SCMS Panel CFP

KF of Planned Obsolescence is circulating the following CFP for a panel at next year’s Society for Cinema and Media Studies in Vancouver:

Database/Narrative: The Forms of Digital Media

Critics including Friedrich Kittler and Lev Manovich have posited, in so-called “new media,” the replacement of narrative by the database; other theorists and practitioners, including Marsha Kinder’s Labyrinth Project, have imagined the future of media as developing precisely in the nexus of narrative and the database. This panel will explore, across multiple media forms, the intersections and divergences of narrative and the database in the contemporary media ecology. Papers might address a range of topics, such as recent experiments in documentary production, the role of narrative in digital gaming, or the structures of such forms of social software as wikis and blogs. Such an exploration might help bridge the apparent gap between traditional narrative forms such as film and more recent technologies such as the Internet, creating a useful dialogue between “cinema” and “new media.”

Alas, my kingdom for a travel budget. If you have a paper that would fit, send it in. Vancouver is beautiful to visit, and KF is a hoot to hang out with.