Join the University of Oregon Graduate School, schools of Journalism and Architecture & Allied Arts, the Institute of Ecology & Evolution, the Office of Sustainability, and the New Media & Culture Certificate at the 7th Annual ‘What is Life?’ Conference in Portland, April 6-8th!
We bring together scholars, government and community officials, industry professionals, alumni and students, as well as scientists, artists, filmmakers, grassroots community organizations, and the public for a conference-experience to engage communication, media, and nature by examining everyday life — our lifeworks and lifestyles — emphasizing the lifeworlds we live in. It will investigate how communication/media constitute and permeate all avenues and forms of life — from scale, pace, and pattern to the public, private, and organic. By building bridges through multidisciplinary networks, the event emphasizes how communication is instrumental in and for living systems. What is life and how is life mediated?
What is Life? (2017) builds on last year’s conference-experience, What is Media? (2016), expanding a transdisciplinary notion of medium/media with special attention to its material, historical, and ecological ramifications. It marks the second collaboration with scholars from the natural sciences (physical and life sciences) and the arts.
Schedule Highlights
- Thursday, April 6th: Commencement lecture – 2017 Leonardo da Vinci Lecture with Fritjof Capra from Schumacher College and The Center for Ecoliteracy
- LIFEWORLDS Exhibition, 7:00pm
- Friday, April 7th, 8:30am: Technological Culture & Aesthetics professor Jussi Parikka (Univ. of Southampton) and Toby Miller (Loughborough Univ. London)
- Plenaries: Salma Monani (Gettysburg College, PA) and Brendan Bohannan (Biology, UO)
- Saturday, April 8th, 4:30pm: an EXPERIENCE at the Portland Japanese Garden with the Media Literacies for a Living World Roundtable featuring Divina Frau-Meigs (Univ. Sorbonne Nouvelle, France), Renee Hobbs (Univ. of Rhode Island), Antonio López (John Cabot Univ., Italy), Ed Madison (UO), and W. James Potter (UCSB)
- Plenaries: Gabriela Martínez (UO) and Douglas Rushkoff (Queens College, CUNY), philosopher of language, Mark Johnson (UO) and philosopher of living technologies, Mark Bedau (Reed College).