*MIX 2017: REVOLUTIONS, REGENERATIONS, REFLECTIONSBATH SPA UNIVERSITY,
NEWTON PARK CAMPUS. 10-12 JULY 2017*

www.mixconference.org

*CALL FOR PAPERS AND PRESENTATIONS*

After the success of the last three MIX conferences, MIX 2017 returns to
Bath Spa University’s Newton Park Campus. 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 attracted an
international cohort of contributors from the UK, Australia, and Europe as
well as North and South America. MIX is now situated within the recently
created international research centres - Making Books: Creativity, Print
Culture & the Digital, and the Media Convergence Research Centre.

After more than two decades of innovation and experimentation, the
relationship between reading, writing, form, content and delivery platform
remains in flux. The e-book has taken its place alongside the print book
and the multimedia story app and/or website have become familiar modes for
reading and viewing. Developers are creating dramatic story and
character-led narratives via independent games while interactive and
immersive theatre-makers are finding new ways to engage audiences well
beyond traditional theatre spaces. Television storytelling conventions
continue to evolve in line with the dominance of streaming services; new
reading habits and engagement strategies now surround the form of digital
comics. Music exhibitors are forging increased participatory opportunities
via developments in live-touring; spoken word continues to thrive at the
same time as poetry film is gaining wider recognition; virtual reality and
augmented reality are both making in-roads into documentary and fiction;
literary forms are morphing and changing in response to the affordances of
the smartphone and tablet; pervasive and locative media are shaping how
literature is understood and read. Digital media technologies foster
creative ways of telling stories across multiple platforms. New media
hasn’t been ‘new’ for quite some time and the word ‘digital’ is rapidly
becoming redundant as technology becomes more deeply enmeshed within our
cities, our homes, our lives.

In this context, a conference that looks at where creative writing,
storytelling and media creation intersects with and/or is dependent upon
technology should be as interdisciplinary as possible, and that’s what we
are aiming for with MIX 2017. The conference will host a vibrant mix of
academic papers, practitioner presentations, seminars, keynotes,
discussions and workshops. Alongside scholars and researchers, artists,
creative writers and creative technologists interested in literary forms
are welcome to submit proposals.

*Confirmed keynotes* include Prof Jon Dovey
<http://people.uwe.ac.uk/Pages/person.aspx?accountname=campus%5Cj-dovey>,
Digital Culture Research Centre and Pervasive Media Studio at the
University of the West of England; Dr Elizabeth Evans
<https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/clas/departments/cfm/people/elizabeth.evans>,
Assistant Professor in Film and Television Studies at the University of
Nottingham; Anna Gerber and Britt Iverson from Visual Editions
<http://visual-editions.com/about>/Editions at Play; and Prof Caitlin Fisher
<http://www.yorku.ca/caitlin/home/>, Director of York University Augmented
Reality Lab, Toronto, Canada.

The *themes* for this year’s conference are *revolutions, regenerations and
reflections*. We would like to encourage the submission of research papers
and artist/practitioner presentations that address these themes in the
following ways:

   - *Revolution*: science and writing; turning points and key moments in
   the development of digital literature; writing in and on urban spaces; 3D
   environments; writing and narrative using virtual reality and augmented
   reality; transnational creativity; ambient literature
   - *Regeneration*: young writers and the future of creative writing; new
   directions and new hybrid forms; remix; hybridity; new possibilities
   offered by new technological platforms and tools
   - *Reflection*: scholarly or practice-based papers that focus on
   practice that resides at the intersection of writing, storytelling, media
   creation and technology; the history of the book and other media forms and
   how those histories inform present day reading, consumption, publishing and
   exhibition practices; work which investigates and forecasts the future of
   reading; digital writing pedagogy

We are interested in work that takes a wide variety of forms, including
digital fiction and digital poetry, participatory media, digital art and
text, collaborations between writers and technologists, hybrid and
cross-media practice, transmedia practice, as well as our on-going themes
of the future of the book, new forms of publishing, convergent media
cultures and new forms of digital curation. We’ll also look for papers and
presentations on digital and interactive theatre-making, including
scriptwriting, performance and technology, and ambient literature,
including mobile, locative, pervasive and other site-specific forms. As in
previous conferences, papers that focus on pedagogy in any of these fields
are also welcome.

