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CFP: ELO 2021 Conference and Festival: Platform (Post?) Pandemic

ELO 2021 Conference and Festival: Platform (Post?) Pandemic
Co-chairs: Søren Pold, University of Aarhus and Scott Rettberg, University of Bergen

Dates
The academic conference will take place May 24-28th, 2021. Workshops will take place May 24-25 and the main conference will take place May 26-28th. The arts program will unfold over a longer span of time, with a series of events and exhibitions during March, April, and May 2021.

Submission deadlines:
Academic Proposals: Jan. 15
Full Papers & Posters: April 28

Exhibitions:
Post-Human Electronic Literature: Jan 8
Covid E-lit: Jan. 8
Platforming Utopias (and Platformed Dystopias): Feb. 1
Kids E-Lit: Feb. 1.

Performances: Feb. 1

Conference Theme

While international travel has become virtually impossible due to widespread restrictions, the pandemic has pointed to our global connectedness: this is an aspect of platformed culture we will embrace in this conference. For the first time, the ELO conference will not be constrained by orientation to a particular location or time frame, but will unfold over three days and be hosted by institutions in Scandinavia, India, and the United States in synchronous and asynchronous events taking place online around the clock, including presentations, exhibitions, performances, workshops, and social events.

Globalized platforms present new opportunities for writers and readers both because of their large audiences and the fact that new forms of electronic literary cultures are emerging around them. The current rise of global platforms and platform culture however challenge Electronic Literature’s history of developing independent, purpose-specific platforms, since commercial platforms are often closed formats with largely rigid templates for ‘content’. In this sense, forms of criticality are challenged by the fact that the platforms are typically owned, maintained and often quickly updated (and sometimes made obsolete) by global corporations.

Digital platforms are not new: gaming consoles operating systems, programming languages and the web itself were discussed as platforms before the current platformization. The integration of hardware and software in many platforms has been seen in gaming consoles, PCs, phones and tablets, and can be seen as a result of initiatives from the fields of ubiquitous computing, Internet of Things and business strategies leading to the design of walled gardens. With the combination of social media, apps, search engines and targeted advertisement, platformization has become increasingly dominant in digital media. The platformization of culture is highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic as physical platforms for art, culture and the public have become difficult to access at times where physical meetings, travel, public institutions and life in general have been challenged. Digital platforms have entered into our most private and intimate spaces, raising questions about surveillance, capture, and who’s reading our reading and writing. Connecting, meeting, working and reading on platforms have been defining moments for our contemporary life during the pandemic comparable to the way the clock defined industrialized life. What do digital and digitization mean now, and what is left out and missing when culture is streamed?

Globalization has become less seamless, as global trade and collaboration is affected, but we are more connected in our individual lives and worries. Furthermore, the big, rapid changes of culture and society during the pandemic have raised fundamental questions about other urgent challenges: the climate crisis, equality in relation to race and ethnicity, the social, and the liberation and equality of gender and sexuality. The pandemic situation has led to both hope and despair in relation to new and old political struggles such as the #metoo and #BlackLivesMatter movements, which have also been fought on and off platforms.

With this conference we aim to investigate how the future will be platformed: what will come after the pandemic and how can we explore this from the pandemic? The pandemic will not be over when we meet on the conference platforms, rather it is a condition from which to rethink and explore the future, and learn from how life has changed during this period: What has the pandemic crisis made us see that was not before apparent to us, and how do we build upon the lessons we have learned to develop a more sustainable and equitable future? We seek explorations and research into electronic literature that examines how we are platforming the future. What are the practices and poetics of contemporary electronic literature? How to thrive as electronic readers and writers within the constraints of platform culture? How to be critical on and of platforms? How to develop alternative literary platforms? What are the global dimensions? How do we connect and disconnect on platforms? What could and should platform e-lit be? How does platform culture relate to the traditions and history of electronic literature?

The conference theme can be addressed in several ways including the following:

  • Platform electronic literature: How does data and literary production, writing and reading practices converge in platforms? How does electronic literature inhabit platforms? How are new forms and audiences developed? How is electronic literature hosted, exhibited, archived, disseminated and cared for with and in platforms?

  • Platform history: Historical platforms and electronic literature, platform obsolesence, and the constant upgrade.

