Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia, USA
18-19 September 2015.
The 2015 meeting will focus on the cross roads between alternative food systems and traditional systems of agricultural production.
Proposals for paper presentations, workshops, focused discussions, or colloquia are invited that address the broader themes listed below
Theme 1: Food Production and Sustainability
Theme 2: Food, Nutrition, and Health
Theme 3: Food Politics, Policies, and Cultures
More information here.
Submission deadline (a title and short abstract): 7 October 2014

Technarte launches the Call for Papers for the new edition of 2015, being at the same time of the 10th Annniversary of the Conference. If you work in one of the most breaking technologies right now, don’t miss the opportunity of being part of Technarte, the most important event on Art & Technology in Europe. We are looking for artists and technologies that use the technological innovation as a way for their artistic creations. Nanoart, Bioart, Digitizing and 3D Printing, and many other disciplines fit in Technarte.

More information and application form here.

Deadline submission 15th Oct

The Inaugural (Rest of the World) SLSA Conference

Perth Western Australia

1-3 October 2015

CALL FOR PAPERS, PANELS AND WORKSHOPS

Neolife; full of surprises.
From the odd to the mundane, new forms of life are emerging in labs, workshops and studios. With the promise of exploitation for health and wealth we are seeing life as it previously never existed, albeit smothered in hyperbole, rhetoric and speculation. How do cultures such as Indigenous Australia respond to Neolife? On what terms are countries like China, India, Singapore and Japan, who have a rapidly growing biotech industry embracing or rejecting Neolife? How different it is to the west? Neolife: The Rest of the World SLSA 2015 meeting in Perth, Western Australia will attempt to address these questions from a wide range of approaches.

Abstracts (max 300 words) accepted from November 1 2014 due 21 March 2015. Topics include:

• RotW (Rest of the World) Biotech and life science
• Cultural and literary studies of new life
• Representations of new life
• Non-Human biopolitics
• Non-Human bioethics
• Animal studies
• Cultural teratology
• Biotech consumer products
• Speculative biology in Design/Art/Film/Literature
• History of (life) science
• Regenerative biology /Stem Cells (STAP, iPS)
• Synthetic biology
• Biological/biomedical Law
• Anthropocene

SymbioticA presents the inaugural Rest of the World (RotW) SLSA conference in Perth, Western Australia from 2-5 October 2015. This will be the first time the conference, will be staged outside of Europe or the United States, presenting an excellent opportunity for SLSA members in Australia, Asia and New Zealand to take part in the conference.

2015 represents the 20th anniversary of the public outing of regenerative biology which ushered an ontological crisis and new perspectives into the ways living bodies have been related to. The last twenty years also seen a shift in (or maybe a return of) the approach of scientists’ attempt to capture the public imagination; public engagement in forms of science on the display and as a spectacle. This meeting will try to get western and non-western perspectives in relation to life on display as well as life transformed into a raw material to be engineered.

The meeting is planned to take place at the beautiful Crawley campus of The University of Western Australia in Perth. SymbioticA will arrange a series of workshops and pre-meeting events, as practical and conceptual build up to the main event via the SymbioticA Lab which was established at UWA in 2000.

New Zealand’s Kinetika Awards (up to $5,000) for kinetic art works are

open to national and international submissions. The due date for
proposals is June 27th. Categories include you design and ITL
Engineering builds, there is even a Supreme Concept Award see
http://www.kinetika.co.nz/about/prizes-for-kinetika-2014.html for details.

CALL FOR PAPERS

New Immaterialities
Transformations is calling for submissions for Issue 25: New Immaterialities This special issue of Transformations will examine the various ways in which immateriality is encountered, invoked, conceptualised and investigated in cultural theory and research. It explores how the immaterial is reconfigured within changing materialisms. Amidst well-entrenched materialism, the concept and term ‘immateriality’ regularly features in cultural research and theory. New media arts and the virtual have all been understood, without irony, to be involved in the ephemeral and the immaterial. Forms and forces often imagined as incorporeal, such as spectres and hauntings, provide metaphors for historical and cultural processes. The immaterial may be theorised as the absence of material or that which material holds forth as possibility. It may be described as a changed approach or re-imagining of matter. In this context the bodied and disembodied are not opposed but reciprocally permeable, posing questions as to the new places and practices by which immateriality emerges and the new explanatory purposes it serves.
http://www.transformationsjournal.org/journal/calls_for_papers.shtml
Abstracts (500 words) due: 15 November 2013

17 Japan Media Arts Festival :: February 2014

Call for works :: Deadline 12 September 2013
The Japan Media Arts Festival honours outstanding Media Arts work including interactive art, video, websites, games, animation and comics. The Festival is open to international artists, with a Grand Prize of 600,000 Yen in each of four categories – Art, Entertainment, Animation and Manga and a touring exhibition of winning works.
http://j-mediaarts.jp/?locale=en

Toward a Science of Consciousness 2014

April 21-26, 2014, Tucson, Arizona
Speakers will include: Ned Block, David Chalmers, Karl Deisseroth, Daniel Dennett, David
Eagleman, Rebecca Goldstein, Stuart Hameroff, Christof Koch, Henry Markram, John Searle, Petra Stoerig, Giulio Tononi and many more.
Toward a Science of Consciousness is an interdisciplinary conference known for rigorous and leading edge approaches to all aspects of the study of conscious experience. These aspects include neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, molecular biology, medicine, quantum physics, and cosmology as well as art, technology, and experiential and contemplative approaches. The conference is the largest and longest-running interdisciplinary gathering probing fundamental questions related to conscious experience. An estimated 700 participants from over 60 countries are due to take part. As in previous conferences, program sessions will include plenary and keynote talks, concurrent talks, posters, art/science demos and exhibits, pre-conference workshops, side trips, and social events in the Tucson tradition.
http://www.consciousness.arizona.edu/
Due: Dec 10 2013

The Science Fiction Research Group @ Deakin University Presents:

he Inauguration of the SF Seminar series

Thursday 22nd of August, 4—6pm

Phoenix Gallery, Deakin University Burwood

Dr. Paul Thomas (Associate Professor at COFA) will be presenting his research into nanotechnology through his artworks Midas and Nanoessence. The focus will be on nanotechnology and the exploration of materiality and immateriality in the expanding area of art and science practice. Nanotechnologies have created new ways of thinking about materials and processes that construct different social realities. The presentation draws on contemporary science and art practice to confront traditional understandings of materiality, exploring key issues that define possible shifts in our conscious understanding of matter. The talk will explore his current research into Richard Feynman’s famous diagrams, parallel universes and quantum theories.

Tracy Sarroff will be presenting a talk about science fiction in relationship to her visual arts practice. Ecology and concerns about art and science underlie the majority of her projects. What prevails is an interest in the relationship between ecology and science and the creative boundaries of what is both imaginary and real. Frequently using ideas that are allied to science fiction and science fact, Sarroff’s work manifests an ambiguity in relation to natural and artificial engagement. Transgenics, biotechnology, microscopy, and science fiction have been some major themes fuelling her explorations to date. Often these themes relate to contemporary society and movements in scientific research. During her presentation, these topics will be discussed and analysed in relation to creative practice and the zeitgeist.

Deakin SF Inaugural Seminar series talk.pdf