[csaa-forum] CFP: 4S 2023 Open Panel: "The politics and aesthetics of synthetic media"

[Thao Phan]

Hello!

Fabian Offert and I are organising an Open Panel on the "The politics and
aesthetics of synthetic media" for 4S 2023 Honolulu, 8 - 11 November
<https://www.4sonline.org/meeting.php>.

We're interested in papers that take a cultural studies/media studies
approach to the topic of synthetic media (i.e. large language models, large
visual models, foundation models, synthetic data, simulations). We are
especially interested in questions of feminist, anti-colonial/decolonial,
and critical race perspectives on these topics.

Full panel details below.

Warm regards,
Thao Phan (Monash University) & Fabian Offert (UC Santa Barbara)

---

*CFP: 4S 2023 Open Panel: "The politics and aesthetics of synthetic media"*

Submissions open: end April 2023
Deadline: May 26, 2023

Organisers: Thao Phan, Monash University & Fabian Offert, UC Santa Barbara

What is synthetic media? While born-digital objects have existed since the
20th century, the current AI revolution has put a new spin on the question
of digital remediation, in both scientific and cultural knowledge
production. Large visual models are able to emulate established media like
photography without simulating any particular optical apparatus. Large
language models are able to extrapolate text based on minor prompts, an
approach that literalises the cybernetic maxim of communication as
information processing. In what is either the dream or nightmare of media
archaeology, established media become infinitely remixable, as just one
'style' among others. Synthetic media, then, represents a turn from an
aesthetics and politics governed by semiotic, ideological and other forms
of symbolic meaning, to an aesthetics and politics driven by statistical
correlations and probabilistic determinations. Here, the 'stuff' of
culture, such as images and words, are not produced through systems of
human meaning and intention but through opaque computational processes that
ontologically flatten the ineffable qualities of culture into operational
data points. This panel invites STS scholars interested in these new ways
of seeing, listening, reading, producing, consuming and other ways of being
with media. It includes topics like large language and visual models, but
also extends to practices such as the use of artificially manufactured
datasets (synthetic data) and artificial environments (training
simulations). We are especially keen to receive submissions that engage
with questions of aesthetics and politics as articulated through feminist,
critical race, and other frameworks grounded in material analyses of power.

See: https://4sonline.org/news_manager.php?page=31391
<https://4sonline.org/news_manager.php?page=31391>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.cdu.edu.au/pipermail/csaa-forum/attachments/20230417/997293d6/attachment.htm>