E-lit Exhibit at the Library of Congress

Following up their back-to-back exhibits at the Modern Language Association, ELO Vice President Dene Grigar and Kathi Inman Berens are bringing electronic literature to another hallowed venue that was formerly the primary proving grounds of print matter: the U.S. Library of Congress.

Running April 3-5, the exhibit, “Electronic Literature & Its Emerging Forms,” part of the “Electronic Literature Showcase,” features 27 works of electronic literature––dating from 1982 – 2013––by American authors, relevant printed works from the Library of Congress collections, readings by select authors featured in the exhibit and hands-on workshops for visitors.

Along with the exhibit, the Library of Congress’s “Electronic Literature Showcase” includes an exhibit of rare books; a keynote address by ELO board member Stuart Moulthrop, panel discussion about electronic literature’s connection to major areas of knowledge and creativity featuring Berens; Grigar; Matthew Kirschenbaum, associate director of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities; and Nick Montfort, current President of the Electronic Literature Organization. As a sign of her dedication to training future e-lit scholars, Grigar has also continued to draw and train student docents from her home institution, Washington State University-Vancouver (WSUV). All events are free and open to the public.

From the WSUV announcement:

Generally defined as a “digital born” literary work, electronic literature is a “first-generation digital object created on a computer and (usually) meant to be read on a computer.” In a world dominated today by smart phones and tablets, the term computer has come to include any computing device. The electronic literature featured in the exhibit has been produced by major American artists and influential pioneers working in any language, and reflects a broad spectrum of genres and approaches, e.g. kinetic poetry, hypertext fiction, animated graphic novels and augmented reality environments. These works will be displayed on iMacs, iPads, vintage Macintosh computers, and vintage Atari game systems.

This exhibit of electronic literature is the Library of Congress’s first. It was made possible by digital humanist Susan Garfinkel, research specialist with the Digital Reference Section, CALM Division, at the Library of Congress, as well as colleagues in her department and at the Library.

For more information about the exhibit, contact Grigar, dgrigar at vancouver.wsu.edu, or visit the exhibit website at http://dtc-wsuv.org/elit/elit-loc/. For information about the Electronic Literature Showcase, contact Susan Garfinkel, elit at loc.gov, or visit the website at http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/elit-showcase.html.

Follow the event on Twitter @eLitatLOC and hashtag #elitloc, as WSUV student Evan Flanagan directs the social media for the event.

E-Lit Reading at The Kitchen 3/25 7pm

Electronic Literature at the Kitchen
Where: The Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street, New York, NY 10011 (212) 255-5793.
When: 7pm, 3/25/13
Co-Sponsored by The Electronic Literature Organization

You are invited to an evening of born-digital writing showcasing a range of artistic practices.

Featuring: Mark Amerika, Ian Hatch, Yael Kanarek, Paul La Farge, & Illya Szilak

Mark Amerika’s latest projects are Museum of Glitch Aesthetics (glitchmuseum.com), Micro-Cinematic Essays on the Life and Work of Marcel Duchamp dba Conceptual Parts, Ink (markamerika.bandcamp.com), and remixthebook (remixthebook.com).

Ian Hatcher is a poet, programmer, and performance artist living in NYC. Prosthesis, an ongoing project, is an expanding suite of code/text/vocal works exploring feedback loops between human cognition and digital systems.

Yael Kanarek is a media artist. In her practice she looks at globalization through interaction of languages and the collective experience of standard time. Selected scenes from Object of Desire, an online story inspired by motifs and themes born in the Middle East and Mediterranean, will be performed.worldofawe.net/objectofdesire

Paul La Farge is the author of four novels, most recently Luminous Airplanes, which is also a web-based hypertext. His short stories have
appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, McSweeney’s, Conjunctions, Fence and elsewhere.

