[spectre] CFP: PostSENSORIUM Conference @ RIXC Art Science Festival, Deadline Augt 20, 2021!

Tue Aug 3 15:10:13 CEST 2021

Dear All,

Please find below the call for (virtual) Open Fields 2021 RIXC Festival 
Conference, which this year is devoted to the topic of PostSENSORIUM. 
The conference takes please from September 23-25, 2021, virtually in 
Zoom. The only physical event of this year's festival will be the 
international exhibition in the National Library of Latvia and RIXC 
Gallery in Riga.

Deadline for conference abstract submission - August 20, 2021,
You can apply here -> https://openfields2021.rixc.lv/openconf.php

Looking forward to see you in the virtual 'venue' of Riga conference!

Best,

Rasa

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PostSENSORIUM

RIXC Art Science Festival 2021
and Open Fields Conference
September 23–25, 2021, Riga, Latvia (Virtual) 
https://festival2021.rixc.org/

PostSensorium, this year's RIXC Art Science Festival and the Fourth Open 
Fields Conference (virtual), will take place from September 23-25, 2021, 
exploring the immensity of our virtual and real life challenges that 
demand a renewed focus on sensory perception and embodied experiences.

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Open Call for Conference Proposals

 Deadline – August 20, 2021 

APPLY NOW! https://openfields2021.rixc.lv/openconf.php
https://festival2021.rixc.org/

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PostSensorium festival aims to provide a platform for artistic 
interventions and critical discussions on 21st-century's virtual sensing 
technologies, science and aesthetics, reconsidering the relations 
between the actual and virtual, organic and artificial, natural and 
techno-social, human and “more-than-human”... 

The PostSensorium Festival Program will feature the Opening of the 
PostSensorium Exhibition (the only physical event of this year's 
festival) showing the works by internationally recognized artists who 
are at the forefront interrogating novel sensing tools, immersive 
technologies, and experiential art practices.

The PostSensorium Virtual Program will consist of the annual Open Fields 
Conference, online WebVR exhibition and Screening Program by young and 
emerging artists, Live Concert and Performances from RIXC Greenhouse, 
Artist Talks and outstanding Keynote Lectures discussing the 
contemporary mediums, artistic practices and novel tools for exploring 
human and “more-than-human” sensoriums, AI and aesthetics of the 21st 
century, and art practices creating new immersive experiences.

* Keynote Speakers

Christiane PAUL / chief curator and director of the Sheila C. Johnson 
Design Center and professor of media studies at The New School / Adjunct 
Curator of Digital Art at the Whitney Museum in New York City / well 
known as the author of the book “Digital Art” (Thames & Hudson. 
2003/2008) / curator of “The Question of Intelligence: AI and The Future 
of Humanity” (2020) exhibition.

Oliver GRAU / art historian and media theoretician / Chair Professor for 
Image Science and Dean of the Department for Cultural Studies at Danube 
University, Austria / author of “Virtual Art: From Illusion to 
Immersion” (MIT Press/Leonardo Book Series, 2003), and other books on 
media art history and immersive arts.

Douglas KAHN / sound and media art historian, theorist and writer / 
Emeritus Professor at the National Institute for Experimental Arts at 
the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia / author of 
“Noise Water Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts” (MIT Press, 1999) and 
other books on sound art history and “energies in the arts”.

* Concept and Themes

“We like to imagine ourselves as rational beings who think and speak, 
yet to live means first and foremost to look, taste, feel, and smell the 
world around us.” (Emanuele Coccia, 2016)

The human sensorium has always been mediated. “Without the 'medium' of 
air or water, the anthropoid ear finds it impossible to hear” (Caroline 
A Jones, 2006). But with more recent enhancement of virtual and sensing 
technologies, and intensification of its daily use, our 'sensoriums' 
have become more mediated than ever before. Recent conditions of 
navigating our lives between the virtual and the real, demand a renewed 
focus on sensory perception and embodied experience.

Earlier cyberfiction referred to the body as a “meat machine”, the only 
function of which is to facilitate the activity of the brain, so – to 
think; while our thinking separated from the body was considered to be a 
purely transcendental act. Even if contemporary neuroscience 
increasingly confirms that our “will'' is an effect of basic autonomic 
neurons (hence, 'sensing'') we keep designing our machines, including 
the intelligent ones, “to foster the fantasy that bodies are separate 
from the minds that 'control' them”. Moreover, as an art historian, 
curator and author Caroline A Jones puts it that “embodied experience 
through senses (and their necessary and unnecessary mediations) is how 
we think”. (Jones, 2006)

According to contemporary philosopher Emanuele Coccia “our existence – 
whether sleeping or awake – is a relentless stream of the sensible…”, 
yet the communication of two – body and mind, imaginative and physical, 
natural and artificial – needs a medium, as “the things are not the 
sensible themselves, they need [a media] to become visible, tangible, 
audible”. (Coccia, 2016)

PostSensorium festival will take on the earlier RIXC studies on 
“techno-ecological perspective” aiming to open it up towards broader 
discussion on “post-sensorium conditions”; whereby asking which mediums, 
technologies or practices are better than others served to reveal our 
sensorium – as mediated being and extended reality.

The festival will gather together artists, theorists, and researchers 
who are in a forefront of exploring the “post-sensorium conditions”, 
critically interrogate transformative potential of arts, and use virtual 
sensing tools for creating new embodied and immersive experiences in 
which sensible and actual, embodied and imaginative, natural and 
artificially intelligent are in a continuous interaction..

* OPEN CALL: Open Fields 2021 Conference (Riga/Virtual)

We welcome proposals for the PostSensorium conference by artists, PhD 
students and researchers from different fields, who explore extended 
reality applications, virtual sensing tools and other immersive 
technologies, use data, AI and ML algorithms; collaborate with science, 
biology, ecology and other disciplines; create and critically engage 
with  embodied experiences, immersive environments, and experiential 
practices.

