News & Events
The Centre sponsors a variety of seminars, conferences, publications and an active program of lectures and colloquia by both internal and external faculty.
CSTC Sponsored Conferences
~
Apps and Affect
October 18 - 20, 2013
Sponsored by FIMS and the Centre for Theory and Criticism
There has been a palpable shift in the digital world, primarily motivated by the growing popularity of the iPhone model of mobile computing and the raise of an app as a new signifier, media object, and technique of ubiquitous computing. Although the term has been in use colloquially since 2009 (following Apple’s iPhone ad campaign built upon the slogan “There’s an app for that”), the rapid adoption of the term and the tool was unforeseen by media theorists. Nonetheless, many social, cultural and media theorists predict the death of the Web, the reinforcement of control and censorship of the online content, and the end of a general purpose computer (Zittrain). Whereas the logic and environment of the Web is one of open, free, and constantly changing or updating (i.e. mutating) networks, it is argued that mobile computing operates upon semi-closed platforms that are driven by specialty software with single-purpose designs (Anderson and Wolff). How do apps as ‘cultural technique’ (Siegert) and ‘technics’ (Stiegler) channel our ways of maintaining relations with/in media environment? Do the specific and circumscribed operations of individual applications foster or foreclose what media theorists call the transformative and transductive potential of collective technological individuation (Simondon)? Do apps represent “a new reticular condition of transindividuation grammatising new forms of social relations” (Stiegler)? Or do they signal instead the triumph of “regulatory” networks over “generative” ones (Zittrain)? This conference sets out to examine the relations between mobile apps and their networked/internet context.
For inquiries contact: Svitlana Matviyenko at svitlana.matviyenko@gmail.com
PAST CONFERENCES:
Nietzsche Workshop @ Western: Tunnels, Tightropes, Net-&-Meshworks
April 13, 2013
Audio file of conference proceedings
Aftermaths: Revolution and Recovery
May 10-12, 2012
Nietzsche Workshop @ Western: Nietzsche, Ecology, Technology
October 1, 2011
Audio file of conference proceedings
Enter the Fray: Theory and Criticism in the Network-Centric World
April 7-9, 2011
Nietzsche Workshop @ Western: Re-Thinking War in the 21st Century
May 7, 2010
The Artfulness of Play: Bridging Creative and Theoretical Discourses
September 25-27, 2009
13th International Mikhaïl Bakhtin Conference
July 28 - August 1, 2008
Tactics of Resistance: Limitations & Possibilities
October 12-13, 2007
Drawing a Blank
March 22-24, 2007
Illusions of Identity: resisting (beyond) identity politics
October 14-15, 2006
La cérémonie : Entre le protocolaire et l'intime
6-8 octobre, 2005
Community and Identity: Constructions, Deconstructions, Reconstructions
May 25-27, 2005
Pornography is Not About
April 7-10, 2005
Gambling Theory
October 13-17, 2004
The Philosophy of Everyday Life: What Phenomenology Tells Us
March 16, 2004
On Things Atomic
February 12-14, 2004
On Distortion
April 3-6, 2003
Community and (Im)Possibility
March 23-24, 2001
The Histories of Theory
April 16 - 19, 1998
The Human Sciences in the Age of Theory
April 1-4, 1993
