Open Space/Singapore/Southeast Asia

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

We seek submissions for a curated online and on-site exhibition exploring the theme of Open Space. This exhibition will be showcased at the International Communication Association (ICA) Conference in Singapore from June 22-26, 2010. Open Space is mounted as the digital arts exploration of the conference theme Im/Material.

WHAT IS OPEN SPACE?

Open Space imagines a zone of horizontality mobilizing collaboration, participation, complex interactive dialogues, process, permeability, and community. The term open space originates in landscape design, where space is privileged over mass to stage meaningful and often surprising encounters and interactions. It has also emerged as a key environmental concept in the greening of global cities, in architecture, and in international organizational design. Indeterminancy, flexibility, and contingency constitute key strategies in open space.

Open Space proposes a relational mode rather than a fixed object. Open Space suggests work that mobilizes an ethics of convenings and encounters in a sustainable zone. Open Space spurs collaborative knowledges and produces new provisional microterritories through engagement. Open Space is where technologies meet people meet spaces.

WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR?

We seek works and makers exploring the concepts and practice of Open Space in Singapore and Southeast Asia (Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Burma/Myanmar, and Indonesia). We are particularly interested in makers, artists, collectives, and collaborative projects from these regions. Works that are transnational and translational with a central concern of Southeast Asia as nexus will also be considered.

The Open Space/Singapore/Southeast Asia exhibition is looking for digital arts and design projects in any of the following forms/interfaces: online art projects, Alternate Reality Games (ARGs), social gaming, creative robotics and digital devices, locative media, mobile applications, ambient screens, user-generated community narratives and maps, innovative digitally-based cartography projects, web-based archival projects, social media interfaces and projects, installation, live DJ/VJ remixes.

Additionally, any other digital and analog forms that engage a collaborative aesthetic and participatory ethics are eligible for inclusion.

PRACTICAL DETAILS FOR PARTICIPATING PROJECTS

Deadline: March 3, 2010

To submit work: Please send a short, one paragraph description of your project, a short bio, and a link to your project or documentation of your project in an email inquiry to Patricia Zimmermann, Shaw Foundation Professor, Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, at [email protected] no later than March 3, 2010

Exhibition: Projects will be featured on the ICA/WKWSCI website as the Open Space Exhibition. A limited number of artists/makers/collaborative teams will be selected from the overall exhibition to present at sessions and venues at ICA in Singapore June 22-26, with airfare and accommodation provided.

CURATORIAL TEAM

Patricia R. Zimmerman, Nikki Draper, and Sharon Lin Tay, at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore with Wenjie Zhang.

INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATION

The International Communications Association (ICA) (http://www.ica2010.sg) is the largest international academic association for scholars interested in the study, teaching, and application aspects of human and mediated communication. ICA has over 4,500 members from 76 countries. Over 2,000 scholars, writers, and communications practitioners from around the world attend the conference. ICA 2010 is the first time in seven years that the annual conference will be held in Asia.

ICA 2010 CONFERENCE THEME: IM/MATERIAL

Communication is in many respects im/material because it constitutes the very nexus where the material and immaterial dimensions of our world meet each other. Communication is indeed spectral or ghostal because our interactions consist of making present what could have remained absent from a debate, a discussion, a conversation and so on. (from the conference website: http://www.ica2010.sg/conference.html)

WEE KIM WEE SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATION AND INFORMATION
NANYANG TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY, SINGAPORE

The host for ICA 2010 is the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information (WKWSCI) (http://www3.ntu.edu.sg/sci), at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore. Ranked as one of the world’s top 100 universities, NTU(http://www.ntu.edu.sg) is a research-intensive university with globally acknowledged strengths in science and engineering. WKWSCI is one of the premiere institutions for research and teaching in communication and information in Asia. It houses the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre , the Asian Communication Resource Centre, and the Singapore Internet Research Centre.