MAST: The Journal of Media Art, Study and Theory

MAST is an international, online, open-access, and 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 that present new methods, approaches, questions, and studies in the field of media study, practice, and theory. The journal is relevant to academics, artists, researchers, theorists, and art curators with an interest in research, theory, and praxis of media, introducing work that demonstrates a clear and creative engagement with current debates in media studies. MAST issues are published twice a year, and the journal is housed in and sponsored by NeMLA (the Northeast Modern Language Association) at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. MAST's inaugural issue will be out in March 2020.

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 its art-research community and 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 practice and research together to a greater audience, and seeks to contribute to a potential future for media studies that can speak to current and future generations of media artists-scholars.

MAST will publish its inaugural issue in March 2020. Submissions for the second issue are due by December 15, 2019. Please send your materials to the editors at MAST@nemla.org.

Editors

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

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

Invited Advisory Board

• Carine Mardorossian (University at Buffalo)
• Bernadette Wegenstein (Johns Hopkins University)
• Alexander Reid (University at Buffalo)
• Ewa Wojtowicz (University of Arts in Poznan)
• Jonathan Sterne (McGill University)
• Ryan Lizardi (SUNY Polytechnic Institute)
• Teri Rueb (University of Colorado at Boulder)
• Jeffrey Kirkwood (Binghamton University)
• Timothy Barker (University of Glasgow)
• Mark Shepard (University at Buffalo)
• Katherina Niemeyer (University of Quebec at Montreal)
• Sheenagh Pietrobruno (University of Ottawa)
• Simone Natale (Loughborough University)
• Lori Emerson (University of Colorado at Boulder)
• Jason Farman (University of Maryland)
• Shannon Mattern (The New School)
• Hadas Steiner (University at Buffalo)
• Katherine Groo (Lafayette College)
• Paul Vanouse (University at Buffalo)
• David Parisi (College of Charleston)
• Iris van der Tuin (Utrecht University)
• Ina Blom (University of Oslo)
• Jordan Frith (University of North Texas)

Contributions are reviewed by MAST editors and the advisory members using a multi-level open peer-review process. The editors and the board will consider the degree to which the submission is significant to the field as well as its strength both conceptually and artistically.

MAST accepts:

• full papers (6000-8000 words)
• short articles (2000-3000 words)
• interviews (2000-3000 words)
• exhibition reviews (1000-2000 words)
• book reviews (1000-2000 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, archival practice, and archiveology
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

• The content cannot have been previously published and should not be currently considered by another journal; if parts have been published, the MAST submission must add substantially new meaning to the work.
• Submissions must include:
  • Author biography (75-100 words)
  • Title/subtitle
  • Name and affiliation of all authors, their current position, together with a valid e-mail address
  • Abstract (250 words) and keywords (3-5 keywords). 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 on future research. This structure must be adapted, according to the particular characteristics of the study.
• For media files (image/sound/video) attached, ensure an adequate quality for web display. The authors are responsible for obtaining the copyrights for the use of images.
• Submissions must use the MLA (Modern Language Association) citation style (parenthetical citations and a list of works cited). The use of endnotes is permitted, although it should be kept to a minimum.
• Full papers should be 6000-8000 words, and short articles 2000-3000 words.
• The authors would not receive any copies of the journal, as all available materials are electronic.
• All submissions should be edited in Microsoft Word and typed in Times New Roman, 12 points, 1.5 line spacing with 1-inch margins. Each paragraph should start with an indent.
• 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 formatting guidelines. Identification of plagiarism will automatically lead to the rejection of the manuscript and to permanent banning of the author from future publication in the journal, as well as to institutional exposure. 

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 taught courses in video and sound production, as well as film seminars such as World Cinema, and Film and Immigration, among others. Maryam’s work has been exhibited in various settings inside and outside academics 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 and examines 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 non-communication aesthetics and implications of media and in the field of media archaeology. 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, she has served as art director and animator at Buffalo Documentary Project. Maryam is also the co-founder of Media-as-things, a collective (practice+research) project with a focus on themes such as media archaeology, failure, noise and error in contemporary media art practice. Website: http://maryammuliaee.com

Mani Mehrvarz is an award-winning, non-fiction filmmaker, media artist, and curator, currently completing his PhD 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 been an instructor in the Department of Media, teaching courses such as 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 2004. Mani is the founder and director at Buffalo Documentary Project (a collaborative film project to unfold the stories of Buffalo and WNY through documentary filmmaking), the film director of the “LIVE YOUR ART” (2019) series at the UB Arts Collaboratory project (featuring four women artists living and working in Buffalo, NY), and the co-founder of Media-as-things. Mani’s doctoral dissertation explores and frames technology of recording memory in terms of media’s particular qualities such as materiality, temporality, and operation. 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, introducing work that showcases the unseen material relations in media in a unique way. Website: http://manimehrvarz.com