  • Platform determinism, dependence and criticism: To what extent does platform determine literary practice and genre? To what extent are the forms and genres of electronic literature limited by our dependence on particular platforms? And how can we best archive and preserve platform-dependent e-lit? To what extent do literary practices work against the grain of platforms or reshape them? How is electronic literature critical on and of platforms?

  • Pandemic platforms: How have the specific circumstances of the pandemic affected the production of electronic literature and the cultural practices surrounding it? What are our post-pandemic cultural platforms going to be?

  • Platform politics: Hashtag movements and platforms for change. Platforms as ways of organising political activity.

  • Platform utopia: speculative futures, alternative platforms, writing for difference.

  • Platformed globalisation and colonialism: How are new global and local forms of electronic literature emerging? How does electronic literature deal with globalisation and new forms of (post-)colonialism? E-lit in different continents, countries and languages.

  • Platform identities: Identification, profiling, identity politics, race & ethnicity, gender and sexuality.

  • Platform culture: (Dis-)connection: (anti-)sociality, (not)meeting, (un)care.

  • Platform performance: Literary programming, live-coding, algorave, and other forms of performance that take place within platforms.

  • Platform literacy: multisensory reading, mobile and spatial reading, reading contexts and voices, reading of generated, profiled and dynamic/streaming text, platform and narrative.

  • Digital literary audio platform: audio walks, ambient literature, site specific audio stories, voice assistants and other audio interfaces.

  • Platforms for digital literacy: What sorts of platforms and creative works best serve the needs of young digital readers? Platforms for children’s E-lit.

We will strive for maximum open accessibility in archiving and disseminating all conference outputs.

Keynote speakers will be selected by the conference committee to respond to the conference theme.

Types of Conference Submissions Accepted

  1. Full papers: 2,000-4,000 words. Full papers will be accepted via a two-stage submission process, with an abstract of 500 words for the first submission deadline and full papers due by April 28th. Full papers will be published open access on the conference site and the ELMCIP database. We will also strive to find journals who will consider selected papers for special issue publication. Full paper presenters will also participate in a live roundtable discussion of their papers (5-minute presentation plus discussion). Accepted abstracts will be grouped into peer panels, and peers will be asked to give feedback on each other’s papers.

  2. Panel presentations: Proposals for panel presentations including 3-5 presenters for a one-hour session. Panels may include a series of short presentations bound by a theme or may feature a roundtable discussion of a particular topic or project. Abstract submission max 500 words.

  3. Posters: We will accept submissions of one-page posters in PDF format (A4, A3, or A2 size) to illustrate a project or theme in visual format. Posters can include links to interactive, networked and dynamic content not hosted at the conference site. Posters will be displayed on the conference site and will be discussed in a virtual poster session with short lightning talks. Abstract submission max 500 words. Complete poster due by April 28th.

  4. Workshops: We will accept proposals for workshops based on live hands-on activities, demonstrations, tutorials etc. Abstract submission max 500 words.

  5. Virtual Engagement Events: sessions based on innovative strategies for creating engagement and connection. Abstract submission max 500 words.

    Submissions are accepted on EasyChair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=elo2021

The primary shared language of the conference will be English, and abstracts should be submitted in English, though we welcome proposals for papers, panels and presentations in other languages.

Submissions are restricted no more than two per person.

Submissions to the academic program will be due Jan. 15th, 2021.

Accepted full papers and posters will be due April 28, 2021.

Exhibition Submissions

Exhibitions for ELO 2021 will unfold on an extended time scale from March-May 2021. All exhibitions will be fully exhibited online, though some will also include local physical exhibitions. Jason Nelson will be the main exhibition coordinator.

The following exhibitions will be part of the festival:

  1. Posthuman Electronic Literature. An online exhibition with a projection exhibition component focused on electronic literature and media art that addresses posthumanism. To be featured during European SLSA conference at the University of Bergen. Curated by Joseph Tabbi, Scott Rettberg, Jason Nelson, Eamon O’Kane. MARCH 4-7, 2021. Submissions accepted until Jan 8th, 2021.

