Telepresence to Teletrust

Call for Expressions of Interest to Participate in day 2 of an Online Symposium 2021. Deadline  midnight (UTC),  18^th June 2021.

The Telepresence to Teletrust Symposium is a two-day event focusing on the ,‘third space’ between tangible and mediated presence’.  The event takes place on-line on 8-9th July 2021 and is organised by the EMERGE research centre.

Day 1 is open to the public to enjoy presentations from a rich list of expert speakers.

Day 2 is reserved for a limited number of participants interested in participating in workshops that take a ‘deep dive’ into the subject and designed to expand and intensify research opportunities in this field.

Please take a close look at the outline of the symposium’s principal aims below. If you care to participate in day 2 then send an expression of interest with a brief summary (200-500 words) of how your research or practice relates to the themes by the deadline, midnight (UTC),  18^th June 2021.

Please submit expressions of interest to: telepresence2teletrust@gmail.com

Telepresence to Teletrust

Live telepresence through new platforms such as Zoom, Teams, Facetime, Jitsi etc have become fully embedded in our lives. Like it or not this way of being together is here to stay. In the post-Covid push for a zero-carbon economy, international travel will be radically curtailed and remote working will become if not the norm then far more common. Welcome to a world of virtual assemblies and blended communications.

This symposium aims to recuperate the rich resource of spatial and temporal experimentation that artists and creative researchers have developed over many years. Our conviction is that these experiments will help us move towards richer and more embodied forms of virtual encounter. In addition we aim to use the event to crystalise these ambitions in the form of proposals for exhibitions and/or a publication, a critical primer, an ABC of Telepresence, a phenomenology of Telematics.

The talks and presentations are encouraged in but not limited to of the themes of embodiment, society, aesthetics and politics, refracted through the lens of the following questions:

• How is the proliferation telepresence changing what it means to be reflexively ‘present’ to one another?
• what scope might there be to shape new directions for these platforms that go beyond the ghostly dance of endless ‘talking-heads’?
• How we are to avoid the emergence new forms of alienation?
• Given that billions of live feeds can be seen as just one more stage in a process of endless fragmentation what are the possibilities for creating a third space between tangible and mediated presence, stepping outside the usual binaries of the real and the virtual?
• How do we provoke creative responses that break the frame and go beyond the limitations of existing platforms?

Practical Information

Day 1 principal speakers will give presentations will be followed by panels and Q&A.

Day 2 will start with a facilitated workshop asking participants to use the one of the existing teleconferencing platforms in imaginative, anarchic, chaotic, collaborative, and unexpected ways modelling new modes of talking and thinking about Telepresence.”  Following this there will be intensive workshops with an aim to generate chapter proposals for a forthcoming critical primer on Telepresence.

Confirmed speakers for day 1:

Prof. Caroline Nevejan, Chief Science Officer City of Amsterdam.  www.nevejan.org

Prof. Paul Sermon, University of Brighton, http://paulsermon.org/pandemic-encounters/

Ghislaine Boddington is a Reader in Digital Immersion  ,Creative Director, body>data>space  and Women Shift Digital- The Internet of Bodies 

Prof. Atau Tanaka, Professor of Media Computing Goldsmiths, University of London PI for AHRC project Hybrid Live https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FV009567%2F1

Ali Hossaini, Co-director of National Gallery X, online gallery  https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/national-gallery-x

Prof. Maria Chatzichristodoulou Associate Dean Research, Business & Innovation Editor-in-Chief, International Journal of Performance Arts & Digital Media (IJPADM)

Karen Lancel and Hermen Maat Artists and researchers. https://www.lancelmaat.nl/about/about/