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Summer eReading: La valeur heuristique de la littérature numérique

New Scholarly text by Serge BouchardonEven as some of us return to our studies, our Summer eReading continues with this French work of scholarship by Serge Bouchardon: La valeur heuristique de la littérature numérique.

Based in Paris, Bouchardon has been a long time friend of ELO. In addition to his critical work, his creative works have been celebrated at a variety of ELO events including the recent New Media Gallery in Milwaukee.

Presentation

Literary writing with and for the computer has been around for over half a century. This literature is part of well-known genealogical lines: combinatorial writing and writing with constraints, fragmentary writing, audio and visual writing. Whether it is in the form of hyperfictions, animated poems, generative or collaborative works, digital literary creation is now flourishing, especially online.

Because it is at the intersection of literary, communication, epistemological and pedagogical issues, digital literature is a particularly fruitful object.  The heuristic value of digital literature is what allows you to question and reevaluate certain notions (author, text, narrative, materiality, figure, memory…), but  it is also what opens up avenues for the field of digital writing.

Biography

Serge Bouchardon graduated in literature from the Sorbonne University (France).  After working as a project manager in the educational software industry, he wrote his dissertation on interactive literary narrative and is currently Professor in Communication Sciences at the University of Technology of Compiegne (France). His research focuses on digital creation, in particular digital literature.

As an author, he is interested in the unveiling of interactivity. The creation Loss of Grasp (http://lossofgrasp.com/) won the New Media Writing Prize 2011.

Research: http://www.utc.fr/~bouchard/
Creation: http://www.sergebouchardon.com/

 

 

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Announcing the ELC3

Call for Submissions

The Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) is now seeking submissions and nominations for Volume 3 of the Electronic Literature Collection. ELO was founded in 1999 and has released two collections, in 2006 and 2011. The third volume is slated for publication in 2016 and will continue to archive outstanding examples of electronic literature from an international community of practitioners. The goal of this volume is to represent the current state of electronic literature and to archive historically significant works from earlier generations.

From hypertext and kinetic poetry to ARGs and Twitter bots, we invite submissions from a wide range of fields. Electronic literature (or e-lit) thrives at the intersection of digital media and textuality. ELO offers a broad definition of e-lit as “works with important literary aspects that take advantage of the capabilities and contexts provided by the stand-alone or networked computer” (https://eliterature.org/what-is-e-lit/). For examples of the range of writing previously collected, Volume 1 and 2 are available at http://collection.eliterature.org. These earlier volumes were published under a Creative Commons license, distributed in physical storage media, and available open-access through a website. The ELC3 will follow a similar format.

Please submit your works and nominations online using this form, also embedded below.  You may contact the editorial collective directly at: elcvol3 at g mail.

Entries in any language are welcome.

Deadline: November 5, 2014

https://eliterature.org/elc3/

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Summer eReading: Analyzing Digital Fiction

Analyzing Digital FictionOur Summer eReading series resumes with a scholalry work that examines many of forms of electronic literature. Analyzing Digital Fiction (Routledge 2014), edited by Alice Bell, Astrid Ensslin, and Hans Rustad, features readings from an international group of scholars on an equally international collection of works.

Collected authors, in addition to the editors, include: Serge Bouchardon, David Ciccoricco, Isabell Klaiber, Alexandra Saemmer, Roberto Simanowski, Bronwen Thomas, and Susana Tosca.   Finnish scholar Raine Koskimaa says, “This book provides the reader with powerful tools to analyze and understand the emerging fictions of digital culture.” It will make a good companion to the diverse works of electronic narrative that will also be featured in our summer eReading!

From the Publisher:

Analyzing Digital Fiction offers a collection of pioneering analyses based on replicable methodological frameworks. It offers analyses of digital works that have so far received little or no analytical attention and profiles replicable methodologies which can be used in the analyses of other digital fictions. Chapters include analyses of hypertext fiction, Flash fiction, Twitter fiction and videogames with approaches taken from narratology, stylistics, semiotics and ludology. Essays propose ways in which digital environments can expand, challenge and test the limits of literary theories which have, until recently, predominantly been based on models and analyses of print texts.

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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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Summer eReading: This Is

Link to the "This is"Our Summer eReading series continues with a creative work, this time by e-lit author Alan Bigelow, whose works can be found at webyarns.  Bigelow’s piece “This is” includes one of the many divergent adaptations of Jeremy Hight’s ‘missing’ short story “Ethan has nowhere to go.” You can read more about that project in Potomac Review and see more permutations in Unlikely Stories, which includes versions by  Aaron Avila, Scott Davis, Keith Higginbotham, Alexandra Naughton, Jason Nelson, Vera Lucia Pinto, Johansen Quijano, Anastasia Salter, Matthew Sherling, and Brian Vann.
The transformation of Hight’s work from one artist to the next in the electronic literature community demonstrates the collaborative interplay of artists as they re-imagine each other’s works and draw inspiration from each other’s innovations.  Meanwhile, Bigelow says he’s developing another webyarn for later this summer (called “Life of Fly”), which, fortunately for us, means even more Summer eReading!
Medium: Internet-based HTML5/CSS3/JavaScript work for laptop, desktop, or portable devices.

