Dene Grigar

532. Reading Writing Interfaces: Electronic Literature’s Past and Present
Saturday, 7 January, 1:45–3:00 p.m., 613, WSCC
“Early Authors of E-Literature, Platforms of the Past”

730. New Media Narratives and Old Prose Fiction
Sunday, January 8, 1:45-3:00 p.m. in 310, WSCC
“Contrasts and Convergences of Electronic Literature”

Carolyn Guertin

301. Reconfiguring Publishing
Saturday, January, 7, 1:45–3:00 p.m., Grand A, Sheraton
Program arranged by the MLA Committee on Information Technology
Presiding: Carolyn Guertin, Univ. of Texas, Arlington; William Thompson, Western Illinois Univ.

Margie Luesebrink

532. Reading Writing Interfaces: Electronic Literature’s Past and Present
Saturday, 7 January, 1:45–3:00 p.m., 613, WSCC
“Seven Types of Interface in the Electronic Literature Collection Volume Two”

Nick Montfort

730. New Media Narratives and Old Prose Fiction
Sunday, January 8, 1:45-3:00 p.m. in 310, WSCC
“Computing Language and Poetry”

Rita Raley

301. Reconfiguring Publishing
Friday, January, 6, 1:45–3:00 p.m., Grand A, Sheraton
Program arranged by the MLA Committee on Information Technology

410. Reconfiguring the Literary: Narratives, Methods, Theories
Saturday, January 7, 8:30–9:45 a.m., 608, Washington State Convention Center
Program arranged by the Association for Computers and the Humanities

Stephanie Strickland

532. Reading Writing Interfaces: Electronic Literature’s Past and Present
Saturday, 7 January, 1:45–3:00 p.m., 613, WSCC
“Seven Types of Interface in the Electronic Literature Collection Volume Two”

Joe Tabbi

730. New Media Narratives and Old Prose Fiction
Sunday, January 8, 1:45-3:00 p.m. in 310, WSCC
“New Media: Its Use and Abuse for Literature and for Life”

In conjunction with these collections, Lori Emerson has organized an evening performance of electronic literature at the Richard Hugo House. The readings will feature Jim Andrews, Kate Armstrong, Ian Bogost, John Cayley, Erin Costello, Aaron Angello, Marjorie Luesebrink, Mark Marino, Nick Montfort, Brian Kim Stefans, and Stephanie Strickland.

Exhibit Location and Time
“Electronic Literature” takes place in Seattle, WA, at the Washington State Convention Center in Room 609. Exhibit times are:

Thursday, 5 January, 12 noon to 7:00 p.m.
Friday, 6 January, 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Saturday, 7 January, 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.

E-Lit Reading
Friday, 6 January, 8 p.m to 10.30 p.m.
Richard Hugo House 1634 11th Ave.
Seattle, WA 98122-2419

LANGUAGE TO COVER A WALL:
Visual Poetry Through Its Changing Media
November 17, 2011- February 18, 2012
UB Art Gallery
University at Buffalo

From the announcement:

The Digital Poetry component of Language to Cover a Wall, curated by Loss Pequeño Glazier, extends the traditions of visual poetry into present day digital poetics with an emphasis on visual, sound, video, interactive, and computational language practice, investigating digital media materiality through a variety of platforms. This part of the exhibition shows new works alongside rarely exhibited historical works crucial to the field, and presents an international range of digital poetry.

This is a major digital poetry exhibition (2nd floor) perhaps the largest and longest-running to date in a major U.S. museum. It is presented by E-Poetry, the Electronic Poetry Center (EPC), and the Dept. of Media Study, SUNY Buffalo and features projections, sculpture, digital prints, Linux-based generative poetry, a future book, iPad poetry, an interactive nook — plus a digital poetry cinémathèque!

The exhibition demonstrates the dramatic shift successive new media have brought to the concepts and definitions of poetry. The exhibition curatorial team (Steve McCaffery, David Gray Chair Professor of Poetry and Letters, UB Department of English; Karen Mac Cormack, adjunct professor of English; and Michael Basinski, Curator of the UB Poetry Collection) seeks to increase awareness of concrete and visual poetry and its ongoing possibilities. An historical range of works by George Herbert, Lewis Carroll, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Barbara Kruger, Henri Chopin, Robert Lax, Dick Higgins, Daniel Spoerri, Alison Knowles, d.a. levy, Bob Cobbing, Siebren Versteeg, bpNichol, Bill Bissett and Guy de Cointet are among the three-hundred plus works on view.

Some of the digital poetry works in the exhibition will also appear in performance contexts, in dance or artist performance in February, offering a multifaceted approach to artistic practice in the digital medium, in the following events.

DIGITAL POETRY IN PERFORMANCE
UB Art Gallery, Center for the Arts
Saturday, February 4, 2012, 7:30 pm

DIGITAL POETRY & DANCE
Black Box Theater, Center for the Arts
Friday, February 3, 2012, 7:30 & 9:00 pm
$10 at the door
Kerry Ring, Dance Director

Organized by ELO Vice President, Dene Grigar, the show will run the 10 days through the end of the conference. Below is the call:

In conjunction with the Electronic Literature Organization 2012 Conference, a juried Media Arts Gallery Exhibit will be held from Wednesday, June 13 – Saturday, June 23, 2012 at The Monongalia Arts Center.

