New Media Art Project Network Presents New Work

Fundamental Patterns- Peripheral Basics” is a new online show that includes the solo presentation of Calin Man, who received the “JavaArtist of the Year Award.” “Actual Positions of Italian Netart” features 26 artists. “Focus:x? – {self}_representation” includes “Mirror at the Bottom – artists portraiting themselves” with work by Coco Gordon (New York), Melissa Ulto (New York), Valerie Rose (Tampa,USA).

ELO Site Redesign

ELO is in the process of updating its web presence. UCLA undergraduate artist and designer Gabe Dunne is developing the new site, which will launch soon after the new year.

The ELO website, the PAD (Preservation, Archiving, and Dissemination) webpages, and the ELO Directory will all participate in this Re-Launch. So, look for our new interface and information in the upcoming months!

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Cauldron & Net

Editor Claire Dinsmore released the new version of the journal of the arts & new media, Cauldron & Net. The current issue features author Kathleen Fraser and book artist Inge Bruggeman. Alongside of these features is a choice selection poetry, essays, fiction, visual art, hypermedia work and sound.

ELO’s PAD Members Meet in Santa Fe

ELO’s PAD (Preservation, Archiving, Dissemination) Project is off and running! Members of the PAD committees met in Santa Fe over the weekend to discuss the project and its range, planned future steps and shared information.

In attendence were Jeff Ballowe (Chair of the Operations Committee), Scott Rettberg (Chair of the Archiving/Exhibition Committee), Marjorie Luesebrink (Archiving/Exhibition Committee), Howard Besser (Archiving/Exhibition Committee), Alan Divack (Archiving/Exhibition Committee), Alan Liu (Chair of the Technology/Software Design Committee), Nick Montfort (Technology/Software Design Committee), Bill Warner (Chair of the Copyright/Open Source Committee), Rob Swigart (Copyright/Open Source Committee), Rob Kendall (Director of the ELO Directory), Melissa Stevenson, and Jessica Pressman. Matt Kirschenbaum (Chair of Academic Dissemination Committee) phoned in to participate.

PAD will soon have a presence on the web, accessible from the ELO website. The PAD webpages will be available by the end of November. Check back soon!

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New E-Lit Creative Writing Fellowship Offered at Brown

Robert Coover writes:
When the award-winning digital artist Talan Memmott went to the Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Brown University this fall as an MFA candidate in electronic writing, something new was happening. He followed upon such previous e-lit luminaries as Bobby Arellano, Shelley Jackson, Mary Kim Arnold, Mark Amerika, Matt Derby, Judd Morrissey, and Noah Wardrip-Fruin, but all of these writers were accepted as graduate fiction writers, not electronic writers. And now the unique fellowship awarded to Memmott has been converted into a permanent annual Creative Writing graduate fellowship in electronic writing, perhaps the first of its kind in the world (any challenges?). It offers tuition and a stipend, partly earned in the second year by teaching workshops, which in the case of those holding this new fellowship will be electronic writing courses, thereby expanding the university’s course offerings in the digital arts. Applicants should follow the existing Creative Writing guidelines, applying to the genre of choice (fiction, poetry, or playwriting) with a clear indication of interest in the digital field. Although there is only one such fellowship at this time, it is hoped that other electronic writers might, through the quality of their writing, be accepted within the traditional genres, thus augmenting the digital community here. In addition to providing print writing samples in one of the three genres (the electronic fellowship is not genre-specific), applicants should submit examples (or documentation) of their electronic writing by way of DVD, CD-ROM, videotape, or web address (URL).

New E-Lit Creative Writing Fellowship Offered at Brown

Robert Coover writes:
When the award-winning digital artist Talan Memmott went to the Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Brown University this fall as an MFA candidate in electronic writing, something new was happening. He followed upon such previous e-lit luminaries as Bobby Arellano, Shelley Jackson, Mary Kim Arnold, Mark Amerika, Matt Derby, Judd Morrissey, and Noah Wardrip-Fruin, but all of these writers were accepted as graduate fiction writers, not electronic writers. And now the unique fellowship awarded to Memmott has been converted into a permanent annual Creative Writing graduate fellowship in electronic writing, perhaps the first of its kind in the world (any challenges?). It offers tuition and a stipend, partly earned in the second year by teaching workshops, which in the case of those holding this new fellowship will be electronic writing courses, thereby expanding the university’s course offerings in the digital arts. Applicants should follow the existing Creative Writing guidelines, applying to the genre of choice (fiction, poetry, or playwriting) with a clear indication of interest in the digital field. Although there is only one such fellowship at this time, it is hoped that other electronic writers might, through the quality of their writing, be accepted within the traditional genres, thus augmenting the digital community here. In addition to providing print writing samples in one of the three genres (the electronic fellowship is not genre-specific), applicants should submit examples (or documentation) of their electronic writing by way of DVD, CD-ROM, videotape, or web address (URL).

Review of Stephanie Strickland’s V in Publisher’s Weekly

The following is a quote from a review in Publisher’s Weekly:

“If Brian Kim Stefans’s The Dreamlife of Letters (2000)-a gorgeous send-up of Freud, lettrism and contemporary gender-bending-was the first large-scale poem using the internet animator Flash, then this book by Strickland continues to blaze trails of possibility in a new poetic medium. By putting the soul of this book solely online, Strickland reaches beyond True North (1997), which was developed in both print and hypertext versions, and seeks to fully bridge the gap between print and electronic media. The work’s bound component consists of two sections, “WaveSon.nets” and “Losing L’Una,” printed reversibly (so that either section can be seen as beginning the book, and neither ends it) with a centerfold directing readers to a third, free, interactive section at http://vniverse.com. The printed poems encompass a broad range of thematic concerns-including virginity, body, circuitry, waveforms, wormholes, engineering, parturition, mythology, fractals and witchcraft: “This is hallucinated hearing/ in the service of art, of Arthur’s table,// R2, Artemis,/ and Ursa guarding the Pole./ Welcome, then, Presence, Reflection, Shadow,/ Refraction, She Who Stands,// Gnova, Gnomon, Goose, Ouzel, Orca, Longdark,/ Hardware, Software, Wetware, a Dolphin/ leaping, responding/ to the bare boy on her back.” And as in previous work, Strickland engages with a wealth of scientific, historical and biographical source material, particularly regarding the life and thought of Simone Weil (also the subject of Strickland’s The Red Virgin, 1993). But the point here is the endless combinations created by clicking variously on the Web site’s screen filled with gently twinkling stars, which sets off a process of selection, combination, dissolve, and recombination among lines, phrases and sources in the printed text. Strickland’s interrogation of structure finally outshines her content, but readers will sense that she is also creating space for future work, both by herself and by others, bringing intelligence and legitimacy to a new form.”