Testing New Ground: An Interdisciplinary Discussion on Hybrid Habitats
has been accepted for presentation at ISEA2011 Istanbul next September.
Panel members in addition to myself are:
Panel Abstract
Unique synergies will emerge from this panel discussion on the habitat as theorists and artists speak to the ways in which their current research raises insights into contemporary modes of technologically mediated inhabitation.
With a focus on diverse sites that are both material/virtual, actual/imaginary, discussion will consider the issues at stake as we shift from imaging and thinking of the screen as a portal to other worlds or a mirror of those that we actually inhabit to alternative accountings of the hybrid and augmented experiences on offer.
The mixed realities of new urban destinations, artworks that employ game engines and 3D platforms to make visible the conditions for alternate life and consciousness, space stations that are no longer just artificial worlds actually occupied by astronauts but augmented realities inhabited potentially by all earth dwellers - these are all sites that move beyond established understandings of the integration of screen and communications technologies with physical architecture in the form of the digital city or the virtual worlds that have been conjured up through digital networks to be embodied by the user as avatar.
In contemporary culture, alternative forms of inhabitation, both imaginary and actual, embodied and sensorial, are being enacted that point to possible transfigurations of the screen as a habitat.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 at 3:36PM 
