February 16, 2010 - 8:29am
There is a scene in the Oscar-nominated film Up in the Air where two corporate
high-flyers compare the merits of various airline and hotel loyalty plans
before romance and inevitable complications ensue.
The plans, with their easy to use membership cards, are one example
of the evolving types of communities that are being examined by faculty of Vancouver Island University’s Media
Studies Department, English Department, and Graphic Design Program and Creative
Writing student Alison Pitcher.
“It’s an exercise to think about what is changing in our
culture and our society,” said Doug Stetar, chair of Media Studies at VIU and
one of the presenters of the Arts and Humanities colloquium Process over Product : : Collaboration and
Machine Communities.
“We look at the Internet and social media and the way people
travel now and we see groups and communities forming that never could have
formed in the past,” Stetar said. “At the same time, we feel our local
communities are under threat.”
VIU’s Literary Theory Research Group and the Datastream
Media Collective are collaborating to examine the nature of communities through
a variety of inter-disciplinary approaches. The inter-disciplinary approach to
the colloquium is one of the key ways to break down barriers and allow the
participants to take a broader perspective at societal issues.
“We need to have a conversation about what’s going on in
society and how much we know about what is going on,” Stetar said.
Participants will provide a look at their works in progress
at VIU’s Library Boardroom 10 to 11:30 am Friday, Feb. 19. The presentations
are free and open to the public. The projects will be shown in more complete
form in May.
The collaborations between theorist/writers and digital
artist/practitioners are inspired by Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben,
author of The Coming Community. The
concept of “machine communities” reflects the kinds of associations created by
corporations, governments and others that use technology such as databases.
Among the works are:
Desire & Machines: Auralizing Community by English
professor Daniel Burgoyne, Digital Media Technology professor Robin Davies, third-year
English and Creative Writing student Alison Pitcher, and Digital Media
Technology professor Marian van der Zon. Examples of historical and
live aural machine communities will be used to show human-machine interactions and
their impact.
Knitting: A Community
Machine? by Graphics Design
technician Kevin Mazutinec and English professor Frances Sprout. This explores how the
ancient craft of knitting is influenced by the evolution of online websites
such as Ravelry.com where old-fashioned knitting circles have been replaced by
a database with more than half a million members.
Archival Machine Communities & the
State of Exception by English professor Richard Lane and Digital Media
Studies chair Doug Stetar. This collaborative video probes themes such as
forces colliding, shifting rules and the horrific example of community evident
during the Shoah or Holocaust.
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For more information, contact Katharina Rout (Katharina.Rout@viu.ca)
or Helen Brown (Helen.Brown@viu.ca)
Tags: In the Community
