[PHILOS-L] Time Signatures and Imaginative Possibilities- Art and Technology in Dialogue CFA

[Elvis, Lucy]

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Time Signatures and Imaginative Possibilities.

Art and Technology in Dialogue

 

Annual Conference of the Irish Philosophical Society

Queens University, Belfast

 

23-24 October 2026

Call for Abstracts

 

If you wish to present a paper, please prepare an anonymised abstract of 500-750 words free of any identifying information, upload it and fill out the required information at this form: (https://forms.gle/LMbscg4CaXb8iQEc6).

Contact: irishphiloso...@gmail.com

 

The deadline for the submission of abstracts is Friday 29th May 2026 (midnight Irish time).

 

Keynotes

We are delighted to have great keynote speakers for this conference:

Ciano Aydin is Full Professor of Philosophy of Technology at the University of Twente heading the Philosophy of Human-Technology Relations research line. His research focuses on "existential technology", how technologies increasingly shape our identity, impact our freedom and responsibility, and influence different facets of our life. 

Yvonne Foerster, currently Philosopher in Residence at the Institute of Advanced Studies, TU Munich, will take up a position as Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Galway in the Autumn. Her research centres around the question of how humans and machines shape each other, what it means to embody technology, and how this influences everyday life.

Graham Parkes is currently a Professorial Research Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Vienna having previously being professor of philosophy at University College Cork in Ireland. He was founder director of the Irish Institute of Japanese Studies. He works between Eastern and Western traditions addressing topics in aesthetics, climate change and interculturality.

 

Frame

Both art and Technology have been treated with caution by philosophers. Each is credited with either a surfeit of influence on human behaviour or as operating at a remove from reality (Plato), their development conceptualised as inherently teleological (Hegel). Although often placed in opposition in discussions of authenticity (Heidegger), history has shown the boundary between art and technology to be porous (McCluhan, Bataille). In our present moment, both art and technology have been framed as the solutions to and heralds of a series of crises: of attention, of political will and of the climate, among others.

Paradoxically, the depth of these crises suggests that tackling them will take time, even as ‘time is running out’ has become a ubiquitous refrain. Here, art might operate as an instructive case. Philosophers have identified how works of art often inaugurate their own temporalities (leisure or festival time) (Arendt, Gadamer), while also acting as crucial reminders of our own finitude (Aristotle) or important connections to communities beyond ourselves (Nussbaum). Emerging technologies also exist in this tension. AI agents often exhibit their inhumanity by treating time as a variable rather than an inhabited duration (Bergson), while LLMs offer us new ways to encounter and understand untranslated artefacts. Both AI and social media offer new means of connection and the opportunity of offloading the mundane tasks which otherwise occupy humans’ time.

Although the efficiencies of technology might suggest greater time for the imaginative processes of art making or interpreting, critical theorists have highlighted the short circuit between increased free time and the extension of ‘work’ via the redirection of human attention (Adorno, Horkheimer). This, in turn, raises the question of the limits of both art and technology as forces of change embedded in wider political and economic systems (Fisher).

Art and technology operate simultaneously as stimulators of the imagination and manifestations of the creative imagination. Developments in technology create new ways to make and reproduce art with democratising and displacing effects (Benjamin). Although technology is framed in popular discourse as a threat to the imagination (Anders), its influence on art and art-making has opened up new possibilities for moral imagining and empathy through photography, (Sontag) film (Cavell), and television (Laugier). Technology has, in recent times, been understood as of necessity a self-creative power, challenging human-centric accounts of creativity as a process reliant on human imagination (Leroi-Gourhan, Harraway, Stigler). Engaging with the narratives of other humans and of non-human entities through immersive experiences or poetic representations has been suggested as a way of displacing anthropocentric worldviews (MacFarlane) through a challenge to the imagination- a faculty positioned as both human (Kant) and as the access point to the more-than-human, the mystical or the transcendent (Weil, Thacker). Yet imagination can be seen as a capacity possessed by non-human entities, ideas and processes, including technology itself.

Art in the form of literature and cinema, particularly sci-fi, is often the forum in which we explore our fear or optimism about future effects of rapid technological advancement, often presented as dystopia or utopia (Land, Jameson, Huxley, Blanchot). The forging, fostering and sheltering of new social imaginaries (Marcuse), through art, literature (Murdoch, Greene) and online communities and sub-cultures such as Solar Punk are often heralded as a burgeoning solution to the crises alluded to above. 

 

Abstracts

The Irish Philosophical Society welcomes submissions that bring art and technology into dialogue or address the limits of each in relation to the themes of ‘time’ and ‘imagination’ from a variety of standpoints and/or working in a wide-range of philosophical methodologies and traditions.

 

If you wish to present a paper, please prepare an anonymised abstract of 500-750 words free of any identifying information, upload it and fill out the required information at this form: (https://forms.gle/LMbscg4CaXb8iQEc6).

We welcome abstracts addressing the theme of this conference from a variety of standpoints, methodologies and traditions. We welcome abstracts from academics, postdoctoral scholars, independent scholars and postgraduate researchers. Areas include, but are not limited to:

 

The relationship of art and/or technology to:

-Conceptualising the distant past or future

-A lived sense of time 

-Change and historical development 

-Understanding finitude

-The temporality of on-going crises

-More-than-human temporalities

The relationship of art and/or technology to:

-Our capacity to imagine radically different futures

-Imaginative explorations of the more-than-human world

-More-than-human imagination

-Moral imagination and empathy

-Mixed communities

-Conceptualising impending crises

 

 

Conference format:

The conference will be held in person (with the facility to attend online). Papers will be 20 minutes in length with 15 minute questions and answers.

Conference costs:

> Free to members of IPS.

> Non-members of the IPS can become members by joining the IPS during registration if their abstracts are accepted.

 

Timeline:

4th April 2025: CfA opens

> 29th May 2026 (midnight Ireland): CfA closes

> Mid-June 2022: Abstract submission outcomes communicated

> Early August 2022: Speaker and delegate registration opens

 

Selection process:

> The deadline for the submission of abstracts is Friday 29th May 2026 (midnight Irish time).

> Abstracts will undergo blind peer-review by members of the conference committee who represent the University of Galway and The Irish Philosophical Society.

> We intend to inform everyone on the outcome of their submission by 6 July 2026.

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