Blogs

Lena (StraoFyzika Sound Designer):

Sound characters were designed on Korg Kronos synthesizer sound engines. Following previous concepts of compositions for StratoFyzika, again I have prepared metaphorical interpretation of psychological phenomena with mathematical theories. Since we were considering phenomena of looping and phasing, I chose to explore transcendental number theory, because every real transcendental number must also be irrational and cannot be expressed exactly as a fraction (equivalently, its decimal representation never ends and never settles into a permanent repeating pattern).

As first step I used improvisation method based on playing restricted keyboard, limiting tones and frequencies following randomly distributed digits of the fractional part of number π. The goal of this jam was  square the circle of my imagination in order to reach transcendental states through the sound. Other variants were to play only “prime” bells -  notes following the set of prime numbers. Sound repetition patterns are results of algorithm settings of karma arpeggiator to values according to decimal expansion of imaginary part of first nontrivial zero of Riemann zeta function, to follow Riemann hypothesis of the distribution of prime numbers, where all trivial zeros lie on Critical line of complex numbers. However, even though it is possible to calculate this complicated theory, my personal approach to music is playful and imaginative, not strictly scientific. For references of calculation Riemann theory in music, please see the book The music of the primes by Marcus du Sautoy. http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/fawaz/243/others/themusicoftheprimes.pdf

In this conceptual/sensual approach I experiment with deconstruction of once already synthesized classical instrument, bringing them to back to digital noises and disharmonies, unsynchronised tempos with unexpected abruptions in the sound modulation. There recordings are used as source material for samples or short loops to build a composition. The difference from the pieces IIaikiaII and Shadows is that the composition is not fixed on the timeline, but the sounds are following a process of building the final choreography.

Final composition and its spatial distribution is to reconstruct complex sound environment and could be depicted as sound pool. At the beginning we were also interested in Moon phasing, so I took an inspiration in heavenly motion and decided to simulate a gravitational field. Spacetime can be warped by movement of objects it it and these days the laser interferometer can already detect and record the gravitational waves, which can be heard as sound waves. Dancers were to present such mass objects in correlation to light and sound representing spacetime itself. Practically, sound is to follow the movement of the dancers and the actions of dancers on the scene are affecting  the happening in the space around them. For example Phi opens with part called gravity cracks, which in time span spins into a vortex. Example how mass objects create anomalies in space and when occurs fast dynamic movement, space around them forms into spiral movement. Black holes themselves are a swirling vortex of gravity that does not release light, but expels x-ray and gamma radiation. As piece continues, we reconstruct such images, in a sense, we play with physics as steering factor for imagination, a lead or example how to approach creation. Sound interpretation are conceived in spiritual and intuitive levels. In  Φ  (Phi) we are exploring our very body perception of own space time, each part of the piece is finding a connection in micro and macro cosmos. Choreography and dancers are referring to their inspiration in minimalist music, in Steve Reich’s theory of “process music,” exhibited in his phase-shifting pieces.

In  Φ the interactivity based on sensors does not affect sound character, as it was in Shadows, where filters were applied and modified continuous sound in live performance. This time the sensors data can be read and measured by  the correlation of each of the axis from one and other dancer. In Ableton Live my colleague Max Weber coded new version of vst plugin Send notes XY, which now allows to link separately each of the tracks in within 4 source sounds environment. By connecting osc signal to this source on each line, we can operate each line - individual source of sound, into position in quadratic space.

Video playlist with  conversations  and related video documentation about the first ever dance-tech residency “Technology, the Body, and Choreography” supported by Troikatronix @ Lake Studios Berlin.

The July 2016 sponsored residency recipients are the dance-tech members:

Jacob Niedzwiecki – Toronto, Canada

StratoFyzika Collective - Berlin

Performances at Uferstudios, Berlin

When I dance has been selected and nominated as best documentary from The Social World Film Festival in Italy! We will screen on the 28th of July 2016 in Vico Equense (Naples)

www.whenidancefilm.comWhen I dance World Premiere/Nomination

https://www.facebook.com/whenIdancefilm

Berlin-based collective StratoFyzika is currently in residency at Lake Studios Berlin as part of the DanceTech AIR, under the mentorship of Isadora creator Mark Coniglio. As we continue developing our latest project, Phi, we will continue to blog about the process.

