PPIG 2018 - 29th Annual Workshop

Call for papers

PPIG has always been founded on a dualism: we take as much interest in the psychology of the act of programming as in the computational aspects of psychology. Our special theme for 2018, “craft in programming”, doubles down on this duality - we are as interested in submissions arguing for or against the craft status of programming, as we are in explorations of how programming may interact harmoniously or injuriously with traditional crafts.

Theme

Papers received to recent PPIG workshops have already broken this ground - exploring connections between software and maker culture, distinctions between the craft of artists and amateurs, and whether making software could qualify as a craft at all, beyond being an unreliable activity which requires skill and insight to achieve desirable results.

This year we would like to take these issues further, and particularly welcome submissions that explore the contradictions between the working practices and assumptions of workers in tangible and intangible media, as well as proposals for refounding our disciplines so that such contradictions could be healed. For example, a recent focus of organisations such as the Heritage Crafts Association has been the curation of what is termed “Intangible Cultural Heritage” - the invisible transmission of knowledge and skills associated with traditional artisanry. But here we have a contradiction, since although programming is famously comfortable manipulating the abstract, it is equally famously uncomfortable dealing with the unquantifiable and indefinable. What assistance could a future programming offer to such struggling traditions?

Location

The Art Workers' Guild
6 Queen Square
Bloomsbury
London
C1N 3AT
UK

This year’s PPIG workshop will be gloriously hosted in the London headquarters of the Art Workers’ Guild, founded in 1884 by followers of William Morris. The Guild was founded to teach the ethics of the Arts and Crafts movement to all the craft disciplines. The Guild’s atmosphere provides particularly fertile grounds for exploring connections and contradictions between our senses of craft. Last year the guild hosted a lecture by Sir Christopher Frayling entitled “Craft: a word to start an argument”, which initiated many conversations within the guild about craft education in the digital age. We expect discussion will be lively and fresh.

Submisisons

We will welcome the following categories of submissions:

• Full Papers: Up to 10 pages long.

• Work In Progress reports: Up to 4 pages long.

• System demonstrations and reflections: an abstract, video, or artwork outlining what you will present. Crashes are desirable. Up to 2.5 days long.

• Doctoral consortium submissions: Up to 2 pages long.

Please use our templates for papers. Submissions for the workshop should be uploaded to EasyChair.

Important dates

• Abstract submission deadline: 1 June 2018

• Doctoral consortium submissions deadline: 15 June 2018

• Paper submission deadline: 15 June 2018

• Authors will be notified: 6 July 2018

• Submission of final camera ready copy: 3 August 2018

• Conference: 5-7 September 2018 at The Art Workers' Guild, 6 Queen Square, Bloomsbury, London WC1N 3AT, UK

As always, we are excited to receive papers touching on any of PPIG’s traditional interests, including:

• Music(al) programming

• Liveness and interactivity in programming

• Programming education and craft skill acquisition

• Human centered design and evaluation of programming languages, tools and infrastructure

• Programming and human cognition

• Team/co-operative work in programming

• End user programming

• Distributed programming, programming distribution

• Gender, age, culture and programming

• New paradigms in programming

• Code quality, readability, productivity and re-use

• Mistakes, bugs and errors

• Notational design

• Unconventional interactions and quasi-programming

• Non-human programming

• Technology support for creativity

We look forward to seeing you in London.