Artist Judd Morrissey’s augmented reality performance Saturday concluded a week-long conference in Norway, ELO’s second international conference held outside the United States. Â Running August 4 through 7, with pre-conference workshops days before and Saturday’s poetry performance after, the ELO 2015: The End(s) of Electronic Literature was one of the largest ever with 194 attendees from around the world.
Hosted at the University of Bergen (UiB), the conference spanned six venues, featuring panel presentations, performances, and five gallery exhibitions.  The group of international artists and scholars gathered to discuss the state of the art of electronic literature and to imagine what comes next. The complete schedule is online here.  (Also, see the ELO 2015 Facebook group).
The program coordinator for the conference was Jill Walker Rettberg, Professor of Digital Culture at the University of Bergen and the program coordinator for ELO2015, and the conference chair was ELO co-founder Scott Rettberg,  also a professor of digital culture at UiB. Roderick Coover, Director of the MFA Program in Film and Media Arts at Temple University, was the conference’s Artistic Chair.
In five exhibitions included:
- The Ends of the Electronic Literature: Festival Exhibition (University Library from 8/4 to 8/28)
- Kid E-Lit: Electronic literature for children and adolescents (Bergen Public Library 8/4 to 9/30)
- Hybrid interface, digital stories (Lydgalleriet 8/4-22)
- Decentered: an exhibition of global electronic literature (Stiftelsen 3,14; 8/4-23)
- Interventions: an exhibition of political electronic literature (USF 8/4 to 7)
More information about exhibitions and other open events: http://www.uib.no/nb/fg/elektronisklitteratur/90342/en-festival-elektronisk-litteratur-elo2015
At the end of the conference, two major prizes were awarded:Â N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature, which was awarded to Sandy Baldwin for his book The Internet Unconscious, and the Robert Coover Prize, which was awarded to Samantha Gorman and Robert Coover for their interactive novella app Pry.
The next ELO Conference will be held in 2016 at the University of Victoria.
More details about the conference, including photos and videos, and details will follow. Congratulations and thanks to all who participated and made this possible.