The call for participation in next year’s MIX conference has been released, and there are two exciting opportunities.
First, there is a call for papers to be presented at the conference, with a deadline of 30 January 2017.
Second, in association with Paper Nations, there is a competition to create work for Bath Spa University’s MediaWall. The deadline for proposals for work to appear on the MediaWall is 31 October, 2016.
In addition to these, there will also be another call put out soon for writers and artists to present their work at the conference, with further details coming shortly.
Next year’s conference will be held at Bath Spa University from the 10th to the 12th of July, 2017, and will center around the theme of “Revolutions, Regenerations, and Reflections.”
The conference will feature a lot of terrific keynote speakers, including Dr Elizabeth Evans, Assistant Professor in Film and Television Studies at the University of Nottingham; Anna Gerber and Britt Iverson from Visual Editions/Editions at Play; and Prof Caitlin Fisher, Director of York University Augmented Reality Lab, Toronto, Canada.
Most importantly for us, however, is the keynote from Ambient Literature’s own Prof Jon Dovey, Digital Culture Research Centre and Pervasive Media Studio at the University of the West of England.
Also, the second of our Ambient Literature commissions will debut at the conference.
It promises to be an amazing event, so check out the details below.
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MIX 2017: REVOLUTIONS, REGENERATIONS, REFLECTIONS
BATH SPA UNIVERSITY, NEWTON PARK CAMPUS. 10-12 JULY 2017
CALL FOR PAPERS AND PRESENTATIONS
After the success of the last three MIX conferences, MIX 2017 returns to Bath Spa University’s Newton Park Campus. Bath Spa University is the UK’s foremost provider of creative writing programmes at undergraduate, masters and PhD level and MIX is well-established as an innovative forum for the discussion and exploration of writing and technology. MIX has attracted an international cohort of contributors from the UK, Australia, and Europe as well as North and South America. MIX is now situated within the recently created international research centres, Making Books: Creativity, Print Culture and the Digital, and the Media Convergence Research Centre.
After more than two decades of innovation and experimentation, the relationship between reading, writing, form, content and delivery platform remains in flux. The ebook has taken its place alongside the print book and the multimedia story app and/or website have become familiar modes for reading and viewing. Developers are creating dramatic story and character-led narratives via independent games while interactive and immersive theatre-makers are finding new ways to engage audiences well beyond traditional theatre spaces. Television storytelling conventions continue to evolve in line with the dominance of streaming services; new reading habits and engagement strategies now surround the form of digital comics. Music exhibitors are forging increased participatory opportunities via developments in live-touring; spoken word continues to thrive at the same time as poetry film is gaining wider recognition; virtual reality and augmented reality are both making in-roads into documentary and fiction; literary forms are morphing and changing in response to the affordances of the smartphone and tablet; pervasive and locative media are shaping how literature is understood and read. Digital media technologies foster creative ways of telling stories across multiple platforms. New media hasn’t been ‘new’ for quite some time and the word ‘digital’ is rapidly becoming redundant as technology becomes more deeply enmeshed within our cities, our homes, our lives.
In this context, a conference that looks at where creative writing, storytelling and media creation intersects with and/or is dependent upon technology should be as interdisciplinary as possible, and that’s what we are aiming for with MIX 2017. The conference will host a vibrant mix of academic papers, practitioner presentations, seminars, keynotes, discussions and workshops. Alongside scholars and researchers, artists, creative writers and creative technologists interested in literary forms are welcome to submit proposals.
Confirmed keynotes include Prof Jon Dovey, Digital Culture Research Centre and Pervasive Media Studio at the University of the West of England; Dr Elizabeth Evans, Assistant Professor in Film and Television Studies at the University of Nottingham; Anna Gerber and Britt Iverson from Visual Editions/Editions at Play; and Prof Caitlin Fisher, Director of York University Augmented Reality Lab, Toronto, Canada.
The themes for this year’s conference are revolutions, regenerations and reflections. We would like to encourage the submission of research papers and artist/practitioner presentations that address these themes in the following ways:
- Revolution: science and writing; turning points and key moments in the development of digital literature; writing in and on urban spaces; 3D environments; writing and narrative using virtual reality and augmented reality; transnational creativity; ambient literature
- Regeneration: young writers and the future of creative writing; new directions and new hybrid forms; remix; hybridity; new possibilities offered by new technological platforms and tools
- Reflection: scholarly or practice-based papers that focus on practice that resides at the intersection of writing, storytelling, media creation and technology; the history of the book and other media forms and how those histories inform present day reading, consumption, publishing and exhibition practices; work which investigates and forecasts the future of reading; digital writing pedagogy
We are interested in work that takes a wide variety of forms, including digital fiction and digital poetry, participatory media, digital art and text, collaborations between writers and technologists, hybrid and cross-media practice, transmedia practice, as well as our on-going themes of the future of the book, new forms of publishing, convergent media cultures and new forms of digital curation. We’ll also look for papers and presentations on digital and interactive theatre-making, including scriptwriting, performance and technology, and ambient literature, including mobile, locative, pervasive and other site-specific forms. As in previous conferences, papers that focus on pedagogy in any of these fields are also welcome.
