call for papers

CFP: Ecstatic Truth IV

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Selected papers from this symposium  are published in the International Journal of Film and Media Arts, Feb 2020 issue:
https://revistas.ulusofona.pt/index.php/ijfma

[Image by Dryden Goodwin]

Ecstatic Truth IV. Truth of Matter: process and perception in expanded animation practice – CALL FOR PAPERS

Our 4th Ecstatic Truth symposium will be at the University of Westminster on Thurs 16th May, with Keynote speaker Dryden Goodwin.
We seek proposals for presentations that address the potential of animation, in its most expanded form, to make sense of our realities.
Selected papers will be eligible for publication in a dedicated issue of the peer reviewed International Journal of Film and Media Art.
DEADLINE: 29th MARCH
More information: https://bit.ly/2XyCiOh
Notes from Ecstatic Truth I-III: https://expandedanimation.net/tag/ecstatic-truth
—
Ecstatic Truth organising committee:
Dr. Tereza Stehlikova, University of Westminster
Dr Birgitta Hosea, Animation Research Centre, UCA
Dr. Pedro Serrazina, Universidade Lusófona

Call for papers: artists and spatial inequality

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MOVING POPULATIONS, SCANT RESOURCES, CHANGING COMMUNITIES: with this one-day symposium we want to have some dialogue about artistic practice that engages with radical and mobile approaches to geography that could include gentrification, colonialism or environmentalism.

Here is the call for papers.

SPATIAL MUTUALITY SYMPOSIUM:
 ARTISTS and MIGRATION, MATERIALS and URBAN CHANGE

Date: Thursday 23rd May 2019
Location: University for the Creative Arts, Falkner Road, Farnham, Surrey, GU9 7DS
Times: 10:00 – 19:00

Call for papers: SPATIAL MUTUALITY SYMPOSIUM – ARTISTS and MIGRATION, MATERIALS and URBAN CHANGE
 
Date: Thursday 23rd May 2019
Location: University for the Creative Arts, Falkner Road, Farnham, Surrey, GU9 7DS
Times: 10:00 – 19:00
 

Spatial mobilities of people and materials are emerging as important political and cultural issues (of our time). These mobilities may be related to conflicts, urbanisation, material resource extraction and the pressure of economic inequalities of North and South (all of or in any combination of the above). The work of artists in researching and collecting narratives and accounts of migration, uncovering material processes, and charting urban change is crucial in making our world of spatial mutuality visible.

The late Doreen Massey contended that space is constructed by narrative and the unfolding of personal and community identity. She suggested work foregrounding spatiality and mobility offers new frameworks for understanding the social world and the financial and political forces that shape it. The narrative and analytical potentiality of mobility and our material environment have been particularly of interest to lens based practitioners and those working with socially engaged practice. More recent analyses have explored data and material constitution of spatiality. (cf Faizal & Weizmann 2017, Harvey 2012, Kurgan 2013, Paglen 2018) Artists have used all these approaches and more in their work.

This one day symposium at UCA seeks 20 minute contributions from artists responding to these broad themes of migration, materials and urban change in three panels, with an emphasis on exploring identity and spatiality. We are seeking those working in a diversity of socially engaged practices, contexts and broadly using lens and auditory based media forms. We encourage a diversity of practitioners and presentation forms.
 
The three panels of this symposium are:
 
MIGRATION – artists working with themes of dislocation and place; the dislocation of narratives; and participatory practice.
 
MATERIALS / RESOURCES – artists working with the movement and use of materials in the global economy; issues of resource exploitation; waste; toxicity; exploitation of labour; de/re-colonisation.
 
COMMUNITY CHANGE – artists working with gentrification; social and spatial segregation.
 
Keynote speakers:
 
Christine Molloy, Desperate Optimists
Professor Alison Blunt & Dr Olivia Sheringham, Queen Mary University of London
Call for papers:
 
This one-day symposium at UCA seeks 20-minute contributions from artists and filmmakers responding to the above broad panel themes. We encourage a diversity of practices and presentation forms.
 
