The Fak’ugesi Digital Africa Conference is a retrospective and expansive academic conference to be held in early December 2014.
This intimate but intensive conference, organised by Tegan Bristow from Wits Digital Arts, falls under the umbrella of the recent and very successful Fak’ugesi Digital Africa Festival, and will feature 40 speakers from South Africa; Togo; Egypt; France; UK; USA; Canada; China; Italy; Qatar and Puerto Rico.
“The conference aims to present and publish research on technology as a convergent form where it intersects with the socio-cultural, art and development practices. It will feature three primary topics, two of which will be Africa specific with the third addressing international research in the field,” explains Bristow.
The first session is entitled Post-AfroFuture: Art, Culture and Technology in Africa and will discuss views on African technology and digital creative practice that supersede definitions such as “afro-futurism”. It will include presentations on practice and theory around the unique and emerging ‘cultures of technology’ in the region, which challenge forms evolving from the globalised west.
This will be followed by Innovate, Collaborate, and Educate: Art-Technology Africa. It will be led by Professor Christo Doherty from Wits Digital Art and will address education, inviting views that begin to explore the boundaries of creative practice, science and technology as an innovative and collaborative encounter.
The final session is Post Digital Organic. Led by prominent British media arts pioneer Prof Roy Ascott, this international session will include Prof Ascott and candidates of the Planetary Collegium PhD (Centre for Advanced Inquiry for Integrative Arts (CAiiA) at University of Plymouth) and invited papers. It will present views on the dissolving divide between the engineered and the organic, asking the question “how might learning, research and creativity be furthered, if developed in the context of the organism?”
In addition to the session panels, the conference will host two specialised international workshops. Guests from the Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar will lead the first workshop titled Variable There: Reconfiguring Narrative Through Urban Data.
This workshop explores the construction of narrative through the use of local environmental data that will be collected through a special sensor system in the workshop. The second will focus on the use of Immersive Dome Environments for creative practice and led by Prof. Mike Phillips from the University of Plymouth in the United Kingdom.
Specific papers and presentations for the conference will be finalised before the 3rd of November, feel free to follow the progress of the development of the conference on the website: http://conference.fakugesi.wits.ac.za/ and the Fak’ugesi Festival Facebook page.
