”Image not Available”: Networked Visuality and Its Limits
American University of Paris, 10 May 2014

Contemporary images are networked images, seemingly ever-available and easily adaptable. Yet they always remain contingent on a multiplicity of structures, platforms, operations, and protocols. This international conference considers the boundaries and hazards of today’s networked visual experience by examining relationships between systems, devices, and the images they produce, store, and circulate. Drawing on perspectives and examples from anthropology, art, computing, film and media studies, in addition to other fields, the conference takes an interdisciplinary approach to exploring the consequences of our increasing reliance on complex networks for access to, and understandings of, the image.

Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:

-- systems of classifying, archiving, distributing or displaying images or visual data
-- distributed aesthetics and new image forms, genres or practices
-- visual aspects of locative media or ambient intelligence
-- technological constraints on production, circulation or conservation of images or visual data
-- privacy, policing, surveillance or censorship
-- image commodification, copyright, copyleft or Creative Commons

Abstracts of 200-250 words, accompanied by a short biographical statement, should be submitted to Stephen Monteiro at smonteiro@aup.edu by 15 February 2014. Responses will be sent before 25 February.

Proposals that extend beyond the global North and/or explore typically underrepresented cultural frameworks and contexts are particularly welcome.