If you would like to present at this symposium, please send abstracts of 250 words maximum for 20-minute presentations; a biography of 100 words maximum; and any technical requirements for the presentation to:
 
Stephen Connolly stephen.connolly@uca.ac.uk
David Rule drule2@uca.ac.uk
 
Deadline for abstract submission: 31st March 12:00 (UK time)
 
Presentations to be confirmed: 12th April

 

Call for Papers: Animation in Virtual and Augmented Environments

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Paper Submission Deadline: January 7 2019

The overall goal of this event is to identify the opportunities and challenges for animated content in AVR environments.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

  • Animated reality vs. mixed reality content
  • Animation techniques in AVR environments
  • Hardware/Software support for animation in AVR
  • Interdisciplinary and intermedia approaches (e.g. games, film, theatre, fine arts etc.)
  • Motion and/or performance capture
  • Tools/methods/use cases for Interactive dissemination of animated AVR content
  • Use Cases and Applications of animated content in AVR environments
  • User Acceptance of animated AVR contents

For more information go to: https://anivae.fhstp.ac.at/call-for-papers/

 

CFP: Experimental and Expanded Animation

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Lilly  Husbands wrote up a review of this conference here with lots of information about what was discussed: https://www.fantasy-animation.org/current-posts/2019/2/28/review-experimental-amp-expanded-animation

Call for papers: Experimental & Expanded Animation: Current Perspectives & New Directions

Proposals are invited for an interdisciplinary one-day conference with an evening reception, screening and exhibition.

At the University for the Creative Arts, Farnham, Surrey, UK.

Conference date: February 13th, 2019.

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THEME

With their recent volume: Experimental and Expanded Animation: Current Perspectives & New Directions, Hamlyn and Smith aimed to reach further into understandings of what experimental animation is, and has been,  since Robert Russett and Cecile Starr defined it in 1976. This conference aims to further focus our project and to develop findings from the publication through more immediate methods of open dialogue and/or film practice. The prompts listed below have been condensed from themes emerging in the volume. However we welcome proposals that respond to these areas and also those that pursue other lines of enquiry. A range of disciplinary approaches is encouraged and the conference aims to include papers from practitioners, practitioner/scholars and scholars. As well as traditional 20 min papers we encourage alternative methods for sharing ideas and materials through, for example, performed presentations, artistic works, mini-workshops and lightning talks.

PROMPTS

Craft/ materiality

Transparency of process and use of materials has been central to experimental/ materialist film practice and theory. To what extent has the homogenization of media today prompted a rise in more recent craft theory? How do Marxist materialist theories relate to post-human and new materialist discourse and in which ways do these more recent methodologies impact upon our understandings of experimental expanded animation?

Feminism/women in experimental animation

It’s understood that the privacy of animation production conditions facilitates exploration into issues relating to feminism.  Female animators today are translating concerns, such as the domestic, sexuality and the body, into large scale, expanded and performed animation.  Does such work, installed in spaces beyond the gallery/cinema, and in which the female animator is visible on stage, impact upon expression of the female experience, or has this become less crucial to articulate, and how does feminist theory offer insights into this area?

Industry/ independent

Critically reworked commercial animation is occurring today within the purview of experimental film. Outwardly appearing as traditional cartoons, how does this material sit within a field that has tended to emphasise the auteur and has avoided the graphic, the narrative and the popular? 

Inter-disciplinary

Increasingly we see interdisciplinary approaches employed to analyse animation, including for example post-humanist scholarship; aesthetics; phenomenology; feminism and critical theory. To what extent do these methods cast light on animated texts, or do they detract from fundamental questions concerning form and the medium?

Medium/ context

Media including photography, dance, and performance for example have been central to animation since vaudeville, and then through the expanded cinema of the 60s.  How is experimental animation advanced through media ‘impurity’, and to what extent are theories such as inter-mediality, which suggests that individual qualities of distinct media are enhanced through their interlocking, of value?

Perception/reception

Animation that is articulated beyond the single screen could be said to emphasise a perceptual and phenomenological engagement. Flicker for example, is located in the physiology of the viewer, while animated installation demands a mobile spectator.  Both modes of spectatorship are contingent and situated in the present of their apprehension. How is animation in the expanded field continuing to elicit new modes of spectatorship? 