Topics:

- Embodied Experiences and Extended Reality
- Virtual Sensing, Photogrammetry and Experiential Art Practices
- Sensory Perception and Sonic Immersions
- Intelligent Ecosystems and More-Than-Human Conditions
- Ecologies Beyond Green - Light, Energies and Fields
- Living Technologies - Artificial Intelligence & Biopolitics

DEADLINE for Conference Abstract submissions:
August 20, 2021

Please submit your proposals online:
https://openfields2021.rixc.lv/openconf.php (direct link to submission form)
http://festival2021.rixc.org (more info / conference and festival website)

Conference proposals should consist of:
- title and abstract (max 200 words),
- 5–6 keywords,
- short author's biography (120 words).

* Publication

The selected papers will be published in the new edition “GREEN 
Revisited” of Acoustic Space (Volume 19) / Renewable Futures (Issue 4), 
co-edited by Rasa Smite, Jens Hauser and Kristin Bergaust, published by 
RIXC, 2022.
Call for full papers is open with the deadline October 30, 2021, for the 
participants of the Open Fields 2020 and 2021 and Renewable Futures 
conferences – PostSensorium (OF2021, Riga), Ecodata (OF2020, Riga), and 
Living Technologies (RF2021, Oslo).
Send your submissions to: rixc at rixc.org and cc: rasa.smite at rixc.org 
(editor).
More info: http://acousticspacejournal.com

* Exhibition

The virtual conference and festival program will be connected to the 
exhibition, the only physical event of this year's festival that will 
take place from September 24 until November 12, 2021 in the National 
Library of Latvia and RIXC Gallery, featuring immersive and experiential 
artworks by fourteen international artists. The exhibition will be 
complemented by onsite guided tours and interactive educational programs 
for the local public of Riga and Latvia, as well as virtual excursions 
by curators and artists for online audiences.

* Context: GREEN Revisited and Renewable Futures

Open Fields is the annual RIXC Art Science festival conference based in 
Riga and organized in collaboration with its academic partner – MPLab 
(Art Research Lab) of Liepaja University, Liepaja, Latvia. Open Fields 
is a leading Baltic Nordic platform for critical discussions on emerging 
discourses and novelty art forms in the field of artistic research, 
digital media, art and science, and techno-ecologies.

 Open Fields is a part of Renewable Futures, a larger international 
network and biannual traveling conference series in the Baltic Sea and 
North European region that aim to invent new avenues for more 
sustainable and imaginative future developments, shaping new contact 
zones between traditionally separated domains – art and science, 
academic research and independent creative practices, sustainable 
businesses and social engagement in the 21st century. The first 
Renewable Futures conference took place in Riga (2015), followed by two 
next editions in Eindhoven (2017) and Helsinki (2018).

This year, the fourth Renewable Futures conference will take place in 
Oslo, in November 4-6, 2021, exploring the topics related to “Futures of 
Living Technologies”. Currently, the Call for Renewable Futures 2021 
“Living Technologies” virtual conference in Oslo is also open with the 
deadline – September 6, 2021.  More info and submission from is 
available here: https://feltproject.no

This year's Open Fields 2021 “PostSensorium” (virtual) conference in 
Riga, and Renewable Futures 2021 “Living Technologies” (virtual) 
conference in Oslo, are manifesting a closing phase of “Green Revisited 
- Encountering Emerging Naturecultures (GREEN)” Creative Europe's 
cooperation project. The GREEN project aims to develop a European 
platform that shapes and promotes an emerging “naturecultures” paradigm 
via the arts and enhances criticality by investigating the pervasive 
greenness trope.
http://green.rixc.org

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* Registration Fees / Tickets

Festival's Virtual Program offers festival passes as well as single 
event tickets:
- Conference Registration Fee / Festival Pass – 18 EUR /
Discount for students – 10 EUR
- Single Event tickets (Keynote Talks, Conference Panels, Virtual Tour 
by Curators through the Exhibition, Video Screening, Concert and 
Performances) – 5 EUR / 3 EUR (with student discount)

On site Exhibition in the Library and Gallery has a free entrance. 
 Guided Tours for school groups can be booked for no charge via e-mail 
rixc at rixc.org

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* Support and Partners:

The PostSensiorum Conference is co-organized by RIXC's academic partners 
- MPLab (Art Research Lab) of Liepaja University and RISEBA University 
of Applied Sciences.

The PostSensiorum Festival and Conference program take place in the 
framework of “Green Revisited - Encountering Emerging Naturecultures 
(GREEN)” project co-funded by the EU program Creative Europe. GREEN 
project is led by RIXC in collaboration with the partners Baltan 
Laboratories (The Netherlands), Emmetrop (France), Zavod Projekt Atol 
(Slovenia), Oslo MET (Norway), Biofilia at Aalto University (Finland), 
MPLab / Art Research Lab at Liepaja University (Latvia).

The festival is supported by The State Culture Capital Foundation of 
Latvia,  Riga City Council, the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of 
Latvia, Goethe Institute, and others.

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* Producers and Contact:

The Festival is Produced by The RIXC Centre for New Media Culture.
Festival curators: Rasa Smite (rasa at rixc.org) and Raitis Smits 
(raitis at rixc.org)
Festival producer: Agnese Baranova (agnese at rixc.org)
PR and information coordinator: Liva Silina (rixc at rixc.org)
Contact e-mail: rixc at rixc.org
Phones: +371 29635167 (Agnese Baranova), +371 26546776 (Rasa Smite)
Address: RIXC the Centre for New Media Culture, Lencu iela 2, Riga, 
LV-1010, Latvia

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https://festival2021.rixc.org/

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