ELO 2012 Conference & Media Arts Show June 20-23

ELO 2012
Electrifying Literature: Affordances and Constraints

June 20-23, 2012
Morgantown, WV

ELO’s 2012 conference is fast approaching, and the schedule of readings and performances is now available online.  The conference, Electrifying Literature: Affordances and Constraints will be held June 20-23 in Morgantown, West Virginia, home to WVU, a sponsor of the event.  Pre-conference events on the 19th include and open mic/open mouse.

In addition from presentations from an international gathering of digital literature artists and scholars, the event also features a Media Arts Show, which presents an exciting collection of new works.  This juried gallery was curated by Sandy Baldwin and Dene Grigar and features cutting-edge works in digital literature.

Conference details
Conference schedule
Media Arts Show (and Gallery)

For more information, contact conference chair Sandy Baldwin: elit2012 [at] gmail [dot] com

E-lit Exhibit and Performance at MLA 2012

E-lit MLA LogoElectronic literature will take center stage at the 2012 Modern Language Association conference in Seattle thanks to Board Member Dene Grigar, Lori Emerson, and Kathi Inman Berens. The exhibit, the first of its kind at MLA, will feature over 160 works, including ELC I & II. Also featured in this collection, celebrating its 25th anniversary: Invisible Seattle, the database novel written by The Invisibles in collaboration with the people of Seattle. Kathi Inman Berens has curated an additional exhibit of e-lit works created for mobile devices.

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

SUNY Buffalo E-Poetry Gallery & Events (11/17-2/18/12)

SUNY Buffalo hosted the 10th anniversary of E-Poetry earlier this year, and this past thursday, opened the Digital Poetry Exhibition at the UB Art Gallery. With its Electronic Poetry Center and new journal, Emerging Language Practices, SUNY Buffalo has established itself as one of the premier U.S. centers of electronic literature. The exhibit covers a trajectory of electronic poetry from its precedents and influences to today.

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.
Read more SUNY Buffalo E-Poetry Gallery & Events (11/17-2/18/12)

MIT Welcomes ELO

The crowd at the ELO Welcome event
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.

Read more MIT Welcomes ELO

ELO Archive and Innovate underway @ Brown

With the start of Deena Larsen’s workshop, E-Lit 101, the 4th International Conference & Festival of the Electronic Literature Organization is underway at Brown University where both ELO, literary hypertext, and hypertext itself ostensibly began.

The workshop, attended by approximately 150 electronic literary scholars and artists, marks a look back at the foundational work of Robert Coover and the continuation of the ELO PAD project (ARCHIVE) and an the group’s visionary glimpse at the future of electronic literature.

Conference details can be found here.

Twitter stream is tagged: #ELOAI streaming from @eliterature

Among with readings, performances, screenings, and critical panels, the conference will also announce the Electronic Literature Directory 2.0 and the Electronic Literature Collection, volume 2.

The conference features a number of tributes to Robert Coover, including artwork and panels that re-explore the work that continues to fascinate and drive this digital avant-garde.

mediartZ event in Vancouver, Wa (10/2-31)

Electronic literature (re)takes the Pacific northwest!

See “mediartZ: Art as Experiential, Art as Participatory, Art as Electronic” an enticing collection of works on display October 2-31 at the North Bank Artists Gallery in Vancouver.

“mediart” will feature Second Life performance, video and sound installations, animation, interactive art, and a Halloween-morning cartoon fest. See e-lit and electronic arts rock stars: Mark Amerika, Brian Evans, Jim Bizzochi, Doug Jarvis, Will Luers, Doug Gast, and Reza Safavi. Dene has also brought in works from local artists,
Hoolinganship and Jeannette Altman, are also featured.  The exhibit is free and open to all.

A kick-off party will be held on Friday, October 2 featuring the Willamette Radio Project. The kick-off will also celebrate the launch of a special issue of Hyperrhiz. Hyperrhiz remains one of the premier outlets for electronic literature. The special issue features papers and art from the fabulous 2008 ELO conference Visionary Landscapes.

For info, go to the exhibit web site, or contact curator and ELO Board-Member Dene Grigar grigar [at] vancouver.wsu.edu.  Dene is Director of the Digital Technology and Culture Program at WSU Vancouver.

Let us know about events in your area. Also tune into our new Twitter tag: #elo_events.  And follow us on Twitter.

ELO’s Visionary Landscapes 2008 Conference by the Numbers

The ELO Visionary Landscapes 2008 conference at Washington State University Vancouver was one of the largest in the history of the organization and certainly one of the largest (if not THE largest) international conferences to focus on electronic literature.

The conference also marks a watershed expansion in ELO since all attendees were either current or new members. As this organization continues to grow internationally, the conference drew attendees from 17 countries and 5 continents. The works and presentations continued to demonstrate the diversity of forms that call themselves electronic literature.

Here are some more numerical output from the conference in the first part of a series of post-conference posts.

149 artistic works submitted
80 papers submitted
36 artists featured in the galleries
16 panels, plenaries, and workshops
74 presenters
120 attendees
10 bursaries awarded
16 classic elit works on display
10 bursaries awarded
2 exhausted conference organizers
Bursary winners included:

  1. Ian Hatcher, USA
  2. Deena Larsen, USA
  3. Marjorie Luesebrink, USA
  4. Judd Morrissey, USA
  5. Stefan Muler Arisona, Switzerland
  6. Kate Pullinger, UK
  7. Stephanie Strickland, USA
  8. Donna Leishman, UK
  9. Ethan Miller, USA
  10. Steve Gibson, Canada

Links to their bios and works can be found online here. Post-conference news will follow on the ELO blog and can also be found here on the post-conference page.

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

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

Open Mic/Open Mouse at USC (4/25/2008)

Open Mouse at USCCalling all Southern California Elit Authors:

Elit Under the Stars 
Elit Open Mic/Open Mouse

April 25,2008, 7:30pm
USC, Institute for Multimedia Literacy

Calling All creators (and fans) of Electronic Literature: authors, designers, and programmers.  Sign up now to present your new or favorite work of elit in our Open Mic/Open Mouse.

Venue: Outdoors under the stars at the Institute for Multimedia Literacy, 746 West Adams Blvd., LA, CA 90089 at the University of Southern California.

Potential Genres:

  • Electronic Poetry
  • Hypertext
  • Interactive Fiction
  • Interactive Drama
  • Conversational Agents
  • Video Mashups
  • Serious Games
  • Flash Works
  • Codeworks

Any work that could be labeled “Electronic Literature” is welcome or you may read an excerpt of one of your favorite Elit works.
Performance Spots Length: 7 Minutes Max
The performance will be Free and Open to the public.
To sign up, contact Jeremy Douglass [jeremydouglass [at] gmail]

Organized by Mark Marino, Jeremy Douglass, and Jessica Pressman with support from Holly Willis of the Institute for Multimedia Literacy and from the Electronic Literature Organization.
For more information go here.