[Air-L] CFP InVisible Culture Issue 19: Blind Spots

[iskandar zulkarnain]

My colleagues and I in *InVisible Culture* just launched our latest call
for paper for our journal. And we would like to use this list to spread the
word. Feel free to disseminate this CFP!



*Blind Spots*<http://ivc.lib.rochester.edu/cfp-invisible-culture-issue-19-blind-spots/>

*InVisible Culture* <http://ivc.lib.rochester.edu>, Issue 19

To set up a critical conversation under the thematic framework of
“blindness” runs the risk of holding one mode or locus of vision above
others. In other words, by inviting our peers to carry out their thinking
with the question of “blind spots” in mind, do we mean to encourage a
purely negative criticality or counter-discourse aimed at new technologies
of vision: of revealing their artifice and lamenting their hegemony? Such
concerns might provisionally be put to rest when we consider blindness less
as a metaphor for criticism and more as an actual phenomenon, even how
blindness itself might ground a phenomenology. In considering such
questions, we began by inquiring into the horizon of vision as it currently
presents itself. It is as if everything increasingly makes itself available
to sight. Google now not only seeks to “organize the data of the world” but
evidently has in mind the visualization of that data as well--of turning
seeing itself into a question of data, as evident in the company’s various
projects (or products?) such as Google maps and its latest Google glasses
technology. In part because of this hyper-availability of information by
way of (for instance) technologies of algorithmic vision, seeing has not
only become de-centered from the eye: the eye is itself becoming an
obsolete organ, at best a point of *support *for the manifold ways in which
technology narrows the space between itself and bodies. And yet, how might
the blindness of the eye—its “ability” to falter—assist us in thinking
about these new and complex modes of vision? In what way can sensorial
limits be understood as horizons of possibility? What fresh insights might
a critical examination of past discourses on technological vision and
blindness offer to our current understanding of contemporary technologies
of augmented vision?

Another question we hope to address with this issue, then, concerns the
relationship between blindness as a condition of the lived body and
blindness as a condition attributable to certain media. In Derek Jarman's
1993 film *Blue*, film itself is taken up as a medium that might provide
the basis for reflecting upon and even substituting for the AIDS-stricken
artist's own faltering vision. Comprised entirely of a single, seamless
blue image, *Blue *incorporates voice-over from a variety of sources
(including Jarman himself) as a means of envisioning what is “technically”
absent to sight. Both the eye and the film camera lens are, in the case of *
Blue,* mediated by a larger “poetics” of blindness.

By mentioning the examples of emergent technologies of
algorithmic/augmented vision as well as a film such as Jarman's, and by
generally proceeding under this rubric of “blind spots,” we at *InVisible
Culture** *wish to encourage a cross-disciplinary and vibrant conversation
as well as creative/artistic expression concerning the rhetoric of vision
and blindness from the perspective of our culturally, historically, and
technologically unique moment.

Topics could include:

*new media and sensorial “authenticity” * blindness as a
critical-discursive symptom * blindness and affect * media
decay/rejuvenation * glitches * how media reflect on their own blindness *
gender and blindness * impairment and access * blind temporalities *
blindness as form and content * histories and theories of technologies of
visualization (i.e. stereoscope, 3D, IMAX) * race/ethnicity/nationality and
technological blindness * code/algorithm and augmented vision technologies
* blindness and the politics of (in)visibility*

Please send inquiries and completed papers (MLA style) of between 4,000 and
10,000 words to ivc[dot]rochester[at]gmail[dot]com by *September 1st, 2012
at 11:59pm EST*.



*Creative/Artistic Works*
* *In addition to written materials, *InVisible Culture* is for this issue
accepting work done on other media (video, photography, drawing, codework)
that reflect upon the theme as it is outlined above. For questions or more
details concerning acceptable formats, please use the contact form on our
website with the subject "Creative/Artistic Work Submission."

*Reviews*
* **InVisible Culture* is also currently seeking submissions for reviews of
book, exhibition, and film (600-1000 words). To submit a review proposal,
please use the contact form on our website with the subject "Review
Submission."

*Blog*
* *The journal also invites post submissions to its blog feature, which
will accommodate more immediate responses to the topic of the current
issue. For further details, please use the contact form on our website with
the subject "Blog Submission."



<http://ivc.lib.rochester.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/invisibleculture_logo4.png>

** InVisible Culture <http://ivc.lib.rochester.edu/>*(An Electronic Journal
for Visual Culture) is a peer-reviewed journal dedicated to explorations of
the material and political dimensions of cultural practices: the means by
which cultural objects and communities are produced, the historical
contexts in which they emerge, and the regimes of knowledge or modes of
social interaction to which they contribute.


-- 
Iskandar Zulkarnain

HASTAC Scholars 2011-2012
Website: http://www.hastac.org/hastac-scholars<http://www.hastac.org/scholars>

Rochester Intermedia Studies Group

Ph.D. Student
Visual and Cultural Studies
424 Morey Hall
University of Rochester
Rochester, NY 14627

"Ilmu itu untuk dibagi, bukan untuk dimiliki!"