Call for Papers: MIX 2019: Experiential Storytelling

After the success of the last four MIX conferences, MIX 2019 returns to the beautiful surroundings of Bath Spa University’s Corsham Court Campus in Wiltshire on the 1^st and 2^nd July 2019. This year’s conference will be a more intimate, single strand version, curated for a smaller audience to give time and space to instigate conversations around digital writing with a focus on experiential storytelling, including immersive technologies and new forms of publishing, from transmedia and poetry film to virtual reality to AI in storytelling. Confirmed speakers include publisher, Maja Thomas, Chief Innovation Officer, Hachette Innovation Program; Thomas Zandegiocomo, Artistic Director Zebra Poetry Film Festival, Berlin; Guy Gadney, Charisma.ai and writer Nikesh Shukla.

Bath Spa University is the UK’s foremost provider of creative writing programmes at undergraduate, masters and PhD level and MIX is well-established as an innovative forum for the discussion and exploration of writing and technology. MIX has previously attracted an international cohort of contributors from the UK, Australia, and Europe as well as North and South America. MIX is situated within the international research centres, the Centre for Cultural and Creative Industries, in collaboration with the Centre for Media Research, Creative Writing Research Centre, and The Writing Platform.

This year, our conference focuses on experiential storytelling, which encompasses works that foreground the experience of the audience or reader. Within the single-strand programme there will be four themed panels. We would like to encourage the submission of research papers and artist/practitioner presentations on the following topics;

• Emerging forms of digitally-mediated narrative, including projects that use artificial intelligence, machine learning, algorithmic writing practices and locative-aware narratives.
• Poetry film, including the future of poetry film, current developments in social media sharing, current developments in poetry film content and practice.
• Immersive technologies and narrative, including Extended and Mixed Reality, VR, Augmented Reality, and Ambient Literature
• Ethics of Storytelling, including accessibility and appropriation, but also issues around technology and ethics, i.e embodiment in VR, algorithmic bias in cultural works that use AI, etc.

A conference where creative writing and media creation intersect with and/or are dependent upon technology should be as interdisciplinary as possible, and that’s what we are aiming for with MIX 2019. The conference will host a vibrant mix of academic papers, practitioner presentations and keynotes.

We are looking for proposals for 15 minute papers/ presentations or 60 minute panels (composed of three 15 minute papers with time for q&a). Please submit 300 word abstracts for each paper/presentation you are proposing via http://mixconference.org/submit/ by Monday 4th February 2019. We will let you know whether your submission has been successful by the end of February 2019.

Speakers who are selected to present at the conference will be encouraged to develop their papers into innovative, practice-focused outputs published in Bath Spa University’s recently launched International Journal of Creative Media Research. The journal is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed and open access journal devoted to pushing forward the approaches to and possibilities for publishing creative media-based research.

For queries on your conference submission, email mix@bathspa.ac.uk

You can find the full call for papers on our website.