which hosts the largest arts festival in England each May with the Brighton Festival, its Fringe and associated festivals such as House/ Artist Open Houses (visual arts), The Great Escape (music) and B:Fest (young people) .  Each autumn the city holds an internationally renowned film festival, Cine City and every two years, the Brighton Photo Biennial; all hosted by the College of Arts.
It is also a place of beautiful natural landscapes, with a vibrant seafront along one edge and surrounded on the others by the South Downs National Park. This unique mix of coastal, downs and urban areas has been designated a UNESCO Biosphere. Brighton is 45 minutes by train from London and 20 minutes from Gatwick airport.

You are invited to consider submitting a paper, lab or to propose a contribution to the co-curated digital festival. Please check the website: 
for forthcoming deadlines and do get in touch for further information at: 

The conference and wider programme is likely to be of particular interest to those involved with:
•       Big data
•       Interdisciplinary labs
•       Digital economy
•       Open access and open source
•       Playable cities
•       Climate change mitigation
•       Smart cities
•       Digital museums, archives and engagement programmes
•       Community led planning
•       Social media and active citizenship
•       Urban agriculture
•       Placemaking
•       Performance and embodied experience of place
•       Rapid urbanisation and mass migration
•       Conflict and climate change

Movers and Makers – Edinburgh and Glasgow

6 April | 
7 April | 
http://www.bodysurfscotland.co.uk/event/movers-makers-screendance-salon-cinema/
Screendance Salon (6-7.30pm) £5.00
A workshop for professionals interested in creating dance works for screen. Join artists and filmmakers involved in Scotland’s growing screendance community. Share your ideas, work-in-progress or completed films and take part in peer-to-peer discussions led by  Co-Director, and renowned curator and programmer, Gitta Wigro. To submit a work, please email .
Screendance Cinema (8-9.30pm) £5.00 – free for Salon attendees
A screendance cinema curated by Gitta Wigro featuring internationally significant and single screen works. Currently Co-Director of , London, Gitta has curated many international film festivals, including Video Dance Italy, Movement on Screen and VideoDanza,  as well as working in artist development for over 15 years. The evening will finish with a post event discussion and a chance to meet the curator.
For more info, please tel  or email .

Call for Abstracts – Computing the Corporeal

Special issue of Computational Culture, a Journal of Software Studies

Edited by Nicolas Salazar Sutil, Sita Popat and Scott deLahunta

 

Outline

Intersections between human movement, computer science and motion-tracking/sensing technologies have led to novel ways of transferring body data from physical to digital contexts. From a practical perspective, this integration requires engagement across key disciplines, including movement studies, kinesiology, kinematics, biomechanics, biomedical science and health studies, dance science, sports science, and computer science. This development has also provoked theoretical and critical discourse that has tried to preserve, based on its grounding on bodily and kinetic practice, the differentiation of lived-in and body-specific knowledge. Here is a mode of datarization perhaps closer to what Deleuze (1988) called “immediate datum”: i.e. information stemming not from an abstract and re-moved conceptualization, but from real-world experience of movement, and the immediate perception or capture of kinetic information through physical or sensorial means. Within the field of software studies, advancing a sense of digital materialism has raised concerns for the materiality of technological media, for instance by focusing on the physical constraints of data storage, or the material dimension of computing. But what about “immediation”, i.e. immediate computation of bodily movement by machines for immediate expression, representation or enactment in digital contexts? And what of the representability of such immediation? How can we describe movement and preserve its datum of difference within a scriptable or graphicable computer language without falling into a universal sameness, a movement without bodies?

Whilst the idea that immediate data may demand a “bodying forth” (Thrift 2008), a traffic of bodiliness from biological to technological contexts, it is necessary to de-homogenise the ‘body’ category. Perhaps what is needed is an understanding of “corporeality” that assume multidimensional and relativistic realities of bodies instead, opening up nuanced discourses based on specific body-related ontologies (corpuscles, builds, anatomies, skeletons, muscle systems) all making up a non-singular sense of the bodily real. As such, this collection poses the problem of criteria. Our question is this: how and to what effect does the research community adopt arbitrary criteria in order to compute the body and bodily movement? Can we define narratives emerging from this body-computing arbitration to provoke a critique?

There is a possible tension between “bodying forth”— the idea of a single body operative across both biological and computational contexts—and corporeal relations. We would like to focus this critical edition on the relations between differentiated anatomical or bodily systems (skeletal, muscular, nerve, etc.), and different modes of computation, as well as different theoretical discourses stemming from this experiential basis. If we recognize the problem of relationality we must assume that more than one complex set of co-relations meet when the machine computes the moving human body. How do we start the process of computer-generated learning in terms of selecting body parts, functions, organs, processes, on the one hand, and key languages, code, or indeed technological tools for capture on the other? To what extent does corporeal computing contribute to certain bodily systems (or perhaps even body types) becoming the key agents of action, and indeed learning, in such contexts? How do we respond critically to privileged systems (the skeletal, the muscular), and body types (so called ‘normal bodies’)? To what extent are computational paradigms still dominated by spatial, extensive and quantitative determinations (i.e. the tracking of skeleton, body geometry, kinematic shapes, etc.) that hide other, more intensive, modes of corporeality? And finally, how do we reintegrate the multiplicity of the corporeal in a computational synthesis? For instance, how can we understand the quantitative and qualitative (dynamics, effort, tone, intensity, etc.) as overlapping data priorities?