Illya Szilak uses circulating media and collaborations forged via the Internet to create multimedia novels. She will perform from her latest Queerskins www.queerskins.com.

bleuOrange Competition for Translation of Works of e-lit

Alice van der Klei invites students to try their hand at translating electronic literature with an opportunity to have your translation published in bleuOrange and to be featured in a presentation at the ELO 2013 conference in Paris.
The special issue will include works by ELO President Nick Monfort and Board members Stuart Moulthrop, Scott Rettberg, and Mark Marino along with notable artists including JR Carpenter, Roderick Coover, Rodrigo De Toledo, Tal Halpern, Alexander Mouton, and Mark Marino.

All of the works will be translated into French for this special issue, but the contest offers a unique opportunity for students to show off their way with words. The full announcement follows.

Figura Concordia digital work translation contest
bleuOrange 07 - TRANSLATION ISSUE
Date of publication : September 22, 2013 – Presentation at ELO 2013, Paris, France, September 24-27, 2013

Each year, Figura, the research centre on the text and the imaginary (Concordia University, Montreal) and the Department of French Studies at Concordia University, in collaboration with bleuOrange (www.revuebleuorange.org) open a contest for the publication of a new digital work by a student in the next bleuOrange issue.

For the year 2012-2013, the contest will award a translation of a digital work.

The works published in French in bleuOrange include image, text and sound. They are made for a screen interface and are characterized by hyperlinks and interactivity. The works must have literary content (text) and must adress one of the three disciplines studied at the Department of French Studies at Concordia University (literature, translation, language / linguistics).

Here is the list of works the bleuOrange editorial board has selected to be translated into French and published in the bleuOrange 07 - SPECIAL TRANSLATION ISSUE. Sept. 2013.
Everyone can submit a translation, however, translations made by students will enter a translation contest giving them a possibility to publish their translation, collaborate with an #elit artist and to present the work at ELO 2013.
1. Nanodramas: Identity Pills, Rodrigo De Toledo
http://www.neurondiva.com/nanodramas/

2. TRANS.MISSION [A.DIALOGUE], JR Carpenter
http://luckysoap.com/generations/transmission.html

3. Radio Salience, Stuart Moulthrop
http://www.cddc.vt.edu/journals/newriver/07Spring/moulthrop/radioSalienc…

4. End Game : A Cold War Love Story, Tal Halpern
http://turbulence.org/Works/endgame/

5. Living Will, Mark Marino
http://markcmarino.com/tales/livingwill.html

6. Passing Through, Alexander Mouton
http://www.unseenproductions.net/passingThrough3.html

7. Three Rails Live, Roderick Coover, Nick Montfort & Scott Rettberg
http://elmcip.net/creative-work/three-rails-live

Eligibility:
This contest is open to students enrolled in a college or university in Quebec or elsewhere in a Francophone institute (full or part time), all members of a group must also meet these criteria.

You must send your intention to participate, a short CV and your choice of work for translation by 30 March 2013.

CONCOURS ÉTUDIANT – OEUVRE MÉDIATIQUE

Figura, Département d’études françaises, bureau LB-601
Université Concordia
1400, boul. de Maisoneuve Ouest
Montréal

H3G 1M8
Contact: figura at alcor.concordia.ca
or for any questions on the works themselves alice at labo-nt2 dot org

 

ELO Board Changes

ELO is pleased to announce several changes to the Board of Directors, including one new member.

Lori Emerson will be joining the board, Jessica Pressman will be assuming the role of Treasurer, and Noah Wardrip-Fruin will be stepping down from the board after serving as a director since 2003.

Dr. Emerson and Dr. Pressman are renown scholars in the field of electronic literature.  Their continued work in the field has helped to establish its place in the academy and beyond.

We relay our gratitude to Dr. Wardrip-Fruin for his years of service, since he joined the board in 2003. He has served as a vice president, attended ELO conferences, and had work in both volumes of the Collection. He worked on PAD project, co-writing Acid-Free Bits and worked as a co-author of the Born-Again Bits report. He also helped to convert the ELO site to the current eliterature.org.  Thank you for all your years of service.