  2. COVID E-Lit. An online exhibition of works that respond thematically to the pandemic and/or are produced within the specific context of platform culture during the pandemic. A library exhibition version of the exhibition will also be produced. Curated by Anna Nacher, Søren Pold, and Scott Rettberg. APRIL 2021. Submissions accepted until Jan 8th, 2021.

  3. Flashback: A special celebration of Flash and Shockwave e-lit held in the Electronic Literature Repository with artists on hand to talk about their work. Curated by Dene Grigar at Washington State University Vancouver’s Electronic Literature Lab. MAY 24-28, 2021.

  4. Platforming Utopias (and Platformed Dystopias): This will be the largest open submission exhibition, responding to the conference theme. MAY 24-28 2021. Submissions accepted until February 1st, 2021.

  5. Platform as a place of study – E-lit as already decolonised: A series of exhibitions, workshops and activities focused on Indian and Asian E-Lit that will unfold through Spring 2021. MARCH-MAY 2021. Call will be announced separately. Curated by dra.ft

  6. Kid E-Lit: An online exhibition of electronic literature for young audiences, and work work by young authors. Curated by Mark Marino and Maria Goicoechea. MAY 24-28, 2021. Submissions accepted until February 1st, 2021.

    Submissions are accepted on EasyChair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=elo2021

Not all works submitted need to be designed specifically for the online context. Documentation of other sorts of work, such as material artifacts, printed materials, installations, may also be submitted, along with a plan to exhibit them online. Digital materials can also be exhibited in non-web formats, such as a VR space. Each of the open submission exhibitions have separate submission requirements.

Performance Submissions

Ian Hatcher will be the main curator of the Performance program. For performance submissions, we will accept both submissions for live virtual events and for pre-recorded events that have taken place in a live venue. Performance time for synchronous events. should be specified as short (up to 8 minutes) or long (up to 15 minutes). In addition, we will accept proposals for keynote performances (up to 30 minutes), for 2-3 slots that will be featured in the program. Recorded performance videos or other documentation of live performances may also be submitted for an asynchronous exhibition. Submissions accepted until February 1st, 2021.

Submissions are accepted on EasyChair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=elo2021

Conference Fee

The conference fee will be $100 plus ELO membership for employed academics. The conference fee portion will be waived for independent artists and researchers without institutional support (by request). The conference fee will support technical infrastructure, development and costs related to exhibitions.

Division of Responsibilities

The leadership responsibilities for the conference academic program and arts program will primarily shared between Aarhus University (Academic program, led by Søren Pold) and the University of Bergen (Arts program, led by Scott Rettberg), working in close coordination. Two additional partners include Washington State University Vancouver’s Electronic Literature Lab (led by Dene Grigar) and the India-based dra.ft collective (led by Nanditi Khilnani).

We plan for the conference to unfold in multiple time zones with synchrous activities organized by the partners in India (dra.ft), Scandinavia, and the United States of America.

About the partners

The Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) https://eliterature.org is an international organization dedicated to the investigation of literature produced for the digital medium. Founded in Chicago, Illinois in 1999, the ELO now has a presence across North America and in South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa.  Our members hail from a wide array of disciplines and areas of study, including Art, Literature, Communication, Computer Science, Humanities, Digital Humanities, Media Studies, Womens’ Studies, and Comparative Media.

Aarhus University, Digital Aesthetics Research Center https://darc.au.dk/. Digital Aesthetics Research Centre (DARC) functions as a shared intellectual resource that identifies, analyses, and mediates current research topics within digital art and culture; producing experiments, research projects, publications and public events. The aim is to create a space for critical reflection on digital cultural transformation. The centre was formed in 2002. The purpose of the centre is to bring together researchers at Aarhus University with an interest in digital art and culture (net., software, code, sound etc.). The centre organises invited talks, seminars and conferences like the seminal Read_me conference and Runme Dorkbot City Camp in 2004. DARC has hosted research projects such as The Aesthetics of Interface Culture, published working papers and dissertations on digital art and culture.

DARC maintains its focus on bringing together researchers at Aarhus University, forming research projects, collaborations and international networks. We publish newspapers and a journal, APRJA, arrange yearly international PhD seminars (with transmediale festival and shifting partners), internal research seminars, larger research conferences, and organize public exhibitions and events with digital media artists and researchers from around the world. Besides contributing analytically and theoretically to the field, DARC also engages in practical experiments (often in collaboration with artists and practitioners). DARC researchers have for example collaborated with Danish and international libraries for more than 10 years on promoting and exhibiting electronic literature.