Representation/ technologies 

3D-CG and internet animation has the capacity to invent and manipulate the extant world in myriad ways.  How is CG being used in the context of experimental expanded animated film?

Utopia/ ecology

Gene Youngblood hailed expanded cinema as reflecting a utopian expansion of both consciousness and technology.  Today much experimental expanded animation, made through contracted means of found or old materials, can be regarded as a response to resources made scarce through either forced obsolescence, unsustainable practice and/or as a creative resistance to media acceleration. How does the trend toward a careful ecology of materials impact on experimental animation languages?

SUBMISSION

Please submit an abstract (up to 500 words), 3–5 bibliographical sources, 3-5 keywords as well as a short bio by 15th of November 2018 to:

vsmith9@ucreative.ac.uk

with the subject heading: ‘Experimental Animation Conference’. The selected abstracts for the conference will be announced by late November 2018.

 

Call for Papers: The Crafty Animator

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The Crafty Animator: A Conference on Handmade and Craft-based Animation

Proposals are invited for an interdisciplinary one-day conference at Rich Mix Cinema, Shoreditch, London, on Thursday 7th September 2017

Animation is famously diverse, incorporating as it does a range of production methods, techniques and practices. This one-day conference focuses on any technique that could be considered to be handmade or craft-based, from cut outs to models and puppets, from sand-on-glass to ink-on-glass, and beyond. The role of the animator is key to such techniques where we can often see her/his imprints or finger marks etc. or even hands in the animation; the ‘presence of the artist’ is often highly visible in such craft-based practices and is a presence this conference seeks to explore from numerous perspectives. The conference aims to consider: the kinds of animation techniques that might fall into the category of the handmade; the ways that handmade and craft-based animation might be framed as gendered practices, or not; the kinds of cultural value that handmade and craft-based might animation carry. A range of disciplinary approaches is encouraged and the conference aims to include papers from practitioners, practitioner/scholars and scholars.

I am delighted to confirm Dr Birgitta Hosea, Head of Animation at the RCA, as our Keynote Speaker.

Possible approaches include but are not limited to:

  • Historical examples of handmade animation`
  • Contemporary practices
  • Gender politics and production practices
  • Audience engagement
  • Spectacle and visual effects
  • Space and place
  • Production cultures
  • Narrative and storytelling
  • Children’s television animation
  • Digitising the handmade
  • The cultural value of craft-based/handmade animation
  • Craft-based practices and the community
  • The ‘presence of the artist’
  • Craft-based/handmade animation and advertising

The conference will be held at the Rich Mix Cinema in Shoreditch, London on Thursday 7 September 2017. Please send abstracts of 300 words plus 100-word bio by Friday 23 June 2017 to:

Dr Caroline Ruddell (caroline.ruddell@brunel.ac.uk)

Dr Caroline Ruddell
Lecturer in Film and TV Studies
Department of Social Sciences, Media and Communications
College of Business, Arts and Social Sciences
Brunel University London

Associate Editor Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal
animation: an Interdisciplinary journal is the first cohesive international refereed publishing platform for animation that unites contributions from a wide range of research agendas and creative practice.
http://anm.sagepub.com

Call for Papers: Ecstatic Truth II

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Ecstatic Truth II: Lessons of Darkness and Light

“Fact creates norms, and truth illumination” Werner Herzog 

Date: Saturday 27th May, 2017
Location: Stevens building, Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore

The second animated documentary symposium at the RCA is back!

We want to continue with the examination of how animation can contribute to, challenge and push the boundaries of what documentary film can be. We will consider animation in the most expanded sense and are interested in proposals that may challenge and redefine the boundary of animation itself. We can also confirm that Annabelle Honess Roe, author of ‘Animated Documentary’, will be one of our keynote speakers.

In the last symposium, one of the themes that emerged was one of archaeology and excavation. According to Herzog: “There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization.”

