Connessioni Remote n. 6 – Call for Papers (ITA-ENG)
Connessioni Remote n. 6 – Call for Papers (ENG). Online Theatrical Objects Not (yet) Identified. Between expanded identity, virtual platforms, and user experience design. (PDF CALL ITA-ENG)
Before and after the pandemic, advanced virtual environments emerged as critical sites for social and cultural experiences. They extended conversations, creative projects, collective endeavors, and commercial exchanges into a growing augmented ecology. The rise of the metaverse represents a fundamental shift in the current notion of digital presence toward one of mass interconnectivity, universal interoperability, and persistent synchronicity. Some recent hypermedia proposals seem to force a reevaluation of the nature of being online, along with a recontextualization of the concepts of reality, presence, and simulation, following Eva and Franco Mattes' historical "Reenactments" interventions (2007-2010) in Second Life. Tracing the recent history of online digital performance (Dixon, 2007) and events in virtual environments, their legacies, and future projections is the theme of the 5th Remote Connections open call.
The completion of the metaverse is still a long way off. Today, it could be described as a system of interconnected applications, devices, products, tools, and infrastructures; the Metaverse experience is mainly represented by its 3D online gateways, such as Decentraland, Meta, Sandbox, Somnium Space, VR Chat, etc. - Platforms that allow the user to explore architecture, landscapes, immersion and movement in space-time through VR, XR, AR technologies. Sandbox, open-world games, and online 3D collaboration platforms are increasingly used to create simulations and immersive augmented exhibition and performance experiences: perfect virtual "stages."
Gaming technologies are becoming the fundamental infrastructure for the realization of these visions; this ecosystem of virtual worlds in eXtended Reality (Floridi, 2022) seems to be shaped primarily by the interests of large corporations and mass markets, which, however, see active participation as one of the main economic assets for development. Forms of DIWO (do it with others) collectives raise the quality of the user experience to increasingly immersive levels, enticing direct participation in activities to create, share, decide, learn, and trade collectively. Over the past three decades, interactivity, conceived as a two-way relationship between humans and machines (Löwgren, 2008), has given users increasing power to manipulate and transform the art object with which they interact (Bazzichelli, 1999).
User experience itself refers to how people experience their encounter with a system. UX design embraces and extends traditional human-computer interaction design to increase satisfaction and loyalty through improved usability. The most widely used classification of UX is based on the set of users' feelings, perceptions, motivations, preferences, beliefs, attitudes, and emotional reactions to an interactive technological artifact at a given time and context of use (Park, 2015; Mkpojiogu, 2018, 2019; Hassenzahl, 2004).
The dramaturgical importance of the UX and affordances of a platform in online digital performance is rarely acknowledged: Do these kinds of interactions engage the user? Does the chosen technological system and its features influence these virtual events' performative, participatory, and community-building purposes? And if so, how? Do the artists rely on pre-established criteria, or do they exploit and hack them to create different, more inclusive narrative dynamics? Furthermore, how does this intervention affect the UX itself? Can art practice in the digital environment be a resocializing context, a "laboratory of transformation" (Youngblood, 1991), a gym/community gym, an alternative creative model for adopting active, non-extractive, decentralized modes, apart from speculative and hype dynamics?
This sixth issue of Remote Connections aims to map the recent production of online performance events and actions and the modes of realization, participation, and design associated with them over the past thirty years and are associated with them today. Submissions may address but are not limited to, the topics related to OTONI and online digital performance.
- Essays on the extended, augmented, posthuman body and identity; Dance and XR/VR performativity;
- hybrid experiences in augmented space;
- ethnographic explorations of environments, communities, and online platforms;
- Documentation and testimonies of live online events;
- case studies of artists, theater companies, and historical webcam theater productions; streaming, real-time, and the declinations of digital liveness (Gemini, 2023);
- Review of studies and research on world-building and live simulation;
- From Life Forms to Perception Neurons: Performance Capture, Mocap, 3D Scanning, 3D Sculpture, Photogrammetry, and Biosensors in the Performing Arts.
Authors are invited to submit abstracts of up to 1000 characters, including spaces, on the above topics in Italian or English, along with 4-5 keywords. Abstracts must be sent to rivistaconnessioni.remote@gmail.com by October 15, 2023.
The Editorial Board will select a maximum of 10 abstracts based on thematic and methodological innovation for the ongoing critical debate. The Editorial Board will contact authors via email to submit the final abstract through the OJS platform by registering online. Full articles must be between 30,000 and 40,000 characters, including spaces, notes, and bibliography, and must be unpublished. Authors are asked to consult the article graphics guidelines and editorial standards in advance. Articles that follow these guidelines will be accepted. Articles of appropriate quality and adherence to the journal's objectives will be reviewed and double-masked.
For further information: rivistaconnessioni.remote@gmail.com
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