Some information about our new member of the board of directors and our new treasurer follows:

Read more ELO Board Changes

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New Issues of 2 E-lit journals Hyperrhiz & BleuOrange

This month, we’re featuring posts on e-lit journals that have published issues recently. Up first: Hyperrhiz & bleuOrange

The latest issues Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures and bleuOrange are now online, featuring works and criticism on digitally born literature.  Both are exemplary, long-running journals of contemporary art.

Hyperrhiz

The new issue features essays by Piotr Célinski, David Gruber and David M. Rieder, and Hazel Smith.  The artists in the gallery include The Hanseatic Semiotic Traders League; David Ciccoricco and Jill DelSordi;  David Gruber and David M. Rieder; and Hazel Smith, Joanna Still, and Roger Dean. There is also a review by  Philippe Bootz and Sandy Baldwin.

The Hanseatic Semiotic Traders League (or Fiskekaker) is the name for the collaboration of Brendan Howell, Amrita Kaur, Mark C. Marino, Eduardo Navas, Margaux Pezier,Scott Rettberg, Morten Sorreime, Martin Swartling, Patricia Tomaszek, Rob Wittig.  Their work, “The Colonization of Memory,” combines a locative narrative and an exquisite corpse (a Locative Corpse) in an instantiation of the procedural art form, exquitie_code.

bleuOrange (French)

Issue 6 of BleuOrange, features work by Valerie Cordy, Booris Dumesnil-Poulin and Marie-Pier April, Maxime Galand, Myriam Lambert, Sebastien Cliche,  Line Dezainde.

bleuOrange is a project supported by the Laboratoire NT2: New technologies, new and textualities and Figura, the Centre for Research on the text and imagination, both of the University of Quebec in Montreal.  The editor-in-chief is Alice van der Klei. 

Consider these venues for your latest works of electronic literature!

ELO 2013 Paris: Call for Artistic Proposals (2/18, 2/23-26/13)

Chercher le texte: call for expressions of artistic interest

Event website: http://www.chercherletexte.org

The “chercher le texte” event deals with literary issues and text-oriented multimedia practices on digital devices: digital books, texts generated or animated through programming, fiction hypertexts, “manipulable”, playable works, or on the contrary works whose very program embraces literariness. The considered devices range from computers to mobile devices, including social networks. They can be used in various contexts: installations, performances, personal devices designed for digital reading. These contexts range from solo reading to collaborative or participative reading.

This event will represent an opportunity to showcase young artists and bring together two worlds, which otherwise barely come into contact with one another: that of the experimental digital literature forms deriving from the second half of the 20th century avant-garde movements and that of the digital writings, as used by authors coming from the book world and who have taken over the digital technologies, namely blogs and e-books.

In this context, the Musique et Informatique de Marseille (MIM) laboratory associates with team Écritures Numériques from Paris 8 Paragraphe laboratory, the digital literature European network Digital Digital Digital Littérature (DDDL), the Electronic Literature Organization (ELO), the Bibliothèque Publique d’Information (BPI), the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF), the Cube, the Labex Art-H2H coordinated by Paris 8 and the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (EnsAD) to organize the following events:

-          An online virtual gallery on the DDDL network website.

-          Four events consisting of performances and projections of works, from September 23 to 26, 2013, in the small room of the Centre Pompidou, the big auditorium of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and the Cube amphitheater.

-          A six-week exhibition on “digital literatures from the past and future” in the BNF lab room of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, which will be launched on September 24, 2013. This exhibition will feature the virtual gallery and a selection of digital literary works with emphasis on the works designed for touch-pads and e-readers. No installation is possible.

Artists, especially young ones, are invited to propose one or several work(s) for one or more of these devices.

Please send your proposals to work@chercherletexte.org before February 18. If you wish to propose several works, please do it in a single document and make sure you detail the nature of each proposal on at least one distinct page (gallery, performance, exhibition). Please write it in English or French in pdf format and include a short biography stating the age of the artist and the following information about each device: Read more ELO 2013 Paris: Call for Artistic Proposals (2/18, 2/23-26/13)

Electronic Literature at the MLA 2013

“Avenues of Access: An Exhibit & Online Archive of New ‘Born Digital’ Literature” is a media art exhibit held in conjunction with the MLA 2013 Convention, featuring new works of electronic literature by 33 artists from the U.S., Canada, UK, France, Portugal, Australia, and Germany.  It is curated by Drs. Dene Grigar and Kathi Inman Berens.

