Call for Papers: From Utopian Teleolog ies to Sporadic Historiographies: “Interfaces ” of Art and Cybernetics, Deadline 12 Novembe r 2012

>From Utopian Teleologies to Sporadic Historiographies: “Interfaces” of
Art and Cybernetics (39th Annual AAH Conference & Bookfair University
of Reading, Reading 11 - 13 April 2013), Deadline 12 November 2012

It has been more than six decades since cybernetics was introduced to
the English-speaking world by Norbert Wiener, Claude Shannon, and
Warren Weaver. Stimulated by the information explosion in the 195Os,
it grew as an international phenomenon that challenged disciplinary
boundaries and preconceptions. Cybernetic models of “self-reproducing
automata” brought about an enhanced understanding of informational and
communication systems, engendered artificial intelligence and
machine-biological interfaces (cyborgs), and impacted game theory. In
the West, cybernetics had a lasting effect on art and popular culture
from interactive art, performance, and computer art, to telematic art
and American Idol. The “new science,” however, received a different
reception in USSR. After its initial hostility, the Soviet government
endorsed cybernetics as a panacea ensuring the rational control of a
failing centralized economy. The interdisciplinary umbrella of Soviet
cybernetics protected underground art—from kinetic constructions and
installations, to conceptual art and performance.

The session redresses a lack of attention to cybernetics globally. It
invites presenters in the visual arts and from non-art disciplines to
reconsider or generate new knowledge about generations and geographies
of art and cybernetics, including practices that create, distribute,
and theorize art forms, concepts, and histories. Papers may explore
cybernetic phenomena in artistic environments; examine artistic play
on logic and reason; consider how art or non-art agents treat
cybernetics as a social and cultural paradigm, or question how
cybernetics is presented in historiographies of recent art and what
interfaces of cybernetics and art bode for intra- and
inter-disciplinary research and practice.

Proposals for participation should be sent to each one of the session
chairs Maia Toteva ([email protected]) and Jennifer Way ([email protected])
by 20 November 2012.  Every proposal should include: 1. Preliminary
abstract of one to two double-spaced, typed pages; 2. Letter
explaining speaker’s interest and expertise in the topic; 3. CV with
home and office mailing addresses, email address, and phone numbers.
4. Documentation of work when appropriate, especially for sessions in
which artists might discuss their own work.

39th Annual AAH Conference & Bookfair University of Reading, Reading,
11 - 13 April 2013
AAH2013 will represent the interests of an expansive art-historical
community by covering all branches of its discipline/s and the range
of its visual cultures. Academic sessions will reflect a broad
chronological range, as well as a wide geographical one. We will
address topics of methodological, historiographical, and
interdisciplinary interest as well as ones that open up debates about
the future of the discipline/s.
AAH2013 will take place over three days at the historic University of
Reading, Berkshire. Follow the links below for more information about
this forthcoming event.
http://www.aah.org.uk/annual-conference/2013-conference
Academic sessions are timetabled in blocks of 1 hour 20 minutes,
allowing for 2 papers of 30 minutes each, with 5 minutes for
set-up/session hopping and 5 minutes questions per paper.

Maia Toteva
Assistant Professor
Department of Art & Visual Communication
University of Cincinnati
Blue Ash College
9555 Plainfield Road
Cincinnati, Ohio 45236
[email protected]
_______________________________________________
Shera mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.oakland.edu/mailman/listinfo/shera