CFP - Unauthorized: Media Piracy, Digital Forgery and Generative AI

The specter of replicating – movement, physical reality, and life itself - has haunted cinema ever since Maxim Gorky stepped into the Lumières’ “Kingdom of Shadows.” Over a century later, digital copies and online piracy of media content raise questions of distribution, access, and emerging technologies’ impact on authorship, perpetuating the age of the unregulated reproduction. More recently, AI’s entry into creative production has made concerns over image duplication and fabrication as urgent as ever.

The San Francisco State University School of Cinema wishes to dedicate its 25th conference to exploring the ways in which audiovisual media has historically relied on, contended with, and defined itself in relation to forgery and other unsanctioned forms of production and circulation. It also seeks to interrogate the contexts and bounds of what is considered authorized and what is deemed appropriate in today’s media landscape. The event will take place in person and via Zoom on February 29 and March 1, 2024.

We encourage proposals for presentations and video essays on: 

• Piracy: The relationship between piracy and streaming, piracy as preservation, pirate networks in national/international contexts.
• Deepfakes: Misinformation and deepfakes, deepfakes in studio productions, DIY deepfakes, a media history of the deepfake. 
• Laws: The contentious legality of artificial intelligence,
  the relationship between labor unions and AI,
  laws vs. ethics of piracy, evolution of copyright laws. 
• Ethics: Resurrection of deceased actors on screen via CGI,
  de-aging technologies, widespread access to content
  vs. supporting content producers, likeness ownership.

Please send a 300-word abstract and 100-word bio by November 26, 2023 to sfsuconference@gmail.com. You will hear from us by December 3rd.