The 26th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts

[jason]

[I'll be there. It is a hoot...]

GENERAL CALL FOR PAPERS

The 26th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts

Blurring the Boundaries: The Trans-Real and Other Movements

Wyndham March 16 - 20, 2005
Fort Lauderdale Airport Hotel

Guest of Honor: Rudy Rucker
Guest Scholar: Damien Broderick
Special Guests: John Kessel and Albert Goldbarth
Permanent Special Guest: Brian Aldiss

Autobiography made fantastic. Reality redefined. According to trans-realist Rudy Rucker, it's "writing about immediate reality - or your idiosyncratic perceptions of it - in a fantastic way." At ICFA-26, we look forward to a broad range of discussions examining the trans-real and other movements that blur the boundaries between genres and between worlds, including the New Wave, Cyberpunk, the Interstitial Arts, Slipstream, the New Weird, and more.

And, as always, we also welcome proposals for individual papers and for academic sessions and panels on the work of any of our guests OR ON ANY ASPECT OF THE FANTASTIC IN THE ARTS IN ANY MEDIA. The deadline for submission of individual proposals is 1 December, 2004. Keep checking www.iafa.org for updated information on guests, registration, and submission information.

Comments

[sunir.livejournal.com]

I could easily argue that a world defined by digital network media is a mystical and magical world, where the metaphor inversion (http://usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?MetaphorInversion) is real.

Versus, of course, the representation confusion (http://usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?RepresentationConfusion) endemic to the mythologizing of cyberspace (http://usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?CyberSpace#quixotic) that is not real.

That is, software (http://usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?WhatIsSoftware) itself is a new writing form that is in a stage similar to the introduction of writing in civilization, with scribes and interpreters, except it has aspects of it that hail back to pre-agrarian society where the Word was real.

I'd have to separate the wheat and chaff from that which spewed from McLuhan though, so I may not be able to do this credibly by March.

What do you think? Or is this already well understood?

[complicittheory.livejournal.com]

"duh!" of course! I've been working on a reading of cyberspace as revenant and cryptic. A fantasy reading may be better. It is populated by fantasitic creatures, right? Aristotles' daemons? Fire it off...

[sunir.livejournal.com]

Hmm... well, I just read up on IAFA and realized that I would probably be out of place there, and not particularly interested in what other people are talking about. I mistakenly thought it was an electronic arts conference. So I think I'll pass. Sorry. :P

[complicittheory.livejournal.com]

And when you submit to Stephanie (smoss@cas.usf.edu) mention that we talked.