University of Bergen, Bergen Electronic Literature Research Group: The Bergen Electronic Literature Research Group (BEL), led by Professor Scott Rettberg, studies literary works created for digital media and related digital art forms. An important project for us is the ELMCIP Electronic Literature Knowledge Base, the most extensive open-access research database in the field. Our research often combines theory and practice, as in the award-winning VR narrative Hearts and Minds, winner of the 2016 Robert Coover Award for a Work of Electronic Literature. Members of our group frequently publish scholarship on electronic literature, including recently Electronic Literature by Scott Rettberg (Polity, 2018), described by prominent e-lit theorist N. Katherine Hayles as “a significant and important book by the field’s founder that will be the definitive work on electronic literature now and for many years to come” and the two volume Post-Digital: Debates and Dialogues from the Electronic Book Review (Bloomsbury, 2020), edited by Joseph Tabbi.

BEL frequently organizes international symposia and workshops, such as the Electronic Literature Knowledge Base Symposium and EcoDH seminar in 2018 and welcomes international speakers and visiting researchers. In 2015 we hosted the international Electronic Literature Organization conference and literary arts festival. We embrace innovative forms of scholarly publishing, such as a four-part series of collaborative articles, conversations and interviews on the Metainterface and critical works of artistic digital media published in 2018-19 in the electronic book review. BEL has published annual reports documenting group activities since 2011, which are available in the Knowledge Base.

Washington State University Vancouver’s Electronic Literature Lab (ELL): Founded and directed by Dr. Dene Grigar, ELL is a media archaeology lab created for the advanced inquiry into the curation, documentation, preservation, and production of born digital literary works and other media. It serves as the site of digital preservation for the ELO and, so, manages the organization’s archives and repository. Additionally, ELL has hosted numerous post-doctoral scholars and has served as the site of numerous research projects, including Pathfinders(Grigar and Moulthrop, 2015) and Traversals (Moulthrop and Grigar, 2017); prominent exhibits of electronic literature at the Library of Congress, International Symposium on Electronic Art, the British Computer Society, and other venues; five to seven Live Traversals of early born-digital literature each year; and an annual publication entitled Rebooting Electronic Literature that documents its many activities. It has been supported by grants, most notably from the National Endowment for the Humanities (2013) and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and through the university’s Lewis E. and Stella G. Buchanan Distinguished Professorship. Finally, the lab reconstitutes outmoded e-lit works, most recently Annie Grosshan’s The World Is Not Done Yet and Deena Larsen’s Kanji Kus. They are currently rebuilding Erik Loyer’s Strange Rain, Christy Sanford’s Red Mona, and Richard Holeton’s Figurski at Findhorn on Acid. Collaborating with Grigar on the conference will be Holly Slocum, ELL’s Project Manager; Nicholas Schiller’s ELL’s Associate Director, Mariusz Pisarki, ELL 2020-2021 Research Affiliate, Greg Philbrook, ELL’s Technical Specialist, and Kathleen Zoller, ELL’s Undergraduate Researcher.

dra.ft: dra.ft is a movement, a festival, a community, a long-term research project that explores emergent ideas of text and its future. It draws from the idea of poetic computation where the machine and author are collaborators. It is in these intersectional spaces that we can produce, perform and embody new meanings and develop new texts. The festival dra.ft encourages unfinished, work in progress, prototypes, tests (essentially drafts) of texts and text-making.

dra.ft was originally conceptualised as a 2-day festival in August 2020 to be held in Jaipur, India – host of the popular and well received Jaipur Literature Festival. dra.ft is now an active online community of writers, designers and creative technologists engaging through virtual events, meet-ups and online social spaces.

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ELO Announces Recipients of Emerging Spaces for E-Lit Creations

The ELO Board of Directors is pleased to announce that it is funding two proposals for its 2020 Emerging Spaces for E-Lit Creations initiative. The two winning proposals are Filter by Sarah Whitcomb Laiola and Caleb Andrew Milligan and (RE)VERB by John Barber, Andrew Demirjian, Dahlia Elsayed, Jeremy Hight, and Henna Wang.

