Call for Papers: Geographies of
interactive digital narratives
Sponsored by the Digital Geographies Research Group (DGRG)
RGS-IBG Annual International Conference, Royal Geographical Society, London, 28th
– 30th August 2019
In Hamlet on the Holodeck (1997), digital
narrative scholar Janet Murray described how digital media’s dramatic power
derives from its ability to represent navigable
space. In the diverse and growing body of interactive digital narratives
(IDNs) including videogames, hypertexts, AR/VR/locative media and interactive
TV/film, the user’s movement through, interpretation of, and agency within
designed fictional worlds have become primary mechanisms for the enactment of
stories. While engagement with literary works has a long history within
geography (Pocock, 1988; Brosseau, 1994; Sharp, 2000), contemporary IDNs have
received minimal scholarly attention amidst the discipline’s ‘digital turn’,
despite their ever-increasing societal recognition (demonstrated by the
response to widely-discussed Black Mirror
episode ‘Bandersnatch’) and implementation for educational, artistic and
entertainment purposes. By concentrating on the storytelling potential of digital environments, this session
engages digital geographers with a persistent and pervasive domain of cultural
meaning-making; bringing together theoretical and empirical responses to a
broad range of IDN forms and grappling with their implications for how we
understand space and place in the digital age. Exploring the conceptual and
methodological opportunities and challenges IDNs present to geographers, it
aims to provoke new and fruitful directions of scholarship with narrative scholars/practitioners
across the arts and humanities.
Instructions
for authors
This is an
explicitly interdisciplinary session and we welcome contributions on this topic
from a wide range of fields. We also welcome ideas for creative approaches that
integrate the medium of interactive digital narratives into the session,
alongside conventional paper presentations (15 minutes plus 5 minutes for
questions). Please get in touch with the session organisers if you’d like to
discuss your ideas informally.
Possible
topics for discussion could include:
- Relevance
of geographical concepts for IDNs
- Social/cultural
landscapes of IDN consumption
- Labour
geographies of IDN production
- Agency
and power relationships in IDN environments
- Affect,
embodiment and immersion through IDN environments
- Methodological
approaches for studying IDNs
- Uses
of IDNs for cultural/heritage/educational purposes
- Relationship
between the physical and virtual in IDNs
Please
submit abstracts of no more than 250
words to Jack Lowe (jack.lowe.2017@rhul.ac.uk)
and Scott Palmer (s.d.palmer@leeds.ac.uk) by Friday 8th February.
Please
also let us know if there are any special audio-visual or mobility requirements
(a laptop, data projector, screen and audio speakers are provided).
