OPEN CALL: Mobile Music Workshop 08

The Mobile Music Workshop 2008 is the 5th in a series of annual international gatherings that explore the creative, critical and commercial potential of mobile music. They are inspired by the ever-changing social, geographic, ecological, emotional context of using mobile technology for creative ends. We are looking for new ideas and ground-breaking projects on sound in mobile contexts. What new forms of interaction with music and audio lie ahead as locative media, ubiquitous networks, and music access merge into new forms of experiences that shape the everyday? Can they change the way we think about our mobile devices and about walking through the city?

The emerging field of Mobile Music sits at the intersection of ubiquitous computing, portable audio technology and New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME). It goes beyond today's personal music players to include creative practices of mobile music making, sharing and mixing. The mobile setting challenges existing notions of interfaces and interaction, stretching music to new creative limits. The workshop has been at the forefront of this innovative area since 2004. Past editions of the event have taken place in Amsterdam, Brighton, Vancouver and Göteborg in collaboration with the Viktoria Institute, STEIM, Waag Society, Futuresonic, NIME and others.

The 2008 edition of the workshop will be held in Vienna, one of the hotspots in the European for laptop, glitch, and electronic music. Hosted by the University of Applied Arts, it will feature three evenings of performances and installations, an exhibition in the heart of the city, invited speakers, paper presentations, posters and demo sessions as well as hands-on tutorials. Besides the workshop proceedings, we will publish a catalogue that will gather key contributions from the last 5 years. We invite artists, designers, academic researchers, hackers, industry professionals and practitioners from all areas, including music, technology development, new media, sound-art, music distribution, cultural/media studies and locative media and more to present and discuss projects, prototypes, applications, devices, performances, installations, theoretical and historical considerations.

IMPORTANT DEADLINES

Submission deadline: 10 February 2008
Notification of acceptance: 14 March 2008
Submission deadline for final papers: 14 April 2008
Registration deadline: 14 April 2008

PARTICIPATE

Please upload your submission in any of the three following categories at http://ocs.waag.org/. Submissions will be peer-reviewed by a committee of international specialists in the field.

Papers

We invite submissions of workshop papers presenting new projects, approaches or reflections exploring the topic of mobile music. Potential submissions could include but are not limited to mobile music systems or enabling technologies, interface design, legal issues, user studies, ethnographic fieldwork, social implications, art pieces and other areas relevant to mobile music. Accepted paper authors will be given a time slot during the workshop for presentation and discussion of their work. They are encouraged to bring a demo of their work if possible.

Format: 4 pages in ACM SIG publications format (for templates, see http://www.acm.org/sigs/pubs/proceed/template.html). More artistic submissions are free to pay less attention to the academic or technical detail of the format, and to include more media instead.

Posters and Demos

We also invite the contribution of posters and demos that document work-in-progress projects or ideas in similar areas of mobile music technology as the papers. There will be a poster and demo presentation session where attendees will be able to discuss work with the authors. The most robust of the demos will be offered the opportunity to exhibit to the general public during the open sessions (although this is not mandatory). Posters will be on display for the duration of the conference.

Format: 2 pages in ACM SIG publications format (for templates, see http://www.acm.org/sigs/pubs/proceed/template.html). More artistic submissions are free to pay less attention to the academic or technical detail of the format, and to include more media instead.

Installations and Performances

We invite mobile art installations and performances in the genres of mobile music and locative audio. There will be an exhibition space in central Vienna, and the possibility to show work in the city. There will also be a series of evening performances/concerts/parties.

Format: Please follow loosely the ACM SIG publications format (for templates, see http://www.acm.org/sigs/pubs/proceed/template.html) without too much academic or technical detail and include more media instead. Please indicate if your project would be suitable for indoor or outdoor, installation or performance.

OPEN CALL: Differentiated Bodies

Call for Submissions: Subliminal Statements 3: Differentiated Bodies in Newsletter of the Society for a Subliminal State. Due December 31, 2007. Please email info@subliminalstate.org if you have a question regarding an article you'd like to write. For our third issue, Subliminal Statements asks you to help us grapple with phenomena in the solar system. Differentiated Bodies will examine the objects in our solar system with differentiated composition: from planets like earth, to the legions of asteroids with rocky surfaces and a crystalline once-molten cores.