In particular, we are looking for works such as:

1. Electronic literary works, such as hypertext poetry and fiction, interactive fiction, flash poetry and fiction, as well as other forms of elit
2. Net art pieces
3. Video
4. Animations
5. Sonic art
6. Experimental or conceptual multimedia works
7. Locative Works

We are asking for works that can be presented in 20 minutes, though like most e-lit works might take much longer to fully explore. Because of the limitation of space, all works must be able to be exhibited via a computer, mobile phone, or tablet. We will not be able to accommodate live performances or installations.

Submission deadline for proposals: November, 30, 2011
Notification of acceptance: February 15, 2012

There are two methods of submissions:

CDs or DVDs should be mailed to: Dr. Dene Grigar, The Creative Media & Digital Culture Program, Washington State University Vancouver, 14204 NE Salmon Creek Ave., Vancouver, WA 98686.

URLs for websites should be emailed to Dr. Dene Grigar, dgrigar@mac.com.

You are invited to another launch of the Electronic Literature Collection, volume 2, this time at The Kitchen performance space (512 W. 19th Street, NYC) with a reading on Tuesday, December 13, 2011 at 7pm.

Featuring 5 works by:

• Oni Buchanan
• Jhave Johnston
• Illya Szilak
• Sandy Baldwin
• Stephanie Strickland, Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo, & Paul Ryan

ELC/2 includes 63 works in 6 languages from 16 countries. An astounding variety of forms and genres are included: text movies, interactive fiction, poem generators, codework, animations, Second Life excursions, chatbot drama, augmented reality, and games—to name a few. There are works of poetry, narrative, documentary critique, drama and creative non-fiction for screen, gallery, and virtual environment. The Keyword glossary inside each Collection provides definitions of new forms and software, and each of the works is introduced briefly both by the editors and by the authors.

About The Kitchen:

The Kitchen is a non-profit, interdisciplinary organization that provides innovative artists working in the media, literary, and performing arts with exhibition and performance opportunities to create and present new work. Using its own extensive history as a resource, the organization identifies, supports, and presents emerging and under-recognized artists who are making significant contributions to their respective fields as well as serves as a safe space for more established artists to take unusual creative risks.

The crowd at the ELO Welcome event watches one of the evening's presentations.

Electronic literature artists and enthusiasts gathered at MIT’s new Media Lab Extension building on Monday, Sept. 19 to celebrate ELO’s move its new home at the Cambridge, Massachusetts campus. The “Open Mic/Open Mouse” saw artists from MIT and abroad showcasing their work, from interactive poetry from ELO board members Fox Harrell and Robert Kendall to a series of web pages telling the tale of life at MIT – from the perspective of a student’s cat. John Cayley and his students from Brown University made the trek up to Cambridge from Rhode Island for the event.

Fox Harrell, ELO Board Member	Robert Kendall, ELO Board Member
Christine Yu	Andrew Plotkin

The event was part of the Purple Blurb series, coordinated by Amaranth Borsuk. It was sponsored by the Angus N. MacDonald Fund and the Council for the Arts at MIT.

The ELO is sponsored by MIT’s CMS, SHASS, WHS, and LIT@MIT. Collaborations are underway with GAMBIT, the MIT Libraries, and ACT.

The Electronic Literature Organization, or ELO, is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization composed of an international community that includes writers, artists, teachers, scholars, and developers. The Organization’s focus is new literary forms that are made to be read on digital systems, including smartphones, Web browsers, and networked computers.

ELO is coming to MIT with the support of MIT’s world-renowned Comparative Media Studies (CMS) program. CMS, which has an undergraduate major, a graduate program, and several large-scale research projects, is committed to the art of thinking across media forms, theoretical domains, cultural contexts, and historical periods. The program considers media change and the rise of new forms of writing in different eras, including our current one. ELO’s supporting and collaborating organizations at MIT include the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences; the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies; the Council for the Arts at MIT; Hyperstudio; the Literature Section; and the Singapore/MIT GAMBIT Game Lab.

There is already a great deal of work in electronic literature ongoing at MIT, including that being done by ELO President Nick Montfort and ELO Director Fox Harrell, who are both on the MIT faculty. The Boston area is home to several other ELO directors and to a great deal of digital art activity, thanks to organizations such as the Boston Cyberarts Festival, Turbulence.org, the AXIOM Gallery, the Upgrade! Boston series, and the People’s Republic of Interactive Fiction.

“ELO and MIT have already been successful in advancing the state of the art in electronic literature,” said Montfort. “Now, by working together, we have a chance to sustain ELO’s core operations and projects and to further MIT’s existing commitment to electronic literature. ELO’s coming to MIT will be an chance to find new opportunities for collaboration, here in Cambridge and beyond.”

