MAST: The Journal of Media Art, Study and Theory

MAST is an online, open-access, and double-blind peer-reviewed journal featuring interdisciplinary scholarship in the domain of Media Study. MAST stands for "Media Art Study and Theory" and aims to publish and promote innovative research and writing by artists and scholars who present new methods, approaches, questions, and studies in the field of media study and practice. The journal is relevant to academics, artists, researchers, theorists, and art curators with an interest in artistic research, theory, and praxis of media, introducing work that demonstrates a clear and creative engagement with current debates in media studies. MAST is housed in and sponsored by the Northeast Modern Language Association at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York.

MAST issues are published digitally and twice a year (March and November). MAST will publish its inaugural issue in March 2020. Submissions for the second issue of MAST (November 2020) will be open in January 2020. Please check the website for details on the second issue call and important deadlines.

Buffalo has had a rich history in media practice and research for more than 50 years, especially in terms of experimenting with sound, electronic image and computer-generated arts, teaching creative media, and studying various materials and their socio-cultural aspects, only to name a few. Media scholar Gerald O’Grady, the founder of the Center for Media Study in Buffalo, first invited a number of independent media artists, video-/filmmakers, and researchers to join Buffalo’s Media Study in 1973. Among these artists were Steina, and Woody Vasulka, Tony Conrad, Hollis Frampton, Paul Sharits, Peter Weibel, and James Blue. It was then that this incredible team of media practitioners-scholars began working together and teaching in a new practice-led research program: Media Study. What O’Grady called “Media Literacy” helped put various media courses and degrees on the map of higher education through both practice and theory. Today, the legacies and influence of Buffalo’s Media Study can be seen across the board, flourishing in both Buffalo’s current vibrant art scene and the art-research communities beyond. In honor of and inspired by this prominent legacy, MAST, with an emphasis on Media Art, Study, and Theory, seeks to bring different voices in the field of media studies (practice and research) together to a greater audience, and contribute to the field in ways that will be promising to the current and future generations of artists, theorists, and researchers in humanities and beyond.

Editors

Maryam Muliaee (University at Buffalo) <mmuliaee@buffalo.edu>

Mani Merhvarz (University at Buffalo) <manimehr@buffalo.edu>

Advisory Board

Timothy Barker (University of Glasgow)

Ina Blom (University of Chicago)

Lori Emerson (University of Colorado Boulder)

Jordan Frith (Clemson University)

Katherine Groo (Lafayette College)

Jeffrey Kirkwood (Binghamton University)

Matthew Kirschenbaum (University of Maryland)

Ryan Lizardi (SUNY Polytechnic Institute)

Carine Mardorossian (University at Buffalo)

Shannon Mattern (The New School)

Simone Natale (Loughborough University)

Katharina Niemeyer (University of Quebec in Montreal)

Jussi Parikka (University of Southampton)

David Parisi (College of Charleston)

Sheenagh Pietrobruno (Saint Paul University)

Alexander Reid (University at Buffalo)

Teri Rueb (University of Colorado Boulder)

Mark Shepard (University at Buffalo)

Jonathan Sterne (McGill University)

Helen Thornham (University of Leeds)

Bernadette Wegenstein (Johns Hopkins University)

Ewa Wojtowicz (University of Arts in Poznan)

Deadline for submissions: June 30, 2020 (for publication November 2020).

Guest editor: Dr. Timothy Barker (University of Glasgow)

In what ways do questions of materiality matter in a time of crisis? What does it mean to explore the matter of things at a time when we are threatened with the annihilation of that matter, its disappearance, or its disintegration?

The second issue of MAST seeks to answer and further explore these questions through essays from arts practitioners and theorists.

Please email submissions and questions to editors@mast-nemla.org

Download the CFP here. Read the complete call for papers at mast-nemla.org/call-for-papers.

MAST uses a double-blind peer-review process. The Editors perform an initial review of all submissions and may reject papers that are clearly outside the scope of the journal. Manuscripts within the scope will be reviewed by at least two reviewers. On completion of this process, the authors will be notified of the decision and provided review guidance or additional editing if necessary. Authors are encouraged to write in a clear and concise style, and use visuals and references as necessary to support their statements.

MAST accepts:

• full papers (4000-6000 words)
• short essays (1500-3000 words)
• video essays (5-10 min)
• interviews (2000-4000 words)
• book/exhibition reviews (1000-1500 words)

MAST is interested in studies that broadly meet the themes below:

1. Media archaeology
2. Cultural techniques
3. Digital memory
4. Analog and digital
5. Archive and archival practice
6. Aesthetics of glitch, error, and noise in media art
7. Locative, mobile media, and situated technology
8. Feminist new materialism
9. Material image and haptic film
10. Media and embodiment

Submissions must be sent to editors@mast-nemla.org.

• The submission cannot have been previously published, nor should it be simultaneously submitted to another journal for consideration (or an explanation must be provided in Comments to the Editor); if parts of it have been published, the MAST submission must add substantially new meaning to the work. 
• The text must adhere to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines.
• All necessary permissions to publish images/illustrations/sounds/videos have been acquired by the author(s). The authors must respond to all legal rights.
• The article has been proofedited.