We will have several strands of discussion, and these will include
transnational creativity as well as interactive documentary; the
Bristol-based interactive documentary group, iDocs, will offer a series of
screenings. The second of three new works commissioned for the AHRC-funded
research project, Ambient Literature, will be launched at MIX 2017.

NAWE, the National Association of Writer in Education, will be joining BSU
to curate the pedagogical strand of the conference. In the teaching of
creative writing, from primary to postgraduate level there is an increasing
need to incorporate cross media practice. How can we teach the digital
aspects of writing? Innovative practice requires innovative pedagogy. We
are keen to receive papers from those who work with creative writing at all
levels, primary, secondary, community and post graduate, and to hear about
teaching methods, and innovative projects. We welcome submissions from
educators who are also artist/practitioners who incorporate their creative
practice into their teaching.

In addition to this Call for Papers, we will also issue the following Calls:

   1. a Call to digital writers and artists for entries to the Exhibition.
   Further information will be published shortly.
   2. a Call for the competition to create a work for our MediaWall in
   association with Paper Nations. Building on the success of MIX 2015’s
   international artist’s commission for the MediaWall, James Coupe’s ‘General
   Intellect’, we have teamed up with Paper Nations to commission a writer or
   artist or team to create a new literary artwork for the Bath Spa
   University’s MediaWall. The artwork will need to include original writing
   from young people age 8-14. The aim is to encourage a high level of
   engagement from schools across England and we would welcome innovative
   methods for mass participation such as crowdsourcing. Funded by Arts
   Council England, Paper Nations is the country’s first and only creative
   writing hub for young people. This ambitious project brings together the
   best and most innovative arts organisations, creative writers and educators
   with a common purpose: to inspire a creative nation of young writers. For
   further information will be published shortly.

Workshop sessions will be offered on aspects of digital making, transmedia
practice, interactive narratives, ambient literature and other related
topics. Workshops are intended as a space to share innovative practice into
the making of digital writing and related themes. We invite proposals from
anyone interested in leading one of the workshops as part of this Call –
see below for how to submit proposals for workshops.

The conference will also host the launch of the Special Issue of *Convergence:
The International Journal of New Media Technologies*: ‘Writing Digital:
Practice, Performance, Theory’. This Special Issue arose from themes
developed for MIX 2015. A new Call for Papers for an open access
peer-reviewed journal issue will be launched at MIX 2017.

*HOW TO SUBMIT PROPOSALS*

Abstracts of up to 300 words for a 20-minute paper or presentation or a
90-minute workshop should be sent to *[log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>*
by *Monday 30 January 2017*. The Abstract must be a separate Word, pdf or
rtf file; the document name must be in the following format: Author
Surname, Abstract Title, Type of Proposal (i.e.
paper/presentation/workshop). The Abstract must stipulate which theme(s)
the paper or presentation will address: revolution, regeneration, or
reflection.

*CONFERENCE PRICING*

MIX 2017 Standard        £200
MIX 2017 Early Bird       £145
MIX 2017 Concession    £100

We guarantee all presenters the early bird price – until a final Call is
issued in mid June. If they miss this, the registration goes up to standard.
Early bird ticket sales for non-presenters cut off mid-May.
The £100 concession is offered to independent practitioners, students,
global South, and Bath Spa staff; it is available right up to the
conference opening day.

*BOOKING*

For information about booking into the conference and accommodation, please
go to the conference website at www.mixconference.org.

Bath Spa University Conference Committee: Co-Directors Kate Pullinger and
Lucy English, Executive Producer Bambo Soyinka, Exhibition and MediaWall
Producer Anthony Head, Event Producer Gavin Bower, Comms Producer Steve
Hollyman, Workshop Producer Matthew Freeman, Exhibition and Admin
Coordinator Abbi Cross.



*Dr Matthew Freeman, FHEA*

*Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication*
*Director, Media Convergence Research Centre*

*The Digital Academy*

*Bath Spa University*


T: +44 (0)1225 876708
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Newton Park, Newton St Loe, Bath, BA2 9BN.

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