Project Description: Read more Summer eReading: This Is

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Summer eReading: Digital Modernism

A continuation of our weekly Summer eReading series, highlighting new works of e-lit and scholarship.

Digital Modernism coverA certain self-referentiality and playful experimentation in works of electronic literature has won it the affection of those with an appetite for the Post-Modern.  But in Jessica Pressman‘s new book, she situates these literary works in a category she calls “Digital Modernism.”  Throughout the monograph, Pressman performs detailed interpretations of Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries’ Dakota and William Poundstone’s Project for Tachistoscope {Bottomless Pit}, and other works of digital literature in the context of print-based, canonical Modernist texts such as Ezra Pound’s Cantos.  In what Rita Raley calls “wonderfully elegant close readings,” Pressman demonstrates how critical reading practices evolve with developments in technologies.

In the midst of these close readings,  Pressman presents her exploration of the media archaeology of older forms of “new media,” epitomized by her analysis of Bob Brown’s Readies, in which she sees anticipation of the fast-flashing words that flicker through so much electronic literature.

Jessica Pressman is currently serving on the Board of Directors of ELO, but has a much longer history of service with the organization, beginning with its time at UCLA.  She will be presenting her recent research at the upcoming ELO 2014 conference in Milwaukee.

Read more Summer eReading: Digital Modernism

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Summer eReading: Writing Under

Our Summer eReading series continues with a selection from Alan Sondheim’s collected works “The Internet Text” published by West Virginia University under the title Writing Under. Chris Funkhouser says of the collection: “Writing Under offers up generous statements of process, from a self- and other- aware master who is codework’s godcyborg, a limner of psychedelic landscapes in Second Life, and an inveterate graphophile. This volume radiates foresight, stabilizing, if only for a moment, the fragility of ‘tenuously tethered bits and bytes’ that exist in a vast field.” While Sondheim’s total work of over 25,000 pages of writing would take a lifetime to peruse, this collection offers a summer-sized sampling. The volume was published in the Computing Literature series, edited by ELO Vice President Sandy Baldwin and Board Member Philippe Bootz.

From the publisher:

Writing Under Book CoverAlan Sondheim’s Writing Under explores and examines what happens to writing as it takes place on and through the networked computer. Sondheim began experimenting with artistic and philosophical writing using computers in the early 1970s. Since 1994, he has explored the possibilities of writing on the Internet, whether using blogs, web pages, e–mails, virtual worlds, or other tools. The sum total of Sondheim’s writing online is entitled “The Internet Text.” Writing Under selects from this work to provide insight into how writing takes place today and into the unique practices of a writer. The selections range from philosophical musings, to technical explorations of writing practice, to poetic meditations on the writer online. This work expands our understanding of writing today and charts a path for writing’s future.

The Summer eReading series will continue each week delivering creative and critical texts of and on electronic literature created by ELO members.

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Remembering Randy Adams

runran

The Electronic Literature Organization wishes to commemorate the life of Canadian e-lit artist and writer Randy Adams (aka runran) who passed away on April 25, 2014. To best honor his life and work, we have asked two of his closest collaborators and friends, Chris Joseph and Christine Wilks to write brief statements about him. We conclude with an autobiographical statement from Randy Adams recently published in his Facebook account. See also, Sue Thomas’ statement.

Statement by Chris Joseph

I first met Randy in 2004 at the trAce Incubation Conference, and was immediately struck by his warmth and sincerity, and this impression did not diminish over the ten years that I knew him. As with many in the field of electronic art and literature he was an autodidact, and perhaps this contributed to his constant interest in experimenting with new ways of working and collaborating with others in the field.

Read more Remembering Randy Adams

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Summer eReading: Phantasmal Media

As the semesters wrap up and the summer months begin in the Northern Hemisphere, you might find yourself with a little more time to catch up on your digital lit reading. Today we begin a weekly reading series featuring recent critical and creative works in electronic literature by ELO members.

Phantasmal Media cover
Phantasmal Media by D. Fox Harrell

The first scholarly book is Phantasmal Media: An Approach to Imagination, Computation, and Expression by D. Fox Harrell.  Published in 2013, Harrell’s conceit of the phantasm offers him a framework for exploring the unseen figures (of speech, self, and thought) moving within within computational media.  Among the many featured texts in the book, Fox presents two of his works Living Liberia Fabric and The Girl with Skin of Haints and Seraphs, as he discusses aspects of GRIOT, his narrative generation system.

In addition to serving on ELO’s Board of Directors (currently on temporary leave), Harrell is an Associate Professor of Digital Media at MIT where he directs the Imagination, Computation, and Expression Laboratory.

From the publisher: Read more Summer eReading: Phantasmal Media