The exhibit is located in Room 312 in the Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention Center. Exhibit hours are:

Thursday, 3 January, 12 Noon to 7:00 p.m.
Friday, 4 January, 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Saturday, 5 January, 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.

The exhibit closes on Saturday evening and will not be open on Sunday. Assisting at the exhibit as docents will be six undergraduates from Washington State University Vancouver’s Creative Media & Digital Culture Program.

In conjunction with the exhibit, the curators are hosting a Friday Night Performance by artists featured in the exhibit. This free event takes place from 8 p.m.-10 p.m. at Emerson College’s Bordy Theatre, 216 Tremont Street, Boston, MA 02116, 617-824-8780.  Artists include Alan Bigelow, Amaranth Borsuk, Nick Montfort, Bill Bly, Caitlin Fisher, Mark Marino, Stephanie Strickland, Laura Zaylea, and authors of 10 PRINT CHR$ (205.5+RND (1)); : GOTO 10.

For more information, contact: Drs. Dene Grigar (dgrigar@vancouver.wsu.edu) & Kathi Inman Berens (inmanber@usc.edu).

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CFP ELO Paris 2013: Chercher le Texte (12/31/12; 9/24-27/13)

[updated 11/17/12]

Chercher le Texte: Locating the Text in Electronic Literature

The Electronic Literature Organization 2013 Conference
Hosted by the Laboratoire Paragraphe and the EnsAD (Ecole nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs)
Paris, France, September 24-27, 2013
Deadline for Abstracts: December 31, 2012.

Keywords: e-literature, electronic literature, e-lit, digital literature, literature, world literature, literary semantic web, literariness, new materialisms, new media, locative media, archiving, language, actor-network theory, cognitive capitalism

The Electronic Literature Organization (https://eliterature.org), the leading organization devoted to electronic literature, announces its 2013 conference to be held in Paris, France, September 24-27, 2013. The conference is hosted by the Laboratoire Paragraphe and the EnsAD (Ecole nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs). Along with the conference organizers and hosts, other partners include: Université Paris 8, Laboratoire Transferts critiques et dynamiques des savoirs, Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF), and Le Cube. The official languages of the conference will be French and English.

Proposals are welcome on topics within electronic literature, including but not limited to:

  • Digital culture
  • Code and software studies
  • Digital art
  • Remediation
  • Translation of electronic literature
  • E-literature and the body
  • Digital poetics
  • Digital storytelling
  • Mobile/locative media
  • Preservation and digital cultural heritage

The conference title is “Chercher le Texte: Locating the Text in Electronic Literature.” Electronic literature is explicitly defined as literature. Yet there is great confusion about the concept of text at work in it. What defines the textuality of games, visual works, and works without any evident language? The ELO 2013 conference in Paris will confront such issues: to seek out the text and attempt to define the literariness of electronic literature.

Over the past two decades, while numerous creative and critical movements have taken hold within and without academia, creators have been newly conceiving, and scholars resituating, literary works in new media. Early warnings that we might all get “lost in hyperspace” were overcome fairly easily – perhaps too easily when one considers that our first, most challenging conceptions of electronic writing have never quite been realized. Is there a way to mark the multiplicity of new writing in new media? Can commonalities and distinctions among emerging literary practices be noted? Are there new possibilities for language-based forms in programmable media? Can scholarly discussions surrounding works be carried on over time and among various groups, in the media where the works are generated?

