The 16th Annual Research, Art, Writing Conference
March 1, 2025, University of Texas at Dallas
Call For Papers: RAW 2025
BAIT, PROMPTS, and AID: The Power and Poetics of Engagement
in Art, Technology, History, and Human Nature/Nurture

Keynote Speaker: Grace Aneiza Ali

What baits or prompts audiences to click on a post, linger on a painting, or engage with a video? Bait theory studies these impulses across the arts, humanities, biology, and technology. Rooted in a combination of information theory and behavioral science, it explores the interaction between organisms, stimuli, and responses, seeking patterns in emotions, kinetics, and physiology. Historically, bait applications trace back to early communities where human connections relied on a "network of obligation:” individuals sharing resources and knowledge. Care and general aid thus play a significant role in bait theory.

RAW 2025 presents bait and aid as complementary concepts providing a compelling framework for addressing both the risks and opportunities posed by emerging technological tools. These dynamics, particularly in relation to the "risk of bait" in digital media, challenge existing norms. Bait and aid influence how we engage with these forces playing a critical role in shaping cultural identity, particularly within the contexts of migration, colonial legacy, and the preservation of cultural heritage. Notions of bait and aid extend beyond disembodied clickbait, online advertising, and social media to embodied human and interspecies interaction within history, literature, art, where anticipatory expressions create both suspense and curiosity. From the internet to analogue, bait and aid engage organisms as teleological forces and nuanced communicators. RAW 2025 queries, what are the qualities of an intelligence, whether organic or artificial, when engaging the dialect of bait and aid?

We welcome submissions from all disciplines and strongly encourage interdisciplinary approaches to how bait and aid construct or deconstruct history, politics, aesthetics, and culture. RAW 2025 also invites artist-scholars to explore practice as research through creative multimedia and performance-based projects.

Suggested Topics:
• Expanded painting in digital and physical spaces.
• Metaphors and imagery illusions in poetry.
• Evolving narrative methods in the post-medium age.
• Storybots and interactions on narratives.
• Race and digital avatars in cinema.
• Desktop cinema and the role of digital distribution.
• Gender and feminism in media art and contemporary context.
• Virtual bodies and the reinvention of self.
• Cultural hybridity and AI-driven narratives
• The impact of AI on artistic dialogue and creative expression.
• In-between and liminal spaces.
• Anticolonial engagements with futuristic material.
• Imagining sustainable futures.
• Political art as bait and visual manipulation.
• Virtual vs. visual representation in art history and digital media.
• Contemporary art and unexpected visual or audio malfunctions (like glitch art).
• Historical shifts in visual experience.
• History of baiting and aiding.
• Fragmented memory and memory retrieval.

Please submit a 250-300 word abstract and a short bio (maximum 100 words) here:
https://forms.gle/zqbBsJNJJJU668s3A by Friday, December 6, 2024, at 11:59 pm.
If you intend to present a creative project, please include documentation such as stills, videos, excerpts, and artist statements. Pre-constituted panels of 3-4 participants (including the chair) are welcome, and one of the panelists (conventionally, the chair) may submit details for the entire panel.
Presenters at the RAW 2025 conference are eligible to submit their papers or creative work for the following awards:
• The 13th Annual Sherry Clarkson Prize for the best scholarly paper.
• The Arts, Humanities, and Technology Council Award for the best creative project.
• Travel Awards for participants.
Acceptance notices go out in mid-December. Presenters must register for the conference. Registration fees are $25 - $35.
Please contact RAWconference@utdallas.edu for questions.
RAW Conference Organizers
Maureen Okwulogu & Maryam (Mary) Takalou