FanLIS2024: “Fandom, AI & the Immersive”
Call for Presentations
UPDATE: The call for proposals has been extended until 1 March 2024.
FanLIS 2024 is a CityLIS symposium to explore the intersection between fandom, fan studies, and library and information science. It will take place on May 23rd 2024, as online event. All are welcome to submit, from fans, librarians, infopros, acafen and independent researchers. Email us if you have ideas but aren’t sure if they fit – we’re open to suggestions!
As innovators in both creative expression and its documentation, fans have consistently turned to the latest technological advances in their creative and information practices. The affordances of recent technologies, including the metaverse, special computing, generative AI, and 3D printing, allow fans to engage in fandom in ever more inventive and novel ways.
For FanLIS 2024, we have a dual call. Firstly, for updates to documentation practice around traditional media (costume, print, audio, video), and secondly a special call for papers detailing creative practice in, and documentation of, new media, (AI, interactive, timebased or immersive experiences).
For either track, we are looking forward to hearing about both working and speculative documentation practice. For new media fan works in particular, new documentation processes will be needed, and the authors of creative media will be key to discussions around what needs to be recorded, and indeed, what it may be possible to record and preserve.
AI has come to the forefront of the public consciousness in the past year, and fans have used free online tools such as DALL-E 2 to create fanart, or to generate ideas and “enhance artistic processes” in fannish projects (Mussies, 2023). Such technology may also allow fans to more fully experience and envision fictional worlds, in ways they were not able to before. The use of generative AI has however, recently raised concerns around plagiarism, and this may impact open fan practice (Grynbaum & Mac, 2023).
Likewise, immersive experience allows fans to engage with fandom in deeper, more visceral and experiential modes. Virtual and augmented reality, including spactial computing, enhance this; but technology need not necessarily be required to achieve such immersion. Immersive and interactive performance has been seen growing popularity in the last decade and more, as has screen tourism to ever more immersive ‘fictional worlds’ such as The Wizarding World of Harry Potter and Middle-earth in New Zealand (Baker, Eddy & Bailey, 2022). As Affuso & Scott’s (2023) edited book on fandom and sartorial practice demonstrates, costume and clothing also have their role to play in immersion. The long-established practice of cosplay has become increasingly intricate and accessible, aided by the affordability of 3D printing for prop-making, online communities based upon sharing fibre art techniques, tips and guides, and the ubiquity of dedicated cosplay fanstores.
Fandom can also be played out through the senses, as we see in Yodovich’s (2022) article on fandom, intimacy and smell. But our main question remains – how do we record and document such experiences? And how do we preserve more complex fanworks and experiences – if at all?
Proposals on, though not limited to, the following topics are welcome:
Main track
- Fan information behaviour
- The documentation of fan (sub)cultures
- Fandom through fashion (e.g. cosplay)
- Fan journalism
- Fandom and copyright
- Fandom and (self-)publishing
- Fanbinding
- Beta-reading, and other fan editing practices
- Fan wikis, reclists and encyclopaedias
- Fandom on social media
- Fandom and metadata
- Fanfiction reading groups
New media track
- Fandom and AI
- Fandom and immersive experiences, performances, events, etc.
- Fandom and virtual or augmented reality
- Preservation of complex fan objects, both physical and digital (e.g. videogames, costume, film)
- Fandom, sensory perception and embodiment
Please send your 500 word proposals, indicating the track to which you feel your work would align, to both Ludi Price at Ludovica.Price@city.ac.uk and Lyn Robinson at lynrobinson@ntlworld.com by midnight on 2 February 2024. UPDATE: the call for proposals has been extended to 1 March 2024.
Authors of successful proposals will be notified by 14 March 2024. The symposium will provisionally take place online on May 23rd 2024. Timings will be set to local British Summer Time (BST).
Authors of accepted papers will be invited to publish their work in a special volume of Proceedings from the Document Academy (open access). A $10 fee will be required to contribute towards DOI registration.
Please send any queries to Ludovica.Price@city.ac.uk.
References
Affuso, E., and Scott, S. (eds.) (2023). Sartorial fandom: fashion, beauty culture, identity. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Baker, C., Eddy, R., and Bailey, D. (2022). Immersive worlds and sites of participatory culture: the evolution of screen tourism and theme parks. In: Champion, E., et al. Screen tourism and affective landscapes: the real, the virtual, and the cinematic, pp. 199-216. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
Grynbaum, M. M., and Mac, R. (2023). The Times Sues OpenAI and Microsoft Over A.I. Use of Copyrighted Work. New York Times [online]. 27 Dec. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/27/business/media/new-york-times-open-ai-microsoft-lawsuit.html [Accessed 8 January 2024]/
Mussies, M. (2023). Artificial intelligence and the production of fan art. Transformative Works and Cultures, 40. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2023.2431
Yodovich, N. (2022). “What did they smell like?”: Fans creating intimacy through smell and odor. Transformative Works and Cultures, 38. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2022.2263
