CFP: The Contours of Algorithmic Life
A conference sponsored by The Mellon Research Initiative in Digital Cultures
May 15-16, 2014 at the University of California, Davis
Submission Deadline: March 1, 2014
Send submissions to
algorithmiclife@gmail.comAs
algorithms permeate our lived experience, the boundaries and
borderlands of what can and cannot be adapted, translated, or
incorporated into algorithmic thinking become a space of contention. The
principle of the algorithm, or the specification of the potential space
of action, creates the notion of a universal mode of specification of
all life, leading to discourses on empowerment, efficiency, openness,
and inclusivity. But algorithms are ultimately only able to make
intelligible and valuable that which can be discretized, quantified,
operationalized, proceduralized, and gamified, and this limited domain
makes algorithms necessarily exclusive.
Algorithms increasingly shape our world, our thought, our economy,
our political life, and our bodies. The algorithmic response of NSA
networks to threatening network activity increasingly brings privacy and
political surveillance under algorithmic control. At least 30% of stock
trading is now algorithmic and automatic, having already lead to
several otherwise inexplicable collapses and booms. Devices such as the
Fitbit and the NikeFuel suggest that the body is incomplete without a
technological supplement, treating âhealthâ as a quantifiable output
dependent on quantifiable inputs. The logic of gamification, which finds
increasing traction in educational and pedagogical contexts, asserts
that the world is not only renderable as winnable or losable, but is in
fact betterâi.e. more effectiveâthis way. The increased proliferation of
how-to guides, from HGTV and DIY television to the LifeHack website,
demonstrate a growing demand for approaching tasks with discrete
algorithmic instructions.
This conference seeks to explore both the specific uses of
algorithms and algorithmic culture more broadly, including topics such
as: gamification, the computational self, data mining and visualization,
the politics of algorithms, surveillance, mobile and locative
technology, and games for health. While virtually any discipline could
have something productive to say about the matter, we are especially
seeking contributions from software studies, critical code studies,
performance studies, cultural and media studies, anthropology, the
humanities, and social sciences, as well as visual art, music, sound
studies and performance. Proposals for experimental/hybrid
performance-papers and multimedia artworks are especially welcome.
Areas open for exploration include but are not limited to: daily
life in algorithmic culture; gamification of education, health,
politics, arts, and other social arenas; the life and death of big data
and data visualization; identity politics and the quantification of
selves, bodies, and populations; algorithm and affect; visual culture of
algorithms; algorithmic materiality; governance, regulation, and ethics
of algorithms, procedures, and protocols; algorithmic imaginaries in
fiction, film, video games, and other media; algorithmic culture and
(dis)ability; habit and addiction as biological algorithms; the
unrule-able/unruly in the (post)digital age; limits and possibilities of
emergence; algorithmic and proto-algorithmic compositional methods
(e.g., serialism, Baroque fugue); algorithms and (il)legibility; and the
unalgorithmic.
For more information, especially on updates regarding featured
keynote speakers and performers, check out the conference website at:
algorithmiclife.ucdavis.edu
Please send proposals to
algorithmiclife@gmail.com by March 1, 2014.
Decisions will be made by March 8, 2014.