Yearbook of Moving Image Studies (2023)
»Ludic Images: The Moving Image between Game, Play and Interaction«

Deadline for Abstracts: February 28, 2025
Deadline for Articles: September 22, 2025

The double-blind peer-reviewed Yearbook of Moving Image Studies (YoMIS) is now accepting abstracts from researchers, artists, designers, technical developers, graphic artists, computer scientists, game designers and film makers for the nineth issue »Ludic Images: The Moving Image between Game, Play and Interaction« that will address the aesthetics, cognition, and technological structure of »ludic, interactive and playful moving images«. YoMIS will be enriched by disciplines like media theory, film studies and philosophy, art and design, artistic research, image science, semiotics, phenomenology, art history, game studies, visual culture studies, computer graphics and other research areas related to moving, ludic, interactive, cinematic, dynamic, virtual, augmented, mixed or volumetric images in general.

Within the context of the »digital turn« in art and design there has been a complex ludic dimension in the development of media technologies and user interfaces. This ludic, playful and interactive dimension of images addresses a computer-generated imagery in the aesthetic field of computer games, analogue- and fully digital-based augmented reality games, moving images as cut scenes in gaming settings and a specific handheld condition of interactive media practices in tablets or smartphones and specific applications for head mounted displays in VR, AR or Mixed Reality. This digital trend in the aesthetics of the ludic images is not only connected with developments in the interactive game condition but in very specific ways within the whole narrative construction field of digital scenography, character design and array of events and character development. Ludic images are primary connected with the specific game tradition (or international traditions) in the context of goal driven interaction, game gratification, gamification within a history of game and play. Ludic images as digital images are additionally perceived in a plot perspective with specific dramatic and narrative aspects that are now highly influenced by the digital image tradition of cinematic images and by the whole realm of analogue games. Therefore, the editors would like to address some research directions:

1) How do ludic images relate to the complex tradition of digital moving image representations?
2) What are the specific technological elements and effects of ludic images in the perspective of a modern game, image and media theory?
3) What are the narrative communication effects and contexts of the use of ludic images in games or other technological game devices in the range of VR, AR or game apps for handheld devices?
4) What are the aesthetic principles, levels, or aesthetic layers of ludic and playful digital and interactive images in the context of art, design, gaming culture and computer graphics?
5) Are there specific sensory, cultural, or perceptual conditions of ludic images of the post-modern image era that are important to be classified?
6) Is it possible to categorize ludic images in an aesthetic, phenomenological, semiotic, philosophical, media theoretical or anthropological perspective?

Consequently, »Ludic Images: The Moving Image between Game, Play and Interaction« will address the technological possibilities and media routes of ludic (digital) images that are already affecting media communication practices in different social, playful and technological areas. Thus, contributions for this issue of the Yearbook of Moving Image Studies can concentrate on the specific variety of the pictorial aspects of ludic images, the specific technological conditions and situations, and the development of graphic representations regarding the different game interfaces of ludic image communication. Topics could focus on (but are not limited to) ludic and playful images as perceptual artefacts, ludic artifacts as real-world-simulation elements, the specific digital performance of ludic image technologies that are enabling a specific narration, and the specific ludic modes of user interaction in the context of interactive media, the different aspects of digital game aesthetics, cinematic art, design, and communication in the ludic image conditions, the new forms of psychological and perceptual interaction and narration in ludic media ecologies, the processual dynamic of ludic images, the embodied vision of game narration and ludic cognition, the effects and characteristics of ludic illusions, the phenomenology and semiotics of user perception in gaming conditions, the coupling of digital or analogue ludic moving images with the specific media devices, the ludic image as a multimodal artefact, and the historical, cultural or philosophical evolution of ludic image representations in the era of post-modern image design.

The official deadline for abstracts is February 28, 2025. The anonymous review feedback will be given in March 2025. Long abstracts should include 600 to 900 words in length. Please send a short biography, contact details and your abstract to Prof. Dr. Lars C. Grabbe, Prof. Dr. Patrick Rupert-Kruse and Prof. Dr. Norbert M. Schmitz via: contactmovingimagescience.com. The official deadline for articles is September 22, 2025. The articles should include 5.000 to 7.000 words in length. If you are interested in contributing an abstract and article you will find a specific style sheet of the Yearbook of Moving Image Studies here: www.movingimagescience.com.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the managing editors via mail.