<nettime-ann> announcements | call for submission

The 18th annual Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival (FLEFF) will begin its yearlong exploration of the theme of Habitats with concerts, workshops, master classes, performances, and films. FLEFF invites submissions of digital media projects designed to run online or on mobile devices for its online exhibition “Iterations as Habitats” and prize of USD250.

We speak of habitats in terms of environments inhabited by human and nonhuman animals, plants, insects, minerals, fungi, bacteria; terrains, waters, and atmospheres, spanning the local, havens, dwellings, abodes, sites. While habitats often imply stability, sustenance, and a natural order, their dynamics are also understood in terms of conflicts and contradictions. As competing organisms and species vie for niches, a habitat’s appearance of coherence can be illusory, disguising violence.

Habitats move from environments to the planet, as climate change and species extinction are considered in terms of the Anthropocene; habitats move from physical to virtual places, as artificial intelligence is understood as an actant or agent.

In mathematics and computational sciences, “iterations” are repetitions of functions, statements, applications, software, or hardware that include minor mutations, thereby working successively and incrementally closer to solutions of problems. They can be recursive or fractal, self-similar or mirrored, not unlike patterns in nature. Simulations become environments for artificial life, much like physical environments for synthetic life. From the vantage of environmentalism, notions of improvement and progress, however, demand critical evaluation, particularly in terms of modelling for genetically modified organisms, neoliberal economic policies, and “democratic” elections; at the same time, such notions expand our understanding of life.

As habitats evolve from internal dynamics and external challenges, boundaries unhinge in constant flux. And how do we mark the borders of a habitat or habitus? Are cities habitats? Parks? Farms? Neighbourhoods? Skyscrapers? Museums? Universities? Shopping malls? War zones? Prisons? Databases? Server farms? Phone apps? Concert halls? Film festivals? Beyond the local and the global, how do we imagine habitats manifesting?

“Iterations as Habitats” seeks contributions that use digital media to investigate and expand habitat as a field of critical and imaginative inquiry. Please send link to submission with a brief bio of 75 words in an email to FLEFF Digital Curator Dale Hudson (New York University Abu Dhabi) and FLEFF Assistant Digital Curator Claudia Costa Pederson at fleff.digital.curators@gmail.com
no later than 01 May 2015. The exhibition will follow FLEFF 2015’s onsite festival, which runs
06–12 April 2015.

For additional information on FLEFF, visit: http://www.ithaca.edu/fleff/. To see last year’s online exhibition, “Viral Dissonance,” visit: http://www.ithaca.edu/fleff/viraldissonance/.

FLEFF: A DIFFERENT ENVIRONMENT