CFP: Analogous Spaces: Architecture and the space of information, intellect and action (Ghent University)
May 15-17 2008 Ghent University
International Conference
Deadline: July 31, 2007
Call for Papers URL (with much more information): http://www.hastac.org/node/748
Information: http://www.analogousspaces.com/
Call for Papers
The International Conference on Analogous Spaces interrogates the analogy between spaces in which knowledge is preserved, organized, transferred or activated. Although these spaces may differ in material, virtual, or operational ways, there are resemblances if one examines their 'structure,' 'form' and 'architecture'. How do these spaces co-exist and interrelate?
The conference seeks papers on the following types of spaces:
• architecture and elements of the built environment (museums, libraries and archives, warehouses, ministries, administrative towns, world capitals, physical infrastructure, functionalist urbanism, etc.);
• information storage and data processing (databases, information retrieval, data mining, conceptual maps, scholarly communication, search engines, etc.);
• the architecture of "the book" (contents and layout of atlases, scientific and scholarly treatises, encyclopedias, guides, manuals, children's books etc.);
• organizational schemes and diagrams (organigrams, functional diagrams, visual language, interfaces, artificial intelligence, taxonomies, classification systems, itineraries, etc.).
Conference papers should examine analogical relationships between these types of spaces by investigating how they produce, accumulate, order, conserve, distribute, classify, and use knowledge.
The conference will be organized around three main themes:
1. The first theme explores spatial analogies in terms of social and intellectual networks. What are the geographic relationships and/or technological affordances that support or inhibit the
development of such networks? What constrains their development and effectiveness and how do different kinds of network models help in understanding their formation, evolution and dissolution.
2. The second theme deals with the space of knowledge and memory. How can we compare the encyclopedia and the museum, the book and the library, the diagram and the database? How do they use architecture to structure knowledge and how is architecture used as a metaphor of
memory?
3. The third theme explores the space required for speed, action and decision making. In modernity, fast and effective action generates its own space of organization, intelligence and feedback. What does this space look like, and what are the different ways in which it can
be represented?
Calendar
• 31 July 2007 Deadline submission of abstracts
• 31 October 2007 Selection of papers
• 31 March 2008 Submission of final papers and other contributions
• 15-17 May 2008 Conference Analogous Spaces
Practical Information
• Conference language: English
• Conference venue: Ghent (Belgium)
• Publication: A selection of conference papers will be published
• Information: http://www.analogousspaces.com/
• E-mail: analogousspaces@architectuur.ugent.be