With this initiative, the Board seeks to encourage the creation of new spaces (zines) that curate, promote, and explore a greatly expanded set of works on social media and mobile platforms. Its goal is to stimulate and support the creation and dissemination of quality electronic literature in a greater variety of spaces with zines that reach and cultivate new audiences.

The Board is grateful for all the teams that submitted proposals and encourages those who were not funded to consider applying to future ELO initiatives.

Here are some details on the two awarded proposals.

Filter

An Instagram Collaboratory for E-Lit

Filter​ will be a critical-creative publication that welcomes a variety of works and materials to further the creation and circulation of e-lit both optimized for and disruptive of Instagram, as well as critical scholarly and pedagogical engagement with this developing genre. We embrace the creative and critical opportunities latent in specific features of Instagram; Stories, Boomerangs, Reposts, interactive stickers, 10-frame images posts, and short videos all offer opportunities to expand possibilities for e-literary creation and criticism.

Filter’s ​mission is to support the circulation and promotion of works of e-lit that are optimized for, engage with, and/or disrupt the poetics of that platform.

Filter’s senior editors, Sarah Whitcomb Laiola and Caleb Andrew Milligan, will be assembling an editorial team and an advisory board in preparation for launching the ‘zine.

(RE)VERB

an audio augmented reality zine dedicated to the interplay between sound, electronic literature, and the experience of environment

(RE)VERB is an audio augmented reality zine dedicated to spatially conceived electronic literature projects that explore the aesthetic possibilities of sonically delivered language engaging with the physical and corporeal experience of the environment. (RE)VERB will release two issues per year with the editorial board and guest curators selecting the most compelling pieces that engage global e-lit writers in this emerging medium. 

(RE)VERB will partner with Gesso, creators of an innovative mobile application that enables immersive location-based audio experiences to bring the peer reviewed creative visions of selected authors to life. The free Gesso app provides an interactive map with geographic coordinates, audio, images and video artwork. Readers, listeners, participants can engage with the contents either in situ or through recordings. 

The initial editorial board consists of artists and writers who work with language, mapping and space including John Barber, Andrew Demirjian, Dahlia Elsayed, Jeremy Hight and Henna Wang from Gesso.

Leonardo Flores, ELO President, had this to say about the initiative: “I’m so thrilled about these two proposals! Each ‘zine will focus on a different sense– sight and sound– and will create opportunities for people to publish quality electronic literature designed for three major platforms– Instagram, iOS, and Android– and will be able to cultivate audiences that have no idea what electronic literature is, but are creating it and consuming it. We have two great teams that will help us expand the field and learn valuable lessons from their experiences.”

ELO plans to award more grants to support e-lit publications in the coming years in fulfillment of its mission to support the development of digitally born literary works.

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ELC4 Collective adds Lyle Skains

We are pleased to announce that the editorial collective of the 4th volume of the Electronic Literature Collection is adding a new member, Lyle Skains.  Skains will be bringing a broad sense of the field, especially through her work with Wonderbox.  Lyle will be joining Kathi Inman Berens, John Murray, Rui Torres, and  Mia Zamora.  The team is currently reviewing the submissions for the forthcoming collection.
Lyle researches and teaches Creative Digital Writing and Science Communication, conducting practice-based research into writing, reading/playing, publishing digital and transmedia narratives, and how these can be used for health and science communication. Her recent digital fiction includes No World 4 Tomorrow for the You & CO2 project, and Only, Always, Never for the Infectious Storytelling project; both works were designed to effect social change. She is the founder of Wonderbox Digital, a marketplace for digital fiction, aiming to explore innovations in digital and online publishing and creativity. Her digital fiction can be found at lyleskains.com; articles in Convergence, Digital Creativity, and Computers and Composition; and books with Cambridge UP (Digital Authorship), forthcoming Emerald (interdisciplinary scicomm) and Bloomsbury (convergent evolution of mainstream digital fiction). She is currently a Senior Lecturer in Health and Science Communication at Bournemouth University.
ELO is grateful for her service in this key publication in our field.
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Announcing the 2020 ELO Fellows

ELO is pleased to announce the ELO Fellowship scheme into its second year, aiming to expand our scholarly activity, and our curatorial and creative practices with the appointment of seven graduate and early career fellows. In the spirit of protest, change, and justice, and in an attempt to further strengthen the Organization’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion framework, two of the fellows (one creative, one scholarly) were chosen for our new “Amplify Anti-Racism” scheme. 

