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ELO-DHSI Summer Courses (June 2015)

ELO-DHSI Summer Courses (6/1-5; 6/8-12; 6/15-19 2015)

We are pleased to announce that the Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) will be partnering with the Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI) to offer opportunities for members to participate in the series of DH courses at the University of Victoria that takes place from June 1st-5th 2015, June 8th-12th 2015, and June 15th-19th 2015.

Registration for DHSI is now open. This year will see an expansion from the regular one-week Institute to three weeks of courses, in part to support those enrolled in the Graduate Certificate in Digital Humanities at U Victoria. Participants may choose to attend one, two, or all three week-long workshops. In 2015, 40 courses ranging from old favourites to exciting first-time ventures will be offered. Each week of DHSI will include a week-long training workshop, and the core week (June 8th-12th) will also include morning colloquia, lunchtime unconferences, and Birds-of-a-Feather sessions. Throughout the institute, keynote lectures will be given by Malte Rehbein (U Passau), David Hoover (NYU), Claire Warwick (UC London), and Constance Crompton (UBC Okanagan).

Read more ELO-DHSI Summer Courses (June 2015)

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CFP: ELO 2015 Bergen, Norway

UPDATED: New Deadline: Jan 7, 2015
ELO Conference PosterCall for Contributions: ELO 2015 Conference – Bergen, Norway
The End(s) of Electronic Literature

The 2015 Electronic Literature Organization conference and festival will take place August 5-7th 2015. The conference website is at: http://conference.eliterature.org. The conference will be hosted by the Bergen Electronic Literature research group at the University of Bergen, Norway with sessions at venues including the University of Bergen, Det Akademiske Kvarteret, the Bergen Public Library, the University of Bergen Arts library, and local arts venues. Bergen is Norway’s second-largest city, known as the gateway to the fjords, a festival city and cultural center with a lively and innovative arts scene.

DEADLINES

The deadline for submissions of research, workshop, and arts proposals is Jan 7, 2015.

 

CONFERENCE THEME

The theme of the 2015 Electronic Literature Organization conference and festival is “The End(s) of Electronic Literature.” This theme plays on several different meanings of “ends.” Topics the conference papers and works will explore include:

Is “electronic literature” a transitional term that will become obsolete as literary uses of computational media and devices become ubiquitous? If so, what comes after electronic literature?

Read more CFP: ELO 2015 Bergen, Norway

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Call for Submission: E-lit at SLSA14

Call for submissions
Dig-Lit Flow: Juried Reading at SLSA 2014
Saturday 4pm, October 11, 2014
Dallas, Texas
Deadline: Sept. 12, 2014

Electronic literature brings its own unusual flows to the world of letters.  Calling for submissions for a reading of digital lit that demonstrates the spectacular range of this innovative genre.

The Society for Literature Science and the Arts has been a long-standing center for scholarship on electronic literature.  This year, electronic literature will be showcased in a juried showcase at the 2014 SLSA conference in Dallas, Texas.  The event is co-sponsored by the Electronic Literature Organization (https://eliterature.org).

Potential genres include but are not limited to: electronic poetry, interactive narrative, literary video games, netprov,  locative narrative, and literary generators.

Performances are limited to 10 minutes.

Submit 250-300-word description and links to markcmarino at gmail.com (Subject: elit at SLSA14).  Descriptions should emphasize the performative nature of the presentation. Proposals should include the title and a short description of the work (including any links to your material), a plan for presentation, technology requirements, and a short (50 words) bio for each participant. Available technology will be audio, projector, and wifi.

Deadline: Sept. 15, 2014

Note: All participants must register for the SLSA conference and must be in attendance at the reading.  No remote presentations will be accepted.

For more information, please write markcmarino at gmail

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Announcing winners of 1st Coover & Hayles Awards!

ELO is proud to announce the first winners of the “The N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature” and “The Robert Coover Award for a Work of Electronic Literature,” two new annual awards in the field.  Designed to draw attention to the rising tide in this area, these awards awards mark a significant new initiative in ELO’s support of scholarship and art in the world of digital literature.

The winner of the Coover award is Jason Edward Lewis for his work, “Vital to the General Public Welfare” (The PoEMM Cycle), and the winner of the Hayles Award is Johannes Heldén & Håkan Jonson for their work, Evolution. Honorary Mention for the Coover Award goes to Aaron Reed for “18 Cadence.”  Honorary Mention for the Hayles Award goes Calum Rodger for “Reading the Drones: Working Towards a Critical Tradition of Interactive Poetry Generation.”  Below is the official announcement of the awards.

“The Robert Coover Award for a Work of Electronic Literature”

“The Robert Coover Award for a Work of Electronic Literature” saw 18 submissions from Spain, the US, Australia, Peru, the UK, Sweden, Italy, and Brazil. The Criteria Workgroup that developed the Submission Guidelines for the Award included Judy Malloy, Jennifer Ley, Laura Zaylea, and Brian Kim Stefans. The Jury consisted of Bobby Arellano, Christine Wilks, Patrick LeMieux, and Luciana Gattass.

The winner of this award is Jason Edward Lewis for his work, “Vital to the General Public Welfare” (The PoEMM Cycle).