ELO was founded in 1999 by novelist Robert Coover, electronic author Scott Rettberg, and Internet business leader Jeff Ballowe. The Organization was operated from an office in Chicago until it moved to UCLA in 2001. In 2006, ELO’s headquarters came to the University of Maryland’s Maryland Institute of Technology in the Humanities (MITH). “ELO’s relationships with its academic hosts have been extremely productive for the organization,” said Montfort. “We’re very grateful for the ways that UCLA and MITH have helped us to accomplish our mission, sustain and add projects, and develop as an organization. With work from ELO’s directors, members, and collaborators, we’re now going to try to establish a long-term home for ELO at MIT that will allow the organization and the campus to continue to benefit from their collaboration for many years.”

ELO’s main projects are currently a biannual conference, the Electronic Literature Directory, the Electronic Literature Collection (the second volume of which was released this past Spring: http://collection.eliterature.org) and the eliterature.org site.

ELO is excited to announce the publication of its 2nd collection of electronic literature. With its wide ranging forms, Volume 2 picks up where ELC1 left off, offering a diverse anthology of works from an international group of authors in a variety of languages and forms.

The independent board of editors for the second collection included Laura Borràs, Talan Memmott, Rita Raley, and Brian Kim Stefans, key e-lit artists and critics in their own rights. Their deep knowledge of the field helped them gather works that represent the breadth and variety of e-lit. Also, the addition of Borràs allowed the team to review works in Catalan, Spanish, and Portuguese.

The new collection includes 63 works drawn from (and extending beyond):

• Countries: Austria, Australia, Catalonia, Canada, Colombia, France, Germany, Israel, The Netherlands, Portugal, Peru, Spain, UK, US
• Languages: Catalan, Dutch, English, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish
• Formats: Flash, Processing, Java, JavaScript, Inform, HTML, C++

Like ELC1, the collection can be browsed by author, title, or keyword.

ELC2 speaks to both the continuity as well as the bright future of electronic literature. The works include many of the emerging categories of e-lit: mash-ups, geolocative, codework, as well as “traditional” and evolving forms such as hypertext, chatbots, and interactive fiction. The authors list presents readers with both veterans and newcomers to the field.

As with Volume 1, the editors have published a hard copy of the collection, though this time on a DVD rather than a CD. However, they have also added works that can only be viewed on computers with Internet access, such as Senghor on the Rocks, which uses geodata from Google Maps.

ELC2 is published under a Creative Commons license, which means the collection can be freely shared, non-commercially, between individuals, libraries, and schools, provided that appropriate attribution is maintained and the works are unmodified.

ELC2 is ready for your syllabi and reading list. As a complement to our Electronic Literature Directory, and a continuation from Volume 1, this collection offers an anthology of works that pushes through the boundaries of literary forms, creating new kinds of experiences for interacting readers.

The posts mention ELO and ELO co-founder Robert Coover along with works by Jay Bushman and others. There’s even a mention of ELO-President Nick Montfort, alluding to his work on his IF platform Curveship.

Check out the posts and join the conversation as New Scientist readers discover e-lit.

The posts:

• Storytelling 2.0: The digital death of the author
• Storytelling 2.0: Exploring the news game
• Storytelling 2.0: Open your books to augmented reality
• Storytelling 2.0: Adventures in a virtual reality cave
• Storytelling 2.0: The epic poet of Twitter
• Storytelling 2.0: When new narratives meet old brains
• Storytelling 2.0: Read e-lit for yourself
• Storytelling 2.0: Metamorphosis of the storybook

Here is the beginning of a playlist of videos of varying lengths discussing electronic literature. Please send us links to videos you nominate for the list.

Currently we are featuring:

• E-literature Explains, Mark Marino, a very short introduction to the idea of e-lit (87 secs)
• Exploring Interactive Fiction, Nick Montfort, introduction to the literary form of IF (6 minutes)
• N. Katherine Hayles, herself, extended interview on electronic literature (30 minutes)
• Dr. Fox Harrell at the UBC Centre for Cross Faculty Inquiry, himself, discussion of emergent storytelling forms (9 min.)
• “The Time of Codework,” Rita Raley, discusses codework and e-lit. (8 minutes)
• “Regards Croisés: Perspectives on Digital Literature,” Sandy Baldwin, introduces his collection of essays digital literature, co-edited with Philippe Bootz (5 min.)
• “Noah Wardrip-Fruin,” NWF introduces his perspectives on software objects in Expressive Processing (8 min, but part 1 of 4)
• “The Gameshelf #8: Modern Interactive Fiction ,” Jason McIntosh, introduction to contemporary IF

These titles represent just an initial list.

We are also compiling lists of videos of readings/performances of works and walk-throughs. If you have any favorite videos of or about electronic literature, please refer them to us via email or Twitter @eliterature or #elit_videos. We also encourage you to make them and tag them e-lit.

This is just the beginning of a growing set of resources we are building to facilitate incorporating electronic literature into your classroom or the many informal educational spaces online. Stay tuned.