Daria (dancer/choreographer):

We're at the point of putting it all together, finding transitions between sections, or conversely, non-transitions (this would be like a blunt change of thematic direction with no legible attempt at a smooth segue). It's interesting to me how the piece can start to become the transitions, and vice versa. That is, how a sharp, sudden shift in tone (resulting from one of these 'non-transitions') can start to inform the structure and meaning of the whole work. For instance, without giving away too much, we're playing with sharp, surprising shifts in lighting to help define segues and lead to what we know as a new section (though the audience, of course, won't necessarily read it that way). As we experiment, I am reminded of just how much lighting – such as a simple on/off – shapes and changes my perception of space and time. Particularly as an audience member attending a performance, sitting in darkness while watching a highly lit area, when the stage lights go off, you are literally blinded, nowhere and nowhen. It can feel like an eloquent palette cleanser, or a disorientng goof, depending on how you use it. Regardless, it always makes me suddenly and irrevocably aware of myself and my body, because that is all I can sense in that moment. So then that dislocation, especially if you use it repeatedly, becomes a palpable feature of the piece.

Movement-wise, I'm starting to settle into it more, to better understand how I physically inhabit it. Formally, this piece can be quite complex. One section in particular is structured very intricately and requires constant counting, but the counts and rhythms between Hen and I alternately go in and out of sync, so I have to be careful not to get so caught up in her timing that I lose all track of my own, or conversely, to become so self-focused that I miss those moments of synchronicity with her. It's a delicate balancing act between autonomy and connectivity. Likewise, the ceaseless counting can start to bind me physically, so I have to remember to find release and abandon within the control, something I think every artist can relate to.  

Ale (visual and lighting designer):

Keywords for the lighting work are 

distance

Depth

density

gravity

time shift

Movement

libration

-

dissolve

retract

expand

overlap

The lighting transforms the stage during the entire performance into an architectural machine . Four stage lights are positioned at the 4 highest corners of the stage, while two projectors are on the ground along two opposite sides of that same square. Playing with the different nature of PAR cans lights and projection, we aim to find interesting ways to reveal the bodies and tell their movement .

From the very beginning of our work on Phi, lighting sound and movement have been developed in parallel. This kind of workflow has been very satisfying in the way every small progress in one of the fields inspires unexpected approaches to the other two.

One of the very first ideas was using quick flashes to highlight small portions of the bodies. This way we could reconstruct the choreography by showing/hiding, putting together small chunks of the original movement and giving it another shape. We could easily notice, during these tests, how the body transformed into a composition of many other bodies while being sculpted and dissolved.

The flashing, coming from different directions, was particularly disorienting when seen from the static point of view of the audience and these body chunks, once immersed into that specific space/time environment, were opening up to new possibilities and interpretations.

When we met again at Cultivamos Cultura (Sao Luis, Portugal) for the first residency, watching an updated version of the choreography where the different materials were coming together in the shape of real sections inspired me to push this flashing idea further. As the simple body movements were chasing each other in repetition and variation, the lighting score could lose its spatial randomness and start following a circular path ( the one of a loop ). This way the stage became a rotating reference frame in which the perception of said repetitiveness could be distorted by speeding up and down this visual looping reference clock.

4 lights at the 4 edges, fading in and out one after the other, as to give a key to read the inner repetition happening in the movement. As your perception of the motion of a train changes if you are you sitting on another train moving in parallel to the first one.

The idea of having an audience on two sides came when we were brainstorming about lighting positions in relationship to choreographic pathways. As we noticed it could be interesting offering two simultaneous points of view, the movement was redistributed in the space according to that, and we added to the set-up two projectors pointing towards the center of the stage from opposite sides .

The use of projectors makes it possible to work at higher speeds, and the character of their light beam, combined with a fog machine,  is able to fill the space with solid dense physical light. The space surrounding the stage disappears in the dark. While the dancers move through it, they pierce that material and phase in and out with a backlight - frontlight repetition game .This particular lighting suddenly brings the audience way closer to the performers, creating a much more intimate environment.