ELO 2013 seeks to open the discussion beyond the remediation of literary writing from print to screens, by looking at ways that literary works, and “literariness” generally, circulates through a world system that has itself altered dramatically in the years since the first works of e-lit were produced. New media, from this perspective, are just the most visible instance of emerging economic, social systems, remediations, and subjectivities that impact literary production (as they impact our lives) from every side. New media are now being described, and re-imagined, in terms of new materialisms; discourse networks find new and different alignments within and without institutions, and both human agency and authorial presence have taken on new and sometimes strange forms.

The Electronic Literature Organization and Université Paris 8 invite individual paper proposals, panel proposals, and proposals for alternative formats. Submit abstracts of 200-500 words to Easychair at https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=elo2013. Send questions to Joseph Tabbi <jtabbi at gmail.com> or Philippe Bootz <philippe.bootz at univ-paris8.fr>. A separate call for creative works will be issued shortly.

ELMCIP Conference Remediating the Social in Edinburgh (Nov 1-3)

This week Edinburgh College of Art in collaboration with New Media Scotland and University College Falmouth will host the conference “Remediating the Social” (Nov. 1-3) under the ELMCIP framework.  ELMCIP is a partner of ELO in the Consortium for Electronic Literature (CEL) and has become through its Knowledge Base one of the main sources for information on e-lit in Europe (and beyond).

ELMCIP, or Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice, is a three-year collaborative research project that began in June 2010, which focuses on how creative communities of practitioners form with a transnational and transcultural context, with an implicit emphasis on electronic literature.  ELMCIP’s project leader is ELO co-founder Scott Rettberg, who together with seven other partners make up the principle investigative team.  See his conference presentation on ELMCIP here.

Conference: 01-03 November 2012, Edinburgh College of Art, Edinburgh, UK
Exhibition opening: 1 November, 2012, Inspace, University of Edinburgh, UK

Everyone can watch the live conference stream here.
The conference proceedings, including full-text of papers, is available for download here.

During the conference, ELMCIP will also be featuring the publication of the ELMCIP Anthology of European Electronic Literature.  See the contents list here.

Gallery of Works:
Below you will find the list of works on display at the galleries during the conference and in the two weeks following.

REMEDIATING THE SOCIAL EXHIBITION
1st -25th November, Inspace & ECA

@ Inspace

Romy Achituv | The Garden Library database

Johannes Auer, Beat Suter and René Bauer | Search Trilogy

Philippe Bootz | small uncomfortable reading poems

Andy Campbell and Kate Pullinger | Duel

J. R. Carpenter | The Broadside of a Yarn

John Cayley and Daniel Howe | Common Tongues

Shu Lea Cheang | Baby Work

Donna Leishman | Borderline

Johannes Helden | Natural History

Mez Breeze | _The_Tem(Cor)p(oral)_Body_

Jason Nelson | Textual Skyline


@ eca

Aya Karpinska | Absurd in Public

Judd Morrissey | The Final Problem

 

ELMCIP is supported by the HERA Joint Research Programme (www.heranet.info) which is co-funded by AHRC, AKA, DASTI, ETF, FNR, FWF, HAZU, IRCHSS, MHEST, NWO, RANNIS, RCN, VR and The European Commission FP7 2007-2013, under the Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities programme.

 

 

E-lit reading at SLSA Sept. 29 5-7pm

Electronic Literature & the Nonhuman
Saturday, September 29th, 5-7pm
201C of the Frontier Airlines Center
Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts 2012 Conference

This Saturday, at the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts conference in Milwaukee, ELO is sponsoring a reading entitled, “Electronic Literature & the Nonhuman,” featuring performances from an exciting mix of artists and works, from ARGs to single-line programs.

The presenters for the electronic literature reading at the SLSA conference include:

Jeremy Douglass
Katherine Hayles
Patrick Jagoda
Patrick LeMieux
Clarissa Lee
Amy Letter
M.D. Coverley
Mark C. Marino
Eric Meyer
Nick Montfort
Stuart Moulthrop

The jury for this reading were Sandy Baldwin, Davin Heckman, and Jessica Pressman.  The evening will be hosted by Mark C. Marino and Stuart Moulthrop.

Please join us for this event in room 201C of the Frontier Airlines Center.