We invite speakers to present projects that roam the landscape (whether real or imagined), dig through the sediments of reality, explore vertical time of poetry, examine hidden histories, project visions of future, or trace new connections between concepts, use fabrication and imagination to touch upon vital issues: whether these are social, political, philosophical, or personal.

At a time of polarised political views and a deep sense of division, it seems to be a relevant moment to question the concept of darkness and light, aesthetically, politically, ethically, imaginatively. How can our work be of relevance, help us understand where we have been, where we are, and where we might go? How can the notion of ecstatic truth cast light on the shadowy concept of post-truth and what contribution can animated documentary bring to this debate? How can animation documentary, in its most expanded form, illuminate us?

We are opening this call for paper to PhD students, researchers (within animation but also beyond), filmmakers and other practitioners, who use animation as part of their methodology, their way of trying to understand the world.

Proposals should be for either:

  • a 20 minute conference paper;
  • an alternative discussion/presentation format as appropriate for practice-based research (this can include practice based work in a form of short films, images etc.)

 

Proposed themes:

Deeper Strata

Vertical time and poetic image, landscape and memory, shared or personal history, embodiment

Visions of Future

Imagination and fabrication, science-fiction, art & science dialogue, role of technology

Lessons of Darkness and Light

Human condition, social issues, society, social commentary, religious or spiritual, re-contextualizing documentary footage, post-truth/ecstatic truth/animated form

 

To submit your proposal or any related questions please contact dr Tereza Stehlikova:

tereza.stehlikova@network.rca.ac.uk

The deadline for submissions is 7th April 2017

Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1326409527421972/

Call for Papers: ANIMATION AND MEMORY

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International Conference at Radboud University, Nijmegen, 22-23 June 2017

Confirmed keynote speakers

• Dr. Annabelle Honess Roe, University of Surrey
• Professor Suzanne Buchan, Middlesex University London

Invited artist

• Ülo Pikkov, animator and PhD candidate at the Estonian Academy of Arts

Call for Papers

The past thirty years have witnessed the emergence of memory studies as a field that has yielded a rich body of research into practices of remembering and forgetting in art, popular culture, and everyday life. While live action cinema and documentary films have been studied extensively, the interrelation between animation and memory has so far received much less attention. This lacuna in scholarship is particularly pertinent in light of the increasing number of animation films dealing with various forms, methods, and contexts of remembering and forgetting.

Our conference seeks to address this lacuna. We use the word animation in the broadest possible sense, from stop motion to computer animation and gif files, from cell animated cartoons to painted animation. Cognizant of the medium’s inherent differences from (as well as similarities to) live action cinema, we are particularly interested in the ways in which animation can operate as a medium and a technology of memory and forgetting.

The main questions we will explore are as follows: How do animation films bring forth personal and collective pasts, as well as traumatic, repressed or tabooed memories? What role does the materiality (or immateriality) of the medium play in representing the past and processes of remembering and forgetting? What is the role of found footage, objects, and sound in animation? What role does animation play in disseminating information about the past and how does it serve political ends?

We welcome proposals for 20-minute papers, as well as three-paper panels. Although the conference focuses on animation and memory in a broad sense, we especially seek contributions that address animation in relation to:

Ø documentary
Ø reenactment
Ø recollection
Ø adaptation
Ø the archive
Ø aide mémoire
Ø lieux de mémoire
Ø communicative / cultural memory
Ø postmemory
Ø multidirectional memory
Ø prosthetic memory
Ø performances of memory
Ø real and imagined pasts
Ø commemoration, memorials and monuments
Ø personal and collective trauma
Ø forgetting and amnesia
Ø found footage / objects
Ø tabooed and repressed memories
Ø affect, nostalgia and melancholia
Ø materiality and new materialism(s)
Ø worldmaking
Ø theories of memory studies
Ø the history of the medium
Ø museums, exhibitions, education
Ø miniaturization and enlargement
Ø festivals and distribution of films

Please send an abstract of about 250 words and a bio of 100 words to the organisers at <animationandmemory@let.ru.nl> by February 15, 2017.

Conference website: www.ru.nl/animationandmemory

Selected papers will be considered for publication.

