READ_ME 2004
                    software art festival
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     Software Art and Cultures      Runme-Dorkbot
            conference               city camp


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The third edition of the Read_Me software art festival will be held
at the end of August 2004 in
Aarhus, Denmark. Read_me 2004 will consist of the conference at
Aarhus University and the city camp
organized by two friendly entities: Runme.org and Dorkbot. The
conference and the city camp will be
held consecutively.

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This is an announcement concerning the Software Art and Cultures
conference. The information on the
Runme-Dorkbot city camp will follow later.

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Software Art and Cultures conference aims to provide an opportunity
for people researching
software art and culture to share their findings.
The art movement known by the name "software art" has been active for
a few years, and similar
phenomena under different names have been developed and researched
for a few decades. It is our
belief that there is a sufficient body of thinking in this and
related areas taking place that
there should be a platform for aiding further discovery and enrichment.

Software art is a practice that regards software as a cultural
phenomenon that defines one of the
significant aspects of our lives today. Thus, software is not
regarded as an invisible layer, but
rather as a significant entity contributing to reproduction or change
of certain orders, whether
aesthetic, cultural, social or political.  Software art creatively
questions and redefines software
and its ways of functioning.

Software art embraces a wide range of practices: from formalist
experiments with code and its
execution to software manipulation that does not require any specific
knowledge, from alternative
tools built from scratch to add-ons and deconstructions, from real
software to projects not written
in programming languages at all, but which deal with issues relevant
to software criticism or
culture. Software art deals with a wide range of topics, including
social, political, and aesthetic
issues. In many cases, it addresses and becomes part of software
culture itself.

Software cultures - cultures generated by programmers, designers and
software users - are generous
sources of thinking on digital culture and society. Software cultures
define the way software is
created and functions, thus influencing the composition and function
of the basic infrastructures
of digital society. In this way, software cultures become inseparable
(though largely
underestimated) from the forms digital work, social institutions and
cultural manifestations take
today. Software cultures initiate social change, act in political
spheres, create and discover new
artistic realms and methodologies.

The conference encourages participation of specialists in various
disciplines: multi-disciplinary
researchers including non-academics, art theorists, and other
thinkers and learners interested in
the effects of software and software cultures on art, culture, and
society - and in ways to analyze
them and challenge existing patterns.

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This is a call for submissions of abstracts (up to 2500 characters).
Authors of accepted abstracts
will be asked to submit the full paper before 1 of June, 2004 (up to
25000 characters) and present
it during the conference. The papers will be published prior to the
conference. We aim to provide
grants for travel and lodging for speakers without institutional backing.

Deadline for abstracts: 1 of March, 2004
Deadline for notification of acceptance: 1 of April, 2004

Abstracts may be submitted to: Olga Goriunova  <[log in to unmask]> and Soeren Pold
<[log in to unmask]>
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