cfp: The Apparatus: The Role of Technology in Illustration / deadline 20 March 2025

[Michael Pritchard]

Machines, appliances, gizmos, and contraptions have always been a part of illustration, enabling illustrators to transform their thoughts into real-life forms. The machine’s abilities, aesthetics, and impacts on humanity have always been a source of inspiration and concern. With the discussion raging around artificial intelligence as a game-changing technology, and when computers seem to inextricably serve as parts of creation and of our lives, perhaps it is time to take stock and consider the long-established but fluctuating relationship between illustration and the machine.

From the industrial printing press (once considered the most advanced and disruptive technology) to a symbol of artisanal craftsmanship, from the camera obscura to drawing tablets, from the phenakistiscope to smartphones-within illustration, machines are not only an integral part of the process of creation but also, within reproduction and distribution, they have a defining role in actualising and professionalising the illustrator’s work. Throughout time, analogue and multimedia devices have offered new image–text relationships, bringing new modalities to illustration such as movement, touch and sound.

The digital has offered data visualisation; detailed, calculated modulation; and access to nano and macro worlds, expanding the illustrator’s visual language and scope. Self-made contraptions, and emergent technologies such as digital lenses and wearables open new avenues for innovative visual experiences. Illustrators, by applying their creative visual knowledge and participating in the innovation of scientific tools, have expanded the possibilities of machines. The long history of illustrating machines not only shows the art of technical drawing, but also our aesthetic fascination with them. All these developments show how the machine, celebrated as an advancing technology, has significantly expanded creative capabilities across both traditional and emerging media.

 

For the 15th International Research Symposium on Apparatus & Illustration, we invite papers and posters that demonstrate, expand upon, and discuss the question:

• As the terrain of the apparatus expands, how does illustration define its relationship with the machine?
• How have machines and their technologies empowered or undermined the illustrator?
• How have machines enabled, defined or restricted new and exploratory creative processes and ways of thinking, in the past, present and future
• Can a machine actually make illustrations?
• What can we take away from machine-made illustrations?
• Can a machine be an illustration?
• Can illustration be a machine?

Possible topics may include, but are not limited, to the following:

Machine objects

• Devices, gears, machines, technologies, contraptions and gizmos
• Historical and contemporary apparatuses
• Illustration machines
• Illustration through machine
• Emerging technologies and tools
• Perception through machines
• Machine eyes
• Machines as illustration

Practice and discipline

• Craft and craftsmanship
• Mental apparatuses
• Machine-aided illustration
• Current and historical technical illustration practices
• Representation of machines
• Use of creativity in scientific visualization practices
• Culturally located creative tool practices
• Global illustration-machine cultures and practices

Ethics, philosophy and politics

• Machines, creativity and ethics
• Machine and creative ownership
• Machine learning and artificial intelligence
• The role and power of the machine
• Impact of machine usage

Call for papers and posters
5th International Research Symposium. The Apparatus: The Role of Technology in Illustration
21–22 November 2025, Koç University, Istanbul
Call for papers deadline 20 March 2025
Full details: https://kuarc.ku.edu.tr/research-symposium/