NetSci 2010 Call for Papers
SUBJECT Arts | Humanities | Complex Networks—a Leonardo satellite symposium at NetSci 2010
We are pleased to invite you to this symposium taking place at BarabásiLab - Center for Complex Network Research,
Northeastern University in Boston, MA, on Monday, May 10, 2010.
Abstract
By means of keynotes, contributed talks and interdisciplinary discussion we will explore and identify important issues surrounding the convergence of arts, humanities and complex networks. On the one hand we will concentrate on network structure and dynamics in areas ranging from art history and archeology to music, film and image science. In the same time we are interested in the development and critique of network visualizations from medieval manuscripts to the latest tools, such as Cytoscape and Processing. Our dual focus is based on the opinion that the study of networks and the study of visualizations of these networks complement each other, much in the same way as archeology cannot live without self-reflective art history - studying the represented always presupposes the study of representation. Bringing together network scientists and specialists from the arts and humanities we strive for a better understanding of networks and their visualizations, resulting in better images of networks, and a better use of these images. Running parallel to the NetSci2010 conference, the symposium will also provide a unique opportunity to mingle with leading researchers and practitioners of complex network science, potentially sparking fruitful collaborations.
Confirmed keynote speakers include
Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg (IBM Visual Communication Lab, Boston): http://www.research.ibm.com/visual
Ward Shelley (New York artist): http://www.wardshelley.com
Contributions
In addition to the keynotes we are looking for ten 15 minute contributions in order to cover a large territory around arts, humanities and complex networks.
Abstracts should not exceed 200-300 words. Applications should include one relevant URL and your most awesome figure. Please send a one page PDF not exceeding 500kb to: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Selected original papers will be published in the Leonardo Journal, MIT Press.
Proceedings will be published online.
Important date
The deadline for applications is January 22, 2010.
Decisions for acceptance will be sent out by February 7.
Possible subjects include
* Multi-modal networks of features and meta-data in art, film, music and literature;
* Citation and transmission of motifs (Mnemosyne);
* Emergence and Evolution of canon in art, music, literature and film;
* Evolution of communities of practice in art and science;
* History of network visualization (genealogies, trees, matrices);
* Art history of taxonomy and evolutionary models (like Darwin’s corals vs. Wallace’s trees);
* Networks in architecture (from the Ekistics movement to modern traffic planning);
* Cultural exchange and trade networks (from the Neolithic to modern supply chains);
* Contemporary art and network science;
* Network structure in cultural heritage, film and music databases…
Attendance
Attending our symposium will be free of charge. As space is limited, we require registration. Registration will open here on January 22, 2010.
NetSci 2010 attendees can register directly now. For the NetSci 2010 registration fee and deadline please see http://www.netsci2010.net
Organizers
The symposium is organized by Maximilian Schich (Art Historian at BarabásiLab), and co-chaired by Roger Malina (Executive Editor at Leonardo journal) and Isabel Meirelles (Associate Professor at Dept. of Art + Design, Northeastern University).
The symposium is a satellite to NetSci 2010 and counts with the support of the BarabásiLab - CCNR and Dept. of Art + Design, both at Northeastern University in Boston, and Leonardo/ISAST.
Links
Arts | Humanities | Complex Networks: http://artshumanities.netsci2010.net
BarabásiLab: http://www.barabasilab.com
Dept. Art+Design: http://www.art.neu.edu
Leonardo: http://www.leonardo.info
NetSci2010: http://www.netsci2010.net
Contact
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Files:
THE TOPOLOGY OF CREATIVITY
User Ratings As Limiting Factors in the The Pool’s Social Network
By John Bell and Jon Ippolito, Still Water
While online social networks like Facebook benefit from the structure of small-world networks, few of their interfaces are designed to make their users conscious of this structure. Users of The Pool, by contrast, navigate a graphical interface that portrays at any given time the emergent structure of the community. This online environment, a project of the University of Maine’s Still Water lab, stimulates and tracks collaborations in art, text, and code. At any given time about 300 students in universities across the U.S. are active in The Pool, proposing ideas, building projects, and reviewing each other’s progress. The Pool currently tracks over 2000 project versions and 5000 reviews.
