[spectre] Call for Papers/ Acoustic Space Journal: Trans-Culture Mapping Issue

[Marc Tuters]

===============CALL FOR PAPERS===============

Acoustic Space, special issue of on "Trans-Culture Mapping"

http://rixc.lv

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The RIXC Centre for New Media Culture seeks manuscripts for its 
upcoming Acoustic Space journal, to be published for the 7th 
international Art+Communication festival in Riga Latvia, September 
30th- October 3rd. Now in its 5th edition, Acoustic Space is a forum 
for net-radio and new media artists broadly interested in the idea of 
making visible the invisible. This year's journal, Trans-Culture 
Mapping, will focus, in the context of European expansion, on ideas of 
locality, cartography and the politics of open-systems.

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The ability to visualize a space relates to its domination where 
borders are maintained by a legions of state cartographers, enforcing 
hierarchical regimes of power from the level of the biological to the 
geopolitical.

Against the US-led 'coalition of the willing' of which Latvia counts 
itself a part --informed, as it is, by the US Strategic Command's 
objective of "Full Spectrum Dominance" (that seeks the unilateral total 
domination of land, sea, air, cyberspace and outer space)- this 
publication is interested in projects that re-appropriate mapping as a 
means cultural expression.

The publication seeks to offer a space of exchange for grassroots 
activists and new media practitioners who are critically exploring 
ideas of locality, in response to the continental European (and global) 
process of "normalization".

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Sub-themes

Locative Media
Governments and corporations worldwide are constructing a geo-rectified 
real-time digital-double of earth-systems, which, with the advent of 
the mobile Internet and the ever increasing ubiquity of 
location-sensing technologies, allow for urban space to become 
conceived of as a site for digital media and, potentially, emergent 
social organization. Yet, beneath the manifold promise of collaborative 
cartography, is the harsh reality of 'total information awareness'. Can 
locative media escape its own axiomatic system?

Spectrum Ecology
Advances in wireless internet technology are changing not only how 
people connect to the internet but also how they approach the wireless 
spectrum itself. This section seeks to map how ideas of use and 
ownership are being analyzed and reconsidered in this environment.

Tactical Cartography
Social softwares have become a means of mobilizing people without 
having to go to the "Media" to convey a message. Problems, however, 
persist in making the leap into more mainstream circuits of power. How 
can maps be used both to help legitimize certain "fringe" 
Internet-debates and throw light on the nature of multinational 
capitalism?

Endocolonization
In the context of a "War on Terror", global borders are being mapped 
_within_, in a battle for "hearts and minds". While we may celebrate 
aspects of European integration, smaller States must also be cautious 
of the wholesale adoption of various monoculturing techniques that 
threaten their local diversities.  How does "the local" assert itself 
while at the same time avoiding becoming reactionary and 
fundamentalist.

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We encourage you to submit documents of various lengths and forms, so 
long as they related to one of the sub-themes, and display an internal 
consistence.

All inquiries regarding submissions should be made to Marc Tuters 
<mt at x-i.net> and Rasa Smita <rasa at relab.net>

While we ask for documents in English, we actively encourages 
submissions from non-Anglophones, especially Eastern Europeans.

Please submit documents as RTF's and any images separately in a high 
resolution format.

Deadline for final submissions: August 1st