On Mar 21, 2006, at 9:05 PM, Carl Skelton wrote:
Hyperpolis 3.0: Really Useful Media Call for Papers/Proposals We know too much about media communications technologies as instruments of social control. We don't know enough about media technologies as instruments of civil society and cultural development. We know too much about media discourses as, on the one hand, “popular culture”: alienated and commodified cultural forms; and on the other, “cultural theory”: paranoid cosmologies of hyper-rhetoric, and the ubiquitous inevitability of evil... We don't know enough about digital media as something other than a means to an end, as “instrumental culture”, where culture itself —mainstream, alternative, underground, or otherwise— is degraded to the status of tools (some hard, some soft, all ware). Hyperpolis: Really Useful Media will provide a forum for the discussion and presentation of some positive contributions to the field, in light of these chronic imbalances. 1 Media practices whose product is an improvement in the integrity and vitality of the culture and society in which they are embedded. 2 Media practices whose processes are in and of themselves desirable. Deadline: June 15th, 2006 Conference and Celebration: October 20th, 2006 Hosts: Integrated Digital Media Institute and Othmer Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies Polytechnic University, Brooklyn Info: http://idmi.poly.edu Contact: Carl Skelton, Director, IDMI Polytechnic University, Brooklyn RH 701, Six MetroTech Center Brooklyn NY 11201 USA cskelton@poly.edu