For this piece we decided to win some time using already-assembled sensors systems by x-io technologies, rather than starting from scratch and design our own as we did in the past.

The two sensing units, one for each dancer, are equipped with accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer. We are currently experimenting with calculations between these data to be able to extract interesting values to be used to control properties of light and sound.  An interesting approach could be calculating difference values between the two body movements, to be able to highlight the phasing out that gradually happens after a unison.

(Anthony McCall´s work inspired the use of projectors and fog to create physical lighting dimensions).

(Photo edit of Daria Kaufman in rehearsal for Phi)

(Schematic of lighting trajectories in Phi)

Are you a pioneering dance scholar? The Fulbright Association invites you to share your talent with the Fulbright community at this year’s conference by applying to be the 2016 Selma Jeanne Cohen Fund scholarship on Dance awardee.

The Selma Jeanne Cohen Fund for International Scholarship on Dance enables a dance scholar to present a major paper on previously unpublished research at our 2016 Fulbright Annual Conference. The 2016 Lecturer will be selected based on guidelines developed by the late Dr. Selma Jeanne Cohen, dance historian and founding editor of the International Encyclopedia of Dance, whose generously gifted endowment supports this lecture program.

• Selma Jeanne Cohen Fund provides an honorarium, round-trip travel and per diem to the selected dance scholar to attend and present at the 2016 Fulbright Association conference.
• Applicants are encouraged to make presentations interactive, through multimedia and dance demonstrations.
• Competition is open to all dance scholars in any field of dance and may be residents of any country.
• Lectures must be based on previously unpublished research and not presented at other conferences.
• Selection based on the quality of your presentation plan, qualifications, dance demonstration and references.
• Application should include an assessment of the impact of your own Fulbright or other international exchange experience on your work in the field of dance, when possible. It may also include a general assessment of the Fulbright Program’s impact on the field of dance in a particular country or region. While it is not a requirement to have had a Fulbright scholarship, the committee greatly values international experience and knowledge.

Selection Process
The award recipient will be selected through a competitive process. Decisions will be made by the Cohen Selection Committee.

Application Procedure
• Please include cover letter, no longer than one page in length, briefly describing your proposal.
• Include a narrative of no longer than ten pages, double-spaced (3,750 word limit), describing the research or scholarly work to be presented and its significance in advancing dance scholarship and addressing the guidelines above.
• Include a presentation plan for a conference presentation of NO LONGER than one hour’s length. The presentation plan must include a lecture of no longer than 30 minutes and a 30-minute Q & A period.
• Provide two letters of reference from individuals well acquainted with your work as a dance scholar.
• Provide a copy of your resume or C.V.
Application Deadline
• Applications for the 2016 award must be received electronically by close of business day (5pm ET) on June 30, 2016.
• The lecturer must agree to attend the Fulbright Association conference which is November 10-13, 2016, and make his or her presentation on the date requested by the Fulbright Association. The recipient will be expected to have his or her own health, travel, and other necessary insurance.
Submissions: Submit applications by June 30 to info@fulbright.org
Please note in the subject line: “Cohen Lecture Submission.”
Past awardees are listed on this link: http://fulbright.org/cohen-lecture/

VIDEO PROMOCIONAL

Are you a choreographer based in Europe?

Aerowaves is a hub for dance discovery in Europe. Each year the Aerowaves network selects 20 of the most promising emerging choreographers, promotes their work, and creates performance opportunities with Aerowaves' Partners. Apply to Aerowaves and get a chance to have your work programmed by the partners of the network, whether or not you are selected as Aerowaves artists. Around 100 performance opportunities are guaranteed by the partners and supported by Aerowaves each year.

Applications open at 9am on 1 June 2016 and close at midnight on 12 September 2016.

Should you be selected as one of the Aerowaves Twenty, your work will be promoted by Aerowaves via its website for one year by an artist profile, with images, video and calendar all in one place. You may be selected to perform your work at our Spring Forward Festival. We guarantee to programme at least 10 of the current Aerowaves Twenty artists in the festival each year.