Conference committee Maarten van Gageldonk, László Munteán, Ali Shobeiri, Cansu Soyupak, Josette Wolthuis

Ecstatic Truth – Call for Papers

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Ecstatic Truth: Defining the essence of an animated documentary 

Kentridge
[William Kentridge]

 

APGR* research symposium at the Royal College of Art
Date: Saturday 14th May, 2016
Location: Stevens building, Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore

According to Werner Herzog mere facts constitute an accountant’s reality, but it is the ecstatic truth (a poetic reality) that can capture more faithfully the nuances and depths of human experiences. Given that animation has the freedom to represent, stylize, or reimagine the world, it lends itself well to this aspirational form of a documentary.

To celebrate the launch of our new Animated Documentary pathway, Royal College of Art Animation warmly invites PhD research students to submit proposals for Ecstatic Truth: the 6th Animation PGR research symposium. We invite speakers to respond to the idea of “Ecstatic Truth” and reflect, speculate and imagine how animated form might elicitate the different facets of this poetic truth, through its unique language.

Proposals should be for either:

–       a 20 minute conference paper;

–       or an alternative discussion/presentation format as appropriate for practice-based research (this can include practice based work in a form of short films, images etc.)

Some of the proposed themes:

Showing the Invisible
Inner states, subjective states, forbidden places, ethical issues etc.

Transcending Time
Memory, future, sci-fi, history etc.

Truth, Falsification and Poetry
Virtual reality, fictional elements, special effects, imagination, poetic truth etc.

Art and Science dialogue
Science visualization, role of poetry in science imagery etc.

Human condition
social issues, society, social commentary, health and illness, conflict etc. 

(We equally welcome fierce and creative opposition to Herzog’s statement…!)

Please note that the symposium is designed for MPhil / PhD students to present their work-in-progress to a friendly and well-informed audience of peers and supervisors.

The deadline for submissions is 14th April 2016.

To submit your proposal or any related questions please contact Dr Tereza Stehlikova: tereza.stehlikova@network.rca.ac.uk 

*The Animation Postgraduate Research Group was set up in 2011 by Dr Paul Ward of the Arts University College at Bournemouth as a safe and supportive network in which MPhil/PhD students in animation can network, exchange ideas and disseminate their research.

 

Animated Documentaries from the Royal College of Art

 

For inspiration, here are a number of different approaches to animated documentary created by students on MA Animation at the RCA:

Nightclub from Jonathan Hodgson on Vimeo.

Yellow Fever from Ng’endo Mukii on Vimeo

Devil In The Room from Mackinnonworks on Vimeo.

Procrastination from Johnny Kelly on Vimeo.

Die Andere Seite from Ellie Land on Vimeo.

CONFIA 2016: Call for Papers

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The call for papers for CONFIA 2016: International Conference for Illustration and Animation has been extended to March 31st.

CONFIA is organised by the School of Design at the Polytechnic Institute of Cávado and Ave and endeavors to be:

“a pivotal contribution to the contemporary discussion of the areas referred above, which combine long traditions with pioneering roles in technological innovation. We intend to broadly explore the multidisciplinary space that includes illustration and the animated image, from the construction of the narrative to character development, from art theory to critical reflection on the objects that populate the market and the industry. The conference seeks quality original submissions from artists, the industry, the academic community and the market.”

This year CONFIA will be held in Barcelos on June 10, 11 and 12. The keynote speakers are Esther Leslie and Sophie Van Der Linden.

All accepted full papers will be published in the conference proceedings (with ISBN). Only original contributions will be accepted. Submitted papers will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis.

Recommended topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

1. Illustration/ Drawing
Graphic illustration
Information graphics
Editorial illustration
Illustration for children
Character design
Comics and graphic novels

2. Animation
2D animation
3D animation
Animation for video games
Character animation
Animation for virtual or augmented reality
Animation in interactive media
Motion graphics
Sound and animation

3. Art theory applied to illustration and animation
Linear storytelling
Creative writing
Visual culture
Interactive storytelling
Narrative and non-narrative animation
Illustration and animation pedagogy
Authorship in animation or illustration

For more detailed information, please visit http://www.confia.ipca.pt/