CALL FOR PROPOSALS

doing digital: using digital resources in the arts and humanities

DRHA07 : Dartington College of Arts : 9 - 12  September 2007
http://www.dartington.ac.uk/drha07/

Bringing together creators, practitioners, users, distributors,
and custodians of Digital Resources in the Arts and Humanities

Over the last decade the annual Digital Resources for the Humanities and
Arts (DRHA) conferences have constructed an unusual kind of meeting
place: a space in which researchers, curators, and distributors of
digital resources could meet and share perspectives on their
complementary agendas.

Last year, that forum was expanded to include
participants from the creative and performing arts, giving the event a
new flavour and a new direction. This year, the conference aims to
explore further major issues at the interface between  traditional
humanities scholarship and the creative arts, by focussing on their
differing or complementary approaches to the deployment of digital
technologies.

Can the Arts and the Humanities share expertise? Are they
divided by a common tongue? To what extent are they developing common
technical solutions to different problem areas? As in previous years,
the conference will articulate these questions by showcasing the very
best in current practice across the widest spectrum of digital
applications in the arts and humanities and by fostering informed but
accessible debate amongst professionals.

The Programme Committee for DRHA07 is now soliciting imaginative and
provocative contributions for the conference addressing such topics as:

     * the benefits and the challenges of  using digital resources in
creative work, in teaching and learning, and in scholarship;
     * the challenges and opportunities associated with scale and
sustainability in the digital arena;
     * new insights and new forms of expression arising from the
integration of digital resources in the arts, humanities, and sciences;
     * social and political issues surrounding digital resource
provision in the context of global ICT developments;
     * the implications of "born-digital" resources for curators,
consumers, and performers;
     * training methods and best practice for digital arts and
humanities practitioners.


Other themes include: interactivity and performance; digital media in
time and space; integration and deployment of existing digital resources
in new contexts; policies and strategies for digital deployment, both
commercial and non-commercial; cataloguing and metadata aspects of
resource discovery; digital repositories; Web 2.0 and other new
technologies; encoding standards; intellectual property rights; funding,
cost-recovery, and charging mechanisms; digitization techniques and
problems.

Format: The conference will take up three intensive days, comprising
presentation of academic papers and technical reports, performance and
installation events,  software and product demonstrations, debates and
training events.  The atmosphere will be informal, the discussion
energetic. Leading practitioners and representatives of key funding
agencies, such as the the Arts Council, the AHRC, the JISC
will be amongst the participants. We hope that from this occasion a
new consensus will emerge based on real life experience of the
application of digital techniques and resources in the Humanities and Arts.

Timetable: Proposals are now invited for academic papers, themed panel
sessions and reports of work in progress.Your proposal should be no
smaller than 500 words and no longer than 2000; closing date for
proposals is  May 2nd 2007.   All proposals will be reviewed by an
independent panel of reviewers, and notifications of acceptance will be
sent out by 13th June 2007. All accepted proposals will be included in
the Conference preprint volume, and will also be considered for a
post-conference publication.


Cost: The all-in conference rate covering all meals and accomodation as
well as conference registration and proceedings will not exceed £400.
Reduced rates for early registration, and partial rates for one-day or
non-residential attendance will be announced shortly on the conference
website.

Further information: The conference web site at
http://www.dartington.ac.uk/drha07/ will be regularly updated, and
includes full details of the procedure for submitting proposals, the
programme, and registration information. Bookmark it now!

(Sent on behalf of DHRA07 Progamme Chair, Lou Burnard, Oxford University)