Call for Papers
PLACE AND IDENTITY IN VIRTUAL REALITY AND GAMING ON FILM Area
2008 Film & History Conference
“Film & Science: Fictions, Documentaries, and Beyond”
October 30-November 2, 2008
Chicago, Illinois
www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory
Third-Round Deadline: August 1, 2008
AREA: PLACE AND IDENTITY IN VIRTUAL REALITY AND GAMING ON FILM
Virtual Reality (VR) narratives challenge our perceptions of the world not just by
simulating it but by opening up its very form and function to the rules of the computer
environment. For the human player, life inside a virtual world—which can become
surprisingly complex, as in Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games
(MMORPGS) like World of Warcraft and Second Life—begins to offer people the kinds
of determinative choices that shape their characters in the outside world.
From the mid-1980s, in productions such as Tron and Star Trek: The Next Generation,
filmmakers have explored the implications of VR technology on human identities. What
is the connection between mind and body, for instance, if, as in The Matrix, the mind can
be disembodied and placed inside a virtual world, complete with full sensory
experiences? If the artificial world is more seductive than the real, what becomes of
Baudrillard’s “ecstasy of communication”? What are the implications for how we
accommodate time and space when VR can instantly transcend both, as depicted in
Existenz, The Thirteenth Floor, and Strange Days?
Proposals for papers are invited on, but not restricted to, representations of VR in the
context of developing cinematic and VR technologies, notions of dream and altered
states, philosophical debates on the mind/body, the senses and vision in particular, visual
pleasures and leisure, theoretical readings (such as Deleuze, Baudrillard, Freud, Lacan),
the adaptation of role-playing games to film narratives, and the pastiching of other film
genres and styles within the VR world. Where necessary, other forms of media such as
MMORPGS, graphic novels, and television shows may be included in a paper to support
evidence or analysis.
Please send your 300-word proposal by AUGUST 1, 2008, to the area chair:
Joan Ormrod, Chair, Place and Identity In Virtual Reality And Gaming On Film Area
Manchester Metropolitan University
Department of History of Art and Design
Righton Building
Cavendish St
Manchester UK
M15 6BG
Email: j.ormrod@mmu.ac.uk
Panel proposals for up to four presenters are also welcome, but each presenter must
submit his or her own paper proposal. Deadline for second-round proposals: August 1,
2008
This area, comprising multiple panels, is a part of the 2008 biennial Film & History
Conference, sponsored by The Center for the Study of Film and History. Speakers will
include founder John O’Connor and editor Peter C. Rollins (in a ceremony to celebrate
the transfer to the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh); Wheeler Winston Dixon, author of
Visions of the Apocalypse, Disaster and Memory, and Lost in the Fifties: Recovering
Phantom Hollywood; Sidney Perkowitz, Charles Howard Candler Professor of Physics at
Emory University and author of Hollywood Science: Movies, Science, & the End of the
World; and special-effects legend Stan Winston, our Keynote Speaker. For updates and
registration information about the upcoming meeting, see the Film & History website
(www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory).