Critique 2013: in intl conf reflecting on creative practice in art, architecture, and design (Nov 2013, Adelaide Australia)

Dates: 26-29 November 2013
Location: University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia
Website: www.critique2013.com
Deadline for submission of abstracts: UPDATED 7 April 2013

Critique, and by extension criticism, is a vital part of both the everyday creative-practice and teaching in the creative disciplines. The critique of creative works, such as buildings, drawings, images, or artworks, is pivotal for creative practitioners and the broader public to understand the work’s creative and cultural value. In other words, not just judgements of the aesthetic pleasure that the creative work might provide, but, more broadly, what cultural values and critical positions are expressed by the work. However, there are fewer and fewer opportunities and forums in which to mount such cultural critiques of creative practice and its production. The nature and role of critique is changing. So to the public’s perceived value of critique has waned since the 60s, and today is largely thought of as exclusionary intellectual navel-gazing that only permeates the walls of universities and academic journals. The more familiar everyday practice of debating the latest shock-jock celebrity gossip or news-cycle driven political sound-bite seems preferable to deeper and more meaningful interrogations of cultural and environmental questions. It would appear that perhaps both the critique and the critic are in need of cultural reinvention.

Discursive Space Conferences 2013 (20-23 June 2013, Ryerson University and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada)

Dates: 20-23 June 2013
Location: Ryerson University and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada
Deadline for submission of abstracts: 15 January 2013
Submit to: jmacalik@ryerson.ca
Website: www.discursivespace.com

With the theme “Discursive Space: breaking barriers to effective spatial communication in museums”, the conference provides a forum for deliberation concerning the integration of art, design, and architecture in the creation of memorable and immersive museum experiences, while balancing the public’s expectations of self-directed expression and engagement.

Annual Conf of Assoc. of Art Historians Session: Art and Cybernetics/ Art and Technology (April 2013, Berkshire UK)

Dates: 11-13 April 2013
Location: University of Reading, Berkshire UK
Website: http://www.aah.org.uk/annual-conference/2013-conference
Deadline for proposals: 12 November 2012

The session for the annual conference of the Association of Art Historians (April 11-13, 2013) redresses a lack of attention to cybernetics globally. It invites presenters in the visual arts and from non-art disciplines to reconsider or generate new knowledge about generations and geographies of art and cybernetics and art and technology, including practices that create, distribute, and theorize art forms, concepts, and histories. Papers may explore cybernetic phenomena in artistic environments; examine artistic play on logic and reason; consider how art or non-art agents treat cybernetics as a social and cultural paradigm, or question how cybernetics is presented in historiographies of recent art and what interfaces of cybernetics and art bode for intra- and inter-disciplinary research and practice.

The Art of Research IV: Making, Reflecting, and Understanding (Nov 2012, Helsinki)

Dates: 28-29 November 2012
Location: Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture; Helsinki, Finland
Website:  http://designresearch.aalto.fi/events/aor2012/
Submission deadline for abstracts: 10 June 2012

While the power of artistic imagination is widely recognized, the exploration of artistic and designerly methods of knowledge acquisition underway in academia has only just become accepted by other professional communities of researchers and practitioners inhabiting the academy. Building on contemporary discourse regarding notions of practice-led research, the Art of Research Conference 2012 aims to explore the relations that can be constructed between making and critical reflection, and how these enable artistic and designerly practices to be characterized as art and design, or artistic or designerly research. Given how different fields of creative practice may be constructing these relations in different ways — e.g, in methods, tools and skills — the main aim of the event is to explore how these fields might relate to and influence each other.

Journal of Research Practice (JRP) Special Issue: On Reflecting and Making in Artistic Research Practice (Feb 2011)

Proposals due: February 28, 2011
Website: http://jrp.icaap.org/index.php/jrp/announcement/view/6

Over the last 2 decades, a lively discussion has developed about the relationship between art and research. The roles of the professional artist and the professional researcher have come closer to one another and often merged in fruitful ways. The new institutional connection between research and art/design has promoted much discussion concerning how reflecting and making may be combined in productive ways.

A special issue of the Journal of Research Practice (JRP) will focus on artistic research practice, drawing attention to the process of expressing, performing, creating, inventing, in short, reflecting and making, in the process of art and research. The special issue will cover the overlapping area between art and research. It will give a platform to artists who are exposing some form of inquiry within the context of their art practice.

