I’ve been involved with the Digital Arts and Culture conferences right from the start, when my MA (and later PhD) adviser Espen Aarseth chaired the first DAC here in Bergen. He hired me as the practical organiser, and it was amazing: there I was, an eager young would-be-scholar, right in the middle of all the most interesting researchers in the field. I was thrilled, high on the energy of it for ages. And I managed to finish my MA that same semester. The website I made way back then – ooh, eleven years ago, how strange! – is still online. I remember it looked pretty cool to me back then, I was quite proud of it. Lol. The full program with long abstracts for each paper is still there too. Oh, it was a great conference.

Since then there have been many iterations of the conference. The last one was in Perth in 2007 – it runs on a bi-annual basis now. The 2009 Digital Arts and Culture conference is to be held at UC Irvine and is chaired by Simon Penny. Bits of information have been seeping out over the last few months, but yesterday the official call for papers and participation was sent out, and the website is now online. There are a number of themes this year:

• Embodiment and performativity
• Mobile/locative/situated/wearable practices
• Software/ platform studies
• Environment/ sustainability/ climate change
• Interdisciplinary pedagogy
• Cognition and creativity
• Sex and sexuality

They’re also looking for readings, presentations, demos and so on of artistic, literary or otherwise interesting projects. 600 word abstracts are due on May 1, and if the abstract is accepted, you need to submit a full paper by October 1.

I’m not quite sure whether I’ll be attending this year. I’d certainly like to, but I have to say, having a small baby makes me want to spend much less time travelling. So we’ll see.