Call for Participation and Programme: 3rd Digital Cultures Workshop: Navigating Multiplicity #digcult10

1-2 July 2010
University of Salford, Greater Manchester, UK. Final Programme Here (PDF)

Organizers
Ben Light and Marie Griffiths – University of Salford
Sian Lincoln – Liverpool John Moores University
Steve Sawyer – Syracuse University

Confirmed Speakers
Professor Susanna Paasonen
Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies – University of Helsinki
Grabbing by the eyeballs: affective intensities of online porn
Dr Kylie Jarrett
Centre for Media Studies – National University of Ireland Manooth
Managing the multiples:
understanding the power of google

There is still negotiation regarding the novelty of Web 2.0 and social media.  Yet, whether these arrangements are ‘new’ or recombinants/re-presentations of extant things, it is very much the case that in many societies, those that would not have engaged with such arrangements in the past are, and that different sites of such arrangements are becoming easier to connect with each other.  Thus, we are increasingly faced with the issue of having to navigate multiple places across and connected with the Internet.  Unsurprisingly, those in commercial and other formal organizations are also making these connections too.  This year we hope the workshop will tackle issues associated with the multi-sited nature of digital culture.  However, as usual, we intend for the workshop to be multi-disciplinary in nature, broad in the approaches participants take and issues they cover. If your work is about any aspect of digital culture, this is the workshop for you! The following are thus only indicative of potential topics that could be raised:

• What kinds of sites/spaces are being connected and why?
• How does identity feature in multi-sitedness?
• How does multi-sitedness feature in our knowledge and experiences of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity and disability?
• What are the problems and benefits of convergence?
• What role are mobile and ubiquitous computing technologies playing in multi-sitedness?
• How are commercial and non-commercial artifacts, digital games/TV/Radio/newsprint for example, being situated within and across physical and virtual spaces?

Following from the first workshop we continue to see this workshop having three purposes. First, we seek to give voice and structure to existing digital media, ICT and technology related research which may not readily sit within conventionally accepted areas. Second, we wish to draw in research on new forms of digital technology, ICT, computing, organizing and social interactions. Third, we want to continue discussions regarding potential futures for ICT related research, which combine research as related to the evolving forms and functions of organizations and the changing boundaries and relations between these organizations and their social milieus.

Workshop Arrangements
The fee for presentation/attendance at the workshop is £80. This will cover refreshments and meals throughout the workshop and a dinner to be held on the evening of the 1 July.

There is no fee for PhD students, however they still need to register for the workshop. PhD student registration includes refreshments during the workshop but excludes attendance at the workshop dinner (This is subject to a £25 fee, payable upon registration).

You can register for the workshop at: https://shop.salford.ac.uk

The workshop is being held in association with the Innovation Bazaar details of which can be found here: http://www.isos.salford.ac.uk/innovation_bazaar.php

Location of the workshop
The workshop will be held at CUBE.

CUBE (Centre for the Urban Built Environment) is an architecture centre and a member of the Architecture Centre Network. Located in the city centre of Manchester on Portland Street, it occupies a 500m2 gallery and seminar space. The remit of CUBE is to create and promote understanding of the built environment through activities including exhibitions, events, debates, educational projects and publications.

If you experience any difficulties regarding the workshop arrangements, please do get in touch with Deborah Woodman: d.woodman@salford.ac.uk

Presentations Include:

• Vicki Trowler – University of Cape Town – South Africa
  Political promiscuity and multi-modality
• Phoebe Moore – University of Salford – UK
  Was it an internet election?
• Helen Keegan and Frances Bell – University of Salford – UK
  Multiple spaces and discontinuities as transformative tools
• Daniel Villar Onrubia – University of Oxford – UK
  Mobility – personal learning environments – and the use of space in higher education
• Carolyn Downs – University of Salford – UK
  Growing up in a virtual world: girls – identity and facebook
• David Kreps – University of Salford – UK
  Grindr: immoderation vs sin in the global virtual gay bar
• Saeideh Hajinejad – Stockholm University – Sweden
  Gender representation of iranian youth on facebook profile pictures
• Isis Amelie Hjorth – University of Oxford – UK
  Analysing distributed agency in collaborative open source film making: towards a theoretical framework suitable for multisited ethnographies on networked creators and cultures
• Enas Al-Lozi and Anastasia Papazafeiropoulou – Brunel University – UK
  “And why would i participate?” a framework of value exchange and roles in digitally engaged communities
• Rachel mclean – University of Bolton – David Wainwright – University of Northumbria and Jeff McCarthy – Manchester Metropolitan University
  Football social media:  playing the game – but where is the trust?
• Chris Bull – Manchester Metropolitan University – UK
  Multiplicity – congruity and the development of e-gambling commerce in the uk
• Nic Crowe – University of Brunel – UK
  “We die for the glory of the emperor”: young people and ‘playing’ at war in on-line role playing games
• Ben Light – University of Salford – UK
  Missing cultures across video games: queers – gaymers and the terms of their inclusion

SingStar Abba

I’ve prompted myself to do this as I realise I need a space to jot things down as I remember them.  Like today, I discovered the tracklisting for SingStar Abba, which I know my friend Helen will be dying to get her hands on (and so am I – let’s be honest).  I think this is an important development in the game’s development trajectory as it is a disc dedicated to a particular artist.  The tracklist is at the end of this post.  Interestingly on the forums, there are many people saying they don’t like the idea of songs that are not well known going on this disc, and the fact it’s a disc rather than the content being made available via the SingStore.  Personally, I like the idea of disc because (as me, Elaine Ferneley and Gordon Fletcher have written about and will discuss at AOIR 9.0), it extends the gameplay experience by allowing you to easily take the disc to someone elses house (it’s a bugger trying to cart a PS3 around with all your downloaded songs on).  There’s also chatter from those who enjoy Guitar Hero and Rockband.  Although these games are also in the genre of  ’music as gaming’ as I like to call them, they are very much, I feel, targeted at a very different market to SingStar (male teenagers me thinks). It seems these gamers want SingStar to be like those games – very rock oriented…  They’ve described SingStar’s current content as camp – which some of it is, but there’s a lot that isn’t.  Very strange when you think one of the tracks on the first Rockband disc is by Garbage – who have written about gender bending! (see: Androgyny)  There’s something here to look at, just not quite sure what yet!

Anyway, who knows if I’ll keep this up, it’s taken me about half an hour to write this post!

The SingStar Abba Tracklist for PS3 (supposedly): Chiquitita, Ring Ring, Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight), SOS, Take A Chance On Me, Summer Night City, Dancing Queen, Super Trouper, Does Your Mother Know, Thank You For The Music, Fernando, The Day Before You Came, Happy New Year, The Name Of The Game, Head Over Heals, The Winner Takes It All, I Do I Do I Do I Do I Do, Under Attack, Knowing Me Knowing You, Voulez Vous, Mamma Mia, Waterloo, Money Money Money, When All Is Said And Done, One Of Us.

What more could you ask for?