Eligibility criteria:

• You must be resident in Europe to apply

• You may apply with only one work per year

• The work you are submitting must have been made in geographical Europe

• Your work must be 15-40 minutes in length

• Your work should be easily included in a double or triple bill and have simple technical requirements

• Work by postgraduate students is eligible, but not work by undergraduates

• You must fill in the Aerowaves application form correctly, upload your video to Vimeo, providing us with the link and the password if necessary and send us the original video file by We Transfer

• Previous Aerowaves applicants, successful or unsuccessful, may apply again - but you cannot apply with the same work twice Should artists be programmed by Aerowaves partners, they will be paid an agreed fee plus travel, accommodation, and per diem.

APPLY HERE: http://www.aerowaves.org/artists/opportunities-for-artists

Are you a choreographer based in Europe?

Aerowaves is a hub for dance discovery in Europe. Each year the Aerowaves network selects 20 of the most promising emerging choreographers, promotes their work, and creates performance opportunities with Aerowaves' Partners. Apply to Aerowaves and get a chance to have your work programmed by the partners of the network, whether or not you are selected as Aerowaves artists. Around 100 performance opportunities are guaranteed by the partners and supported by Aerowaves each year.

Applications open at 9am on 1 June 2016 and close at midnight on 12 September 2016.

Should you be selected as one of the Aerowaves Twenty, your work will be promoted by Aerowaves via its website for one year by an artist profile, with images, video and calendar all in one place. You may be selected to perform your work at our Spring Forward Festival. We guarantee to programme at least 10 of the current Aerowaves Twenty artists in the festival each year.

Eligibility criteria:

• You must be resident in Europe to apply

• You may apply with only one work per year

• The work you are submitting must have been made in geographical Europe

• Your work must be 15-40 minutes in length

• Your work should be easily included in a double or triple bill and have simple technical requirements

• Work by postgraduate students is eligible, but not work by undergraduates

• You must fill in the Aerowaves application form correctly, upload your video to Vimeo, providing us with the link and the password if necessary and send us the original video file by We Transfer

• Previous Aerowaves applicants, successful or unsuccessful, may apply again - but you cannot apply with the same work twice

Should artists be programmed by Aerowaves partners, they will be paid an agreed fee plus travel, accommodation, and per diem.

APPLY HERE: http://www.aerowaves.org/artists/opportunities-for-artists

Inspired by existing notational languages in dance, Fabricating Performance evolves what have traditionally been graphic, symbolic systems and proposes a new way of interpreting and representing movement, through the generation of architectural-­‐scale sculptures. To achieve this, we have designed a live custom -­ fabrication system, which combines methods of designing dance and architecture - and turns robots into creative collaborators.

Performance is presented as a process of fabrication. Reciprocally, fabrication is presented as a process of performance. A circularity of human body-gesture and computer machine-gesture leads to the construction of notational spatial artefacts. Space is constructed through the transforming conditions of dance, and performance is constructed through the transforming conditions of architecture. The project is a spatially interactive design system. Driven by the motivation of a participating performer/designer, body movement is tracked, analysed and translated into tool paths for fabrication by a robotic armature and an industrial CNC pipe bending machine. Discrete construction elements are fabricated in response to the dancer/designers performance. The generative cycle of construction encourages bodily interaction and the aggregation of a form of spatial notion that described repetition, rhythm and pattern. ’Fabricating Performance’ qualifies movement in space and raises questions of how these qualitative motion segments can be articulated in a quantitatively physical manner.

Project Page

http://www.interactivearchitecture.org/lab-projects/fabricating_performance

Some Background http://www.interactivearchitecture.org/fabricating-performance-a-dance-of-circular-feedback-processes-in-constructing-spatial-notion.html

Project title: Fabricating performance

Researchers: Syuko Kato, Huyghe Vincent

Advisor: Ruairi Glynn

University: UCL, Bartlett Interactive Architecture Lab

would so like to try it out!

XTH Sense™ -- the world’s first biocreative instrument and next evolution in sensory expression -- is LIVE on Kickstarter TODAY.

The XTH Sense combines a wireless biowearable, its companion XTH Software Suite and the XTH Hub, our community platform.

