Early bird registration closes on 31st July for
CREATING SECOND LIVES: READING AND WRITING VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES
Bangor University, 24th/25th October 2008
Games and virtual environments are playing an increasingly powerful role in
Western entertainment and narrative culture. Of particular importance are the
constant re- and de-construction of the embodied playing self and the post-
industrialist, customisable fluidity of personal and social identity. This
interdisciplinary conference will shed light on how virtual communities are ‘read’
and ‘written’, i.e. constructed textually through linguistic and semiotic en- and
decoding, by producers and receivers of video and massively multiplayer online
games as well as virtual worlds such as Second Life.
The conference’s major intention is to bring together researchers from a wide
range of different areas, who share an interest in semiotics, stylistics,
codification, new media design, 3D programming and media/cultural studies but
do not always speak the same ‘language’. The conference will facilitate cross-
disciplinary dialogue and understanding by providing room and material for
discussions between scholars, scientists and professionals from the gaming
industry. By doing so, it will help experts identify and debate current and
future developments particularly in relation to the textual construction of
subjectivities, communities and ideologies.
Major themes include:
- How do we ‘read’ and ‘write’ virtual communities, i.e. how are identities,
communities and ideologies constructed textually and discursively in video
games and other digital environments?
- How are user identities ‘coded into’ virtual communities?
- To what extent and to what effect can we apply contemporary stylistic and
semiotic theory and analysis to virtual, interactive communities?
- How do avatars impersonate networks, communities and societies?
- What are the roles of body and mind in virtual communities? Do they
separate or amalgamate?
- To what extent do we need to revisit the notions of ‘virtual’, ‘actual’
and ‘real’ in relation to entextualised social and communal worlds and realities?
- How does and will 3D graphic design contribute – now and in the foreseeable
future – to the construction of social identity?
- What programming tools and methodologies are/may be used to create
virtual communities and inter-'personal' relationships?
Keynote speakers will include Prof Espen Aarseth, Co-founder and Editor-in-
Chief of Gamestudies.org and author of Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic
Literature, and Fred Hasson, founding CEO of TIGA, the UK Games
Development Trade Association.
Abstracts, registration details and provisional programme are available at
http://nieci.bangor.ac.uk/conf/?
q=en/content/creating_second_lives_reading_and_writing_virtual_communities.
http://nieci.bangor.ac.uk/conf/?q=en/content/abstracts
http://nieci.bangor.ac.uk/conf/?q=en/content/registration
Conference organisers: NIECI Research Centre for Video Games and Virtual
Environments (Dr Astrid Ensslin, Dr Eben Muse, Xavier Laurent)
For further enquiries, please contact Simon Holloway, Conference Officer, at
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