Creating Second Lives 2011: Blurring Boundaries
* 8-9 September 2011, Bangor University, Bangor, Wales UK
* School of Creative Studies and Media, Bangor University;
* Conveners: Dr Eben J. Muse and Dr Astrid Ensslin;
* https://sites.google.com/site/csl20110908/
The Creating Second Lives conference is a chance to explore lives lived in virtual worlds, electronic games, MMORPG and other parts of cyberspace. Following Creating Second Lives 2008: Reading and Writing Virtual Communities, the theme of Creating Second Lives 2011 is the blurring of boundaries in the mixed reality of ubiquitous computing and augmented reality. New technologies are moving users into the screen (Microsoft’s Kinect), making the user the screen (MIT’s Sixth Sense), and bringing the content out of the screen into the world (smartphones, Layars, Wikitude). Pervasive games, Digital tourism, telematic art and telematic performance are only a few manifestations of this new set of boundaries that must alter our definitions of fundamental concepts of culture, gender, identity, race, nation, authority, geography, space, narrative and time. The distinction between second life and first life is blurring at an increasingly rapid rate.
More details after the jump
We invite proposals for twenty minute papers that examine how people are using these technologies to cross boundaries (technical, spatial, temporal, cultural, social, political, linguistic, ludic, economic) through a range of theoretical and applied, empirical, critical, rhetorical, creative, economic and professional approaches.
Conference papers will be considered for subsequent publication in a special, themed issue of the Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds.
Keynote speakers:
* Michael Nitsche, Associate Professor in Digital Media at Georgia Institute of Technology: “Fourth Walls and Second Lifes”
* Paul Sermon, Professor of Creative Technology at the School of Art & Design in the University of Salford
Please e-mail abstracts of 250-300 words to e.muse@bangor.ac.uk along with your name, affiliation and title of paper. All queries should also be directed to this address. Please include in your proposal any technological needs. The deadline for submission is 31st May 2011. Selection of papers will be made by 15th June. Further information concerning the conference may be found on our website: https://sites.google.com/site/csl20110908/