The XIIth International Wassard Elea Symposium will be postponed to 2023
Computer Creativity in
music performance, improvisation, composition
aesthetics, ethics, performance practice, musical creativity
Initially scheduled for May 26 – 29, 2022, Ascea, Italy
is postponed to 2023, dates to be announced
__________________________________________________________________________________
Music Improvisation and Creation
Human and Computational
October 20 – 23, 2021
Ascea, Italy
~ call for papers ~
We have been, like several others, compelled to postpone the XIth WE
symposium, please notice the new dates; consequently submissions are also
accepted until September 15.
These two terms,
‘improvise’ and ‘create’, are in frequent use, not only in several, but in many
dis-parate ways and their nature, analysis and description currently come to a
head by the efforts to translate them into AI. So first, in order to decide if
all – and in particular these – human capacities are computable, one has to get
beyond the notoriously vague conceptions and cavalier uses of them. How are
they distinguished from inventions, inspirations, impulses, experiments,
accidents, discov-eries, etc.? What are the criteria for their descriptive or
their occasional uses? Are they co-extensive, inter-dependent, conceptually
distinguishable? Is creation always or generally the product of im-provisation?
Is improvisation dependent on a learning process that may or may not lead to a
creative product? Is it consistent and/or useful to (attempt to) define
creativity?
Several projects
are underway to install these capacities in (students as well as in) machines;
since the success of some of these (particularly in music), we need to ask how
human and machine improvisations relate, and whether they do. Are improvisation
and creation teachable? Are they temporary or permanent capacities? Can one
acquire talent? Can a machine be(come) talented? Can machines improvise in the
sense that humans do, can they co-improvise, and is there a valid general
approach to understanding or evaluating machine improvisation? Its musicality?
In what way does
it make sense to describe or analyse the activity of improvisation? Can improv-isation
be reduced to parameters? Is improvisation a general or particular category of
action or performance? Is musical improvisation a particular kind? Can a
computational improviser system trained in music then be applied to improvise
in other kinds of activities such as decision-making in (all?) other AI
programs? This call is for original and detailed examinations of the content
and logic of the concepts of ‘improvisation’ and ‘creation’.
The XIth International Wassard Elea Symposium,
held in Ascea, Southern Italy, invites musicologists,
computer scientists, musicians, artists, philosophers and other interested
parties to submit papers on the topics of this year’s theme. Sessions of 90
min. include speaker, commentator and open discussion (40/20/30). Participants
whose papers are accepted are expected to also prepare a commentary on another
presentation at the meeting. All suitable contributions are published in our
journal, Wassard Elea Rivista.
New deadline for submissions: September 15, 2021.
There is no
registration fee; participants will receive details about accommodation rates
in due course.
Inquiries are very welcome. Full papers (attached in Word format) should be sent directly to the organizers:
Dr. René
Mogensen, Birmingham City University, England: Rene.Mogensen@bcu.ac.uk,
or
Notice: At this time you are additionally invited to submit chapters, original
work, to the forthcoming anthology on Improvisation and Creation: Music, Arts,
and AI. Please send works, proposals etc. to Dr. René Mogensen, Birmingham City
University, England: Rene.Mogensen@bcu.ac.uk.
Wassard Elea
Refugium for writers, artists, composers, and scholars
in Southern Italy
Wassardelea.blogspot.it
__________________________________________________________________________________
The
Concept of Example
May
22-25, 2020
Ascea,
Italy
~call
for papers~
The
question ”Are There Counterexamples to Aesthetic Theories of Art?”,
raised by Nick Zangwill (JAAC, 2002), hasn’t made deep marks, and
we invite proper analyses, expansions and interpretations. A
counterexample is after all just an example and examples are legion
as are samples, instances, cases, and so on, but what exactly is the
logic of ‘example’? What’s the matter with examples? Do
examples matter? Examples are deployed in many ways, e.g. to confirm,
support, disconfirm, explain, clarify, illustrate, teach, and more.
Do they? If they do, how is that? Why are examples taken to be so
consequential? Why so prominent in practically speaking all the
sciences, human and natural? If a thing (person, work, event, or
other) is unique, how could it be an example of something? If it is
“one of a kind”, what is the kind? This call is for fresh and
detailed examinations of the logic of the concept of ‘example’.
The
Xth
International Wassard Elea Symposium
is dedicated to investigation of this most frequent element in
reasoning. We seek to engage philosophers and scholars in a
conceptual analysis of what it means to be an example (good, bad,
irrelevant, paradigm, etc.).
