In the era of networked technology, we appear to live in an integrated global community where human relations and perceptions are conceived through various manifestations of a non-physical world of connections. We collectively build and spontaneously find refuge in virtual communities whose inhabitants experience incongruity and fragmentation, along with conformity and wholeness. The interplay of physical and virtual within our lived experience opens up portals and wormholes enabling simultaneous and discontinuous realities at the touch of a button, echo of a voice, or nudge of a sensor. The new dynamics not only reconfigures our relations with ourselves and with one another, but most importantly, it reshapes our sense of identity, belonging, and place.

As the line between the virtual self and the physical self blurs, as our engagement with the world becomes less dependent on the physical space, and as we simultaneously reside in a multitude of deterritorialized ubiquitous places, what happens to our understanding of home?

The SIGGRAPH 2011 Art Gallery: Tracing Home, seeks exceptional digital and technologically mediated artworks that explore issues around the concept of home in the networked age. Explorations may include but are not limited to examining current functional, structural, cultural, emotional, or metaphorical definitions, or constructing new realities, experiences, and meanings.

For more information and to apply visit Siggraph 2011