We invite individual papers and session proposals addressing the conference theme from all possible disciplinary angles; such as its representation in literature, the visual arts, political essays, or scientific and philosophical writings. We welcome submissions for poster or portfolio presentation and musical performance as well.

In addition to the conference theme, papers on all other aspects of the interaction of technology, science, and the humanities are welcome.

The conference theme addresses the role of the visual and performing arts and technologies in the urban environment. As locations for human activity, cities would seem to invite interactions of the arts, humanistic concerns, and technology. Our disciplinary emphasis on expertise often results in isolation of individual fields. Our cities consign the arts to limited precincts within the urban environment, while technologies, represented as largely neutral, value-free and beyond politics and identity, appear to function without concern for aesthetics.

Here in Lower Manhattan, our technology has reconfigured the landscape, changing the very shape of the island on which the city is built, creating the buildings that tower over the streets of the old colonial settlement, adding all the infrastructure of a modern urban environment. While the parklands created on the riverfront have integrated artworks and landscaping with new buildings, development within the business core itself seems haphazard and less human in scale. Recent events have forced open the possibilities for reconfiguration. We invite consideration of possibilities for a humane urban environment.

We welcome consideration of new materials, media, technologies and academic disciplines (and cross-disciplines), as a way of integrating this new urban vision of community with artistic and aesthetic concerns.