We will have several strands of discussion, and these will include transnational creativity as well as interactive documentary; the Bristol-based interactive documentary group, iDocs, will offer a series of screenings. The second of three new works commissioned for the AHRC-funded research project, Ambient Literature, will be launched at MIX 2017.
NAWE, the National Association of Writers in Education, will be joining BSU to curate the pedagogical strand of the conference. In the teaching of creative writing, from primary to postgraduate level there is an increasing need to incorporate cross media practice. How can we teach the digital aspects of writing? Innovative practice requires innovative pedagogy. We are keen to receive papers from those who work with creative writing at all levels, primary, secondary, community and post graduate, and to hear about teaching methods, and innovative projects. We welcome submissions from educators who are also artist/practitioners who incorporate their creative practice into their teaching.
In addition to this Call for Papers, we will also issue the following Calls:
- a Call to digital writers and artists for entries to the Exhibition. Further information will be published shortly.
- a Call for the competition to create a work for our MediaWall in association with Paper Nations. Building on the success of MIX 2015’s international artist’s commission for the MediaWall, James Coupe’s ‘General Intellect’, we have teamed up with Paper Nations to commission a writer or artist or team to create a new literary artwork for the Bath Spa University’s MediaWall. The artwork will need to include original writing from young people age 8-14. The aim is to encourage a high level of engagement from schools across England and we would welcome innovative methods for mass participation such as crowdsourcing. Funded by Arts Council England, Paper Nations is the country’s first and only creative writing hub for young people. This ambitious project brings together the best and most innovative arts organisations, creative writers and educators with a common purpose: to inspire a creative nation of young writers. The deadline for applications is 31 October, 2016. For further information go to www.mixconference.org/
Workshop sessions will be offered on aspects of digital making, transmedia practice, interactive narratives, ambient literature and other related topics. Workshops are intended as a space to share innovative practice into the making of digital writing and related themes. We invite proposals from anyone interested in leading one of the workshops as part of this Call – see below for how to submit proposals for workshops.
The conference will also host the launch of the Special Issue of Convergence: the International Journal of New Media Technologies: Writing Digital: Practice, Performance, Theory. This Special Issue arose from themes developed for MIX 2015. A new Call for Papers for an open access peer-reviewed Journal issue will be launched at MIX 2017.
HOW TO SUBMIT PROPOSALS
Abstracts of up to 300 words for a 20 minute paper or presentation or a 90 minute workshop should be sent to mix@bathspa.ac.uk by Monday 30 January 2017. The Abstract must be a separate Word, pdf or rtf file; the document name must be in the following format: Author Surname, Abstract Title, Type of Proposal (i.e. paper/presentation/workshop). The Abstract must stipulate which theme(s) the paper or presentation will address: revolution, regeneration, or reflection.
CONFERENCE PRICING
MIX 2017 Standard £200
MIX 2017 Early Bird £145
MIX 2017 Concession £100
- We guarantee all presenters the early bird price – until a final Call is issued in mid June. If they miss this, the registration goes up to standard.
- Early bird ticket sales for non-presenters cut off mid-May
- The £100 concession is offered to independent practitioners, students, global South, and Bath Spa staff; it is available right up to the conference opening day.
BOOKING
For information about booking into the conference and accommodation, please go to the conference website at www.mixconference.org.
Enquiries to mix@bathspa.ac.uk
We are pleased to announce that MIX 2019 will be hosted by Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia in July 2019.
Bath Spa University Conference Committee: Co-Directors Kate Pullinger and Lucy English, Executive Producer Bambo Soyinka, Exhibition and MediaWall Producer Anthony Head, Event Producer Gavin Bower, Comms Producer Steve Hollyman, Workshop Producer Matthew Freeman, Exhibition and Admin Coordinator Abbi Cross.
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International Call for a new MediaWall Artwork for 2017
- Proposal – 500 words max, including stating what software/technologies are likely to be used.
- CV(s) with short artist statement
- Budget
- 3 work samples or portfolio website url
http://mixconference.org/mediawall-call/
Writers and Artists wanted for new Literary Arts commission.
The biannual conference, Mix 2017 has teamed up with Paper Nations to commission a writer or artistic team to create a new literary artwork for the Bath Spa University’s MediaWall.
