Call for submissions to 2nd Symposium on Digital Art in Ireland

16 Oct 2023

Proposals are now being accepted for the 2nd Symposium on Digital Art in Ireland, a conference organised by Sample-Studios and the Department of Digital Humanities and Future Humanities Institute at University College Cork.

The 2nd Symposium on Digital Art in Ireland offers an opportunity to share research and creative contributions within an engaging, collegial atmosphere comprising digital art scholars, artists and practitioners from Ireland and beyond.

Thanks to generous support from the Arts Council of Ireland, there will be no registration fee for this event. Bursaries of €150 will be made available for artists and practitioners, as well as researchers and scholars in precarious employment.

The conference will be held in Cork on June 13th and 14th, 2024. The symposium is an in-person event for which remote participation will not be facilitated.

Submission Guidelines

Proposals are welcome from scholars, critics, artists, and practitioners, and may take one of three formats:

Academic Conference Papers

We invite proposals of ~500 words (.docx) for 20-minute academic conference presentations. Proposals may focus on any topic relating to the wider field of digital art or new media aesthetics, situated in an Irish context. Each presentation will be followed by a 10-minute Q&A.

Artist/Practitioner Papers

We invite proposals of ~500 words (.docx) for 20-minute conference presentations from artists and practitioners looking to detail and discuss some aspect of their own work. Please note that we do not have capacity for actual works to be exhibited, installed, or performed. We welcome presentations on any form of artistic practice that might be considered “digital” in the broadest possible sense. Each presentation will be followed by a 10-minute Q&A.

Panel Discussions

90-minute panel proposals, incorporating separate but related presentations / discussions on a consistent topic are also welcome, and may be either academic or artistic in nature (or a mix of the two). Panel proposals should provide ~500-word summaries (.docx) of the planned structure and overall thematic emphasis.

All proposals should include the title of the submission, the name(s) and affiliation(s) of the contributor(s), 500-word abstracts, and 200-word biographical notes (all in .docx format). The deadline for submissions is January 15th, 5pm GMT (UTC+00:00; Meán-Am Greenwich). 

Submissions should be emailed to james.osullivan@ucc.ie and director.samplestudios@gmail.com by the deadline.

Submissions will be reviewed by the conference chairs, and contributors will be notified of decisions in February 2024. The Programme & Book of Abstracts for the 2nd Symposium on Digital Art in Ireland will be deposited to the Cork Open Research Archive (CORA), UCC’s institutional repository, where details of the event’s contributions will be preserved and publicly accessible.

Exhibition

In addition to the presentation sessions, the event will be accompanied by an exhibition in The Lord Mayor’s Pavilion, curated by Robin Parmar, University of Limerick. 

Chairs

Dr James O’Sullivan (james.osullivan@ucc.ie)
Department of Digital Humanities, University College Cork

Aoibhie McCarthy (director.samplestudios@gmail.com)
Artistic Director, Sample-Studios