Watson Conference University of Louisville October 16-18, 2008
One of the primary reasons I wanted to do the Watson Conference this year was catch Paul Miller, aka, DJ Spooky, that Subliminal Kid. What other reason is there to haul down to Kentucky? As it so happens, DJ Spooky canceled. Boooo! I was checking out the one line descriptions last night, and, still, it looks to be a very promising conference nonetheless. I’ve never gone to Watson (I actually didn’t even hear about it till last year), but the list of speakers is strong enough that I’d want to go even without.
Here’s a list of the featured sessions:
Featured Speakers
The 2008 Conference, The New Work of Composing, will follow previous Watson Conferences in alternating plenary sessions with concurrent sessions.
Plenary Session I-New Perspectives on Technology, Media, and Communication:
- Andrew Feenberg- Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Technology in the School of Communication, Simon Fraser University
- N. Katherine Hayles- Distinguished Professor of English, University of California, Los Angeles
- Lev Manovich- Professor of Visual Arts, Universtiy of California, San Diego
- Mitchell Stephens- Professor of Journalism, New York University
Plenary Session II-New Forms of Textuality:
- Janet Murray- Professor and Director of Graduate Studies School of Literature, Communication and Culture, Georgia Institute of Technology
- Matthew Kirschenbaum- Associate Professor of English, University of Maryland
- Richard Miller- Chair and Professor of English, Executive Director of the Plangere Writing Center, Rutgers University
Plenary Session III-Access and Agency:
- Valerie Kinloch- Assistant Professor of Adolescent Literacy and English Education, The Ohio State University
- David Kirkland- Assistant Professor of English Education, New York University
- Joe Lambert- Executive Director, Center for Digital Story Telling
- Omar Wasow-PhD Candidate in African American Studies and Political Science at Harvard University and Co-founder of BlackPlanet.com
Plenary Session IV-Text and Image:
- W.J.T. Mitchell- Professor of English and Art History, University of Chicago.
- Diana George- Professor of English and Director of Composition, Virginia Tech
- Anne Wysocki- Associate Professor of English, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Plenary Session V-The New Work of Composing: A Roundtable on Teaching, Scholarship, and Administration:
- Jonathan Alexander- Associate Professor of English and Campus Writing Coordinator, University of California, Irvine
- Cheryl Ball- Assistant Professor, Illinois State University
- Scott DeWitt- Associate Professor of English, Director of the Digital Media Project, The Ohio State University
- Bump Halbritter- Assistant Professor, Director of the MSU Documentary Lab, Michigan State University
- Charles Kostelnick-Professor and Chair of English, Iowa State University
- Andrea Lunsford- Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor of English and Director of the Program in Writing and Rhetoric, Stanford University
Of course, Kate Hayles and Lev Manovich are very big draws. I’ve kept up with Hayles over the years and read My Mother Was A Computer a couple of years ago. Though How We Became Posthuman was an award winner and all that, particularly as it brought discussions of cybernetics to the humanities, conceptually, My Mother was a Computer is a better book, particularly through her discussions of embodiment and information. She corrects her earlier alignment with the Donald McKay strand of first order cybernetics and recognizes that the disembodied information transmission in Claude Shannon’s theories remove the phenomenological subject from the center of the situation. By taking the set of possible situations and connotations out of the equation (unlike Mckay), my take is that Shannon is a stronger believer in chance and randomness. By multiplying the total set of possible messages that can be transmitted and ignoring how a user might need those messages to suit his or her desires, Shannon’s model opens the possibility of connection through multiplicity, a step towards emergence theories. McKay is caught in interpretation, a problem that situates the human in the center of situation and reveals a desire for stability and control. Those who follow Mark Hansen in media theory would recognize Hansen’s arguments about embodiment and his alignment with McKay, but Hansen’s embodiment, the way I read it, is just another word for the subject, since for him, the body is the site of the origin of information.
Oh, well, I guess I felt like I needed to get that off my chest. I have a long section on this in my book, and you can read about it more when it comes out (not anytime soon–no contract yet). I haven’t read Hayles’ new book Electronic Literature, but from the back of the book, you can see that Hayles is now arguing that neither the body nor machines should be given theoretical priority. I like this better though I’d push harder to make strong distinctions between the body and the subject. In A Counter-History of Composition: Towards Methodologies of Complexity, rhetoric’s own Byron Hawk handles this well.
Since the Language of New Media, i haven’t really kept up with Manovich’s work. Much of what he’s done has been with other writers and he’s been doing a lot of digital stuff. A lot of the other names are familiar and their talks should be interesting, but the conference itself has tons of great people. My own paper is going to be on how virtual forms of temporality are actualized through Web 2.0, and how we can channel these temporalities that are already structuring our lifeworld as open-ended starting places for writing new media.
Man, bummer about Spooky bailing. I’m using a few selections from his recent -Unbound Sound- to kick off the semester in one class and part of -Rhythm Science- in another. A major blow! But! I think we’ll still have a good time! …and it will have to do for now given the news concerning C’s.
Anyway, what’s new with the Mets?