Conference, June 26-28, 2009, London UK

The conference 'Virtual Reality: Frameworks and (Mis)-Conceptions' aims to further elaborate on both historic and contemporary understandings of virtual reality, to challenge orthodox ways of thinking about virtual reality and examine the term beyond its current technological definitions and applications.

CALL FOR PAPERS:
VIRTUAL REALITY: FRAMEWORKS AND (MIS)-CONCEPTIONS
June 26-28, 2009; London, UK
Organized by
Art, Design and Museology
Department of Arts and Humanities,
Institute of Education, University of London

As early as 1889 Henri Bergson referred to the term virtual in ‘Matter and Memory,’ and later in ‘Time and Free Will’ (1896). Bergson used the term to make an ontological distinction between what is possible and what actual. In 1938 the poet Antonin Artaud, in his seminal book ‘The Theatre and its Double’ understood virtual reality as something that dealt with imagination. Taking these theorists as a point of departure, this conference aims to further elaborate on both historic and contemporary understandings of virtual reality. The conference particularly invites submissions that challenge orthodox ways of thinking about virtual reality and examine the term beyond its current technological definitions and applications. We welcome interdisciplinary papers on the following themes:
• historiographies of virtual reality
• aesthetics of virtual reality
• virtual reality and imagination
• virtual reality and space
• virtual reality and narratives
• virtual reality and the sacred
• power, politics and virtual reality

Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words by email to both:
Dr. Elena Stylianou, Conference Organizer, e.stylianou@ioe.ac.uk and
Dr. Pam Meecham, Co-Organizer, p.meecham@ioe.ac.uk
All paper proposals must be received by January 15, 2009
Notifications of accepted papers by February 1, 2009
Submission of full papers by April 1, 2009