Wassard
Elea
invites philosophers and aestheticians to submit papers on the topic
of this year’s theme. Sessions of 90 min. include speaker,
commentator and open discussion (40/20/30). Participants whose papers
are accepted are expected to also prepare a commentary on another
presentation at the meeting. All suitable contributions are published
in our journal, Wassard
Elea Rivista.
Inquiries
are welcome.
Full papers (attached in format: word) should be sent directly to
organizers: Prof. Lars Aagaard-Mogensen, Italy:
wassardelea@gmail.com,
or Prof. Jane Forsey, University of Winnipeg, Canada:
j.forsey@uwinnipeg.ca.
Deadline
for submissions: February 15, 2020.
There
is no registration fee; participants will receive details about base
rate accommodations in due course.
Wassard
Elea
Refugium
for writers, artists, composers, and scholars in Southern Italy
Wassardelea.blogspot.it
__________________________________________________________________________________
Past editions of the symposium:
Parody
May
27-30, 2019
Ascea,
Italy
~call
for papers~
Parody,
the term, is in common usage. Many writers seem to suppose it applies
mainly to theater and literature; while virtually absent in several
genres (Sokal’s an exception), it is certainly not only a category
of style. It’s also considered a bright tool in humour’s arsenal.
In philosophy parody is a rare and neglected concept. Yet parody
raises prompts myriad/a host of questions, most of which lack precise
answer. Some such as: Parody’s exact difference(s) from travesty,
allegory, satire, farce, irony, comic, pastiche, caricature, parable,
(indirect?) quotation, etc.? The value of parody? Are they
necessarily abstractions? Are there several types of parody? Does
parody produce, present, insight? The conditions of (failing) parody?
The charm of parody? Parodies exhibit the logic of the absurd? When
does a parafrase, an analogy, turn into a parody? Are parodies
arguments? critique? Do they necessarily imitate or refer to some
(prior) thing, can one parodise nothing? Are series of theories, the
path of despair, each a parody of the former? (Example: I think
therefore I am, I laugh therefore I am, I drink therefore I am,
etc.). This call is for fresh and detailed examinations of the logic
of the concept of ‘parody’. Treatment of particular works or
groups of works, current or historical, are only considered relevant
insofar they significantly advance philosopical explication of the
concept of ‘parody’.
This,
the IXth
International
Wassard
Elea Symposium,
is dedicated to thorough investigation of this common concept. We
seek to engage philosophers and scholars in a conceptual analysis of
what parody means.
Wassard
Elea
invites philosophers and scholars to submit papers on the topic of
this year’s theme. Sessions of 90 min. include speaker, commentator
and open discussion (40/20/30). Participants whose papers are
accepted are expected to also prepare a commentary on another
presentator’s paper at the meeting. All suitable contributions are
published in our journal, Wassard
Elea Rivista.
Inquiries
are welcome.
Full papers (format: word) should be sent directly to: Prof. Lars
Aagaard-Mogensen, Italy: wassardelea@gmail.com.
Deadline
for submissions: February 1, 2019.
Registration
fee: 10 €. Information on base rate accommodations will be posted
in due course.
Wassard
Elea
Refugium
for writers, artists, composers, and scholars in Southern Italy
Wassardelea.blogspot.it
__________________________________________________________________________________
Taste,
Bad Taste, Tastelessness
May
25-28, 2018
Ascea,
Italy
~call
for papers~
Taste
is a common sense concept. Almost everyone thinks that they have
taste – indeed, thinks they have good taste – in such things as
conduct, arts, dress, design, cuisine, and so on. But many of them
are also wrong. Frank Sibley described taste as an ability involving
perceptiveness, sensitivity, aesthetic discrimination, and
appreciation, and further noted that taste “is a somewhat more rare
capacity than other human capacities”; relativists and skeptics
would dispute this, and argue that taste is little more than liking,
or preferring, some things over others. This call is for fresh and
detailed examinations of the logic of the concept of ‘taste’.
Rehearsals and exegesis of tradition or history (e.g. Hume, Kant,
etc.), sociology (e.g. Bourdieu), empiricism (e.g. Brunius) fall
outside the scope of this conference as does criticism of such types
of speculations unless significantly advancing philosophical
explication of the concept of ‘taste’.
