FW: from the magic lantern to the internet /call

[claudia westermann]

http://www.english.upenn.edu/CFP/archive/Film/0323.html

MULTIMEDIA HISTORIES:
 From the Magic Lantern to the Internet

An international conference organised by the AHRB Centre for British Film and
Television Studies, and the Bill Douglas Centre, Exeter University. This
conference is the culmination of an AHRB project investigating the
continuities between nineteenth-century optical recreations and subsequent
screen technologies. It will take place at the University of Exeter on 21-23
July 2003.

CALL FOR PAPERS

One of the most dominant critical concerns of recent years has been the
attempt to understand the impact of a multimedia culture. The scope and limits
of a multimedia culture have become associated with issues of virtual reality;
interactivity; media convergence and hybridity; body/technology couplings,
etc. These familiar narratives, however, have a much more extended history
than is often realised.

Multimedia Histories will examine the long genealogy of multimedia usage and
discourse. From the 19th C onwards, the proliferation of screen technologies
and optical recreations has been an important element of popular culture.
Moreover, the exhibition and consumption of these entertainments was often
defined by their interrelationship. The mid nineteenth-century drawing room,
for example, typically included stereoscopes and praxinoscopes alongside the
magic lantern.

The conference is keen to pursue a comparative approach by focusing on
specific historical moments of convergence and hybridity. In so doing, it aims
to locate the aesthetics of the new media in relation to an intermedial
tradition of public and domestic forms of screen entertainment. The principal
question it hopes to address is this - to what extent do recent multimedia
technologies extend established features of cinema, television, and the
panoply 19th C and 20th C optical recreations?

Papers are particularly invited on the following key areas:

- Moments of media convergence and hybridity
- Immersion, interactivity and the embodied spectator
- Spaces of consumption and the organisation of audiences, virtual and/or
actual.
- Modes of production and exhibition
- Screen technologies and the tropes conceptualising their usage
- Boundaries and linkages between domestic and public screen entertainment
         
It is planned to produce an edited collection of papers from the conference.
Please send abstracts of c.300 words to james.lyons at exeter.ac.uk or
j.plunkett at exeter.ac.uk, or by hardcopy to: Multimedia Conference, School of
English, Exeter University, EXETER, EX4 4QH. Deadline for Abstracts: 1 January
2003

Conference Organisers: Dr James Lyons and Dr John Plunkett