Ambience’11: where art, technology and design meet (Nov 2011, Sweden)

An international conference, and exhibition, which welcomes researchers and artists/designers/architects to the University of Boras 28-30 November 2011.
Extended abstracts of papers and exhibition proposals should be submitted no later than: April 1 2011.
Website: http://www.ambience11.se/

The Ambience conference focuses on the intersections and interfaces between technology, art and design. The first international conference in the Ambience series was held in Tampere, Finland in 2005. In Tampere 2005 the basic theme was “Intelligent ambience, including intelligent textiles, smart garments, intelligent home and living environment”. In Boras 2008 it was “Smart Textiles – Technology & Design” and in Boras 2011 it will be the new expressional crossroads where art, design, architecture and technology meet; digital architecture, interaction design, new media art and smart textiles.

Boundaries? New Histories in Art, Architecture and Design (Apr 2011, Bristol UK)

Deadline for submissions: 2011-02-11
27th April 2011, University of Bristol

A one-day postgraduate conference on the theme of ‘Boundaries’ organised by the RX-Research Exchange in the History of Art network.

Boundaries divide and indicate limits; they can be geographic, historical, social or disciplinary. But what happens when those boundaries are crossed? What about the spaces in-between boundaries, what can occur in these liminal spaces?

Further Information and the full CfP is available from: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/arthistory/news/2010/44.html

Popular Culture Association Conference (Apr 2011, Texas)

We are now calling for papers in the area of Popular Art, Architecture and Design for the annual Popular Culture Association Conference, 20 – 23 April 2011, at the Marriott Rivercenter, San Antonio, Texas. Popular Art, Architecture and Design is concerned with the aesthetics of popular culture in the everyday world of the past, present and future. Scholars from such disciplines as Architecture, Art History, Fine Art, Industrial Design, and Interior Design are invited to submit proposals. At previous conferences topics have included World Fairs, architectural follies, urban image, Buckminster Fuller, Tadao Ando, urban memory, Disneyland, railroad stations, literary architecture, Vietnamese shop-houses, mobile homes, and the effect of television on home, and clothing design. It is truly a broad arena. Please e-mail a cover letter with contact information and 150-word abstract of your proposed paper to Dr. Loretta Lorance at <llorance@earthlink.net>  and Dr. Derham Groves at <derham@unimelb.edu.au>. NO ATTACHMENTS.

The deadline for abstracts is December 15, 2010.

For information about the Popular Culture Association, please go to: http://www.pcaaca.org/conference/national.php.

2nd Leonardo Satellite Symposium: Arts, Humanities, and Complex Networks (Jun 2011, Budapest)

We are pleased to invite you to Arts, Humanities, and Complex Networks — 2nd Leonardo satellite symposium at NetSci 2011 taking place at the Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest, on Tuesday, June 7, 2011.

Deadline for application: 6 February 2011.

Abstract:
We are pleased to announce the second Leonardo satellite symposium at NetSci2011 on Arts, Humanities, and Complex Networks. The aim of the symposium is to foster cross-disciplinary research on complex systems within or with the help of arts and humanities.

The symposium will highlight arts and humanities as an interesting source of data, where the combined experience of arts, humanities research, and natural science makes a huge difference in overcoming the limitations of artificially segregated communities of practice. Furthermore, the symposium will focus on striking examples, where artists and humanities researchers make an impact within the natural sciences. By bringing together network scientists and specialists from the arts and humanities we strive for a better understanding of networks and their visualizations in general.

NORDES2011: 4th Nordic Design Research Conference (May/June 2011, Helsinki)

Theme: Making Design Matter!
Location: School of Art and Design, Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland
Deadline for submission: 10 January 2011

Nordes calls for perspectives on ‘Making Design Matter’. In the 2011 Nordic Design Research Conference, you are invited to present and discuss how design matters today.

Nordes 2011 in Helsinki is the 4th in a series of biannual conferences, which has included conferences in Copenhagen in 2005, Stockholm in 2007 and Oslo in 2009. Organized by Nordes – an open network of people interested in design research in the Nordic countries – the conference is attended by about 200 people and has rapidly been established as an important venue for design research. It serves several constituencies in design, ranging from design studies, history and management to professional design and practice-based research in art, crafts and design.

Participation is also open to people from outside the Nordic countries.

This website will be continually updated with information about the conference. Click above or here to read the Call for Participation!