The
VIIIth
International Wassard Elea Symposium
is dedicated to ransacking this core topic in aesthetics. We seek to
engage philosophers and scholars in a conceptual analysis of what it
means to have – or lack – taste. To this end, we invite papers
that focus on, e.g., the following topics:
1.
Taste as liking the right things for the right reasons—and bad
taste as the reverse;
2.
Taste as a capacity, and how it can be improved;
3.
Distinction(s) between bad taste and tastelessness;
4.
Relationships between liking and appraising or appreciating;
5.
Taste being a kind of judgement, verdict or valuation;
6.
Distinction(s) between lapses and mistakes of taste and flaws in
taste.
Wassard
Elea
invites philosophers and aestheticians to submit papers on the topics
of this year’s theme. Sessions of 90 min. include speaker,
commentator and open discussion (40/20/30). Participants whose papers
are accepted are expected to also prepare a commentary on another
presentation at the meeting. All suitable contributions are published
in our journal, Wassard
Elea Rivista.
Inquiries
are welcome.
Full papers (format: word) should be sent directly to co-organizers:
Prof. Lars Aagaard-Mogensen, Italy: wassardelea@gmail.com,
or Prof. Jane Forsey, University of Winnipeg, Canada:
j.forsey@uwinnipeg.ca.
Deadline
for submissions: February 15, 2018.
There
is no registration fee; details about accommodations will be posted
in due course.
Wassard
Elea
Refugium
for writers, artists, composers, and scholars in Southern Italy
Wassardelea.blogspot.it
__________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
Aesthetic
Foundations
May
19-22, 2017
Ascea,
Italy
~call
for papers~
There
is an explosion of works on the aesthetics of this
and the aesthetics of that
– sport, film, design, television, video games, atmosphere,
graffiti, rap, food, etc. This contemporary diversification involves
a confident
and often facile use of such notions as aesthetic experience,
aesthetic value, aesthetic appreciation, and so on. But this use in
fact belies confusion about what these terms mean, or what we mean
when we use them. The question of what makes any kind of encounter a
particularly aesthetic one cuts to the heart of the discipline at its
most complex. Not only are there divergent approaches to locating the
aesthetic – in the properties of objects on the one hand, or the
phenomenology of our experiences on the other – there is also a
great deal of disagreement about what values arise from, or are
involved in, these experiences, and how they differ from the ways we
otherwise give our attention to the world. The
VIIth
International
Wassard
Elea Symposium
is dedicated to a reconsideration of these core problems in
aesthetics:
-
What is the nature of aesthetic experience? Is it primarily evaluative?
-
Is the aesthetic necessarily linked to pleasure and enjoyment?
-
What is the difference between aesthetic value and other values (cognitive, etc.)?
Wassard
Elea
invites philosophers and aestheticians to submit papers on the topics
of this year’s theme (to which papers in applied aesthetics are not
relevant). Sessions of 90 min. include speaker, commentator and open
discussion (40/20/30). Participants whose papers are accepted are
expected to also prepare a commentary on another presentation at the
meeting. All suitable contributions are published in our journal,
Wassard
Elea Rivista.
Inquiries
are welcome.
Full papers (format: word) should be sent directly to co-organizers:
Prof. Lars Aagaard-Mogensen, Via La Chiazzetta 27, I-84046 Ascea
(Sa), Italy: wassardelea@gmail.com
or Prof. Jane Forsey, University of Winnipeg, Canada:
j.forsey@uwinnipeg.ca.
Deadline
for submissions: January 15, 2017.
Information
on accommodations will be posted in due course.
Wassard
Elea
Refugium
for writers, artists, composers, and scholars in Southern Italy
Wassardelea.blogspot.it
__________________________________________________________________________________
On
Ugliness (etc.)
(“There is an awful lot of ugliness in
this world”)
June 17-20, 2016
Ascea, Italy
~Call
for Papers~
While it is probably true that there is an awful lot of ugliness in
the world, the intelligent treatment in fact, theory, and judgement –
in the precise mapping and conceptualization of this and its kin
features – is not a whole lot. The scant mention here and there in
the literature hardly exhausts, let alone provides, a firm
contemporary grasp of the objects, experiences and judgements of what
is ugly, unpleasant, horrid or revolting. Can one have “pure”
aesthetic experiences of these, free from cognitive or moral
presuppositions and implications? How, if at all, does ugliness
contrast with the beautiful? And exactly how does the ugly affect the
quality of life?
