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November 2025

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[REMINDER] CFP: Special Issue on Feminist Archaeologies of Desktop Media
by Veronika Hanáková 10 Nov '25

10 Nov '25

Dear SIGCIS members, I’d like to highlight this call for papers that may be of interest to you: *Special Issue on Feminist Archaeologies of Desktop Media* The 21st century has witnessed a boom in media formats that creatively inhabit the seemingly familiar space of the computer (or smartphone) desktop. Simulated clicks, swipes, and multitasking across windows and apps on the screen have become central to emerging artistic forms variously referred to as “desktop cinema,” “desktop documentary,” and “screenlife.” These formats not only play with screen-based aesthetics but also mediate lived experiences of labor, surveillance, communication, and self-fashioning—often through identity-based and affectively charged engagements with the interface. Yet, despite the emergence of several scholarly publications on the topic (e.g., Kiss 2021; Anger and Lee 2023; De Rosa 2024) and the use of desktop formats in videographic criticism and practice-based research (e.g., Lee 2014; Galibert-Laîné 2019; Bird 2023; Zecchi 2023; Lacurie 2024), there is a need for collective reflection on the desktop itself: as a representational space, a material interface, and a historically conditioned technology embedded in overlapping histories of gender, race, affect, and domestic labor. To address this gap, the special issue brings *media archaeology and feminist media history into direct dialogue*. Media archaeology offers critical tools for tracing how desktop media engage with and shape the evolution of the graphical user interface (GUI), and how they resonate with earlier technological practices—from desktop publishing to early computer video editing systems (e.g., Ernst 2021; Gaboury 2021; Distelmeyer 2022; Hanáková 2024). At the same time, recent interventions by feminist media historians provide strategies for denaturalizing the desktop through feminist, queer, and anti-racist perspectives on labor, domesticity, and authorship (e.g., Nooney 2023; Moretti 2023; Hilu 2024; Nakamura 2025). Together, these frameworks showcase a generative methodological tandem to interrogate how desktop media inherit, extend, or critique earlier promises of democratization, user-centered design, and interactivity. Crucially, they allow us to ask: What kinds of subjectivity have these formats invited, enabled, marginalized, or repressed? We invite scholars, artists, archivists, and curators *to submit works that seek out diverse histories of desktop media practices*—practices too often seen as exclusively contemporary. Building on the momentum sparked by the 2023 collection of videographic essays published in Feminist Media Histories, this special issue aims to create space for both written and practice-based archaeologies of desktop media formats. You can read the CFP here. <https://online.ucpress.edu/DocumentLibrary/Feminist_Archaeologies_of_Deskto…> Potential areas of contribution include, but are not limited to: - Desktop Documentary - Desktop Horror - Desktop and Video Platforms - Desktop and Computer History - Desktop and Useful Media - Desktop and Preservation - Desktop and Domesticity - Desktop and Liveness - Desktop and Labor - Desktop and Hardware - Desktop and Pedagogy - Global Desktop - Desktop and AI *Proposals should be roughly 500 words (including 3–5 references),* include a short bio, *and be submitted no later than October 28, 2025 *to Jiří Anger (j.anger(a)qmul.ac.uk) and Veronika Hanáková ( veronika.hanakovaxp(a)gmail.com) *Please state clearly whether you plan to submit an article or a video essay. *Contributors will be notified by November 28, 2025; essays will be due to editors by June 28, 2026 and then will be sent out for anonymous peer review. All the best, Veronika Hanáková and Jiří Anger -- Veronika Hanáková *. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.**. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.* DVD Enthusiast Gimmicky Media Artifact Finder *. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.**. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.* *Screenworks: the peer-reviewed online publication of practice research in screen media* <https://www.screenworks.org.uk/archive> Associate Editor

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NEW CHM Lecture on Tuesday: Island Tinkerers by Honghong Tinn.
by Dag Spicer 02 Nov '25

02 Nov '25

Hello SIGCIS Friends and Colleagues! Just quick note to let you the Computer History Museum is honored to be hosting this Tuesday the wonderful Honghong Tinn, author of Island Tinkerers: Innovation and Transformation in the Making of Taiwan’s Computing Industry, (MIT Press, 2025). From the MIT Book Blurb: "How did Taiwan, a former Japanese colony and the last fortress of the defeated Chinese Nationalists, ascend to such heights in high-tech manufacturing? In Island Tinkerers, Honghong Tinn tells the critical history of how hobbyists and enthusiasts in Taiwan, including engineers, technologists, technocrats, computer users, and engineers-turned-entrepreneurs, helped transform the country with their hands-on engagement with computers. Rather than engaging in wholesale imitation of US sources, she explains, these technologists tinkered with imported computing technology and experimented with manufacturing their own versions, resulting in their own brand of successful innovation. Defying the stereotype of “the West innovates, and the East imitates,” Tinn tells the story of Taiwanese technologists' efforts over the past six decades. Beginning in the 1960s, they grappled with the “black-boxed” computers that were newly available through international technical-aid programs. Shortly after, multinational corporations that outsourced transistor and integrated circuit assembly overseas began employing Taiwanese engineers and factory workers. Island tinkerers developed strategies to adapt, modify, assemble, and work with computers in an inventive manner. It was through this creative and ingenious tinkering with computers that they were able to gain a better understanding of the technology, opening the door to future manufacturing endeavors that now include Acer, Foxconn, Asus, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC)." Please do join us: it will be a great lecture! Lecture is in-person at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California AND streaming online. SIgn up here: https://computerhistory.org/events/taiwan-rising/ Taiwan Rising computerhistory.org All the best! Dag ----- Dag Spicer Senior Curator Computer History Museum Editorial Board, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing ACM History Committee 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd. Mountain View CA 94043 “History is a vast early warning system.” — Norman Cousins, American journalist (1915-1990). Join our Mailing List here: https://info.computerhistory.org/subscribe

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