Electronic Literature Organization

The Chronicle of Higher Education has devoted three pieces to the ELO/MITH Open Mic & Mouse event that was held as a kick-off to the Electronic Literature Symposium that was held at the University of Maryland in early May.

Click here for an article covering the event. Below the lead picture, you’ll find a link to the video story. And, on the right-hand side of the screen, under “Related Material,” you’ll see a link for an audio interview with N. Katherine Hayles.

The Electronic Literature Collection, volume one is the topic of Katie Haegele’s column in the Philadelphia Inquirer this week. She writes:

But wouldn’t it be nice to get our arms around this thing, to get a sense of the full breadth and scope of what’s called digital literature?

The 60 works in the first volume of the Electronic Literature Collection (ELC) (http://collection.eliterature.org) - edited by N. Katherine Hayles, Nick Montfort, Scott Rettberg and Stephanie Strickland - show the wide range of forms that exist within the genre.

The column describes the keyword index and discusses four of the pieces included in volume one of the Collection in detail.

On Thursday, May 17th, at the Institute for Creative Technologies at De Montfort University, in Leicester, a UK Launch of the Electronic Literature Collection will be held. Scott Rettberg will be introducing the ELC at the at the event, and John Cayley, Jon Ingold, Chris Joseph, and Kate Pullinger will be reading from their work. The first 50 attendees will receive a free copy of the Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 1 on CD-ROM.

The ELC has recently been reviewed internationally in a number of publications including a review in El Pais by Stefano Caldano, a review by Tim Wright in Realtime Arts, a review by Edward Picot in the Hyperliterature Exchange, and a review by Jesper Olsson in Svenska Dagbladet.

The Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) has now established its new headquarters at The Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) at the University of Maryland, College Park. The move, which has been made possible by sponsorship from MITH, the English department at Maryland, the College of Arts and Humanities, and the University Libraries, was completed this summer.

Neil Fraistat, director of MITH, said of the move: “In moving from UCLA to the University of Maryland, the ELO will provide MITH with a unique opportunity for a truly comprehensive program in the Digital Humanities, one that focuses equally on migrating electronically the cultural artifacts of the past and the production of the cultural artifacts of the future.” Thom Swiss, president of the ELO, added: “The Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) at the University of Maryland, College Park, is internationally known and, together with the support of its campus partners in this venture, makes for the best possible home for the ELO because of our similar and now collaborative interests and ambitions.”

Founded in 1999 in Chicago, the ELO is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization made up of writers, scholars, educators, and technologists dedicated to exploring how computers can be used for literary expression, and how born digital work can use the computer and the network to build on and extend the tradition of literature. Landmark events in the ELO’s short history include:

* The launch of the Electronic Literature Directory, an acclaimed
database-driven resource of information about electronic literature
maintained by authors and visited by thousands of readers;

* Readings of electronic literature and outreach events in Chicago,
New York, Seattle, Boston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Providence;

* The Electronic Literature Awards, which recognized exemplary works
of poetry and fiction and rewarded winners with substantial cash
prizes;

* The State of the Arts Symposium, which united over one hundred
international writers, scholars, and publishers of electronic
literature at UCLA for two days of panels and presentations and
produced hard-copy proceedings; and

* The Preservation, Archiving, and Dissemination (PAD) project’s
publication of two reports, Acid-Free Bits: Recommendations for
Long-Lasting Electronic Literature and Born-Again Bits: A Framework
for Migrating Electronic Literature.

The ELO has an international network of directors, literary advisors,
and members. The organization’s university partners include the
University of Iowa, the University of Illinois Chicago, and the
University of Pennsylvania. After the headquarters of the ELO moves to
Maryland, partnerships with these universities, and the partnership
with UCLA, will continue, as will electronic literature readings,
events, and activities across the country.

The partnership between MITH and the ELO will help both organizations
pursue their related missions. The ELO will work, with MITH’s help, to
further its programs and its impact, both internationally and on the
Maryland campus.

Read a brief article in the San Antonio Express-News about Robert Coover’s recent presentation at Our Lady of the Lake University’s first city-wide literary festival. Coover’s overview of the elit medium included a look at the ELO’s website and its definition of the field.

Scott Rettberg was recently interviewed by the Chicago Tribune’s cultural critic, Julia Keller, for an article entitled “Plugged-In Proust: Has E-Lit Come of Age?” William J. Mitchell, head of the Media Arts and Sciences program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was also interviewed for the piece, which examines the relationship between control and reading technologies.

This year’s Interactive Fiction Competition, the 11th annual “comp,” was won by Jason Devlin’s Vespers. There was a tie for second place between Beyond, a game by Italian authors Roberto Grassi, Paolo Lucchesi and Alessandro Peretti, and A New Life by Alexandre Owen Muñiz. Voting in the competition was open to the public; more than 100 people downloaded the competition entries, interacted with at least five, and voted. The full results have been posted; all the pieces entered remain available for free download.

The IF Comp was covered in The Wall Street Journal this year in an article by Vauhini Vara.

Chris Joseph, author of Babel and editor of the online magazine 391.0rg, surveyed a group of digital writers, including Deena Larsen, Michael Joyce, Alan Sondheim, Kate Pullinger, and Marcus Bastos, about the current state and possible future of digital writing. Read his article on trAce.

Read Domenico Quaranta’s recent interview with Helen Thorington, a founding organizer and current co-director of Turbulence.org, at Turbulence. Also forthcoming in Cluster #5. Thorington discusses the origin and development of Turbulence, which has produced over 300 projects over the last 15 years and currently has approximately 80 net art projects running.

Today in Trópico — the Brazilian online magazine of Art, New Technologies, Cinema, and Culture — there’s an interview with ELO board member Noah Wardrip-Fruin by Cícero Inácio da Silva. A broad range of perspectives on digital media (literary, ludic, and simulation-oriented perhaps chief among them) are employed for discussing computer games.

At the top of the Arts section of yesterday’s The New York Times readers found an image of Grace and Trip, characters from the eagerly-awaited interactive drama Façade. The story, “Redefining the Power of the Gamer,” covers a number of projects and points of view from the recent Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment conference (AIIDE) in Los Angeles.

Adam Baer’s New York Times article “Call Me E-Mail: The Novel Unfolds Digitally” features comments by ELO board members Thom Swiss and Noah Wardrip-Fruin. To read the entire article, you must register with the NY Times online, a free service.