At the turn of the 20^th century, techniques of observation and of visual representation were achieving an exponentially fast industrial revolution of production, distribution, and reception.  Presses and cameras were faster, more precise, and as their influence on society rapidly broadened, a whole new set of visual practices became available to artists. Since then, vision has become fully fragmented or accelerated, with the collapse of “classical models of vision and their stable space of representations. Instead, observation [became] increasingly a question of equivalent sensations and stimuli that have no reference to a spatial location” (Crary 1990). These advancements encouraged a perpetual deconstruction of vision prompting new techniques of representation, which are still ongoing in our technological age.

During this period, print and visual media developed new modes of combining words and images that both dynamize vision and normalize it in new directions. This results in media forms that playfully engage the eye in nonlinear visual explorations, forms that are implicitly forces of deinstitutionalization of subjects, framing, and usages. Examples can be found in comic strips and magazines, but also advertisements, games, miniatures, puzzles, rebus, travelogues and visual bibles.

This conference invites an intermedial reflection on the development of modes of reading and seeing in relation to constraints of production and distribution. We welcome contributions on subjects ranging from a medium’s early stages of development up to the present digital world, while addressing issues of readability, narrativity, interactivity, and/or materiality. How did new ludic modes of seeing develop from scientific observation to artistic production? What techniques did artists develop to increase the readability of their medium? How did they negotiate the tensions between originality and standardization? What new visual norms were established along the way?

Bringing together scholars and practitioners, the conference aims to understand how popular media art contributed to the ludification of vision, training our eyes to see in playful, nonlinear and equivocal ways.

We welcome submissions on any aspect of ludification in the visual arts and its adjacent practices. Please send an abstract (300 words maximum) with a title, bio, and a brief bibliography related to the paper (maximum of 5 titles) through this submission form  by October 31^st. We plan to announce decisions by November 21.

Bibliography

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