Following her departure from trAce, Sue Thomas has launched a new online community project called “Writing and the Digital Life” . Sue’s first initiative for the project is a listserv with moderated monthly conversations that aim to explore “the impact of digital technologies upon writing and lived experience.” The first topic, ongoing during May, is “Technophobia”. Visit Writing and the Digital Life to join the list and read the archived postings.
‘I Know a Man,’ One Letter at a Time
“‘I Know a Man,’ One Letter at a Time” is a tribute to Robert Creeley (1926-2005). It places his poem in an austere, yet funny, “letterist” framework. This non-interactive piece takes Young-Hae Chang’s “phrase at a time” and “word at a time” approach to animated poems to its logical conclusion.
Reagan Library
“Reagan Library” was published on the 1999 Gravitational Intrigue CD and is also available online. The piece presents four shifting worlds of text and 3D images, treating the theme of memory and allowing the reader to resolve the scattered and randomized statements into something stable. “Reagan Library” uses HTML and Quicktime VR. See the Directory entry for more information about this piece.
Robert Coover in Seoul, Beijing, and Tokyo
As part of the 2nd Seoul International Forum for Literature, Robert Coover lectures on “Literary Hypermedia and the Cave” May 26, 2005 at the Convention Center and Conference Hall of the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts in Seoul, South Korea. The Forum is organized by the Daesan Foundation and the Korean Culture and Arts Foundation. Other stops on Coover’s Asian lecture tour include Tsinghua University in Beijing on May 20, the Tokyo section of the American Literature Society’s meeting on May 28, and several other Tokyo universities.
First Person at electronic book review
All the essays from First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game — edited by ELO board member Noah Wardrip-Fruin, working with Pat Harrigan — are now online at electronic book review, a journal edited by ELO board member Joe Tabbi. The final installment, “New Readings,” includes essays by board members N. Katherine Hayles and Nick Montfort. Now the First Person project is opening up the conversation through ebr‘s “riposte” system of responses, such as that recently written by board member Matt Kirschenbaum. Those with a contribution to make are encouraged to send them via email to ebr /at/ altx.com.
Literary VR at Brown
This weekend and next (April 30 & May 1 // May 7 & 8) there will be two different exhibitions of literary virtual reality at Brown University. The exhibitions will employ a room-sized immersive stereo display (Brown’s Cave) and a spatialized sound system (controlled by Max/MSP) to present 10 projects created by writers, musicians, visual artists, and computer scientists. Because shows will be small (6 people) and spread out at 45 minute increments over the course of the day (11am to 5pm), reservations are required. Reservations are made by calling Brown’s David Winton Bell Gallery at 401-863-2932. This show, “Works from the Cave II,” is the sequel to Brown’s Cave exhibition for the 2003 Boston Cyberarts Festival.
FILE Call for Proposals
FILE is one of the world’s most significant gatherings for consideration and exhibition of computational language. It has taken place in São Paulo, Brazil for each of the last five years, and currently entries are still open for 2005 (until May 1). Standing backward (in English) for “Electronic Language International Festival” or forward (in Portuguese) for “Festival Internacional de Linguagem Eletrônica,” FILE includes an exhibition of digital text art, a symposium with the same focus, a section specific to games, and a parallel electronic music festival. FILE will be in early October this year.
Psy-Geo Provflux 2005
Psy-Geo Provflux 2005 is looking for people to propose, plan, and/or participate in a weekend of interventions, lectures, shows, and events that encourage others to reinvent their social spaces May 27-29 in Providence, Rhode Island. Looks like it will be a weekend of happenings. Submissions are due April 15th.
ISEA 2006: Interactive City
From the call for proposals for one of 4 themes of the next ISEA, in San Jose:
The Interactive City seeks urban-scale projects for which the city is not merely a palimpsest of our desires but an active participant in their formation. From dynamic architectural skins to composite sky portraits to walking in someone else’s shoes to geocaches of urban lore to hybrid games with a global audience, projects for the Interactive City should transform the “new” technologies of mobile and pervasive computing, ubiquitous networks, and locative media into experiences that matter. … Interactive City proposals should embrace aspects of the city of San José and/or the surrounding metropolitan San Francisco Bay Area specifically. We are seeking projects that are large in scale, require advanced or special planning and/or permissions.
Early proposals are due April 22.
2004 XYZZY Awards
The big event, interactive fiction’s Oscars, was held Sunday March 20th at 4pm EST (9pm GMT), on ifMUD. Now ifwiki has the list of 2004 XYZZY winners.