[game_preservation] Fwd: CFP: 9th MAGIS – Gorizia International Film Studies Spring School Gorizia, April 8 – 13, 2011

[Jose P. Zagal]

-------- Original Message --------
/(This is the CFP for the video games and comics section of the 9th
MAGIS Spring School - University of Udine. /
/As you'll read, the topic of the new edtion of the school is "the
archive".)
/
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*THE ARCHIVE*
/Memory, Cinema, Video and the Image of the Present/

*The 9th MAGIS Spring School*, organized by the* University of Udine*
and the *University of Paris 3* – *Sorbonne Nouvelle*, in
collaboration with their network of partners – *Universities of
Amsterdam*, *Bochum*, *Prague*, *Valencia* and *Milan-Catholic*,
*Pisa* and CineGrap*h/Hamburg* – as part of the activities of
*International Ph.D. in Audiovisual Studies* will be held in *Gorizia*
*from April 8th to April 13th, 2011*. This 9th edition of the MAGIS
Spring School will focus on the relationship between
audiovisual forms and the *notion of “The Archive”*. With the help of
scholars, graduate students, artists, curators and
representatives of art institutions, and through plenary sessions and
workshops, *the 9th Spring School will address “The*
*Archive” in relation to specific disciplinary fields, objects and
perspectives of research: Cinema & Contemporary Visual*
*Arts, Post-Cinema, Porn Studies and Film Heritage*.

*Videogames and Comics section*

Video games, movies, comics and new media, from the internet to mobile
phones, through an elaboration of their inner
specificity and through a rupturing of themselves to absorb the features
of other media, are now orienting each medium by
way of convergence and expansion. Every medium disposes itself
spontaneously into new arrangements, that include
functions often reworked by introducing features, devices and linguistic
choices apparently specific to other "arts" or media.
In this sense, the term "Archive" aptly defines the new media landscape.

The “Archive” is seen as "Database", a spacewhere items of knowledge are
arranged in a paratactic way, measuring their similarities and
differences. This structure sees connections that go through every
single medial experience: the cinematic video games - from Max Payne,
Alan Wake to Heavy Rain and Bioshock; web comics and their derivations
on different media; the branches of the Marvel universe, a constant
collection of characters, stories and visual solutions ready to be
structured in different media universes; the
numerous applications for mobile devices, like Hysteria Project or Make
My Day, that test the possibility of interactive
narratives; ending with the achievement of the mix of art, film,
animation, game art and cultures through the Machinima
productions and the mash-up that are present on the web, or through the
possibilities offered by software like Avatarize
Yourself or virtual worlds like Second Life.

Furthermore the notion of archive recalls the place, both physical
and/or metaphorical, of reserve of memory, secrets,
hidden or unknown stories, details and information. The archive is thus
an opportunity or access to new developments,
further stages or levels, untold narrations or redefinition of old
stories. It is in the comics, films and games the vault or crypt
of secrets, forbidden notions, revelations, the dark side of what
belongs to general knowledge?

In these terms, we raise the questions of how a mapping of this
landscape can be made, and what kind of theoretical problems it may
raise, more specifically:

What kind of remediations of other arts are these media achieving? In
what terms is the past of other arts or of the
individual medium itself re-read (quotations, evocations, copies)?

How does the device of the archive, vault or crypt allow enrichment and
redefinition of previous consolidated narrative
and imaginary legacy? In which ways does it guarantee continuity of
established formats, characters, settings or
instead launch new elements of development?

How do individual games, movies, comics, apps arrange the traces of
memory? In what terms are these paths of memory
activated in each game or any other kind of media form?

What kinds of problems are raised by the archiving, preservation, or
restoration of any objects related to the
contemporary and so to the rapid obsolescence of the media too?

In what terms can the hybridization between real and digital be
measured? How is the narration involved in these
processes? How do the dynamics of the game playing or the ones of
construction of media objects involve the
narration?

In terms of suggestion, aura, emotional colour, what is the added value
of the “archive” device? How does it work?
Which functions and uses are related to it?

What are the criteria for the recovery of gaming and technology's
memory? What are the bodily and mental "experiences"
involving gamers and Internet users? Is it possible to reproduce the
same kind of gaming experience in a future
time and with different technologies?

What is the role of the emulation, the retro-technology and the
conservation? What gaming experiences today differ from
those of the past and how can you preserve them? Is it possible, for
example, to consider the gaming experience
with MAME or Win UAE identical to that of coin-op or Amiga?

What games or media products produce spatial structures that act as
"patchwork", collection, or database of information
and knowledge? How are the dynamics of the game, the landscape, spatial
and narrative variables of texts
constructed as audiovisual cultural databases? What are the "genres" of
video games or media that help to develop
this "density" of cultural references and this intermediality? What are
the individual products/games/films that are
clearly addressed in this direction or are particularly immersed in the
practice of the hybridization of game
/film/new media?


Deadline for proposals: *November 1, 2010*
Length of proposal: *1 page max*
A short CV (10 lines max.) should be sent with proposals
Email: gospringschool at gmail.com <mailto:gospringschool at gmail.com>


For more information, please contact:
Dipartimento di Storia e Tutela dei Beni Culturali - Università degli
Studi di Udine,
Palazzo Caiselli, Vicolo Florio 2
33100 Udine,
Italy
fax: +39/0432/556644
e-mail: udineconference at gmail.com <mailto:udineconference at gmail.com> /
gospringschool at gmail.com <mailto:gospringschool at gmail.com>

http://filmforum.uniud.it

Giovanni Caruso
Ph.D. Candidate in Audiovisual Studies at Università degli Studi di Udine

Digital Media Strategis
Bibop SpA - Milan (Italy)
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