Wassard Elea invites philosophers and aestheticians, critics and
theorists, to submit papers on any topic in this area for the 6th
WE international symposium. Sessions of 90 min. include speaker,
commentator, and discussion (40/20/30). Participants whose papers are
accepted are expected to also provide commentary on another
presentation during the meeting. All suitable contributions will be
published in our quarterly journal, Wassard Elea Rivista.
Inquiries and proposals are welcome. Full papers (in English)
are to be submitted to Professor Lars Aagaard-Mogensen, Via La
Chiazzetta 27, I-84046 Ascea (Sa), Italy. Emailed submissions, word
format, are welcome at: wassardelea@gmail.com
Deadline for papers: March 31, 2016.
Information on registration and accommodations will be posted in
advance of the date.
Wassard
Elea
Refugium
for writers, artists, composers, and scholars in Southern Italy
Wassardelea.blogspot.com
__________________________________________________________________________________
The Aesthetics of Design
(in the land of great design)
May 16-18, 2014
Ascea, Italy
It is well-known, that aesthetics is expected to tell what we do know
(or we can know) about beauty, the dainty and the dumpy, the ugly,
and so on. The world is replete with designs, designers, and designed
things, images, sounds, texts, etc. So what do aestheticians find is
true to say about all this? E.g., about what is designing as an
activity, and how if at all does it differ from other activities and
makings like art- and craft-making, producing, fashioning,
fabricating, manufacturing? Are designed objects distinct kinds of
things from those of mere things, goods, arts and crafts? In what
does the aesthetic excellence or beauty of a designed object consist?
Do judgements of design excellence differ from judgements of natural
beauty or art? What role does the function of designed things play in
design excellence? Can one have “purely” aesthetic experiences of
design, free from cognitive or moral or other implications?
Wassard Elea (wassardelea.blogspot.com) invites philosophers, design
critics and theorists, and design practitioners to submit papers on
any area of design aesthetics for this international conference (or
intensive symposium, if you like). Sessions of 90 minutes include
speaker, commentator, and discussion (40/20/30). Participants whose
papers are accepted are expected to also provide commentary on
another presentation during the conference. All suitable
contributions are published either simultaneously or subsequently in
Wassard Elea Rivista.
Inquiries and proposals are welcome. Full papers (in English,
prepared for blind review) are to be submitted to Professor Lars
Aagaard-Mogensen, Via La Chiazzetta 27, I-84046 Ascea (Sa), Italy.
Emailed submissions, word format, welcome to: wassardelea@gmail.com
Deadline: March 1, 2014.
Information on registration, accommodation and conference fee will be
posted on proper date.
Keynote:
Prof. Jane Forsey (Winnipeg University), author of The Aesthetics
of Design (Oxford University Press, 2013): “The Value(s) of
Design”
__________________________________________________________________________________
Better
to be an unhappy man than a happy pig?
May
27-29th
2011
Elea,
Italy
John
Stuart Mill provides a detailed argument as to why unhappiness as a
human is preferable to happiness of the most satisfied “beast”,
concluding that
It
is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied;
better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the
fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is because they only
know their own side of the question. The other party to the
comparison knows both sides.
John
Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism
(1861)
Ch.II.
This
conclusion raises rather difficult questions: is it actually better
to be an unhappy human than a happy pig? and such as the substance
and purpose of morality, the nature and utility of happiness, the
comparative value of happiness and contentment, and indeed the
question of why a human who experiences extreme unhappiness should
not wish to be either a pig or a fool.
Keynote
speaker: Prof. Timothy Chappell, Director of the Ethics Centre, The
Open University
Wassard
Elea (& Parmenideum) invites philosophers and all those
interested in the themes broached by Mill’s conclusion, to submit
papers for this international conference (or intensive symposium, if
you like). Sessions of 90 minutes include speaker, commentator, and
discussion (40/20/30). Participants whose papers are accepted are
expected to also provide commentary on another presentation during
the conference. All suitable contributions are published either
simultaneously or subsequently in Wassard
Elea Rivista.
Inquiries
and proposals are welcome.
Full papers (in English) are to be submitted to Professor Lars
Aagaard-Mogensen, Via La Chiazzetta 27, I-84046 Ascea (Sa), Italy.
Emailed submissions, in word format, are welcome to:
wassardelea@gmail.com
There
is no registration fee; details about accommodations will be posted
in due course.
Deadline
for submissions: March 15, 2011.
Wassard
Elea
Refugium for writers, artists,
composers, and scholars in Southern Italy
Wassardelea.blogspot.it
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