Winner:
Leise Hook The Vine and the Fish
Shortlisted:
Diego Bonilla & Rodolfo Mata Big Data
Jason Nelson The Wonders of Lost Trajectories
Qianxun Chen and Mariana Roa Oliva Seedlings_:From Humus
Stephanie Dinkins Secret Garden
Jury: Jason E. Lewis, Amira Hanafi, Karen Ann Donnachie
The Electronic Literature Organization is proud to announce that the 2021 Robert Coover Award for a Work of Electronic Literature goes to Leise Hook for The Vine and the Fish.
Winner:
Leise Hook The Vine and the Fish
From the judges: A slowly-but-surely unfolding narrative reflection on the power of language to create and dissolve the boxes in which we put—or from which we can free—one another, carried along by an intimate story of movement, migration, and the unstoppable fecundity of life. The jury was struck by how well the writing, visual design, and simple yet exquisitely crafted interactivity work together to pull us ever further into Hook’s world.
Shortlisted:
Diego Bonilla & Rodolfo Mata Big Data
From the judges: This generative video poem looks into a not-so-far-off future in which the new knowledge gained by massive data collection is used to hypnotize consumers. The jury appreciated the tone of the work, which simultaneously mimics and critiques big data’s power to influence, and its activist intent, which hopes to unveil the viewer’s inconspicuous collaboration with those who seek to profit from the degradation of our privacy.
Jason Nelson The Wonders of Lost Trajectories
From the judges: This collection of work highlights Nelson’s playful mastery of metaphors. Of special note was the striking interactive card-catalogue-cum-cabinet-of-curiosities navigation controller which activates thoughtful visualisations of the locally embedded cultural narratives and archive from which it derives.
Qianxun Chen and Mariana Roa Oliva Seedlings_:From Humus
From the judges: The jury wants to acknowledge this work’s elegant intervention into natural language processing technology. Seedlings is a winsome digital manifestation of an extended agricultural metaphor, in which stages the browser as a fertile site for human and non-human collaboration.
Stephanie Dinkins Secret Garden
From the judges: “Our stories are algorithms.” Dinkins’ powerful work immerses the viewer in the stories of generations of African American women in a vibrant visual environment that invites whimsy & sorrow, regret & celebration. The women gaze directly at the viewer, looking to both connect and bear witness, and challenge us to think deeply about how computational technologies are shaping the stories we tell and who tells them.