Meredith Dabek (Ireland)
Malthe Stavning Erslev (Denmark)
Roberta Iadevaia (Italy)
Dani Spinosa (Canada)
Yohanna Joseph Waliya (Nigeria)
Margaret Rhee (AAR) (U.S.A.) – scholarly
Keith Wilson (AAR) (U.S.A) – creative

 The ELO Fellows are six graduate and early career Research Fellows for the academic year 2020/21, each of whom have been awarded a $500 stipend along with a one year ELO membership. Fellows help contribute to various ELO projects, including the Electronic Literature Directory and its alliances with partner organizations such as ELO. Each Fellow will be paired with a mentor.  “The Fellows program is critical to the sustained success and development of the ELO and its many projects, and it’s truly rewarding to be working with such a diverse and stellar group of scholars and artists, from so many regions around the world,” comments ELO Board Member Astrid Ensslin, who oversees the ELO Fellowship scheme.

 The AAR Fellows take two forms. The creative Fellowship is intended for a BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and Persons of Color) identifying a digital creator whose work should aspire to use digital media in e-literary ways, but there is no technical skill requirement to apply. The Fellows receive mentorship and support. The scholarly Fellow will be undertaking activities in support of developing the ELO’s racially/ethnically inclusive and activist policies and projects. These may include, for example, identifying e-literature initiatives and creative works by BIPOC within ELO existing databases, curating the collection of works and criticism by BIPOC and/or related to racial justice and anti-racism, developing racially and ethnically diverse and inclusive ontologies for the ELO’s databases, and/or supporting the design and development of e-lit works promoting racial justice and anti-racism.

“We are excited to have this excellent group joining in ELO’s efforts to promote scholarly and creative work in electronic literature while working to create an inclusive and welcoming community,” said President Leonardo Flores when the Fellows were announced during the 2020 conference, which was held online this summer.

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ELO Amplify Anti-Racism Fellowships (June 21)

In the spirit of protest, change, and justice, and in an attempt to further strengthen its EDI (Equity, Diversity, Inclusion) framework, the Electronic Literature Organization invites applications for two dedicated Fellowships aimed to Amplify Anti-Racism: a creative and a scholarly one.

In line with its other five 2020/21 Fellowships, the two AAR Fellowships will be a one-year opportunity for early career applicants with strong interests in the area of anti-racist electronic literature and/or digital arts.

The creative Fellowship is intended for a BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and Persons of Color) identifying digital creator whose work should aspire to use digital media in e-literary ways, but there is no technical skill requirement to apply. The successful applicant will receive mentorship and support. The scholarly Fellow will be undertaking activities in support of developing the ELO’s racially/ethnically inclusive and activist policies and projects. These may include, for example, identifying e-literature initiatives and creative works by BIPOC within ELO existing databases, curating the collection of works and criticism by BIPOC and/or related to racial justice and anti-racism, developing racially and ethnically diverse and inclusive ontologies for the ELO’s databases, and/or supporting the design and development of e-lit works promoting racial justice and anti-racism.

Both Fellowships will come with a $500 stipend and a one year ELO membership. The awardees will be announced during the virtual ELO conference in July.

One page letters of application, and short CV’s can be sent to the Fellowship committee chair, Astrid Ensslin (ensslin at ualberta.ca). Applicants for the creative Fellowship are further encouraged to include a portfolio link to samples of their work.

Deadline to apply: June 21st, 2020.

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Call for ELO Research Fellows 2020/21 (May 31)

Call for ELO Research Fellows 2020/21
Deadline: May 31st, 2020

The ELO is expanding its scholarly activity, creative, and curatorial practices with the appointment of six graduate and early career Research Fellows for the academic year 2020/21, each of whom will be awarded a $500 stipend along with a one year ELO membership. Awards will be announced during the virtual ELO conference in July. In the coming months, we’ll be welcoming applicants who will be working with established ELO scholars and practitioners on a variety of ELO projects, such as the Electronic Literature Directory (http://directory.eliterature.org), CELL (www.cellproject.net), The Digital Review (http://www.thedigitalreview.com), the electronic book review (https://electronicbookreview.com), and the ELO Repository (https://elo-repository.org).