This work is, according to one Jurist, “[i]n its entirety . . . very impressive and most enjoyable to read. There’s a marvellous range of different modalities combined with touch interaction, used to great poetic, narrative and thematic effect. . . . These works are at the cutting edge of electronic literature and stand out in the way they thoroughly embrace interactive reading in the multi-touch, multi-screen present and future.” Another wrote, “This is serious poetry and beautifully designed in an ambitious project cycle.”

Honorary Mention goes to Aaron Reed for “18 Cadence.”

One Jurist remarked that “’18 Cadence” “combines interactive fiction with a memetic, cut-and-paste interface that allows reader and player to become the maker of their own microstories. ‘18 Cadence’ is a beautifully designed, complex reading experience not only of a hundred years of one house, but of those fictions produced by other readers.”  Another wrote, “Engaging story, intentionally minimalist, encouraged discovery as well as play in a multi-modal synchronous interface.”

“The Robert Coover Award for a Work of Electronic Literature” is an award given for the best work of electronic literature of any length or genre. Bestowed by the Electronic Literature Organization and funded through a generous donation from supporters and members of the ELO, this $1000 annual prize aims to recognize creative excellence. The prize comes with a plaque showing the name of the winner and an acknowledgement of the achievement, and a one-year membership in the Electronic Literature Organization at the Associate Level.

 

“The N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature”

 

“The N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature” saw 9 submissions, consisting of four books and five articles by scholars from the UK, Canada, Sweden, Germany, Portugal, and Scotland.  The Criteria Workgroup that created the Submission Guidelines for the award included Matt Kirschenbaum, Chris Funkhouser, and Rita Raley.  The Jury consisted of Jill Walker, Anastasia Salter, Pat Jagoda, and Stephanie Boluk.

The Winner of this award is Johannes Heldén & Håkan Jonson for their work, Evolution.

“Evolution” by Johannes Heldén & Håkan Jonson, wrote one Jurist, “an interesting critical-creative experiment. . . . [that] captures the boundary crossing spirit of the ELO.” Another wrote that “Evolution” “is both a work of literature and multi-voiced, multi-modal criticism.” Another wrote that “this collection of seven short critical responses to the generative poem Evolution by Johannes Heldén and Håkan Jonson plays with the genre of criticism by enclosing the essays within over 200 pages of code. . . .  Each of the essays in this collection is poetic and thought-provoking in its own way. . . .  The rest of the book is left to the code itself, and to logs of its output. Perhaps the book was written, compiled, designed by Evolution itself. Even the table of contents looks like computer code, laid out the way that a piece of software might prefer.  I’m ranking this book first on my list because of its challenges to the form of criticism – there is a creativity and unexpectedness in the way that these responses to the text are presented that is very engaging and that contributes to the work and to the field in general.”

Honorary Mention goes to Calum Rodger for “Reading the Drones: Working Towards a Critical Tradition of Interactive Poetry Generation.”

One Jurist wrote that “this essay offers an extremely clear and useful intervention into why we should study Interactive Poetry Generation in literary criticism.” Another said that it “combines a wide-ranging knowledge of conceptual poetry with computation” and “offers many lucid insights in an under-examined field of literary and media practice.”

“The N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature” is an award given for the best work of criticism, of any length, on the topic of electronic literature. Bestowed by the Electronic Literature Organization and funded through a generous donation from N. Katherine Hayles and others, this $1000 annual prize aims to recognize excellence in the field. The prize comes with a plaque showing the name of the winner and an acknowledgement of the achievement, and a one-year membership in the Electronic Literature Organization at the Associate Level.

Read more Announcing winners of 1st Coover & Hayles Awards!

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This week: ELO 2014 Hold the Light

Logo for ELO14 conferenceThis week we preempt our Summer eReading series to bring you a host of works featured in the 2014 ELO Conference: Hold the Light June 18-21 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  And conference organizers Stuart Moulthrop, Marjorie Luesebrink, Sandy Baldwin, and Kathi Inman Berens have brewed up a lake of Milwaukee’s finest.  You can download the full program.

The conference features three electronic galleries.  The first is on-site, featuring a wide variety of works by new and established authors. The second is online, the Media Arts Gallery, featuring a virtual exhibition of the works from the juried show.  The third is the Gallery of E-Lit 1st Encounters, which feature first time e-lit authors – or at least those new to ELO.

Organized by Kathi Inman Berens and vetted by the gallery jurors, the various exhibition halls have much to dig into even if you can’t make it to Milwaukee. If you can make it, you are in for a wonderful set of panels, roundtables, keynotes, and evening performances.  See the full schedule here.

And stay tuned.  On Friday, at the banquet, the winners of the N. Katherine Hayles and Robert Coover prizes will be announced.  You’ll find out who won if you follow the #elo14 hashtag or the @eliterature Twitter account.

You’ll also find updates in the Facebook group as well.

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ELO Hold the Light Conference Registration

Registration is now open for ELO’s 2014 international conference Hold the Light (June 19-21) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Early registration continues until April 15. After that, prices increase by $25. There is also an early registration discount for the Workshop Pass, which offers full access to the pre-conference workshops.

The scholarly papers and artistic works have been selected by the international jury, so we can assure you this will be another remarkable event, full of cutting-edge works and the insightful discussions on the past, present, and future of electronic literature.