New Scientist Discovers Electronic Literature

December 15, 2010 in E-Lit Criticism, ELO, Press, Uncategorized

Members of the Electronic Literature Organization no doubt remember the first time they heard about electronic literature. That exhilarating moment wrapped around a sense of possibility and a desire to get their hands on either the tools of creation or the mind-blowing creations or both. Over the past month, the popular science journal New Scientist has been publishing posts marking its discovery of electronic literature in a series called Storytelling 2.0.

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:

Electronic literature jobs at the University of Bergen

April 23, 2010 in E-Lit Criticism, ELO, Job Listings, New E-Lit

ELO Co-founder and Board member, Scott Rettberg, sends word of 2 opportunities in Norway! (Note: Summer deadlines for applications.)

Two opportunities are now available at the University of Bergen’s Digital Culture program (http://www.uib.no/rg/digitalculture) for scholars of electronic literature.

FULBRIGHT SCHOLAR/LECTURER IN DIGITAL CULTURE http://catalog.cies.org/

POSTDOC IN ELECTRONIC LITERATURE BIBLIOGRAPHY

Read the rest of this entry →

The ELO Directory returns 010110

January 1, 2010 in E-Lit Criticism, ELO, New E-Lit

ELO welcomes 010110 (decimal 22) with a special announcement:

The framework for the Electronic Literature Directory version 2.0 is now online:
http://eld.eliterature.org/

Think of this as an open house in a model home for e-lit.

The Directory has always been key to helping outsiders discover electronic literature. With the new version, it will be even easier to add and find works of electronic literature AND criticism.

But there’s more: The ELD will feature venues or “collections,” aggregators of e-lit and criticism.

When you take a glance at our demo works, you will notice some exciting features:

In addition to basic information about author, date, url, and language, entries list software platforms as well as annotations by ELO members. However, registered users will be able to extend the discussion in the comment section or by writing a review.

The ELO Directory team has worked hard to make these works more accessible, developing search tools, categories, and tags, the subject of much discussion on Joseph Tabbi’s recent online meditation (On Reading 300 Works of Electronic Literature).

The works you see are but a small sample of the ones already vetted, but this is a special invitation to see the structure of this exciting re-imagined resource.

Start by creating an account and submitting creative or critical works or collection sites. Those submissions will be delivered to our Directory team for evaluation and review.We’re looking forward to the re-launch of this flagsite enterprise of ELO.

Watch for full announcements to follow including thanks to the team who have been working so hard to make this a possibility.

At the start of the new decade, it is impossible to predict what new forms of literature will emerge, but you at least know where you can find them: the Electronic Literature Directory.

[Also, reminder, ELO AI deadline: January 15, 2010 or 011501]

&Now Festival Calls for eliterature (6/15/09, 10/14-17/09)

June 8, 2009 in Calls, E-Lit Criticism

Among the innovative writing featured at the past three &Now festivals has been a strong showing of electronic literature. Steve Tomasula sends us word that he hopes to see more at The 4th Biennial &Now Festival of Innovative Writing & the Literary Arts to be held in Buffalo, NY from October 14-17, 2009.

From the Call:

PLEASE SUBMIT….
Critical papers, criti-fictional presentations, fiction readings, performance pieces (digital, sound, and otherwise), electronic and multimedia projects, and cross genre work of all kinds. Pieces that address linguistic transgressions, the limits of genre, or works that promote interdisciplinary explorations are particularly encouraged. Proposals can be for individual readings, critical panels, creative panels, and/or roundtable discussions. (See the full call here)

In a note to ELO, Steve speaks of his desire from the start to include electronic literature as a literary genre, as opposed to a specialty or an oddity. Past &Nows have featured the electronic works of Stephanie Strickland, Rob Wittig, Scott Rettberg, and MD Coverley.

As another sign of the ELO-link, this year’s festival features Robert Coover.

This should be an excellent showcase for ELO works. Please submit or join us there.

SoftWhere: Software Studies Worksop 2008 (5/21-5/22)

May 21, 2008 in E-Lit Criticism, Events, Other News

Software Studies Gets Underway at UC San Diego!

Wednesday, May 21st, from 12:30-5:00pm, ELO board member Noah Wardrip-Fruin and the Software Studies Initiative at UC San Diego invite you to attend a public event:

SoftWhere: Software Studies Workshop 2008
Time: Wed. May 21 – Thu. May 22
Place: Calit2, University of California, San Diego
Format: Open public session (Wed May 21, short presentations of research in “Pecha Kucha” format)
Closed workshop session (Thu May 22)
URL: http://workshop.softwarestudies.com/

