The MACHINE series is pleased to host Stuart Moulthrop, author of Victory Garden, Hegirascope, Reagan Library, and Pax. Moulthrop will discuss his more than 15 years of work in digital writing and will show and read from new work.
The event is free and open to the public.
Kelly Writers House
University of Pennsylvania
3805 Locust Walk
Wednesday – April 19, 2006 – 5:30pm
The MACHINE series at the Kelly Writers House is co-sponsored by the Electronic Literature Organization.
In “Recycled,” Giselle Beiguelman has taken an “artifact” of electronic technology, the object-follow-cursor feature, and transposed it into a moving metaphor. Across a field of bright yellow, the letters RECYCLED enter the screen, track the cursor, disappear if gathered, and finally clump together and vanish, only to begin migrating, again, from the margins. The letters, then, are constantly being “recycled” — and the reader is the agent in effecting the transformation. Beiguelman’s piece is an example of the way in which minimal text can join with technological trope in a “reading” of e-lit.
The John and Bebe Petrou Foundation, the Department of English, and the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) are very pleased to announce the 2006 Bebe Koch Petrou Lectures on NEW MEDIA STORYTELLING at the University of Maryland, College Park. There will be two speakers associated with this event, coming to campus on separate days. All events are free and open to the public.
The first will be SHELLEY JACKSON on Monday, April 17th. She will present “Shelley Jackson’s Interstitial Library” at 3:30 in Susquehanna Hall 1120. There will also be a more casual colloquium discussion at MITH (McKeldin Library, B0131) earlier in the day at 11:00, which all are welcome to attend. Jackson is an internationally recognized writer, electronic artist, and theorist and practitioner of new performance media. Her work includes Patchwork Girl (published in 1995 by Eastgate Systems, it is a hypertext refashioning of Frankenstein, told–in part–from the vantage point of the female monster). “Perhaps the true paradigmatic work of the era,” writes Robert Coover, “Shelley Jackson’s elegantly designed, beautifully composed Patchwork Girl offers the patient reader, if there are any left in the world, just such an experience of losing oneself to a text, for as one plunges deeper and deeper into one’s own personal exploration of the relations here of creator to created and of body to text, one never fails to be rewarded and so is drawn ever deeper, until clicking the mouse is as unconscious an act as turning a page, and much less constraining, more compelling.” More recently, Jackson has gained notoriety for “Skin,” a short story “published” as individual words tattooed onto the skin of hundreds of willing participants. She has written experimental Web-based texts, including “My Body–a Wunderkammer” (available at http://www.altx.com/thebody/) and “Stitch Bitch” (http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/papers/jackson.html). She is also an illustrator of children’s books. Jackson teaches at the New School.
SCOTT McCLOUD will visit on Tuesday, May 2. Watch for further details.
Judy Malloy’s “Interlude” is part of a longer work entitled Dorothy and Sid. This story focuses on the lives of contemporary artists in the San Francisco Bay area; it unfolds in four parts: “Dorothy Abrona McCrae”; “Interlude — Dorothy and Sid”; “A Party at Silver Beach”; and “Afterwards.” Each of these narratives is characterized by multilinear story segments that can be accessed by the reader in varying order. “Dorothy Abrona McCrae” was begun as an online serial in April 2000. A new installment was added each month. The final installment was posted in December 2000. In “Interlude — Dorothy and Sid,” in a series of trips and intimate moments, Dorothy and Sid change their long-term but occasional relationship into a more serious commitment.
The Center for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln invites pre-tenure faculty, post-doctoral fellows, and advanced graduate students to submit proposals on digital humanities work at the first Nebraska Digital Workshop. The workshop, “a forum where the best new digital humanities work will be critically evaluated, improved, and showcased,” will take place at UNL September 22-23, 2006. Selected scholars will receive full travel reimbursements and honorariums. Visit the Center for Digital Research for information regarding proposal submission and selection criteria, or contact William G. Thomas, III, chair of the workshop. Deadline for proposals is May 1, 2006.
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.
Erica T. Carter (the Electronic Text Composition project) now has a home page. Users can generate poetry with the system Jim Carpenter has presented at the Slought Foundation, as part of the ELO and the Kelly Writers House’s MACHINE reading series, and at Brown University’s E-FEST 2006.
The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey is hiring a Visiting Instructor/Assistant Professor to teach introductory through advanced courses in New Media Studies, including writing for New Media and Multimedia production, and survey or topical courses in Literature. Teaching load is six four-hour courses per year. Preference will be given to candidates with evidence of excellence in college teaching and experience using Flash and CSS. To apply, send letter of application with CV, statement of teaching philosophy, and three letters of recommendation to Robert Gregg, Interim Dean, Arts and Humanities, The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, AA118, PO Box 195, Pomona, NJ 08240-0195. See the Stockton HR site for details.
The interactive whodunit doesn’t get any harder-boiled than in Dangerous Curves, a rare and effective follow-up to the style of detective interactive fiction seen in Stu Galley’s The Witness. A classic cast of characters and effective geography, with helpful compass direction information provided in the status line, make this piece more approachable than some others of similar depth and complexity. A Z-Machine interpreter (such as Windows Frotz 2000 or Zoom for Mac) is needed to run Dangerous Curves.
E-FEST 2006: A Celebration of New Literary Hypermedia is taking place at Brown University March 22-24. The events include several presentations of new work and panels on “Memory and Real Time,” “Noulipo: Recombinant Poetics,” and “The Game of Fiction.” Participants will include:
E-FEST 2006 is sponsored by the Brown Program in Literary Arts, the Creative Arts Council, the Watson Institute for International Studies, and the Salomon Fund.
See The official blog for information about the schedule and for the E-FEST 2006 poster.