One page letters of application, and short CV’s can be sent to the ELD project director, Astrid Ensslin (ensslin at ualberta.ca).

Deadline to apply: May 31st

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Announcement: ELO 2020: Moving Forward, Virtually

The ELOrlando leadership team has found ourselves, like many conferences, faced with rethinking our plans. We were thrilled to be hosting you here in Orlando this July, but in light of COVID-19 we have already received numerous cancellations and concerns from members of the community such as yourselves asking if the conference will be held.

Given the public health concerns and travel restrictions imposed by many universities, we are moving to a fully virtual event for this year. There are various models for this type of conference, but given our highly international community, our approach will combine synchronous and asynchronous events, with an emphasis on openness and access. What this means  is:

  • Plenaries: Keynotes and special events will still be held synchronously, as well as archived for subsequent viewing. Questions will be moderated, and participants will be encouraged to share their thoughts in the hashtag.

  • Conference Presentations: All other conference presenters will be asked to record their presentations in advance and submit them through the same conference interface, to be hosted in UCF’s institutional repository, and then hold conversation and/or promote their talks in the conference hashtag: #ELOrlando.

  • Conference Proceedings: As conference proceedings have already been submitted as full papers, no video is required: however, authors are welcome to submit a video talk to accompany their paper submission.

  • Exhibits and Performances: We will work with exhibitors and performers on the best way to share your work. This might include directly hosting your piece for access by the public, or including documentation via video.

While this change was unexpected, and we regret the loss of both the opportunity to connect with you here in Orlando and to share your work through public events with our community, we hope to view this as an opportunity to innovate. Given that, there is a new call for innovative sessions open now to both current participants and those interested in joining the virtual event. We are particularly interested in experimental sessions for collaboration, sharing, and socializing. If you would like to submit, please view the new call (copied below) and submit by May 1st.

One benefit to this model is that it makes the entire conference open access and alleviates some of the exclusionary aspects of academic conferences. Given this opportunity for inclusivity, and the economic challenges facing all of us and our institutions in this time of crisis, we are reducing the registration fee for the conference. We ask that you pay your ELO membership (https://eliterature.org/membership/) by May 15th plus an additional $50 registration fee to be included in the conference program, and if you have the funds available, please consider donating to support the community-building, archival, and critical work of the organization. Our conference is our biggest event each year for supporting the organization’s mission, and without this gathering our budget will be greatly reduced, particularly as we are in the process of negotiating potentially significant penalties from the hotel.

Updates to the website and other logistical details will be forthcoming, pending our current attempts to resolve the contract with the hotel. We hope that you will be able to join us in this new format, even if you were not originally planning to make the trip to Orlando.

Thank you, and take care,
Anastasia Salter

Call for Experimental Virtual Sessions:

As with many conferences moving to the virtual format for the first time, the Electronic Literature Organization Conference and Media Art Show will be seeking innovative strategies for creating engagement and connection during the week of the virtual event. These can include both synchronous and asynchronous sessions. If you would like to lead a virtual happening, please submit an abstract of 150-250 words describing the session via our submissions portal: https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cgi/ir_submit.cgi?context=elo2020. Here are a few ideas from our conference team to get you started:

  • Synchronous roundtables or hashtag chats

  • Netprov or other virtual performance pieces

  • Digital poetry jams in unusual platforms (Animal Crossing? MMOs)

  • Social media exhibition pieces

  • Game or electronic literature jams appropriate to the conference theme

Select the category of “Virtual Engagement Sessions” when submitting. This call is open both to those who had already planned on joining us in Orlando, and those newly able to participate due to the move to online. Our team will review proposals on a rolling basis through May 1st, and reach out to discuss strategies for implementation as appropriate. We look forward to working with you to craft an engaging program under our new constraints.

 

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ELO Call for MLA abstracts

Call for Abstracts

We are calling for abstracts for a potential Special Session hosted by Electronic Literature Organization at the Modern Language Association’s convention to be held in Toronto from January 7-10, 2021.