For the month of July 2017, we want to commission a new artwork by an artist of international standing, launched as part of the MIX 2017 conference. The artwork will need to include original writing from young people age 8-14. The aim is to encourage a high level of engagement from all young people across England and we would welcome innovative methods for mass participation such as crowdsourcing.
Following the successful delivery of the artwork the Paper Nations team may wish to work with you to further develop the scope of your project. We are keen to use the MediaWall project as a model of best practice for embedding digital writing outreach programmes in schools across England and especially the South-West.
About Paper Nations
Funded by Arts Council England, Paper Nations is the country’s first and only creative writing hub for young people. This ambitious project brings together the best and most innovative arts organisations, creative writers and educators with a common purpose: to inspire a creative nation of young writers.
The partnership of Bath Spa University, Bath Festivals and The National Association of Writers in Education will use a grant of £600,000 from Arts Council England to develop and deliver a three year programme. The consortium will work with 100 schools and a thriving community of regional arts organisations to create opportunities for pupils from deprived areas to work with nationally-recognised creative writers. A research-led professional development programme for teachers and writers will also be devised.
About MediaWall
MediaWall is a uniquely positioned digital gallery space consisting of a large set of 55 inch screens viewable in daylight. It is situated in the Newton Park Campus of Bath Spa University, built into the brand-new Commons building and surrounded by green fields, hills and trees. The nearly 8 metre high, 3×10 screen wall stands like a monolith awaiting an inscription.
Since its launch in June 2014 the MediaWall has exhibited a number of artworks including those by international artists Julian Opie and Bruce Munro, and the text-based OAK, which was a response to Letter to the Unknown Soldier.
This is a rare opportunity to create a literary artwork that can be shown at very high resolution (e.g. 1920 x 6000 pixels) in daylight (unlike a projection).
Requirements
Your proposal needs to be related in some way to text-based narrative. Your concept could be software/data-driven, interactive, live, internet/mobile linked, sensor or camera-driven.
Your proposal will need to include original writing from Young People age 8-14 in Schools from the South-West of England.
Your proposal needs to address the themes and priorities of Paper Nations. These include helping young people to enjoy creative writing, inspiring a creative nation of young writers, exploring ideas for the future of writing with young people and reaching out to disadvantaged communities within the UK.
The writer/artist or writer-artist team needs to be able to realise their idea technically (with appropriate advice and support from the MIX team).
We expect that the artist will be able to start working on the project from January 1st 2017 (with some consultation and preparatory work in Dec 2016). We anticipate that the artistic team will dedicate 30 to 60 days to the project in total.
The artist/s will also need to be available for a minimum two-day visit in March or April, as well as be present for the week before conference up to and including the last day of the conference which runs from 10 -12 July 2017 (7 days in total).
Artist Budget
The award of £8000 must include a budget covering:
- Artistic Fees and Expenses.
- Travel, subsistence, and accommodation for a planning and scoping meeting in Bath between November 2016 and July 2017.
- Travel, subsistence, and accommodation to setup and test in advance and present your work at the MIX DIGITAL 4 conference.
- For 6-12th July, you will need to book accommodation on campus at a cost to the budget of £70 per person per night.
- Equipment needed to support your proposal (ownership of any equipment purchased via the bursary will remain with BSU).
- The University will provide basic technical support needed for the installation of the work; you would need to budget for advanced development, if required.
- Communicating with Schools, parents and children online. Paper Nations will provide a framework for communication and PR , but you will need to outline a budget and plan for any bespoke methods of public communication and engagement.
Eligibility
Technically self-sufficient writer/artist or writer-artist team from anywhere in the world.
Not a current Bath Spa University student, member of staff or recent graduate (< 3 years).
Criteria
- Clarity of proposal
- Achievability of proposal
- Suitability of the proposal to the unique features of MediaWall.
- Potential for engagement with Young People and Schools
- Appropriateness of proposal to Paper Nations themes and strategic priorities.
- Viability of budget
MediaWall Technical Specifications
- MediaWall is powered by one or two PC’s with a 6 output graphic card.
- MediaWall can be treated as one large screen or any number of smaller screens (depending on the software created for it).
- There are many floor points in the 10m+ space in front of the wall, to connect peripheral devices, sensors, power etc.
How to Apply
For questions about the MediaWall and other technical aspects please contact Anthony Head (a.head@bathspa.ac.uk).
For questions about the scope of the call and the Paper Nations project please contact Bambo Soyinka (b.soyinka@bathspa.ac.uk).
Proposals must be sent in before midnight GMT on 31 October 2016. Please send via email to writers@papernations.org with the following attachments:
- Proposal – 500 words max, stating what software/technologies are likely to be used.
- CV’s with short artist statement
- Project Budget
- 3 one page statements about previous work and/or portfolio website url
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