 

Topics or projects might include:

  • Computable relations between bodies and digital avatars, digital dance representations, digital sports representations, digital health representations, digital animation— digital bodies in general.
  • Computable relations between biological bodies and robotic systems.
  • Computing relations between physical movement and abstract thought, automated thought (AI) or machine learning.
  • Computing mobility studies (i.e. relations between body and automobile, body and assisted mobility machines, body and prosthetics).
  • Computing sociokinetic material (i.e. computing the movement of groups of bodies).
  • Affective corporeal computing— the capacity to process psychophysical and cognitive processes within corporeal movement (e.g. computing effort, dynamics, tonicity, emotion).
  • Integration of quantitative and qualitative body datasets.
  • Metabody theory and notions of meta-anatomy, meta-strata in the ontological literature (i.e. movement of digital ghosts, sprites, techno-animism, etc.)

750 word abstracts should be emailed to n.salazar(at) April 17th.  

Any queries can be addressed to Nicolas Salazar Sutil at n.salazar(at), or Sita Popat at s.popat(at), or Scott deLahunta at scott(at).

Abstracts will be reviewed by the Computational Culture Editorial Board and the special issue editors. Authors of selected abstracts will be notified by April 24th and invited to submit full manuscripts by September 26th. These manuscripts are subject to full blind peer review according to Computational Culture’s policies. The issue will be published in January 2017.

Computational Culture is an online open-access peer-reviewed journal of inter-disciplinary enquiry into the nature of cultural computational objects, practices, processes and structures.

​Europeana Space Digital Dance Day

16th March 2016 

10am – 4pm

Coventry University

As part of the EU funded Europeana Space (ESpace) project, C-DaRE will be holding a Digital Dance Day, to showcase two recently developed digital tools for dance practice and scholarship.

ESpace is a three-year project, now in its second year, which examines the creative reuse of cultural heritage across a range of art and media forms. As part of the project researchers at C-DaRE have teamed up with partners from New University Lisbon and IN2 to develop two digital tools to facilitate and encourage creative engagement with digital dance content.

Dance Pro is a digital annotation tool, which allows users to inscribe on top of live streamed and recorded footage. It is designed for use during and after the creative process, allowing artists to notate their work and draw attention to key features. The tool allows for aspects of choreographic thinking to be communicated across disciplines and has great potential for use in educational contexts.

Dance Spaces is an online portal that allows users to search, collate and organise dance content. It facilitates the development of virtual exhibitions, specialist educational resources, and expansive collections of online and personal content.

The ESpace Digital Dance Day will introduce the tools through a series of practical workshops led by Sarah Whatley, Rosa Cisneros and Hetty Blades. The morning session (10am – 12.30pm) will explore the potentials of annotation in studio contexts. Participants will have the opportunity to experiment with using Dance Pro in their own practice, and explore the multiple ways in can be used for research and education.

The afternoon session (1.30pm – 4pm) will look at ‘remixing’ dance, using Dance Spaces to source, learn, re-make, and share online content. We will explore embodied interaction with digital dance, developing new works and collections for submission to an online dance exhibition.

Participants are welcome to join us for one or both sessions. The day is suited to dance practitioners, educators, students and researchers, as well as those with an interest in dance working in neighbouring fields.

The event is free, but places are limited and participants must register before 11th March via the following link: 

If you have any questions please email Hetty Blades 

CfP: Third International Conference on Media and Popular Culture, Vienna, Austria (8-9 September 2016)

Conference venue: ***** Hotel Le Meridien, 13-15 Opernring, Vienna, Austria

RATIONALE

It is an unobjectionable fact that media participate in formation of our daily lives by creating identities, images, and by generally influencing our views. This applies not only to politics (i.e. political campaigns), but also to the formation on how we see ourselves and others. Popular culture, on the other hand, also affects our daily lives by fostering images and ideologies, and by selling a way of life that is presented as acceptable or non-acceptable.Sociological theories presented five models of audiences (hypodermic needle model, normative model, model of satisfying needs, interpretative model, structural interpretative model), and scholars still debate usability of each model due to the influence of media and popular culture over current issues. In addition, the agenda setting theory of mass media influence postulates that media affect our views and influence what we think about even if media cannot influence how we think about issues. These and other issues will be discussed at our conference.

 

Papers are invited (but not limited to) for the following panels:

 

Media and identity

Media and political campaigns

Media and discrimination

Women in the media

Media Bias

Media and democracy

Media and human rights

Popular culture

TV shows and identity

Film and identity

TV shows and everyday lives

Film and everyday lives

Media and memory

Media and history

History of media and popular culture

Media and diplomacy

Media and the Collapse of Eastern Europe

Audience studies

Media and the war in Yugoslavia

Media and religion

Media audience models

Media and Business

 

Prospective participants are also welcome to submit proposals for their own panels. Both researchers and practitioners are welcome to submit paper proposals.

 

Submissions of abstracts (up to 500 words) with an email contact should be sent to Dr Martina Topić () by 15 August 2016.

 

Conference fee is EUR 290, and it includes

 

The registration fee

Conference bag and folder with materials

Access to the newsletter, and electronic editions of the Centre

Opportunity for participating in future activities of the Centre (research & co-editing volumes)

Discount towards participation fee for future conferences

Meals and drinks

Sightseeing for second day of the conference

WLAN during the conference

Certificate of attendance

 

Centre for Research in Humanities and Social Sciences is a private institution founded in December 2013 in Croatia (EU).

 

Participants are responsible for finding funding to cover transportation and accommodation costs during the whole period of the conference. This applies to both presenting and non-presenting participants. The Centre will not discriminate based on the origin and/or methodological/paradigmatic approach of prospective conference participants.