Although the Banff New Media Institute’s journal horizon zero: digital art + culture in canada ceased publication in December 2004, its 18 back issues are very much available in its web archive. horizon zero was a multimedia and bilingual “virtual space dedicated to creativity and critical ideas in the new media canon.” Its 18 issues include web-based interactives, essays and journalistic writings, fiction and poetry, video, animation, games, and other digital artworks.
Launch of Redesigned ebr: Electronic Book Review
ebr: Electronic Book Review, has been redesigned. The rebuilt site promises greater “power to gather text, gloss and cross-reference, spool threads” and “fly high and see the weave.
The current issue features Brian Kim Stefans on “Privileging Language: The Text in Electronic Writing,” Scott Rettberg on “First Person, Games, and the Place of Electronic Literature,” John Cayley on “Bass Resonance,” and Lori Emerson’s review of Walter Benn Michaels’ The Shape of the Signifier, “On Materialities, Meanings, and the Shape of Things.”
Ashbaugh and Gibson’s AGRIPPA: New Description of Book Available
Matt Kirschenbaum has posted a detailed physical description of Dennis Ashbaugh and William Gibson’s 1992 artist’s book/e-literature collaboration AGRIPPA: A Book of the Dead (published by Kevin Begos), based on his close examination of the copy now owned by the New York Public Library. There is a great deal of internet lore and misinformation surrounding this project, including statements that the work does not in fact exist. This description puts those misconceptions to rest–even as it raises new questions.
Dichtung Digital “Netzliteratur” Issue
In November 2004 the University of Siegen hosted an all-star gathering of electronic literature critics and authors. Now the presentations from “Netzliteratur – Umbrüche in der literarischen Kommunikation” are online as a special issue of Dichtung Digital. Contributors include ELO board member Noah Wardrip-Fruin and literary advisory board member Loss Pequeno Glazier, as well as Marie-Laure Ryan, Markku Eskelinen, Frank Furtwängler, Mela Kocher, Roberto Simanowski, Philippe Bootz, Jean-Pierre Balpe, Laura Borras Castanyer, Susanne Berkenheger, and conference organizers Peter Gendolla and Jörgen Schäfer.
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.
New Media Article Writing Competition Winners
trAce and Writers for the Future are pleased to announce the winners of New Media Article Writing Competition: Review category – “A Bad Machine Made of Words” by Nick Montfort; Opinion category – “Are cell phones new media? Hybrid communities and collective authorship” by Adriana de Souza e Silva; Process category – “Writing 4 Cyberformance” by Karla Ptacek & Helen Varley Jamieson; Editor’s Choice Award – “Show Me Your Context, Baby: My Love Affair with Blogs” by Kate Baggott; Honourable Mention – “Postcards From Writing” by Sally Pryor.
First Person at ebr
Visit the electronic book review to read an installment of essays from Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan’s First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game.
New reviews in cyberculture studies
New book reviews at RCCS include: Susan B. Barnes’s Online Connections: Internet Interpersonal Relationships reviewed by Andrew Dalton; Edwin Bendyk and Zatruta Studnia’s [Poisoned Well. On Power and Freedom] reviewed by Alek Tarkowski; N. Katherine Hayles’s Writing Machines reviewed by Michael Filas; Joseph Tabbi’s Cognitive Fictions reviewed by Kathleen Fitzpatrick and Jen Webb, with a rejoinder from Joseph Tabbi; and Mark Warschauer’s Technology and Social Inclusion: Rethinking the Digital Divide reviewed by Chris Hewson.
First Person
First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, edited by Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan, is a new book gathering a remarkably diverse group of new media theorists and practitioners to consider the relationship between “story” and “game,” as well as the new kinds of artistic creation (literary, performative, playful) that have become possible in the digital environment. Topics range from “Cyberdrama” to “Ludology” (the study of games), to “The Pixel/The Line” to “Beyond Chat.” For more information and to purchase First Person, visit MIT Press.