Author Guidelines

All submissions must:

• include a concise and informative title.
• include the name and affiliation of all the authors, their current position, and a valid e-mail address.
• include keywords (5-8).
• include a short author biography (150 words).
• for full papers, include an abstract (250 words). In the abstract, the authors must synthesize clearly the content and the implications of their study, following the structure of various subchapters: background, aims, methods used, results obtained, discussions (also presenting the limits of the study), as well as implications for future research. This structure can be adapted, according to the particular characteristics of the study.
• all submissions must ensure an adequate quality for web display of attached media files (image/video/sound).
• use the MLA (Modern Language Association) citation style, latest version (in-text parenthetical citations and a list of Works Cited). The use of endnotes is permitted, although it should be kept to a minimum.
• be edited in Microsoft Word and typed in Times New Roman, 12 points, 1.5 line spacing with 1-inch margins. Submissions should use italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables must be placed within the text at the appropriate place, rather than at the end.

For video essays, please submit a link to the video online (provide a password, if required).

Authors will not receive any copies of the journal, as all available materials are electronic. 

MAST has a policy of zero tolerance for plagiarism and sustains a publication ethics that is based on an honest citation of sources as well as original research. Please follow the rules regarding plagiarism that are recommended by the MLA guidelines. Identification of plagiarism will automatically lead to the rejection of the manuscript and to the permanent banning of the author from future publication in the journal, as well as to institutional exposure.

Incomplete submissions or those received after the deadline may not be considered.

Maryam Muliaee is a media artist-researcher based in Buffalo, NY. Her work is multidisciplinary, ranging from video/sound installations to experimental animation, xerography, and locative media. She is currently a PhD candidate in Department of Media Study at University at Buffalo, SUNY, where she has taught courses production courses, and film seminars such as World Cinema, and Film and Immigration. Maryam’s work has been exhibited in various settings within and outside of the academy in more than 50 international curated shows, juried festivals, and screening programs including in galleries in London, Tokyo, Seoul, Berlin, Poznan, Warsaw, Florence, Brussels, Zagreb, Athens, New York, Buffalo, and Tehran since 2007. Her current research/practice explores how media can engender fictional places and urban imaginaries through feminist tactics. Maryam’s recent publications include book chapters in anthologies (with Peter Lang and Bloomsbury Publishing) and in peer-reviewed journals such as Ekphrasis: The Journal of Images, Cinema, Theory, Media, specifically focused on media archaeology, failure and non-communication aesthetics in media art practice. She is the recipient of the grant award 2019-2020 Gender Institute Dissertation Fellowship for her project “Feminist Media Archaeologies as Counter-mapping”. Since 2016, Maryam has served as art director and animator at Buffalo Documentary Project. She is also the co-founder of Media-as-things, a collective (practice-as-research) project with a focus on themes such as noise, error and failure in the context of media archaeological art practice. Website: http://maryammuliaee.com

Mani Mehrvarz is a filmmaker, media artist, and curator, currently a PhD candidate in Media Study at the University at Buffalo in a practice-led program that incorporates both technology and art into theoretical research. Over the last four years, Mani has taught courses in documentary, video art, and media theory. His media installations and documentary films have been exhibited and screened in solo and group shows and juried festivals around the world since 2006. Mani is the founder/director at Buffalo Documentary Project (a collaborative film project to unfold the stories of Buffalo and WNY), associate director of UB Arts Collaboratory, and co-founder of Media-as-things Collective. His areas of research interest and art practice include database and archive, media archaeology, cultural techniques and post-history. His doctoral dissertation explores and frames technology of recording memory in terms of media’s particular qualities such as materiality, temporality, and operation. Since 2013, Mehrvarz has worked on several media projects with a focus on the unstable processes of analog and digital technologies of recording memory in the context of post-Kittlerian media studies. 

His art practice with the moving-image goes beyond the conventional linear storytelling towards various forms of data-based video, interactive documentary, and video mapping. His project “Private Nostalgia” (2014) has been featured and reviewed in various scholarly publications including Ewa Wojtowicz’s book, Art In Post-Media Culture (2016), as a creative example of data base cinema along with several other contemporary projects such as Lev Manovich’s Soft Cinema. Mani recently published two book chapters that investigate the materiality of media and their inner process in depth within art practice. Moreover, exploring how art practice can embody and reveal the entanglement of materiality in analog and digital media, he has curated exhibitions such as “MAKE.MEDIA.MATTER” (2018) at UB Art Gallery, and “Media-as-Things” (2019) in El-Museo gallery, presenting works that showcase the unseen material relations in media in a unique way. Website: http://manimehrvarz.com

Visit MAST online at mast-nemla.org.

Please send your submission materials to the editors at editors@mast-nemla.org.

If you have any questions about Submissions, General Enquiries, and Copyright Concerns, please email editors@mast-nemla.org.