::fibreculture:: Transformations CFP: Hyperaesthetic Culture

[Grayson Cooke]

Dear Colleagues,

Transformations is calling for submissions for Issue 22: Hyperaesthetic 
Culture.

We live in a competitive sensory environment. The marketing of consumer 
goods continually appeals to taste, touch, vision, hearing, and smell, 
compelling other practices to engage our senses in what David Howes 
describes as a 'hyperaesthetic culture'. This environment is saturated 
with alluring and intense sense experience that proliferates as 
technologies such as ultrasonography, satellites and computer 
applications provide access to things previously beyond human 
perception. Bodies are cultivated to be aesthetically appealing and 
optimally available to the senses for commercial, medical and security 
purposes.

This special issue of Transformations will examine sensory regimes and 
the way in which people respond to them. Recent cultural research into 
the senses shows that the relationships and hierarchies between them are 
not static. Varying sensoriums are involved in different understandings 
of the self and its relationship to the world. This is apparent in 
cultural studies projects that implicitly and explicitly integrate 
questions of sensory experience into their investigations.

We invite submissions in the areas of philosophy, critical, cultural and 
media studies, and creative arts research. Possible topics include:

– new technologies of the senses, such as haptic technologies
– the effects of sensory regimes on bodies and minds
– sensory appeal and the persistence of technologically 'outmoded' 
goods, such as vinyl records
– relationships between hyperaestheticism and thought
– sensory adaptation and substitution, such as human echolocation
– ways of making bodies and objects available to the senses, such as 
body scans
– senses other than the traditional five senses, such as proprioception
– new media arts projects incorporating biometric feedback

Abstracts (500 words): due 7 November 2011 with a view to submit by 7 
February 2012.
Abstracts to be forwarded to: Erika Kerruish erika.kerruish at scu.edu.au 
<mailto:erika.kerruish at scu.edu.au>
For submission guidelines go to: 
http://www.transformationsjournal.org/journal/

-- 
Dr Grayson Cooke
Course Coordinator BMedia
(acting) Director of Higher Degree Research Training
School of Arts and Social Sciences
Southern Cross University
PO Box 157
East Lismore NSW 2480
Ph: +61 2 6620 3839
http://works.bepress.com/grayson_cooke/
http://www.transformationsjournal.org