Over the past decades, and especially since the generalization of the Internet, artists have been actively exploring the potentialities of new media languages and communities, often blurring artistic categories. Movements like Digital Art or Internet Art clearly demonstrate how these technological means came to shape challenging new territories for contemporary art, not only in terms of creation, reception and participation, but also regarding its preservation, collection, curatorship or exhibition.

Yet, interestingly enough, while many of these virtual projects successfully embrace immateriality as a prolific category, many others fail to propose utterly innovative environments, as they merely seek to reproduce conventional museum models: uncritically digitizing existing collections, following the same classification and display criteria or duplicating, online, real exhibition spaces.

To what extent is the permanence of the ‘physical’ determining the shape of virtual art works and environments? What are the differences between digital representations of an existing museum building and a purely virtual, web-based exhibition space? How are we to study, classify, preserve and exhibit Internet art works and collections? How is the emergence of the ‘intangible’ affecting heritage, exhibitions design, art practices and public participation? Is ‘intangible museography’ a new field of specialization for scholars, museum professionals and independent curators?

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We welcome 20-minute presentations, in English, (followed by 10-minute discussion) from a wide variety of disciplinary perspectives related to contemporary art. Encouraged topics and case studies may include, but are not limited to:

• Digital and Internet Art
• Virtual Exhibitions
• Online Collections, Archives and Data Bases
• Collaborative Contemporary Art Projects
• Digital Preservation / Media Obsolescence
• Communities and Social Participation
• Art and Piracy
• Romanticism, Empathy and Affect
• Politics and Activism
• Virtual Museums as Utopian Architecture
• Intangible Museography

SUBMISSIONS

Please send 300-word abstracts, in English, no later than 15th July 2014 to: [log in to unmask]

Submissions should include the following details:

• Full title of your paper;
• Your name and institutional affiliation;
• E-mail and postal address;
• Short biographical note (100-150 words). 

Submitted proposals will be peer-reviewed. Selected papers will be eligible for publication.

The conference will include plenary lectures by keynote speakers and thematic sessions for registered delegates, as well as debates with artists and curators.

For more information, please check the website: http://unplace.org/opencall-papers/