Invitation to Contribute to the Network Ecologies Digital Scalar Publication

August 5th, 2014 | Posted by amandastarling in Network Ecologies digital Scalar Publication

CFP for new work posted!

Invitation to Contribute to the Network Ecologies Digital Scalar Publication

(Listed also on HASTAC and in HASTAC Opportunities)

The Network Ecologies project has been a multi-year, multi-stage, multi-format, multidisciplinary venture exploring the object and idea of the network and the networked. The first stage was an online forum where invited scholars posted content for comment and critique by their fellow featured scholars. Stage two was an exciting two-day symposium at Duke University that included presentations from an architect, a data scientist, a media philosopher, a multimedia artist, a classicist, a speculative lab performance group, and a pair of game designers. It culminated in a keynote + response from Jussi Parikka and Mark BN Hansen. Stage three involves tracking and tracing the data threads from the previous stages in order to produce a digital publication using the Scalar publishing platform. My design partner, Florian Wiencek, and I dedicated the last week in May to an N_E design-sprint of sorts and, with the help of Scalar’s Craig Dietrich, we mapped a prototype. A few highlights: our content nodes will be networked by keywords and will allow readers to slip into and out of interdisciplinary research threads; our reading paths will be multiple so as to suit a variety of reader-preferences; our conference videos will be annotated with time-matched tweets; and upon release we will open the publication for comment and will integrate the most exciting comments into the text as featured annotations. We live-blogged our data-centered design process and you can see that on our Network Ecologies website. The project will initially be published by Duke’s FHI but we are excited to pursue several other publication prospects that are in the pipeline.

During this Scalar production stage, I am inviting a select group of scholars to contribute original pieces for publication. We’d like the publication to be a ‘living’ publication and the purpose of this call is to further perpetuate both the research conversation and the publication’s interdisciplinary reach.

I ask only two things:

1) That your piece engage the idea or object of the network or the networked.

2) That your engagement be particular to your research. You need not follow any prescribed theoretical trajectory or particular iteration of the network(ed). The very point of this project is for each of us to bring our own research – developed and delivered in its own unique vernacular – together around a to  converge around a single keyword. The assumption is that through transdisiplinary co-mingling and collaboration, both our individual research projects and the Network_Ecologies publication, as a living research hub, can gain new dimension. We hope that by putting diverse minds in dialogue with each other, we can facilitate a more robust understanding of the network by way of merging and (re)mixing multidisciplinary understandings. You also need not follow a prescribed format. Our current data sources include tweets, video, audio, images, text, powerpoint presentations. The beauty of a digital publication, especially one using the Scalar platform, is that we can publish – and annotate – a multiplicity of media forms. For the format of your piece, consider a long- or short-form essay, consider an annotated text, consider a video, consider an audio recording, or consider a hybrid. The Network_Ecologies project appreciates the media-specific materialities of data presentation so if a deliberate and/or particular text/media arrangement is part of your piece, we can work together to realize your vision.

Deadlines will be rolling. The first deadline for final projects is September 20. The second is December 20. If you’d like to contribute but cannot make these deadlines, let me know and we’ll work out a third.

If interested in contributing to one of the first two deadlines, please email me at amanda[dot]gould[at]duke[dot]edu a statement describing your research or project idea by Oct. 1, 2014.

Thanks!

Amanda Starling Gould

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 You can leave a response, or trackback.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *