Deadline: Nov 15, 2016
CFP "View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture" 16
Digital Darkness
Editor of issue: Lukasz Zaremba

"Gray media" and "black boxes" have become central to discussions about
the development of technology and digital practices. As Wendy Chun
noted, "to know software has become a form of enlightenment."
Simultaneously however full transparency has long seized to be
possible. Subsequent gates of access to the viscera of contemporary
media - the barrier of knowledge, copyright laws, licenses and other
corporate and technological limitations - effectively separate us from
the most important algorithmic operations: on the one hand the process
of selecting information visible on our screens, on the other the
processes of acquiring user data. Screens are merely reflections, or -
even worse - veils, of invisible operations.

That is why the iconoclastic critique of screens as bearers of evil
content and harmful ideologies has lost its validity and should be seen
as a mere substitute, or a supplement to an accurate critique of
mechanisms of new media. Since the most crucial operations of
contemporary technology are not visible, does that mean that visual
culture as a field has exhausted its critical potential in relation to
new media? Especially since contemporary critical theory (Matteo
Pasquinelli, Tiziana Terranova) often uses the model of opaque and
invisible mechanisms of advanced technologies to describe not only the
functioning of computational machines, but also of dominant economic
and social systems, forms of subjectivity, and models of communication.

In the sixteenth issue of "View. Theories and Practices of Visual
Culture," we'd like to invite contributions reflecting on the relations
between machines and visuality, algorithms and screens. The possible
topics may include: historical changes of the visualization of
computational processes; functioning of software "for thinking" after
the age of Power Point (e.g. archiving, editing, and communication
applications); relations between algorithms and economy (with the
consideration of the role of visualization); ways of rendering
invisible mechanisms visible (amongst others in critical art and film
practices), as well as disturbing the workings of the machine through
visual means.

Deadline for submitted articles: November 15th, 2016.

We invite you to consult the topic of your article with the editor of
the issue (redakcja@pismowidok.org).

For editorial and technical requirements, go to:
http://pismowidok.org/index. php/one/about/submissions.