Keeping in line with the convention theme, Persistence, the theme of this panel is “Persisting Literatures.” We are looking for abstracts, 250-words in length, for presentations that explore ways in which digital literary scholars and artists work to keep writing accessible to the public. Topics can include but are not limited to: preservation, taxonomies, software deprecation and upgrades, changing platforms, hardware challenges, archival practices, translation, economic resiliency, racial inequality, and environmental crisis.

Send proposals by March 20, 2020 to Dr. Dene Grigar, Washington State University Vancouver, dgrigar[at]wsu.edu.

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ELC4 Deadline Extended (April 19)

EXTENSION:
New deadline April 19

The submission page is here.

We are extending the deadline for submissions to the Electronic Literature Collection Volume 4 to April 19th. We appreciate that the impact of COVID-19 as an international health emergency may prevent potential submissions from parts of the world affected, and so are extending the deadline to mid-April. If you have already submitted, you will have an option to revise or update your submission, and if you have not yet submitted, and have any issues with the submission process, including the video documentation, please reach out to us.

Video Documentation:

We have received a number of questions relating to the video documentation requirement, and so would like to provide some clarification. The file size limit is 100MB. Our recommendation is to record the work in a resolution no greater than 1200×768, and to use a codec based on the nature of the graphics in the work. We ask that you document at least a single traversal of the work if it is multicursal. This is so that we can make a decision on the work’s availability to future scholars and teachers in the case that the original platform is no longer viable. For some works, a traversal does not make sense, and so we are looking for documentation of the core features and essence of the work and its contributions. For a VR work, this could include a recording of a session, though it is important such sessions are long enough to represent the work and not simply function as a trailer for the work.

We are grateful to everyone who has submitted and who plan to submit, and hope that everyone is able to take appropriate measures during this pandemic.

ELC4 Electorial Collective

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New Board Members: Alex Saum-Pascual & Erik Loyer

ELO is pleased to announce the addition of two new Board members: Alex Saum-Pascual and Erik Loyer.  As prominent scholars and practitioners, both Alex and Erik have shaped electronic literature, now they will help shape ELO.

Alex SaumAlex Saum-Pascual is Associate Professor of Spanish and New Media at the University of California, Berkeley, where she teaches Contemporary Spanish Literature and Culture (20th and 21st Centuries) and Electronic Literature (Digital Humanities). She is also part of the Executive Committee of the Berkeley Center for New Media. Her academic work on digital media and literature in the Spanish-speaking world has been published in Spain, Mexico and the United States in the Digital Humanities Quarterly, the Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, the Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies and Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, among others. Her monograph, #Postweb! Crear con la máquina y en la red (Iberoamericana-Vervuert, 2018) explores the influence of electronic writing technologies on both printed and born-digital books. As an artist, she is interested in the intersection of female representation in digital media and online spaces as these relate to offline environments in the Anthropocene. Her digital artwork and poetry has been exhibited in galleries and art festivals in the United States and abroad. She is currently a 2020 Poetry Fellow at the Arts Research Center, working on her latest electronic literature work, corporate poetry.

Erik LoyerErik Loyer makes digital artworks and creative tools that marry the visual language of comics with motion graphics and musical performance. He founded the interactive label Opertoon in 2008 to explore this territory, releasing the interracial love story Ruben & Lullaby, the touchscreen meditation Strange Rain, and the digital graphic novel Upgrade Soul, which have garnered critical acclaim and over half a million downloads. Through Opertoon, Loyer has also originated a pair of creative tools—Panoply for digital comics, and Stepworks for electronic literature—which have been utilized in classrooms and workshops across the United States and Europe, as well as in commercial releases. He is active in the digital humanities as Creative Director of the popular scholarly publishing tool Scalar, and as the designer and developer of over a dozen interactive non-fiction works in collaboration with leading scholars, artists, and organizations including the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute. Loyer is also co-founder and Chief Experience Officer of TunesMap, a media startup that delivers cultural context around streaming music. A two-time Webby Awards Official Honoree, his work has been exhibited in the Americas and Europe, included in the Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 2, and he has been commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

The ELO Board of Directors is a hardworking group of volunteers.  For a full list of members see our People page.