Writing in the Age of New Media

This upcoming Saturday I will fly from Melbourne to Perth so I can then boogie to Freemantle to perform at Ctrl-Z: Writing in the Age of New Media. I'm really looking forward to an afternoon of heuretic dialogue with many colleagues including Darren Tofts, Niall Lucy, McKenzie Wark, and my undergraduate honors thesis advisor Gregory Ulmer who figures prominently in remixthebook.

From the press release:

In the age of personal computers, the Internet, mobile phones, Facebook, Twitter, Word, Photoshop, SMS, email, desktop- and e-publishing, blogging and fan fiction, autocorrect and track changes, who -- or what -- is a writer?

Ctrl-Z is an arts symposium aimed at exploring the possibilities of writing in the age of new media. While the means and opportunities for writing are seemingly forever multiplying, can the same be said for the ways in which we think about what we call writing, or what we call a writer? How, today, does writing take shape: how is it produced, published, distributed and read? How might we account for cultural anxieties over the ill-effects or improper uses of new writing technologies (illiteracy, plagiarism, piracy, cyberbullying), and how might we imagine new ways of thinking about creativity, technology and communication?

Featuring panel discussions, video screenings, exhibitions, live music and more, Ctrl-Z will appeal to anyone with a professional or personal interest in writing as a cultural and communicative practice -- from humanities academics, postgraduates and English and Media teachers to authors, artists and creative media practitioners; from arts patrons to general readers. Cutting across academic, professional and public divides, Ctrl-Z will present an engaging and entertaining occasion to reflect on what it means -- now -- to write and to be a writer.

This will be my third trip to Western Australia where locations shoots for FILMTEXT took place back in 2002. In addition to discussing the issues above with a core group of international theorists who I greatly admire, I will undoubtedly try to sneak in another swim in the Indian Ocean on Australia's west coast. Gorgeous.

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Keywords: Mark Amerika, Ctrl-Z, Freemantle, writing, digital, new media