[Air-l] [cultstud-l] VECTORS CALL FOR FELLOWS (fwd)

[david silver]

vectors has been publishing / platforming some really interesting work.  see below for details.

david

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2006 11:37:04 -0800
From: Tara McPherson <tmcphers at usc.edu>
Reply-To: Cultural Studies <cultstud-l at comm.umn.edu>
To: CULTSTUD-L at comm.umn.edu
Subject: [cultstud-l] VECTORS CALL FOR FELLOWS

Summer 2006 Fellowship Call for Proposals
Vectors: Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular

The University of Southern California’s Institute for Multimedia Literacy is 
pleased to announce a third annual Fellowship program for summer 2006 to foster 
innovative research for its digital publishing venture, Vectors: Journal of 
Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular.

First launched in 2005, Vectors is an international electronic journal 
dedicated to expanding the potentials of academic publication via emergent and 
transitional media. Moving well beyond the text-with-pictures format of much 
electronic scholarly publishing, Vectors brings together visionary scholars 
with cutting-edge designers and technologists to propose a thorough rethinking 
of the dynamic relationship of form to content in academic research, focusing 
on the ways technology shapes, transforms and reconfigures social and cultural 
relations.

Vectors adheres to the highest standards of quality in a strenuously reviewed 
format. The journal is edited by Tara McPherson and Steve Anderson, with 
Creative Directors Erik Loyer and Raegan Kelly and Lead Programmer Craig 
Dietrich, and is guided by the collective knowledge of a prestigious 
international board.

About the Fellowships
· Vectors Fellowships will be awarded to up to eight individuals or teams of 
collaborators in the early to mid- stages of development of a scholarly 
multimedia project related to the themes of Difference or Memory. Completed 
projects will be included in Volume 3 of the journal in 2007. Vectors features 
next-generation multimedia scholarship, publishing work that can only be 
realized in an online format.

Volume Three, Issue One: Difference
From Charles Babbage's 19th century "Difference Engine" to Derrida's 1980s 
neographism "Différance," the notion of difference has served as a provocative 
metaphor for thinking about language, culture, politics, technology and 
identity. This issue of Vectors encourages diverse examinations of the notion 
of difference as it plays out in a variety of cultural spheres, discourses and 
practices. We are interested in a broadly-conceived notion of difference, one 
that engages technology and culture or that might be productively examined 
through the format of an interactive multimedia journal. In particular, we seek 
proposals that foreground the cultural or political manifestations of racial, 
gender, national, religious, ethnic, geographic, technological or economic 
differences.

Possible areas of investigation include but are not limited to:
-historical and future conceptions of difference
-rethinking otherness, multi-culturalism, convergence
-technologies of difference
-legacies + limits of 1990s theories and manifestations of difference
-sounding out difference(s)
-afro-futurism, speculative differences, future species
-sameness and/or difference, the logics of both/and
-rethinking identity; difference/multiplicity/fragmentation
-post-Katrina, post-9/11, post-racism
-post-feminist gender differences
-war and ethnic/religious differences
-economic disparity and cultural differences

Volume Three, Issue Two: Memory
Jean Luc Godard's dictum that "only the hand that erases can write" underscores 
the ironic and contradictory status of memory in postmodern culture. In an age 
when both history and memory are routinely characterized as being at an end, it 
is more important than ever to closely examine the epistemological precepts and 
rhetorical strategies by which we engage, remember and speak about the past. 
This issue of Vectors explores a range of possible frameworks for thinking 
about memory as a phenomenon that is fundamentally entangled with the 
discourses of competing disciplines, political imperatives and cultural 
contexts. We are particularly interested in proposals that engage the 
eccentric, disruptive and dynamic potentials of memory as it relates to 
history, media, technology, and/or the sciences.

Possible areas of investigation include but are not limited to:
-the impact of proliferating technological and prosthetic forms of memory
-scientific and medical visualization
-visual memory, media and popular culture memories
-memorialization, reminiscence, recall
-the role of nostalgia, desire, psychology and narrative
-amnesia, displacement, erasure, regeneration
-the dynamic interplay of remembering and forgetting; "creative forgetting," 
"active forgetting"
-memory as practice, process and ritual
-reconstruction, reenactment, rescripting and remixing of memories
-counter-memory, chaos and resistance
-discontinuous, fragmentary or disruptive visions of the past
-individual vs. social, cultural and popular memory

About the Awards
All fellowship recipients will participate in a one-week residency June 19-23, 
2006 at USC’s Institute for Multimedia Literacy, where they will have access 
to state of the art production facilities. Fellows work in collaboration with 
world-class designers and Vectors' technical support and programming team 
throughout the project’s development, typically during a span of 3-5 months.

The residency will include colloquia and working sessions where participants 
will have the chance to develop project foundations and collectively engage 
relevant issues in scholarly multimedia. Applicants need not be proficient with 
new media authoring, but must demonstrate familiarity with the potentials of 
digital media forms. Evidence of the capacity for successful collaboration and 
for scholarly innovation is required. Fellowship awards will include an 
honorarium of $1500 for each participant or team of collaborators, in addition 
to travel and accommodation expenses.

About the Proposals
We are seeking project proposals that creatively address issues related to the 
themes of Difference and Memory. While the format of the journal is meant to 
explore innovative modes of multimedia scholarship, we are not necessarily 
looking for projects that are about new media. Rather, we are interested in the 
various ways that 'old' and 'new' technologies suggest a transformation of 
scholarship, art and communication practices and their relevance to everyday 
life in an unevenly mediated world.

Applicants are encouraged to think beyond the computer screen to consider 
possibilities created by the proliferation of wireless technology, handheld 
devices, alternative exhibition venues, etc. Projects may translate existing 
scholarly work or be entirely conceived for new media. We are particularly 
interested in projects that re-imagine the role of the user and seek to reach 
broader publics. Work that creatively explores innovations in interactivity, 
cross-disciplinary collaboration, or scholarly applications for newly 
developing scientific or engineering technologies are also encouraged.

Proposals should include the following
· Title of project and a one-sentence description

· A 3-5 page description of the project concept, goals and outcome. This 
description should address questions of audience; innovative uses of 
interactivity, address and form. Please also detail the project’s argument 
and its contribution to multimedia scholarship and, more generally, to 
contemporary scholarship in your field.

· Brief biography of each applicant, including relevant qualifications and 
experience for this fellowship

· Full CV for each applicant

· Anticipated required resources (design, technical, hardware, software, 
exhibition, etc.)

· Projected timeline for project development

· Sample media if available (CD, DVD, VHS (any standard), or NTSC Mini-DV); 
for electronic submissions, URLs are preferred but still images may be sent as 
e-mail attachments if necessary)

Projects that articulate a clear understanding of the value of multimedia to 
their execution will be the most successful. Take seriously the questions "Why 
does this project need to be realized in multimedia? What is to be gained by 
the use of a rich media format for the argument or experience I aim to 
present?"

Electronic applications are preferred. Please submit to:
vectors at annenberg.edu

Mailing address
Vectors Summer Fellowships
Annenberg Center for Communication
746 W. Adams Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90089-7727

Priority will be given to applications received by April 15, 2006. Fellowship 
recipients will be notified in May 2006.

Additional Information
For additional information about Vectors and the Vectors Summer Fellowship 
Program, please visit http://www.vectorsjournal.org
Questions may be directed to Tara McPherson tmcphers at usc.edu or Steve Anderson 
sfanders at usc.edu



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