PICTOPLASMA - CALL FOR PAPERS

In recent years, a new kind of "character design" has been making its mark on the visual world - in media, art and urban landscapes across the globe. From Hello Kitty to Obey Giant, Emily the Strange to Takashi Murakami’s DOB – contemporary character design, abstract and reduced to the essentials, playfully samples and remixes visual codes, making a beeline for our emotional attention.

It is Pictoplasma’s aim to foster an understanding of this phenomenon as a new era of figurative expression. Based in Berlin, the project has functioned as a global network for heterogeneous "character-related" activities since 1999. Through pictorial encyclopaedias, exhibitions, online archives, conferences and film festivals, Pictoplasma brings together artists and designers from all over the world, encouraging experimentation and pushing the development of this new visual language. In the run-up to the 2nd Pictoplasma Conference in October 2006 in Berlin, Pictoplasma is keen to collect theoretical reflections along the lines of: Body, Narration and Communication. (more...)

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