San Diego will be the site of the Software Studies Initiative. Among the Critical Code Studies blog participants there will be Rita Raley and myself.

Wednesday, May 21st, from 12:30-5:00pm, the Software Studies Initiative at UC San Diego invites you to attend a public event:

SoftWhere: Software Studies Workshop 2008
Time: Wed. May 21 Thu. May 22
Place: Calit2, University of California, San Diego
Format: Open public session (Wed May 21, short presentations of research in Pecha Kucha format)
Closed workshop session (Thu May 22)
URL: http://workshop.softwarestudies.com/
[Public session seating is limited. RSVP by May 19 to softwarestudies@gmail.com]

Software studies is a research field that examines software and cyberinfrastructure using approaches from humanities, cultural criticism, and social sciences. Following on the first Software Studies Workshop organized by Matthew Fuller (Rotterdam, 2006 http://pzwart.wdka.hro.nl/mdr/Seminars2/softstudworkshop), the SoftWhere @ University of California, San Diego is a foundational event bringing together key figures in this emerging area to inaugurate the field. The event aims to coalesce a high-level conversation about what it means to study software cultures, and the direction and goals of Software Studies as an emerging movement. It will take place at Calit2, a pre-eminant research center for future computing and telecommunication (http://www.calit2.net/), where the Software Studies Initiative @ UCSD is located and currently collaborating with researchers on several exciting projects. SoftWhere has has also been timed to precede (and co-ordinate with) the the HASTAC II conference (http://www.hastac.org/) which will begin in nearby U. California Irvine on Thursday evening.

The session on Wed May 21 12:30-5:00pm will be open to the public. The session will feature a rapid series of short presentations by workshop participants (see list below). The format is 5-10 minute speed-talks, modeled on the popular Pecha Kucha format, in which each presenter is allowed a slideshow of 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds. Attendees can expect a collage of diverse perspectives on what it means to live in software society and how to study it.

The workshop is sponsored by Calit2, CRCA, HASTAC, UCDARNet, and the UCSD Visual Arts Department.

Off-Campus Participants:

Ian Bogost (Georgia Institute of Technology)
Geoff Bowker (Santa Clara University)
Benjamin Bratton (UCLA / SCI-Arc)
Matthew Fuller (Goldsmiths College, University of London)
N. Katherine Hayles (UCLA)
Matthew Kirschenbaum (University of Maryland)
Peter Lunenfeld (Art Center College of Design)
Mark Marino (USC)
Michael (Mateas (UCSC)
Nick Montfort (MIT)
Rita Raley (UCSB)
Casey Reas (UCLA)
Warren Sack (UCSC)
Phoebe Sengers (Cornell)
Doug Sery (MIT Press)
Chandler McWilliams (UCLA)

Campus Participants:

Lev Manovich (UCSD)
Noah Wardrip-Fruin (UCSD)
Jeremy Douglass (UCSD)
Amy Alexander (UCSD)
Barry Brown (UCSD)
Jordan Crandall (UCSD)
Kelly Gates (UCSD)
Brian Goldfarb (UCSD)
Jim Hollan (UCSD)
Stefan Tanaka (UCSD)
Geoff Voelker (UCSD)