fishers, surfers and casters

This is the title of one in a series of free seminars leading up to the Parliament of the World’s Religions (held in Melbourne in December). Moderated by Penny Mulvey of Positive Media, they explore questions relevant to the upcoming Melbourne Parliament of the World’s Religions and to our multifaith society.

Who am I in cyberspace?
Spirituality and identity online

Monday 21 September, 6.00pm–7.30pm
Venue: St Michael’s Uniting Church, cnr Collins and Russells Sts , Melbourne

What is cyberspace doing to people’s identity and spirituality?

Speakers: Mandy Salmon and Francis Macnab.

Mandy Salomon leads Swinburne University Smart Services CRC’s social research into the disruptive aspects of virtual worlds and their application in health, commerce, industry, education and government. She is an international editor for the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research and is well-known in the media as a speaker and writer on a variety of related issues such as the internet and internet culture, social networks, web services and augmented intelligence.

On top of his duties as a minister of inner city church St Michaels, Dr Francis Macnab is a psychotherapist and an internationally renowned public speaker. He has published more than 25 books and is the founding Executive Director of the Cairnmillar Institute – a unique centre in Australia for the psychological treatment and prevention of emotional and psychological difficulties.

Sponsored by St Michael’s Uniting Church

Bookings: reception@stmichaels.org.au

This will be a great get-together.

How do the Christian faith and the Internet impact upon each other?
What place might the Bible have in our digital world?

Come and join us as our panel of expert speakers engage with these topics and others relating to issues of faith in the digital world.

Speakers:
Mark Brown
CEO, Bible Society New Zealand & founder Anglican Cathedral in Second Life.
Stephen Garner
Lecturer in Theology and Popular Culture, School of Theology, University of Auckland.
Heidi Campbell
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Communication, Texas A&M University & author of Exploring Religious Community Online.
Tim Bulkeley
Lecturer in Old Testament, Carey Baptist College & developer of the Amos Hypertext Commentary & podBible projects.

Saturday 5 September 2009
9am-12pm
OGGB4 Lecture Theatre, Level 0, Owen G Glenn Building, Grafton Road, The University of Auckland
Please register your attendance by Wednesday 2 September, with theologyadmin@auckland.ac.nz
Cost $5 (morning tea provided)

This is not my area, and I won’t be attending the conference, but it looks both interesting and very important, so when it came across my inbox I thought I shouldn’t not promote it. Thanks to Jaz Choi for sending the notice out.

Call for Participation

Hungry 24/7? HCI Design for Sustainable Food Culture

Full day workshop at OZCHI 2009
24 Nov 2009, The University of Melbourne

http://food.urbaninformatics.net/events/ozchi2009/
http://www.ozchi.org/mediawiki/index.php/HUNGRY247
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=128413300549

This workshop proposes to explore new approaches to cultivate and support sustainable food culture in urban environments via human computer interaction design and ubiquitous technologies.

Food is a challenging issue in urban contexts: while food consumption decisions are made many times a day, most food interaction for urbanites occurs based on convenience and habitual practices. This situation is contrasting to the fact that food is at the centre of global environment, health, and social issues that are becoming increasingly immanent and imminent. As such, it is timely and crucial to ask: what are feasible, effective, and innovative ways to improve human-food-interaction through human-computer-interaction in order to contribute to environmental, health, and social sustainability in urban environments?

This workshop is an open and active forum for forward- thinking practitioners and scholars across disciplines to discuss this question, and plan and promote individual, local, and global change for sustainable food culture.

YOU DO NOT NEED TO BE WORKING IN FOOD HCI RESEARCH.
YOU DO NEED TO BE HUNGRY (for networking, knowledge, creativity, fun, and of course, food!)

We suggest, but do not limit to, three broad topics of interests for this workshop:
- Participatory networks
- Research and design methods
- Deployability and interoperability

We kindly ask prospective participants to submit a short position statement (300-500 words) or abstract by 20th September 2009. Please send all submissions and queries to Jaz Choi at h.choi@qut.edu.au.

Acceptance notification will be sent by 27th September 2009.

Important Dates:
- 20 Sep 2009: Submission of position statements
- 27 Sep 2009: Notification of acceptance
- 24 Nov 2009: Workshop

Organisers:
- Jaz Hee-jeong Choi (Queensland University of Technology, Australia)
- Marcus Foth (Queensland University of Technology, Australia)
- Greg Hearn (Queensland University of Technology, Australia)
- Eli Blevis (Indiana University, USA)
- Tad Hirsch (Intel, USA)

26 -27 November 2009
Monash University Conference Centre
Level 7, 30 Collins Street
Melbourne

Registration (includes lunches and morning and afternoon tea):
$ 160 wage earners
$ 100 students and non-wage earners* *

*CALL FOR PAPERS *

This conference will focus on religious communication and religious aesthetic forms. The underlying impulse is to bring into dialogue scholarly work undertaken in religious studies and theology with debates and research in the fields of communications and cultural studies, including performance, literary, visual and aesthetic analyses. The premise of the conference is that communication and aesthetic forms play an active role in shaping a religious culture’s sensibility rather than merely reflecting that religious community’s ideology, logic or worldview. In short, religious communication makes religious experience meaningful, possible and effective.

The conference will have a wide interpretation of ‘religious communication’, including, but extending religious communication beyond ‘communication studies’ understood as ‘mass media’, to include religious modes of communication such as prayer, sermons, revelation, art, theatre and ritual, as well as religious uses of mass media. We invite papers from the perspectives across the humanities and social sciences, including literature, music, performance, film and television, anthropology, sociology and history, as well as religious studies and theology. We also invite papers from all religious perspectives.

The conference is particularly interested in exploring:
* Religious affect and its relationship to different media (e.g. song, prayer, architecture, film, performance, images in general)
* Religious interpretation and textual hermeneutics (e.g. literalism versus symbolism)
* The use of communication media and art forms by religious groups to create a sense of community
* Communication as a ‘portal’ or window to the ‘divine’ and/or the ‘sacred’
* Cross-cultural adaptation and the creolisation of religious forms
* Religion and the sacred in popular culture
* Modernity, post-modernity and religious communication.

This conference will be held immediately prior to the World Parliament of Religions, providing an opportunity for reflection on religious practice and the relationship between religious identity and the aesthetic forms of religious communication, and cross cultural communication.

Deadline for submission of abstracts: 22 June 2009
Please email an abstract of 200-250 words, and a short biographical note to:
Elizabeth.Coleman <at> arts.monash.edu.au

Conveners:

Dr Elizabeth Burns Coleman
Associate Professor Gil-Soo Han
Communications and Media Studies, ECPS, Monash University

Supported by:
English, Communications and Performance Studies, Monash University Performance and Social Aesthetics Research Unit, Monash University

http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/ecps/conferences/religious-communication/