Viewing Axolotls

Viewing AxolotlsRegina Celia Pinto, a Brazilian artist and writer, is the creator of The Library of Marvels. This online library is a collection of “artist’s e.books” on the web. The library began in 1999, and now contains six volumes: White and Black, Reflections on Fog (1999), the Book of Sand (2001), The Psychiatrist, Net.art / Web.art and other stories (2002), The Newest Song of Exile: Sabiá Virtuality (2003), Viewing Axolotls (2004) and Tales from my balcony / Alice in the “wonderbalcony.” Viewing Axolotls is a multiple investigation into a Cortazar short story updated in gender and media. Please see the directory entry for more about this author.

Diagrams Series 6

Diagrams Series 6In Jim Rosenberg’s diagram poems a graphical notation acts as an external syntax — thereby, as Rosenberg puts it, “allowing word objects to carry interactivity deep inside the sentence.” This interactivity allows each element of the syntax to be occupied by complex clusters of words: layered, multiply embedded, and yet legible. Rosenberg’s earliest experiments with diagrammatic poems date back to 1968, and he has been creating interactive works since 1988, using a variety of platforms. Diagrams Series 6 was developed in Squeak, an environment that allows for reading on a wide variety of operating systems and also enabled Rosenberg to move (for the first time) to composing each poem in the series within the interactive reading environment. See the Directory entry on Rosenberg for more information.

Postdoctoral Research Associate Position, Annenberg Center for Communication

The Annenberg Center for Communication at the University of Southern California invites applications for a postdoctoral research position sponsored by a grant from the MacArthur Foundation. This one-year position, with the possibility of a second-year renewal, will require the researcher to work as a fieldworker/ethnographer on a project on “digital kids” and informal learning: how children and youth are using information and communication technologies and the internet. The USC project, led by Mizuko Ito, is part of a broader project involving Peter Lyman and Diane Harley at UC Berkeley, and Michael Carter at the Monterey Institute of Technology and Education. Visit the main project website, “Kids’ Informal Learning with Digital Media: An Ethnographic Investigation of Innovative Knowledge Cultures” for more information on the project.

Responsibilities will include monitoring and participating in online activity and conducting interviews with kids and parents; analyzing, writing up and presenting results; exploring policy implications of the research. The ideal candidate will have experience in ethnographic fieldwork, collaborative and interdisciplinary research, and experience working with children and families.

This full-time position pays $45,000 plus benefits, and requires residence in the Los Angeles area. For complete information on the position, and application instructions, contact Rachel Cody at the Annenberg School. Deadline for receipt of application materials is April 30, 2006.

Interactive Media Studies Positions at National University of Singapore

The National University of Singapore‘s Communications and New Media Programme (CNM) in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences invites applications for five tenure-track positions at either the assistant- or associate-professor levels.

Media scholars should have an M.F.A. or Ph.D. and an active research program in one or more of the following areas:

–Interactive Media content design and development

–HCI and evaluation research

–User experience design/strategy and innovation

–Interactive advertising/business/marketing

–Media arts: storytelling, cyberculture and cyberarts, new media arts (theory and practice)

For complete details on position requirements and application procedures, visit CNM’s website. Application review begins immediately for positions to begin August 2006 or January 2007.

“Visual Narrative of the Desktop” at CAA

If you are going to CAA06 in Boston February 22-26, consider attending this New Media Caucus panel: “The Visual Narrative of the Desktop”. Chaired by Alec McLeod of the California Institute of Integral Studies, the panel will include presentations on a varieties of approaches to the desktop interface:

–Juliet Davis, “Fractured Cybertales: Interface Mythologies of Feminine Choice and Control”

–Craig L. Warner, “What We May Want May Not Be What We Need–An Interface Should Face the Inner Need”

–Craig Saper, “Interface as/on Art”

–Sylvia Grace Borda, “The Social Implications of New Media: An Overview of Trends”

–Mary Agnes Krell & Petra Gemeinboeck, “Investigating Imaginary Evidence”

The panel will take place Saturday, February 25, from 9L30 a.m. to noon, in Room 311 of the Hynes Convention Center. For information on all the New Media Caucus’ events at CAA, visit NMC’s website.