By Roger Malina on 2010 02 05
this paper has been accepted for the conference
Cybernetic Bacteria 2.0
Authors:
Anna Dumitriu – University of Brighton< .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)>
Dr Blay Whitby – University of Sussex <blayw@sussex.ac.uk>
“Life did not take over the globe by combat but by networking” (Margulis, 1997)
The transdisciplinary art project Cybernetic Bacteria 2.0 brings together an artist, a
philosopher, a microbiologist, an artificial life programmer and an interactive media
specialist, to investigate the relationship of the emerging science of bacterial
communication to our own digital communications networks, looking in particular at
‘packet data’ and bacterial quorum sensing.
The project seeks reflect the complexity of communication taking place at a microscopic
level in comparison with human communication technologies such as the Internet.
The first artwork in the series, by
Dumitriu, involved a clear plastic
tube of liquid agar jelly planted into
the earth ‐ allowing the soil bacteria
below to grow upwards and
become visible to the audience. 100
μL of Homoserine Lactone, a
hormone used by bacteria for
quorum sensing, was added.
Dumitriu, in effect saying: “I’m
here” to the bacteria below, which
‘pass the signal on’ to their
neighbours, until the signal has
travelled around the globe. The
issue with this work is one of
Hermeneutics; the bacteria will not
identify Dumitriu as human ‐ simply
as another bacterium.
The next stage of the project involved a multiple screen projection showing network traffic
taking place in real time, a film of bacterial communication occurring (using two strains of
genetically modified bacteria) and an interactive visualization of the data from both sources
generated using artificial life technology.
The artwork revealed the wireless/Bluetooth and RFID data being transmitted in an around
the local area, including device names and IP addresses of gallery visitors’ phones, laptops
and PDAs. The disclosure of this information often surprised and sometimes shocked the
audience, as if some personal or private secret was being made public, but that was never
the case.
http://www.normalflora.co.uk
Figure 1 “Cybernetic Bacteria 2.0” (shows RFID/Bluetooth
‘sniffer’ and bacterial communication)
By Anna Dimitriu on 2010 02 07
“Network Criticism” – A New, Crossdisciplinary Paradigm for the
Criticism of Dramas, Movie Scripts and Literature
Michael Schober, Paul Willems, Johannes Putzke
Although humanities and cultural studies have a long tradition in formalistic interpretations of works of art and
literature (e. g. Erlich, 1973; Wellek and Warren, 1956), only few writers have understood these works as
networks of characters that (inter)act (with each other). This paper expands this stream of thought by
formalizing, visualizing and analyzing the evolution of the characters’ interaction networks in some popular
movies (including “The Avengers” “Babel”, “Batman and Robin”, “Burn after Reading”, “Godfellas”, “The
Godfather”, “The Graduate”, “Pretty Woman”, “The Reader”, “Schindler’s List”, “The Shawshank
Redemption”, and “Thelma and Louise”). In the formalization, each character represents a vertix of a network.
An aligned edge between two characters is drawn when they interact with each other in the movie (see Figure 1
and http://tinyurl.com/bpkkox). For the creation of movie networks, the authors wrote a parser that can
automatically extract social networks from movie scripts or dramas that are available free of charge on a a
variety of websites (e.g. awesomefilm.com, imsdb.com, simplyscripts.com, gutenberg.org). In the paper, the
authors discuss several decisions that have to be taken during the formalization process (e.g. how to treat
characters who speak in the off etc.). Afterwards, they analyze the dynamic visualizations and statistic properties
of these networks, and illustrate the potential of this approach in an interdisciplinary research context. Scholars
in the humanities can benefit from this just as well as researchers in management science who aim at
investigating success factors of movies on the basis of quantitative methods (e.g. Hennig-Thurau et al. 2007).
For example, there are not yet many satisfactory quantitative measures reflecting movie script quality that can
support managers during the greenlighting process.
Figure 1. Social Network of Characters Interacting in Babel
By Michael Schober on 2010 02 10