Symposium Schedule – Saturday, April 5

California College of the Arts presents

2008 Visual and Critical Studies Thesis Symposium
Saturday, April 5, 2008

11 am to 4 pm
Timken Lecture Hall
California College of the Arts, 1111 Eighth Street, SF

Schedule of Events

11:00 -11:15am Welcome Remarks
Chair of Visual and Critical Studies: Tirza Latimer

11:15 -12:45 pm Panel 1: Reconstructing Objects
Moderator: Alla Efimova

Analisa Violich Goodin, An Imagined Absence: Images of Loss and the Performance of Representation
Maya Kimura, The Schoolgirl Body in Pieces: Sex as Violence in Makoto Aida’s Harakiri Schoolgirls
Erik Scollon, Craft in the Expanded Field

12:45-1:45 pm Lunch break

1:45 – 2:45 pm Panel 2: Visualizing Work and Play
Moderator: Sanjit Sethi

Victoria Gannon, Day Laborer Landscapes: Seeing Informal Hiring Sites
Rae Quigley, The Stinking Rose: A Food Festival at Play in the Production of Social Order

3:00 – 4:00 pm Panel 3: Charting the Digital Domain
Moderator: David Silver

Guinevere Harrison, Neogeography: Mapping Our Place in the World
Lee Pembleton, The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction

4:00-4:15 pm: Closing remarks by Tirza Latimer

4:15 – 6:00pm: Reception

Satellite Spying and Dreaming

We Make Money Not Art posted a lengthy summary of Lisa Parks’ lecture on satellites and visual culture at the Seville-based ZEMOS98 audiovisual festival. From Regine:

One of the highlights of the week for me was Lisa Parks‘ talk. Her lecture was part of Critical Powers which invited thinkers and creators to share their views on the possible functions of utopia in an era of advanced Capitalism, the effects of technology changes on cultural process, or on the power of a public sphere.

Lisa Parks, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at UC Santa Barbara. She is the author of Cultures in Orbit: Satellites and the Televisual and co-editor of Planet TV: A Global Television Reader. Her research explores uses of satellite, computer and television technologies in a transnational context.

Cultures in Orbit was one of the foundational texts I read when I began researching this thesis, but it was published in 2005—pre-Google Earth—so the landscape has shifted considerably since then. It was great to catch a glimpse of Parks’ follow-up research since then, and interesting to note that several of the examples she cites are ones that I also have used in my work. I don’t think I agree with all her arguments, particularly her comparisons to earlier news media and Google Earth, but it’s hard to tell without seeing the full presentation or reading new work. Hope she publishes again soon.

China to shut down mapping sites

China View reports that the Chinese government is tightening the reins on “illegal” online maps and geographical information Web sites, claiming they threaten state security.

Min Yiren, deputy director of the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping (SBSM), said almost 10,000 online map websites operated in China, most of them showing maps without approval.

“Some websites publish sensitive or confidential geographical information, which might leak state secrets and threaten national security,” Min said.

He said those websites would be closed down.

Foreign organizations and individuals engaging in making and publishing online maps in China would also be stopped.

The campaign would also target websites that made mistakes such as labeling Taiwan a “country”, wrongly drawing national boundaries, or omitting important islands including the South China Islands, Diaoyu Islands and Chiwei Island, said Min.

These websites would be punished and required to make corrections, he said.

Google Earth has been the site of several disputes involving the Chinese government in recent years, and censorship has long been an issue for Google’s operations in China. During the violent crackdown in Tibet a few weeks ago, censors blocked countrywide access to YouTube and Google News.

Frank Taylor on the Google Earth Blog followed up on this latest mapping news with Google’s Michael Jones to ask whether Google Earth would be banned in China… remains to be seen, apparently.

Save the date! Symposium – April 5

The date is set for CCA’s 2008 Visual & Critical Studies Spring Symposium! My class will be presenting our thesis work to the public in bite-sized, 20-minute powerpoint presentations. It runs from 11am-3pm, with lunch and a reception. The final schedule of panels has not yet been set, I’ll post when it’s available.

Saturday, April 5th
11:00 am – 3:00 pm
Timken Lecture Hall, San Francisco Campus