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From: "James Lyons" <[log in to unmask]>
MULTIMEDIA HISTORIES: From the Magic Lantern to the Internet
An international conference organised by the AHRB Centre for British Film
and Television Studies (www.bftv.ac.uk), and the Bill Douglas Centre,
University of Exeter. 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 [log in to unmask], or by
hardcopy to: Multimedia Conference, School of English, University of Exeter,
EXETER, EX4 4QH, U.K. Deadline for Abstracts: 1 January 2003
Conference Organisers: Dr James Lyons and Dr John Plunkett.
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