Distributed Creativities Call for Papers

Distributed Creativities

University of California, San Diego Visual Arts Department
Graduate Conference
Call For Papers

Please Circulate

The Ph.D. graduate students in the Visual Arts Department at UCSD are soliciting papers for their 2009 Graduate Conference, scheduled for April 4, 2009. The conference, "Distributed Creativities," will explore the distribution of creativity and issues of collaboration. These issues have played a central role in artistic production since ancient times. From era to era and culture to culture, assigning (or taking) credit for artistic authorship has involved an ever-changing/shifting set of criteria. In the modern period, corporate involvement with and patronage of art, along with increasingly sophisticated techniques of mass production have challenged the authenticity of artistic expression as well as the notion of individual artistic genius celebrated by Giorgio Vasari in the 16th century. In this conference we hope to explore the connections between collaboration, creativity and artistic production, from the construction of ancient cities to the pervasive influence of digital media in contemporary art practice.

Possible points of questioning include, but are not limited to:

problematics of authorship
premodern guild systems
artists and artisans
Originality, copies, remix, mashup
humanism and the individual genius
locative media – place, mobility, augmented reality
the rise (and fall?) of the "creative class"? (Richard Florida)
Intellectual property issues
collective storytelling, audio narratives and sound art
open source and crowdsourcing
tactical media – performance, agency and activism
responsive architecture and relational environments
advertising and marketing strategies
digital and interactive work
mechanical reproduction (Walter Benjamin)
material labor
cognitive capitalism
free culture
digital commons and social networking
fair use of creative products in a creative society
defending ownership

We welcome all graduate students with related interests to submit abstracts (300-400 words) or full papers by January 5th, 2009. Participants will be notified in mid January, and final papers will be due in mid March. The authors of chosen papers will be asked to prepare presentations of approximately 20 minutes.

Please send all submissions to visarts-conference at ucsd dot edu . Kindly include the name of your university or home institution, department of study and degree program (MA, PhD, etc.).

We would like to open submissions to graduate students in departments such as: Art History, Visual Arts, Cultural Studies, Area Studies, Classics, Antiquities, Film Studies, Sociology, Anthropology, Latin American Studies, Asian Studies, Communications, Urban Studies, and others, this list is by no means exhaustive.