Text Rain

Text RainText Rain is an interactive installation in which viewers play with the falling text of a poem. The text responds to motion and can be caught, lifted and released to fall again. If participants accumulate enough letters along their outstretched arms, or along the silhouette of any dark object, they can read words and phrases formed by the falling letters. With active participation the text of the poem “Talk, You” by Evan Zimroth can be gradually reconstructed. As Utterback and Achituv put it, “Zimroth’s poem creates metaphorical bridges between the physical and the linguistic. It employs images of the body moving through space to speak of interpersonal relationships, illustrating how ‘meanings’ come together and fall apart through transient ‘syntactical’ spatial relationships.”

MITH Announces Spring Speakers Schedule

The Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities at the University of Maryland, College Park—ELO’s host institution as of July 1, 2006—is pleased to release its Spring Speakers Schedule. Between our weekly seminar series Digital Dialogues and a variety of special guests we are bringing to campus in partnership with other campus units, we are able to offer speakers and events in the digital humanities and electronic literature every week of the spring semester.

Alongside of showcasing a diverse array of current research by MITH’s Fellows and College Park faculty, MITH will host or co-host talks by such distinguished visitors as Jerome McGann and Johanna Drucker (University of Virginia), Alan Liu (UCSB), Joseph Tabbi (UIC), Scott Rettberg (Richard Stockton College, and co-Founder of the Electronic Literature Organization), Shelley Jackson (author of Patchwork Girl and Skin), and Scott McCloud (author of Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics).

MITH is located on the basement level of McKeldin Library. Unless otherwise noted, all talks are Tuesdays at 12:30 in the MITH Conference Room and are free and open to the public.

Call for Net Art Proposals: Turbulence.org

Turbulence announces a call for proposals for Turbulence New England Initiative II: Net Art and Hybrid Networked Art Competition. Three commissions of $3,500 each will be awarded by jurists Julian Bleeker, Michele Thursz, and Helen Thorington. Commissioned works will be exhibited on Turbulence.org and at Art Interactive. For more information, visit Turbulence.org. Proposal deadline is February 28, 2006.

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Creates Center for Digital Research in the Humanities

The new Center for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln aims to advance “collaborative, interdisciplinary research in the humanities by creating unique digital content, developing text analysis and visualization tools, and advancing knowledge of international standards and their implications for humanities computing.”

Co-directed by Kenneth M. Price and Katherine L. Walter, the CDRH will support research faculty fellowships, a Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities, and the Nebraska Digital Workshop to showcase and improve digital humanities work for outstanding early-career scholars.

The inaugural workshop will be held September 22-23, 2006. The CDRH invites proposals for presentations from advanced graduate students, post-doctoral scholars, and pre-tenure faculty. Selected scholars will receive full travel funding and an honorarium, and will have the opportunity to present their work to senior scholars in the humanities. Deadline for application to participate in the first Nebraska Digital Workshop is May 1, 2006. Visit the CDRH for additional information, or contact workshop committee Chair William G. Thomas, III.

Postdoctoral Fellowship at De Montfort University

Applications are invited for a postdoctoral research fellowship on a new project, led by Professor Sue Thomas, entitled “Interdisciplinary Applications of Experimental Social Software to the study of Narrative in Digital Contexts”. This one-year post will be jointly based in the Institute of Creative Technologies and the Faculty of Humanities at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK.

The successful applicant will have a major role in “the survey and evaluation of collaborative social software tools and their application to people-to-people models of transdisciplinary knowledge-sharing in relation to narratives in a digital context.”

Qualifications include a Ph.D., proven knowledge of narrative in digital environments, experience in managing web-based collaborative tools; a substantial understanding of the technical aspects of the project, including knowledge of HTML, databases, data collection and analysis skills.

The deadline for applications is March 17, 2006.

Get additional information and apply online by visiting De Montfort University’s employment website.

Informal inquiries may be made to Sue Thomas.