ICONOGRAPHY 2024.
Levels of Unreality, Metaverses and the Worlds of Images.
Organised by Maria Luisa Catoni, Riccardo Olivito, and Monica Salvadori.

Two years after the conference "Iconography 2022" (Padua-Venice 12-14 December 2022), the LYNX Center of the IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca and the Department of Cultural Heritage of the University of Padua continue to stimulate new reflections on the status and role of images through diachronic and interdisciplinary perspectives.

The next conference, "Iconography 2024" will bring together specialists from various disciplines to focus on the techniques and devices through which images create alternative worlds, different levels of unreality, metaverses, and bridges between real and virtual dimensions. Building on the success of "Iconography 2022," which examined aspects of 'space,' the 2024 conference concentrates on a second fundamental element through which we interact with images, namely their 'meta-iconographic' value. Particular attention will be placed on the ability of images to create or recall - through mimetic processes, symbolic allusions, and specific techniques - dimensions, and realities beyond the context in which the images themselves are created, displayed, and received.
As Ernst Gombrich famously pointed out in 'Art and Illusion' about the relationship between function and form of images: "The test of the image is not its lifelikeness but its efficacy within a context of action." Indeed, one of the central values of images lies in the very relationship between 'context of action' and 'efficacy,' which can also be expressed in the effectiveness with which the real and the virtual relate to one another.
Through the analysis and discussion of specific case studies, the conference aims to investigate the multiple dynamics of interaction between images and contexts (physical or 'metaphysical') from a theoretical and methodological point of view. This implies investigating the set of tools and devices through which images create different levels of 'unreality' and prompt the interaction with the observer. This inquiry also examines how images become activated to interact with and within the worlds they create. Finally, it considers the dialogue between different images in the same space or the transformations, also semantic, that the addition of new images or their reorganisation in a given context inevitably entails.
Focusing on the Greek and Roman world but with the aim of extending the reflection to different chronological and cultural contexts, the conference aims to constitute an opportunity for new reflections on the status of images and their functions. This includes consideration of the status that images assume in relation to the place of display and reception and their capacity to be in a continual process of redefinition, challenging the relation between real and virtual.

GENERAL INFORMATION

We plan to have a series of 20-minute presentations per panel.
Languages accepted for presentations are English, Italian, and French.
Proposals shall be accompanied by an abstract of no more than 400 words and an explanatory image with a caption to be attached to the email.
The scientific committee will select the proposals according to relevance and scientific interest criteria.

After the Scientific Committee accepts the abstract, a registration fee (€ 200.00) will be requested. This registration fee covers access to all keynote and panel sessions, two lunches, all the coffee breaks, the welcome reception, and conference materials.
Papers might be selected for a possible book on the conference's theme.
Proposals must be sent to lynxactimtlucca.it

DEADLINES
Extended proposal submission: 30 June 2024
Selection of papers by the Scientific Committee: July 2024

For further information, please write to lynxactimtlucca.it or visit https://lynx.imtlucca.it/