#IFM2023 VIRTUAL CONFERENCE

CARE COLLABORATION CRAFT

Hosted by Toronto Metropolitan University (Canada), The University of Texas at Dallas (USA), Leeds Trinity University (UK), and Ithaca College (USA), June 7-9, 2023

The annual Interactive Film and Media Conference invites abstracts that explore, interrogate, interweave, unravel, and reinvent the dynamic relationships between care, collaboration, and craft across new media platforms, practices, and theories. This nexus of care, collaboration, and craft has emerged as a fertile ground for thinking through the crucial yet unresolved work of combatting polarization with multiple voices, plural practices, and new ways of working together to invent shared languages and ideas. The conference invites participants to think about these three axes–care, collaboration, craft–whose definitions and relationships are not fixed, but fluid and adaptive.

CARE

Care implies attention to relationships between the human and the nonhuman. It is embedded in the relationship between makers/designers and subjects, and between work(s) and its participants/audience. This notion speaks to the affordances of the technologies, materials, and infrastructure that make media work possible.  Care pays attention to how work is made in communities, and how an ethics of care entails endlessly reformulated and adaptive relations that we inhabit.  How do works invite care?  What is the ongoing work of care in media work and practice?  What kinds of bonds are formed in and through this work, and how can they be nurtured, respected, and encouraged to evolve?

COLLABORATION

Collaboration has become a dominant meme in media practice and scholarly work. It opens up ways to think beyond the auteur-as-individual, drawing on long traditions across the arts and platforms of working with others. It moves from the one to the many, from the monovocal to the polyvocal.  It is often grouped with concepts such as collectivity, community, co-creation, participatory modes, activism.  What is collaboration?  How does collaboration change from project to project in different iterations and different political, social contexts?  Why is collaboration necessary or important? What challenges and pitfalls does collaboration pose? 

CRAFT

Craft suggests a physical relationship to material to emphasize tactility and concrete engagement with the matter of the world. Craft traditions such as quilting bees and barn-raisings, gardening and sewing, etc., re-emerge in digital cultures through questions of tactility, working with machines, rethinking exhibition strategies, and more.  Sometimes, craft is considered as a form of individual authorship or artisanal; other times, it is deemed collective; most of the time, it winds between both. Our conference asks the following: what is craft?  Why is it important now?  Is it possible to think of craft in new ways?  How does craft work through our engagement with material?

This conference does not propose closed definitions of the terms craft, care, and collaboration.  Nor does it map the ways in which these three terms entangle, enmesh, separate, collide.  Instead, the conference celebrates the open fields, gaps, and fissures between these terms in an initial attempt to enhance what is ambiguous, unresolved, and needing our attention. The conference invites participants to think through and imagine craft, care, and collaboration in new ways that mine these cracks and ambiguities.

The 5th Interactive Film and Media Virtual Conference (June 7-9) invites academics (faculty, researchers, and Ph.D. students) and practitioners (filmmakers, artists, VR and game designers, and media producers) to submit their paper abstracts. While presenters are encouraged to consider the themes of Care Collaboration Craft. Proposals on matters relevant to the IFM community and beyond are welcome.

FULL FREE ADMISSION

No fee is charged for presentation and attendance at this conference or publication at the journal. 

PUBLICATIONS & PROCEEDINGS

The video presentations and the peer-reviewed post-conference papers will be published in the #IFM Journal.

Subscribe to the  #IFM list group to be updated on our deadlines and informed about our new endeavors. 

INTERACTIVE FILM AND MEDIA JOURNAL

More info: https://journals.library.ryerson.ca/index.php/InteractiveFilmMedia/IFM2023

Contact email: [email protected]

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PAPER ABSTRACT SUBMISSION

To submit your abstract (500 words long, including the research objectives, theoretical framework, methodology, and hypotheses) and a brief Bio-CV (150-200 words), please download the paper proposal application form here: IFM2023_Paper_Presentation_Proposal.docx and submit it to the section  ‘conference paper abstract’ at the #IFM Journal’s Submissions system by the deadline.

To guarantee full participation and inclusion at the conference of a great diversity of voices, disabilities, accessibilities, and locales from everyone in the world, presenters must submit both video and paper presentations one month before the conference. Further details and instructions will be sent once your proposal is accepted. The Scientific Committee’s decision will be taken by mid-February.

RESEARCH CREATION SUBMISSION

For Research-Creation and Artist/Collective Projects Interactive Workshop proposals, fill out the form, including the research creation’s description, research objectives, theoretical framework and methodology, and a brief Bio-CV (150-200 words for each participant/author). Please download the research-creation presentation proposal application form here: IFM2023 Research Creation Presentation Application Form.docx and submit it to the section  ‘ research-creation presentation’ at the #IFM Journal’s Submissions system by the deadline.

To guarantee presenters’ full engagement and interaction during the workshop discussions, the organizers will provide an online training session before the Conference. 

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:

Hudson Moura, Chair (Ryerson University, Canada),

Heidi Rae Cooley (The University of Texas at Dallas, USA),

Stefano Odorico (Technological University of the Shannon, Ireland and Leeds Trinity University, UK)

Patricia Zimmermann (Ithaca College, New York, USA)

KEY AREAS

1. Digital theory: history, storytelling, intermediality, transmedia, multimedia

2. Interactive film: documentary, fiction, animation

3. Interactive platforms: teleconference, streaming, mobile screens, virtual museums, multimedia installations

4. Interactive media: webseries, digital news, snack media, ecomedia, social media

5. Games: storytelling, education, docugames, serious games, games for change

6. VR (Virtual Reality) / AR (Augmented Reality): immersion, alternative environments and realities, interfaces

7. Database and Big data: archive, politics, ethics