The Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory (HASTAC, pronounced “haystack”) will hold its first international conference April 19 – 21, at Duke University and the Marriott Civic Center in Durham, NC. It is sponsored by RENCI, Duke University and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Registration is now open and space is limited. For a registration form, hotel information and a full conference agenda, see www.hastac.org.
The conference, titled Electronic Techtonics: Thinking at the Interface, will be an unprecedented three-day forum of ideas, demos, exhibits, art and conversation, driven by digital visionaries and practitioners from across domains and disciplines. Topics will include race in cyberspace, theorizing interface, genealogies of old and new media, funding the digital future, games and narratives, and the future of the Internet and Web 3.0. The conference also will feature performances in virtual Reality, and in Second Life. 
Keynote addresses will be given by:

• John Seely Brown, former chief scientist of Xerox Corporation and director of its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Title: The Social Life of Learning in the Net Age.
• James Boyle, William Neal Reynolds professor of law and co-founder of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School. Title: CreativeCommons, ScienceCommons, and Open Source.
• John Unsworth, dean of the Graduate School of Library and Information Sciences (GSLIS) at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Title: The Foundations and Futures of Digital Humanities.
• Rebecca Allen, professor of New Media, UCLA. Title: Intimate Interface: The Interface Between Art and Technology.
• Cathy N. Davidson and David Theo Goldberg, MacArthur Foundation Project on Digital Media and Learning. Title:The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age.

HASTAC is a worldwide consortium of humanists, artists, scientists, social scientists and engineers from universities and other civic institutions committed to new forms of collaboration fostered by creative uses of technology. Since 2003 HASTAC members have worked to develop tools for multimedia archiving and social interaction, gaming environments for teaching, innovative educational programs in information science and information studies, virtual museums, and other digital projects.

The conference, titled Electronic Techtonics: Thinking at the Interface, will be one of the culminating events of HASTAC’s In|Formation Year, which began last June and runs through May 2007. In|Formation Year events include a series of networked discussions, lectures and performances hosted by HASTAC member institutions that highlight the human and humane dimensions of advanced technology.

The Electronic Techtonics international conference is co-sponsored by HASTAC members Duke University in Durham and the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) in Chapel Hill, NC.

The conference is seeking papers and proposals for panel discussions. Topics might include research on interfaces between:

• humans and computers
• mind and brain
• real and virtual worlds
• science and fiction
• consumers and producers
• text archives and multimedia
• youth and adults
• disciplines, institutions, communities, identities, media, cultures,  technologies, theories, and practices.

Other possible topics include the body as interface, neuroaesthetics and neurocognition, prosthetics, mind-controlled devices, telepresence, sensor spaces, virtual reality, social networking, games and issues related to learning, communication, access to information, interactivity, race, gender, sexuality, civic engagement and social activism.

In addition the conference welcomes papers that address the themes of the In|Formation Year events:  in|common, interplay, in|community, interaction, injustice, integration, invitation, innovation.

Panel and paper proposals of 500 – 1,000 words must be submitted to info@hastac.org by Dec. 1, 2006.

Other highlights of the conference will include a keynote address by John Seely Brown, information scientist and author of The Social Life of Information, a talk by legal theorist James Boyle, co-founder of the Center for the Study of Public Domain, Creative Commons and Science Commons, a conversation among leaders of innovative digital humanities projects, and a presentation by media artist and researcher Rebecca Allen.

Details on registration fees, hotel accommodations, and a full conference agenda will be posted at the HASTAC website (link: www.hastac.org) as they become available.

Some scholarship funding will be available to graduate students to help defray conference costs. For more information or to request HASTAC’s In|Formation Year poster, contact Jonathan Tarr, HASTAC Project Manager, at  info@hastac.org or 919 684-8471.

HASTAC is a worldwide consortium of humanists, artists, scientists, social scientists and engineers from universities and other civic institutions committed to new forms of collaboration fostered by creative uses of technology. Since 2003 HASTAC members have worked to develop tools for multimedia archiving and social interaction, gaming environments for teaching, innovative educational programs in information science and information studies, virtual museums, and other digital projects.

RENCI…Catalyst for Innovation
The Renaissance Computing Institute brings together computer and discipline scientists, artists, humanists, industry leaders, entrepreneurs, state leaders and educators for collaborations designed to reshape science, the economy, the state of North Carolina and the world. RENCI leverages its expertise and resources in leading edge computing, networking and data technologies to ignite innovation and find solutions to previously intractable problems. Founded in 2004 as a major collaborative venture of Duke University, North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the state of North Carolina, RENCI is a statewide virtual organization.

The hour-long panel discussion, moderated by Ed Kieser, chief meteorologist at WILL TV in Champaign, IL, will take place Thursday, Sept. 28 at 2 p.m. Eastern time. Called Inside the Digital Storm: Using Computers to Understand and Predict Dangerous Weather, it will be offered live over the Access Grid multicast system and as a webcast at http://www.katrinasummit.uiuc.edu.

Panelists will look at how advanced modeling and visualization techniques and on-demand high-performance computing can improve scientists’ abilities to accurately predict and respond to weather-related disasters. They also will discuss how data from Hurricane Katrina is being used to develop a better understanding of hurricanes, storm surges, flooding and other phenomena related to major storm systems.

The discussion is part of a three-day virtual summit that examines the impacts of Hurricane Katrina and the lessons learned from Katrina about public policy, social justice and equity, the importance of community, and the role of technology in dealing with disasters and in maintaining community. Called Katrina: After the Storm – Civic Engagement Through the Arts, Humanities and Technology, the summit will include performances by New Orleans’s area artists, reminiscences of Katrina survivors, and grid and webcast discussions of public health, educational and social justice issues. The summit will conclude with a live Town Hall meeting that will include participants from Louisiana, Champaign, and other locations.

Sponsored by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Katrina: After the Storm is the first in a series of events supported by HASTAC, the Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory, as part of the organization’s “inFormation Year.” HASTAC inFormation Year events will highlight the human and humane dimensions of advanced technology.

“Thinking Through New Media: 2006 Graduate Student Conference” is sponsored by the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI), the Humanities, Arts, Sciences, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory (HASTAC), and Duke University Information Science and Information Studies (ISIS). Events will be held at the John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary and International Studies, 2204 Erwin Road, Durham, NC. The conference seeks to build a graduate student community around new media scholarship and to introduce participants to HASTAC (pronounced “haystack”), ISIS, and RENCI, a joint institute of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke and North Carolina State University.

Students traveling from outside the Triangle area may apply for scholarships to subsidize their travel and lodging expenses. All scholarship applications must be received by Sunday, May 7. To submit papers, students must email the paper title, one-page abstract and two-page CV to isis-info2duke.edu by Monday, May 1.

Conference details, including online registration, are available at http://isis.duke.edu/events/TTNM.