ISEA2009, the 15th International Symposium on Electronic Art is a major international event that offers a premier and unprecedented showcase for creativity and innovation at the intersection of art, design, science and technology. Under the theme of Engaged Creativity in Mobile Environments it builds a rich and vibrant platform for debate, display and networking across and between different and diverse disciplines and perspectives.

ISEA2009 focuses on imaginative, critical and provocative approaches to the radical and rapid challenges to the ways in which individuals and communities live, work and socialise in the digital age. It brings together international experts and keynote speakers who are forward thinking in the strategic development and creative exploitation of digital technologies. Its dispersed and multi-modal mode of delivery aims to involve, inform and promote the creative potential of communities in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in the exploration of the potential of digital technologies for new practices of exchange, networking, (self)organisation, civil engagement and transactions in the real, augmented and virtual world.

ISEA2009 has invited contributions from diverse disciplinary perspectives to eight supporting sub themes:

The theme Citizenship and Contested Spaces examines established and common sense notions of citizenship and interconnected value hierarchies particularly in politically, socially and culturally contested contexts. It recognises that, over the past decade, international mobility, forced and voluntary migration have changed the social fabric of many societies. Alongside a growing ethnic and cultural diversity within countries, the nation state as discrete, bounded entity is itself increasingly being eroded under the influence of global capital and digitisation. This thematic focus encourages debates on alternatives to the hegemonic model of democracy, and seeks new visions and creative strategies for citizen practices in contested spaces based on the (perceived) potential of digital technologies.

The theme Entertainment and Mobility seeks to identify new developments in the areas of media and user interfaces and content production, and their relevance for existing and emerging art experience and services. It contributes to the understanding of gaming and mobile expressions, technologies, products, services and media, and how these shape new form/at/s of creative expression and interaction or remediate and influence existing art practices, representations and trans/actions.

The thematic strand Interactive Storytelling and Memory Building in Post-Conflict Society considers advanced strategies of interactive, collaborative and participatory practices that build on, mobilise and explore the long tradition of oral storytelling. Of interest are how stories operate in the formation of memories within post-conflict (but still conflicted) society individually and collectively, and what potential they may have to offer in conflict transformation and identity re/ formation. It discusses aesthetic and ethical concerns both within the narrative domain as well as in the technological realisation and dissemination/ distribution.

The theme Interactive Textiles relates to creative and technical production and application processes that challenge and extend conventional methods of working with textiles and their perceived material properties. It aims to give consideration to innovative ways to produce and use textiles, materials and forms that are capable of extending and responding to interaction. This strand profiles fibre and fabric structures that promote expression, communication and enhanced or altered behaviours. What kind of ‘second skins’, artefacts and constructions can be created that support interactions and context awareness? Where are the hardware, software and material challenges, the ethical concerns, sustainability issues, aesthetic, cultural and activist potential?

Contributions to the strand Positionings: Local and Global Transactions look at processes of space construction, re-mapping and negotiation in the contemporary situation of global capital, digitisation and migration. Issues of space are highly pertinent in terms of its constitution, perception, appropriation and consumption. These cannot be divorced from a scrutiny of the social, political, cultural and medial conditions under which spaces are being produced, trans/formed, and re/presented. Of particular interest are new and convergent models of space and spatial dynamics, and thus of reality construction, whether real, virtual or augmented, and the challenges these pose to the relationship between local(ised) and global(ised) transactions in the cultural sphere(s) and the re/formation and re/presentation of identities and places connected to them.

Posthumanism operates at the interface of transhumanism and cyborgology, drawing attention to the convergent spaces of biology and artifice. Its manifestation through a range of biopolitical events, along with an aesthetic staging of bioethical encounters ruptures the polarized views of bioconservatism and technoprogressivism, provoking a series of conflicts that demand multi-layered conceptual apparatuses to unravel. The sensory habitus of posthuman prostheses initiates the re-staging of design principles to anticipate the demand for new sensory experiences, technologies and services. The theme Posthumanism: New Technologies and Creative Strategies explores and expands an understanding of how innovative hardware and technologies are constituted by shifts of new art and design forms and how modes of sensory experience alter arts. For example, what kind of experience is generated through imaginations of posthumanity in different art and design forms? What do viewers expect from artists in terms of adopting posthuman technologies and modes of sensory delivery? How do we prepare and critically engage new generations of artists, designers and consumers through these technologies?

The theme Transformative Creativity – Participatory Practices highlights the operations and limitations of conventional (post-modernist) aesthetic models and cultural representation in relation to the clash of different ideological perspectives, vested interests and authority, whether they concern outright economic interests, political power or the relationship between different domains of knowledge production like art and science, or authorship and expertise, production and consumption. Contributions are invited that challenge established templates of creative practice and audio-visual / multimedia re/presentations and their associated hierarchies of value, modes of understanding and agency in society. This strand focuses on the prototyping and probing of innovative ways of dialogic exchange, of collaborative and participatory creative engagement across the domains of creative practice and the ‘production of theory and reflection’. Proposals are thought that reconsider the transformative potential of creativity in society and scrutinise the role of and relationship between artist and collaborators/participants through the use of digital technologies and the development of innovative/alternative circuits of distribution, debate and social and political inter/action.

Inquiries in the strand Tracking Emotions reflect on innovative ways to scan, model, simulate, stimulate, reproduce and trigger emotions. The theme takes its point of departure from the different forms and modes in which human emotions are utilised in and integral to creative processes. Where and how can artists and researchers avail of new technologies to identify and measure spectators’ or users’ emotional engagement and patterns of affective response? How do conventional and innovative technologies and techniques aid the distinction between different emotional trigger and experiences? How can artists calculate and direct emotional re/actions and what capabilities do new technologies offer for such manipulations?