Conference announcement "Recoded: Landscapes and Politics of New Media" April 25-6 Aberdeen, Scotland

The Centre for Modern Thought atthe University of Aberdeen is holding a conference on  ?Recoded: Landscapes and Politics of New Media?  (April25-26, 2008), featuring many of the international leaders in the field: WendyHui Kyong Chun (Brown);  SandeCohen (CalArts);  AlexanderGalloway (NYU);  KenGoldberg (Berkeley);  Mark Hansen (Chicago); Thomas Keenan (Bard);  TimLenoir (Duke);  Tom Levin(Princeton); Laura Marks (Simon Fraser); Colin Milburn (Davis); Trevor Paglen (Berkeley); Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli,(Aberdeen);  Brian Rotman(OSU);  Julia Scher(Kunsthochschule für Medien, Köln); EugeneThacker (Georgia Tech); Sha-Xin Wei (Concordia); Siegfried Zielinski(Universität der Künste, Berlin) and commentaries by Mario Biagioli (Aberdeenand Harvard), Arnold Davidson (Chicago); Christopher Fynsk (Aberdeen), PeterGalison (Harvard), and Alberto Moreiras (Aberdeen and SUNY Buffalo). 

The conference program alsofeatures the UK premiere of Peter Galison and Rob Moss Secrecy (2007) ? a 2007 Sundance Festival Selection(www.secrecyfilm.com).

The"New Media" is perhaps the most discussed field in the arts and thehumanities today, reflecting a desire to engage with and understand the way inwhich digital technologies have revolutionized the practice of everyday life bybecoming an integral part of how we work, communicate, understand ourselves,make art as well as war.  Theextraordinary attention received by the new media does not, however, come witha consensus about the interpretive frameworks most appropriate for thesematerials, or about the boundaries of the field and its connections to otherdiscipline and practices. 

This conference aims to promotea serious discussion on the place of the new media in modern thought, culture,and the university by presenting a broad set ofperspectives from academic disciplines and art practices, and by bringingtogether key new media theorists and scholars together with theoreticallysophisticated practitioners from other fields.  New fruitful conceptualizations of the new media and itsfutures are, we believe, most likely to emerge from such conversations.

Committedto bypassing the traps set by dichotomies between technophilia andtechnophobia, power and resistance, art and science, technology and the human,and other such binaries, the conference wants to explore how new mediais posing problems to how we think about States, institutions, subjects andmateriality itself.

Registration information, full program,abstracts, and bios can be found at: www.abdn.ac.uk/modernthought /recoded/

Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli

Mario Biagioli

Chris Fynsk