Software studies is a research field that examines software and cyberinfrastructure using approaches from humanities, cultural criticism, and social sciences. Following on the first Software Studies Workshop organized by Matthew Fuller (Rotterdam, 2006 http://pzwart.wdka.hro.nl/mdr/Seminars2/softstudworkshop), the SoftWhere @ University of California, San Diego is a foundational event bringing together key figures in this emerging area to inaugurate the field. The event aims to coalesce a high-level conversation about what it means to study software cultures, and the direction and goals of Software Studies as an emerging movement. It will take place at Calit2, a pre-eminant research center for future computing and telecommunication (http://www.calit2.net/), where the Software Studies Initiative @ UCSD is located and currently collaborating with researchers on several exciting projects. SoftWhere has has also been timed to precede (and co-ordinate with) the the HASTAC II conference (http://www.hastac.org/) which will begin in nearby U. California Irvine on Thursday evening.
Read the rest of this entry →

The Iowa Review Web returns

April 14, 2008 in E-Lit Criticism, New E-Lit, Other News

A new issue of The Iowa Review Web marks its reemergence as a hub of electronic literature. Although the issue has been online for sometime, we wanted to give it a bump for those who had not yet heard:

New Issue:
TIR-W Volume 9 no. 1
Multi-Modal Coding: Jason Nelson, Donna Leishman, and Electronic Writing

Guest-edited by Stephanie Strickland and Marjorie Coverley Luesebrink

The issue features an in-depth double interview of the two artists, essays by each artist on the other’s work, essays by Talan Memmott on Leishman and Nelson’s work, and links to their works, including Leishman’s Deviant, Nelson’s Pandemic Rooms and much more.

The next issue, guest edited by Stuart Moulthrop, will focus on playable texts, and will include works by Judy Malloy, Shawn Rider, Elizabeth Knipe, John Cayley, Nick Montfort, and Stuart Moulthrop. The issue will be published this spring.

The overall editor for TIR-Web is Jon Winet, Director, Virtual Writing
University Experimental Wing, jon-winet [at] uiowa.edu

“Publishing electronic literature since 1999, TIR-W is well-known for its commitment to new writing, encouraging the investigation of text and hypertext in theory and practice at their deepest levels.”

Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary

March 12, 2008 in E-Lit Criticism, Other News

A new book by N. Katherine Hayles: Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary was released today from the University of Notre Dame Press. The publication of the book is a major event for the field of electronic literature. In addition to the printed book, each copy comes with a CD-ROM of The Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 1. In addition, there is a great website accompanying the book hosted here on the ELO site at newhorizons.eliterature.org that includes syllabi for electronic literature courses, a blog/forum, and an additional online anthology of essays by students and scholars of e-lit. Read the rest of this entry →

“Second Person” on the electronic book review

February 28, 2008 in E-Lit Criticism, Other News

Following their game plan (or walkthrough) for First Person, Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin have brought their anthology Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media to the electronic book review (ebr) to bring the threads of discussion to life. Section One, Computational Fictions, has arrived at ebr and the subsequent sections will soon follow.

Together with Third Person, these two anthologies will form a trilogy of works from scholars, artists, and industry professionals on interactive narrative and drama forms. According to ebr,

The material in these volumes and on ebr represents a new level of dialogue between creators and critics about emerging forms of fictional and playable experience.

The ebr publication of the texts will not only open the book to readers across the Internet, but will also offer a site for continued conversation as readers respond to the texts through ripostes.

The essays previously published in the ebr “First Person” thread evoked (and provoked) responses from such central figures as N. Katherine Hayles, Henry Jenkins, and Stephanie Strickland.

The publication continues ebr‘s long-standing relationship with MIT press, and that press’ continued work toward public online discussion of its texts, as seen in the recent and ongoing vetting of Wardrip-Fruin’s Expressive Processing.

The Table of Contents of the Second Person release follows. Read the rest of this entry →

ELO Welcomes 3 New Board Members

December 14, 2007 in E-Lit Criticism, ELO, Other News

The Electronic Literature Organization is happy to announce the addition of three new board members, Stuart Moulthrop, John Cayley, and Mark Marino.

Full bios follow:

Read the rest of this entry →

New on the Electronic Book Review: Electropoetics

November 11, 2007 in E-Lit Criticism, Other News, Reviews

In the latest selection from the Electronic Book Review, Associate Editor Lori Emerson brings together both critics and creators of electronic poetry, some of whom established themselves at the very start and many more who are recent entrants in the field of electronic literature. Essays on print poetry as well as born digital poetry help to situate the field in both a trans-disciplinary and trans-national context.

The collection (more than twenty essays in all) includes three review-essays on the Electronic Literature Collection (volume 1), published by the ELO: “How to Think (with) Thinkertoys” by Adalaide Morris; “Letters That Matter” by John Zuern; and “Electronic Literature circa WWW (and Before)” by Chris Funkhouser. New essays on and by Douglas Barbour, Michael Barrett, Greg Betts, Christof Bruno, Charles Bernstein, Stephen Cain, Robert Creeley, Clayton Eshleman, Alan Fisher, Eduardo Kac, Hugh Kenner, Walter Benn Michaels, Jay Murphy, Janet Neigh, Soren Pold, Christopher Nolan, Jaishree Odin, Tom Raworth, Maggie O’Sullivan, Stephanie Strickland, Angela Szczepaniak, Steve Tomasula, and Eugene Thacker.