Poetics of the Algorithm: Narrative, the Digital, and ‘Unidentified’ Media is an international and bilingual (English and French) conference organized by the ACME Research Group and hosted by the University of Liège (Belgium), from June 16 to June 18, 2016. It focuses on interactive fiction, apps, digital comics, games, e-literature and other emerging, ‘new’ media. The conference will host workshops, roundtable discussions, panels, and presentations of papers.

The conference does not require advance registration (except the WREKshop). It is a free event and completely open to the public. 

WEDNESDAY 15 JUNE

Conference opening event: WREKshop by Olivier Deprez & Miles O’Shea
9h-17h, Académie des Beaux-Arts de Liège

20h – WREKshop Projection, with comments by Olivier Deprez and Aarnoud Rommens – Salle Lumière, Université de Liège


THURSDAY 16 JUNE

8h30-9h – Welcome and registration

9h-9h30 – Introduction by Aarnoud Rommens, Björn-Olav Dozo & Benoît Crucifix

9h30 – 11h30 – Thinking about Digital Comics through Practice

  • Nicolas Labarre (Université Bordeaux-Montaigne), “The Users of Comics as Scholarship”
  • Anthony Rageul (Université Rennes 2, artist), “De la jubilation de concevoir des ‘récits-interfaces’”
  • Daniel Merlin Goodbrey (University of Hertfordshire), “Choose the Format of the Destructor: Design Choices for Comic Creators in Print and Digital Media”
  • Yannis La Macchia (graphic artist), “Narration par fragments”

Coffee break

11h45-12h45
Ilan Manouach
“Shapereader: Tactile storytelling for the visually impaired”

Lunch (room A2/5/6)

14h-15h30 – Bande dessinée numérique : esthétique et lecture

  • Julien Baudry (Université Bordeaux-Montaigne), “Les paradoxes de l’innovation esthétique dans la création numérique en bande dessinée”
  • Magali Boudissa (Université Paris 8), “De l’album à l’écran : enjeux narratifs et esthétiques de la bande dessinée numérique”
  • Jean-Bernard Cheymol (CMI – Université Paris 3), “La vitesse dans 3″ de Marc-Antoine Mathieu”

Coffee break

15h45-17h15 – Comics, Technology and Here

  • Côme Martin (Université Paris-Sorbonne, Paris IV), “Contre ou au-delà de l’imprimé? La bande dessinée numérique à la recherche d’un statut spécifique”
  • Ernesto Priego (City University of London) and Peter Wilkins (Douglas College), “The Question Concerning Comics as Technology: Gestell and Grid”
  • Aarnoud Rommens (Université de Liège), “Weird Media”

18h-19h30
Richard McGuire & Stephen Betts
“Digitizing Here


FRIDAY 17 JUNE

9h-9h45 – Digital Practices

  • Loraine Furter (Hybrid Publishing Group), “Hidden Histories, Public Libraries”
  • Robert Rapoport (Leuphana University), “The Poetics of the AI Video Edit: Projection, Synch, Phase”

9h45-11h15 – Networks/Circulation

  • Estelle Dalleu (Université de Strasbourg), “D’un algorithme en résistance : le GIF. À propos de Zac’s Haunted House et Zac’s Control Panel de Dennis Cooper”
  • Dinu Gabriel Munteanu (Nottingham Trent University), “Indeterminate Media and the Poetics of Loss: Architecture, Colour and Mood on Tumblr Microblogs”
  • Vendela Grundell (Stockholm University), “Interfacing Poetics: Glitch Art Transforming Spectatorship”

Coffee break

11h30-12h30
Johnny Golding (CFAR-Birmingham City University)
“Exquisite Matter: Sensoria, Entanglement and the Roll of the Code (Encountering the Strange Case of 3D Printing)”

Lunch (room A2/5/6)

13h30-14h30 – The Music of Code and Software

  • Jonathan Impett (Orpheus Institute & Middlesex University), “Building with the Unnamable: Code, Music and Operational Discourse”
  • Raffaele Pavoni (Università degli Studi di Firenze), “From Music Videos to Music Algorithms. The Convergence of Software Houses and Record Labels in Chrome Experiments Interactive Music Videos”

14h30-15h30
Sarah Kember (Goldsmiths, University of London)
“iMedia: What or Where is the i in iMedia?”

Coffee break

15h45-16h45 – Rethinking Interfaces

  • Sylvie Fabre (Université d’Artois), “Du lecteur à l’utilisateur: l’expérience de la lecture sur écran, entre raison graphique et raison numérique”
  • Dane Watkins (Falmouth University), “Smudging the Interface: How Can the Aesthetics of Comics Enhance the Usability of User Interfaces?”

17h-18h
Gregory Ulmer (University of Florida)
“Electracy: the Digital Apparatus”


SATURDAY 18 JUNE

9h-10h30 – Mediality in the Digital Age

  • Simon Grennan (University of Chester) and Ian Hague (London College of Communications), “Medium, knowledge, structure: capacities for choice and the contradiction of medium-specificity in games and comics”
  • Olivier Crépin (Université Paris 8), “Walking Dead : de l’adaptation à la transmédialité, transformations du rythme du récit et implications”
  • Gert Meesters (Université de Lille), “Bob and Bobette and Digital Enthusiasm. How a Big Comics Publisher in Flanders Put a Lot of Effort into Discrediting His Own Books”Coffee break

11h-12h
Markku Eskelinen (independent researcher)
“Cybertextuality in 3D: a historical-theoretical-practical framework for re-reading literature”

Lunch (room: A2/5/6)

13h30-14h45 – Game Design and Narratology

  • Victor Cayres, Lynn Alves, Cristhyane Ribeiro (State University of Bahia), “A game narrative development framework based on dramaturgical analysis tools”
  • Mark R. Johnson & Darren J. Reed (University of York), “Towards Participatory Game Design”
  • David Myers (Loyola University New Orleans), “Possible stories and literal games”

14h45-15h45
Gregory Steirer (Dickinson College)
“God from the Machine: Constructing Authorship in Twenty-First Century Interactive Fiction”

Coffee break

16h-17h – Reprocessing Literature Through the Algorithm

  • Martin Zeilinger (Anglia Ruskin University), “Machine-Readable Beckett: A Transdisciplinary Approach to Reading and Performing Quad as Algorithmic Theatre”
  • Philipp Sack (Braunschweig University of Art), “Commodity and thought forms. On ‘Poetry for Robots’”

17h-18h – Oulipo and Digital Avant-Gardes

  • Natalie Berkman (Princeton University), “L’Oulipo numérique”
  • Catherine Lenoble and An Mertens (Algolit), “Exercices de style with algorithms #Digital avant-gardes”

18h-18h30 – Concluding Remarks