Using multiple biophysical sensors, the XTH Sense captures various sounds from your body, such as muscles contracting, blood flowing, the heart beating, as well as your motion data and temperature. These sounds and data represent your expressive signature.

With the XTH Software Suite you can use your expressive signature to control musical parameters, create digital drawings, interact with game mechanics and play in virtual reality (VR). We call it biocreative interaction.

LINK: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1814357959/xth-sensetm-the-worlds-first-biocreative-instrumen

Hello!

We've just launched DanceLinked.com, a community created for dancers of all levels of skill to connect and inspire one another. We noticed a need in the market for a well designed network that offers a great user experience. It is our goal to deliver that to the dance community. The site currently allows you to:

Show What You Can Do: Upload photos and videos of your performances. Show the world your ability and expose your talent.

Make Connections: Follow your favorite dancers. Become inspired and inspire others. Spread your love of dance one connection at a time.

Discover Opportunities: Search upcoming auditions and events. Get notifications about dance opportunities in your area.

We love hearing from our users. If you have any feedback, we'd love to hear it!

When I dance is now online. Please feel free to have a look and follow

us to get updated about our first Premiere!

http://www.whenidancefilm.com/

https://www.facebook.com/whenIdancefilm/

WORLD'S FIRST NETWORK PERFORMANCE WITH CUBA "THE BRIDGE TO EVERYWHERE:234" - Last Tuesday 22nd March we (StudioBiscoe and many friends) were successful in the first ever network performance with Cuba, between Havana and two locations in Miami, Florida, coinciding with the visit of President Obama to Cuba. You can read about the project here: http://studiobiscoe.com/bridge and here:https://www.facebook.com/studiobiscoe and see a highlight video of the central node of the performance at the Frank Gehry designed New World Center concert hall of the New World Symphony in Miami Beach here:https://vimeo.com/160682287 

Send us your dance film until June 15!

http://www.pool-festival.de/

Festival: September 07-10 at DOCK 11, Berlin
Deadline: 15 June 2016

PROFIL

POOL is a format for dance films and dance animations and offers space for the mutual exchange of experiences, development, training, and production prospects. It is a platform for films which picture dance not as a simple documentation, but rather create choreographies exclusively for, and with, the camera. POOL focuses on the intense interplay between dance and the techniques of film, exploring the possibilites and boundaries of the art form. In addition, POOL encourages exchange with other creative areas such as fashion, advertising and music.

PARTICIPATION

All dancers, choreographers, film makers and artists are invited to apply with dance short films and dance animations. 
Films should not be longer than 30 minutes and also not only a documentation of a dance piece. The budget of the films or the background of its creators are less important for us.

PARTICIPATION DOCUMENTS

Applications can be submitted online.

• Preview link for the jury (can be insert into the online application form)

Only if your film is chosen for the programme:

• Filled and signed online application form as scan to info@pool-festival.de
• 3 digital film stills, minimum 300 dpi
• Optional:  biography, video testimonies and useful information

PROGRAMME & PEARLS

The POOL 16 jury will create a film programme from all submissions and select the winner films, the PEARLS 16. PEARLS are the equal winners of POOL – INTERNATIONALES TanzFilmFestival BERLIN.

POOL 15 - Trailer from POOL – TanzFilmFestival BERLIN on Vimeo.

Open Call: CYNETART Competition 2016
Deadline: 1st of May, 2016

CYNETART International Festival for Computer Based Art, November 10th – 16th, 2016
2016 marks the 20th anniversary of the CYNETART International Festival for Computer Based Art in November 10th – 16th is held at its main venue HELLERAU – European Centre for the Arts Dresden and many satellite venues around the city. 20 years of CYNETART Festival is the reflection of the zeitgeist, the presentation of artistic quality and an invitation to the audience to discover something new.

Every two years, the Trans-Media-Akademie Hellerau (TMA) and their partners write out the international CYNETART Competition. The Open Call addresses to young artists (-collectives), researchers and scientists who work with new media, such as installation, sculpture and performance projects, expanded media, AV concerts or net art projects.

The CYNETART Competition includes among others the Award of the Saxon State Minister for Higher Education, Research and the Arts (10.000 €), the Artist-in-Residence Scholarship of the Saxon State Minister for Higher Education, Research and the Arts (worth € 10.200), the CYNETART Price (5.000 €) in cooperation with HELLERAU – European Centre for the Arts Dresden. Further awards are intended.

For more information, terms and conditions and the online application form: http://www.cynetart.de/cfp/2016/

For questions regarding registration: competition@cynetart.de

We would be delighted if you could forward this call.

Cordial greetings from the CYNETART team.

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of Fluxus—the international laboratory of art, architecture, design and music—Swinburne University of Technology has released a free digital copy of The Fluxus Reader. 

Fluxus began in the 1950s as a loose, international community of artists, architects, composers and designers. By the 1960s, Fluxus had become a laboratory of ideas and an arena for artistic experimentation in Europe, Asia and the United States. Described as ‘the most radical and experimental art movement of the 1960s’, Fluxus has challenged conventional thinking on art and culture for half a century. Fluxus artists had a central role in the birth of such key contemporary art forms as concept art, installation, performance art, intermedia and video. Despite this influence, the scope and scale of this unique phenomenon have made it difficult to explain Fluxus in normative historical and critical terms. 

In The Fluxus Reader, editor Ken Friedman offers the first comprehensive overview of this challenging and controversial group. The Fluxus Reader is written by leading scholars and experts from Europe, the United States and Australia.

First published in 1998, the book was out of print for several years and only available from rare book dealers and galleries. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Fluxus in 2012, Swinburne University arranged for a complete digital edition in PDF format, copy-enabled with full search features.

To download The Fluxus Reader please visit
hdl.handle.net/1959.3/42234 

Special issue of Computational Culture, a Journal of Software Studies

Edited by Nicolas Salazar Sutil, Sita Popat and Scott deLahunta

Outline

Intersections between human movement, computer science and motion-tracking/sensing technologies have led to novel ways of transferring body data from physical to digital contexts. From a practical perspective, this integration requires engagement across key disciplines, including movement studies, kinesiology, kinematics, biomechanics, biomedical science and health studies, dance science, sports science, and computer science. This development has also provoked theoretical and critical discourse that has tried to preserve, based on its grounding on bodily and kinetic practice, the differentiation of lived-in and body-specific knowledge. Here is a mode of datarization perhaps closer to what Deleuze (1988) called “immediate datum”: i.e. information stemming not from an abstract and re-moved conceptualisation, but from real-world experience of movement, and the immediate perception or capture of kinetic information through physical or sensorial means. Within the field of software studies, advancing a sense of digital materialism has raised concerns for the materiality of technological media, for instance by focusing on the physical constraints of data storage, or the material dimension of computing. But what about “immediation”, i.e. immediate computation of bodily movement by machines for immediate expression, representation or enactment in digital contexts? And what of the representability of such immediation? How can we describe movement and preserve its datum of difference within a scriptable or graphicable computer language without falling into a universal sameness, a movement without bodies?

Whilst the idea that immediate data may demand a “bodying forth” (Thrift 2008), a traffic of bodiliness from biological to technological contexts, it is necessary to de-homogenise the ‘body’ category. Perhaps what is needed is an understanding of “corporeality” that assume multidimensional and relativistic realities of bodies instead, opening up nuanced discourses based on specific body-related ontologies (corpuscles, builds, anatomies, skeletons, muscle systems) all making up a non-singular sense of the bodily real. As such, this collection poses the problem of criteria. Our question is this: how and to what effect does the research community adopt arbitrary criteria in order to compute the body and bodily movement? Can we define narratives emerging from this body-computing arbitration to provoke a critique? 