We want your writings about all manner of celestial objects and subjects:
Planets and Moons; The bands of habitability inside planets further from the Sun than Earth; Comets; Objects in the Asteroid and Kuiper Belts; The Oort Cloud; The Sun, and its swirling combustive surface. Differentiated bodies here on Earth (made of rock, flesh, or anything else) Tell us your story about any of these objects or phenomena. Describe it, uncover it, recount its implications. Tell us how these things effect us. What do we see when we look at the sky, and how does the differentiation of celestial bodies impact our own differentiated bodies and minds. What changes does it enact in us?

FORMAT

Subliminal Statements is published in a newspaper format. Accordingly we will accept articles and essays written in a style befitting a newspaper: written as though reported, brief editorials, etc. Due to the scientific nature of the issue's theme, we are also accepting submissions in the form of scientific papers, charts, or other data-heavy examinations of the theme.

Photos, drawings, illustrations, or other images should accompany text submissions only, and must be able to be printed in black and white. Suggestions for accompanying illustrations are also welcome.

SUBMISSION DETAILS

Text submissions should be a maximum of 500 words, though we will accept excerpts of longer documents. There is no minimum length. In fact, the shorter, the better. Submit your text as .rtf, .txt, or .doc files, your data as .xls, or .csv files, and your images as .png, .tiff, .jpeg, or .gif (8 MB max). E-mail your submissions to jesse@subliminalstate.org with the subject line: Subliminal Statements 3 Submission.

OPEN CALL: Leonardo Music Journal: Why Live?

Call for papers: Why Live? Performance in the Age of Digital Reproduction. Downloads and file exchanges have altered the economics of music of consumption, but have they also rendered the concert hall obsolete? Or have the isolation of ear buds and the ephemerality of digital files actually served to highlight the social significance and sweaty substantiality of live performance? Or are we witnessing the birth of a new “live” virtually social but vitally sweat-free? For LMJ 18 we solicit writing on the significance or irrelevance of contemporary performance practice and its alternatives.
Deadline: 15 October 2007. Rough proposals and queries to Nicolas Collins, Editor-in-Chief, at ncollins[at]artic.edu. More info: http://leonardo.info/.

OPEN CALL: Wireless Technologies, Mobile Practices

Call for Papers: Canadian Journal of Communication
Special Issue on: Wireless Technologies, Mobile Practices
Mobile wireless devices such as handheld pdas, cellular telephones, and portable computers are part of a changing landscape of communications and culture. In the last decade alone, for instance, the use of cell phones has increased fourfold in Canada signaling a remarkable shift in the telecommunications industry, the convergence of a number of technologies onto a single platform, and new ways of conducting person-to-person communication and creating community. In addition to these devices, Wi-Fi networks, Bluetooth, WANS, and GPS comprise integrated segments of the new infrastructure of the so-called wireless world as well as an emergent vocabulary for citizens and consumers. The Canadian Journal of Communication invites submissions, in English or in French, for a forthcoming special issue on mobile communications and wireless technologies. We are interested in innovative, critical approaches that decipher a range of mobile technologies and practices in wireless contexts. Possible themes include:
Everyday uses: sharing our lives via the mobile (text, voice, video)
Civic engagement, activism and mobile technologies
Wireless services and emergency communication
Privacy, surveillance and mobile phones
Community Wireless Networks
Policy: CRTC regulations and spectrum policy
Mobility, Labour: new conditions of work
Shifting notions of space, place and time in a mobile world
Rhetoric and discourses on mobility and wireless worlds
Art, design and mobile technologies
Mobile genres and cellular convergence
Global and international perspectives on mobile technologies

Full-length papers (@ 7000-8000 words) should be submitted electronically following the guidelines laid out on the CJC submissions website (http://www.cjc-online.ca/submissions.php). Make sure to write in all caps "MOBILE" in the Comments to the Editor field, and to include it on the cover page of your article as well. Do not include your name on the cover page. Deadline for papers is Sept. 1, 2007. Papers selected by the editors will then be sent for peer review for final decision.