The Journal of Comparative Media Arts (CMA Journal) is an open-access, student-run peer-reviewed journal, taking up discussions and investigations within the creative, critical and cultural communities. Our goal is to publish the best of graduate, postgraduate and recent graduate essays and dissertations, presenting the pluralism of research within arts and culture and a forum for scholarly discourse. Engaging a transdisciplinary perspective, the CMA Journal encompasses contemporary concerns with a focus on visual arts and art history, cinema and moving-image studies, performance studies, and studies of computer-based arts. Promoting open-minded thinking the CMA Journal aims to generate a fruitful environment for critical, historical, and theoretical analysis across arts forms and practice. We welcome experimental and creative writing, works-in-progress, collaborations and lively debates that are critically engaged in the ever-shifting range and scope of the fields of critical and cultural studies.
ISSUE ONE: FAILURE
The discourse of failure, while commonly perceived as the antithesis of success, can be understood to engender experimentation and potentiality. Making mistakes becomes an important moment, necessary in the pursuit of progress and discovery. Failure obliges time to reflect on what has taken place; retracing steps in order to analyze, learn and understand outcomes; taking advantage of and recognizing the happy accidents. Within creative practices, error becomes the device for re-investigating, re-evaluating and re-making an event, a moment or a work to implement something different. Pop culture and cybernetic space is rife with memes of failure and reveals the provocative humour in our mistakes. By turning failure on its head, emergent and alternative paths open up to experience and possibility. The process of becoming calls for expanded perspectives and the assimilation of new knowledge. As scholar, artist, critic and keen observer, how might failure be transformed into a pretext to create? Is it possible to engage a perspective in which failure, and therefore the mistake or the error, might be seen as a fundamental moment in the creative and pedagogical process? When is being wrong right? How might a non-judgmental context be recognized as incentive to go beyond limitations and expectations of success? As we launch the first issue of the Journal of Comparative Media Arts, we are optimistic of a rousing success on the provocative theme of failure.
SUBTHEMES
SOUND: Dissonance and cognitive conflict; the disharmony of sound; vibrations and noise; the medium of air and water; reception and perception; manipulation, mixing, and reproduction; environmental, psychological and social sounds; unstable intervals, an argument or disagreement, contradictory beliefs.
PERFORMANCE: Failure to perform, bodily and cognitive stress, dis-ability; a misstep, a fall, injury, non-performance; the rehearsal and the understudy; development of style, finding your voice, forgetting lines and the reverberations of silence; subjectivities and experience; unachievable goals and perilous adventures; wandering, exploring and getting lost.
BODY & EMBODIMENT: Corporeal, social and communicative decay; the carcass, the corpse and the abject; the detritus of human existence; sustainability, waste and apocalyptic events; misunderstanding and losses in translation; cake-eating, revolt and evolution;
POLITICAL & SOCIAL: Ideological, political, civil, or institutional dis-obedience; rioting, challenging authority, breaking promises, accountability; perversions, subcultures and underground movements; marginalization; colonization and the white-washing of culture; language, history and story-telling; migration, moving in, settling and inhabiting; strategy and tactics;
TECHNOLOGY: Glitches, skipping or noise both visual and aural; disconnections and dropped communication; sharing of information, the viral form, the re-evaluation of time; extension and adaptation, the uncanny and the threat/potential of AI; undesirable outcomes and dangerous progress.
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
This is the Journal of Comparative Media Arts CFP for long papers, short papers, photo essays and artworks. The inaugural publication of the CMA Journal invites submissions that consider the theme of FAILURE. Every submission relevant to study of contemporary, forward-thinking investigations in visual culture and the arts will be reviewed and considered. Submissions will be accepted until March 15 2015, 23:59 PST.
ART OR RESEARCH LONG PAPER: This type of submission is best suited for scholarly work and reports on completed research or artworks. Each submission will be carefully reviewed by three independent reviewers and ranked based on quality of presentation, relevance to the community, originality, and importance of the contribution. Submissions in this category can be between 5000-7500 words, including abstract, footnotes, bibliography, author bio(s);
ART OR RESEARCH SHORT PAPERS: This type of submission is best suited for scholarly work and reports on ongoing research or artwork, as well as position papers raising original and provocative theoretical or practical discourses and questions. Each submission will be carefully reviewed by three independent reviewers and ranked based on quality of presentation, relevance to the community, originality, and importance of the contribution. Submissions in this category can be between 2500-3000 words, including abstract, footnotes, bibliography, author bio(s);
PHOTO ESSAYS: This type of submission is best suited for the dissemination of artistic research and its methodologies, from all arts disciplines. This format allows for text to be woven together with image, audio and video. This format also invites critical reviews of exhibitions, artist studio visits, artist profiles and experimental content. All images, audio and video elements must be the property of the artist or meet copyright approval and is the responsibility of the author. Each submission will be carefully reviewed by three independent reviewers and ranked based on quality of presentation, relevance to the community, originality, and importance of the contribution. Submissions in the Photo Essay category can be between 1000-2000 words, including abstract, footnotes, bibliography, and author bio(s). Please include low resolution copies of images/supplements to be included in the essay with copyright permissions where applicable.
ARTWORKS: We accept submissions of individual artworks, including any media, audio and video, to be published as a featured image for each publication. Please provide a 300-500 word artist statement, including how the work fits within the theme of FAILURE.
SUBMISSION FORMAT
All submissions need to be the full length version of the paper. Please submit Word documents (.doc or .docx) or PDFs to the attention of the Peer Review Committee via email: submissions@cmajournal.ca
Submissions will be accepted until March 15 2015, 23:59 PST. Accepted submission will be published online May 2015.
QUESTIONS? Contact the Editorial Committee via email: info@cmajournal.ca, or through our online contact form. Or visit our website: http://cmajournal.ca/call-for-submissions/