There is a possible tension between “bodying forth”— the idea of a single body operative across both biological and computational contexts—and corporeal relations. We would like to focus this critical edition on the relations between differentiated anatomical or bodily systems (skeletal, muscular, nerve, etc.), and different modes of computation, as well as different theoretical discourses stemming from this experiential basis. If we recognize the problem of relationality we must assume that more than one complex set of co-relations meet when the machine computes the moving human body. How do we start the process of computer-generated learning in terms of selecting body parts, functions, organs, processes, on the one hand, and key languages, code, or indeed technological tools for capture on the other? To what extent does corporeal computing contribute to certain bodily systems (or perhaps even body types) becoming the key agents of action, and indeed learning, in such contexts? How do we respond critically to privileged systems (the skeletal, the muscular), and body types (so called ‘normal bodies’)? To what extent are computational paradigms still dominated by spatial, extensive and quantitative determinations (i.e. the tracking of skeleton, body geometry, kinematic shapes, etc.) that hide other, more intensive, modes of corporeality? And finally, how do we reintegrate the multiplicity of the corporeal in a computational synthesis? For instance, how can we understand the quantitative and qualitative (dynamics, effort, tone, intensity, etc.) as overlapping data priorities?

Topics or projects might include:

• Computable relations between bodies and digital avatars, digital dance representations, digital sports representations, digital health representations, digital animation— digital bodies in general.
• Computable relations between biological bodies and robotic systems.
• Computing relations between physical movement and abstract thought, automated thought (AI) or machine learning.
• Computing mobility studies (i.e. relations between body and automobile, body and assisted mobility machines, body and prosthetics).
• Computing sociokinetic material (i.e. computing the movement of groups of bodies).
• Affective corporeal computing— the capacity to process psychophysical and cognitive processes within corporeal movement (e.g. computing effort, dynamics, tonicity, emotion).
• Integration of quantitative and qualitative body datasets.
• Metabody theory and notions of meta-anatomy, meta-strata in the ontological literature (i.e. movement of digital ghosts, sprites, techno-animism, etc.)

750 word abstracts are due April 17th.

Abstracts will be reviewed by the Computational Culture Editorial Board and the special issue editors. Authors of selected abstracts will be notified by April 24^th and invited to submit full manuscripts by September 26th. These manuscripts are subject to outside peer review according to Computational Culture’s policies. The issue will be published in January 2017.

Computational Culture is an online open-access peer-reviewed journal of inter-disciplinary enquiry into the nature of cultural computational objects, practices, processes and structures

These are the times when we’re learning to live ‘smart’. From Smartphones to Smart Towns, everything is upgraded to the latest trends, effectively and efficiently managed, and geared at benefits-optimisation. And thus, the idea of ‘smart homes’ or ‘automated smart homes’, is no stranger to us either. More and more people in the cities are opting for home automation, and it yields numerous benefits:

• Enables you to check on your home security system from any location: Through door locks that are number-operated, you can ensure the security of your house. Often it so happens that we forget to lock the door after having busily barged out. With automation enabling, we can shut the doors quickly through a simple tap on our Smartphone. Another huge added benefit of this system is the alarm. You can be informed each time somebody tries to break into your home. So all in all, it provides for fool-proof security. 

• Helpful in Saving Electricity: The benefits of home automation are not limited to security. It can be of immense help in controlling energy wastage and in turn, global warming. By manually being able to switch your lights on and off, you can save a lot of electricity and prevent the bill from being gigantic. And the best part is that you can either switch them off manually (from your Smartphone or other similar devices) ,or simply time them to be turned off at a particular time. 

• Adjust temperature as per your needs: Temperature of a particular room, or of all rooms, can be adjusted from anywhere in the house. Or outside the house as well. Like lighting automation, thermostat automation is extremely useful in saving energy and cost-effective too. 

• Saves a lot of money and time overall: The biggest advantage of home automation as seen from the above points is that it is hugely effective in cost-saving in several directions. You can save on the electricity and gas bill by a huge chunk. 

• Gives you peace of mind when out of home: This is good for everyone, especially people who tend to worry too much. Home automation helps you not only to operate your home from outside, but also to prevent theft and keep an eye on young children who may be at home alone or under a baby-sitter while you’re out. 

• You’re in control even when out of town: This point is pretty much a re-emphasising of the above point. With automation, you can control your home appliances as per your family member needs and requirements. You can set up a time for the maid or housekeeper to come in, or have a friend/neighbour come over and collect things of importance or just casually look around the house, by the virtue of home automation. As they say, more power to you.