ELO President Thom Swiss will be at the University of Queensland’s St. Lucia campus on Tuesday, August 9th, to give a talk on “New Media Literature and Art: A Writer’s Perspective”. Swiss will discuss “the possibilities for literature offered by the electronic convergence of words, images, and sound.” For complete information on this event, visit the University of Queensland’s Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies. This event is free and open to the public.
ELO’s Born-Again Bits Released
Following up on its pamphlet Acid-Free Bits: Recommendations for Long-Lasting Electronic Literature, ELO has released online Born-Again Bits: A Framework for Migrating Electronic Literature by Alan Liu, David Durand, Nick Montfort, Merrilee Proffitt, Liam R. E. Quin, Jean-Hugues Réty, and Noah Wardrip-Fruin. Part of a continuing series of publications by ELO’s Preservation, Archiving, and Dissemination (PAD) initiative, Born-Again Bits is a white paper that presents a conceptual, technical, and institutional framework for imagining how electronic literature — more experimental and harder to preserve than many other kinds of digital materials — can follow standards-based paths of migration into future technical environments. Two main kinds of migration strategies are addressed under the titles: “Interpreter Initiative” and “X-Lit Initiative.” (For a printed copy of this publication, contact Carol Wald at ELO.)
New ELO Website
The ELO’s new site, designed and engineered by Nick Montfort, is now in place. Thanks go to Scott Rettberg for his help, which included migrating much of the content from the old site, and to Noah Wardrip-Fruin, who prepared many items that will appear in coming weeks in the new showcase.
The showcase is designed to feature exemplary electronic literature. The five most recent items are visible at the top of the main page, and everything featured to date is accessible via the “Showcased E-Lit” link just below the search field. An RSS feed of the showcase is available so that readers can automatically keep bookmarks to the current entry or syndicate the showcase on their own pages.
News entries and other pages on the site are now easily searchable. The news is also accessible by category and by date. We have tried to redirect as many previous URLs as possible to current resources, to avoid leaving anyone with page not found errors. The new site is also designed to be easier to maintain and manage into the future, allowing the ELO to communicate with members and the reading public more effectively.
The new ELO website is powered by WordPress and uses a theme based on Joni Mueller’s Zen Minimalist.
We hope you enjoy the new site. Please let us know what you think of it, and if you encounter any problems. The email you should use to contact the ELO can be found, along with our phone number and postal address, on the “contact” page.
ELO Partnership with University of Iowa
The University of Iowa has announced its partnership with the ELO. The partnership was initiated by Thom Swiss, a professor of English and the Rhetoric of Inquiry at Iowa who is the new president of the organization. The ELO is based at UCLA; this partnership initiates a new form of the organization, where different campuses will be able to participate as “nodes,” helping the ELO reach its goals in different ways.
ELO Elects New Officers
ELO has elected a new slate of officers. Thom Swiss of the University of Iowa Department of English and editor of The Iowa Review Web succedes Margie Luesebrink as president; Nick Montfort and Noah Wardrip-Fruin become co-vice presidents; and Scott Rettberg succedes Celia O’Donnell in the post of treasurer. Rob Swigart continues as secretary for another term. Margie Luesebrink and Celia O’Donnell will continue to serve on the board of directors.
Re: Writing–Writers, Computers, and Networks
“Re: Writing–Writers, Computers, and Networks” will feature readings by ELO board members Nick Montfort and Noah Wardrip-Fruin, along with performances by Thalia Field and John Cayley. Co-organized and presented with turbulence.org, and funded by the LEF Foundation and Literary Arts, Brown University, the event will take place during the 2005 Boston Cyberarts Festival, on April 25 in Providence, and at the Boston Public Library on April 26.
Thom Swiss “Word and Image” Lecture
ELO president and University of Iowa professor of English Thom Swiss will present the annual “Word and Image” lecture at Boston University on May 4, 2005, in conjunction with the 2005 Boston Cyberarts Festival.
E-FEST 2004
The Brown University Program in Literary Arts will present E-FEST 2004, a celebration of electronic literary art, on February 17-19. The program will feature readings by John Cayley, Stephanie Strickland, Talan Memmott, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Brian Kim Stefans, Aya Karpinska, Alan Sondheim and more. E-FEST 2004 also includes performances, panels, discussions with artists and theorists, and artist demos.
ACH Trip Report
Written by Marjorie Luesebrink, ELO’s President, the trip report details the 2 ELO panels at ACH: an academic session titled “PAD: Preservation, Archiving, and Dissemination of Electronic Literature” and a
creative reading titled “Writers Reading Electronic Literature”
State of the Arts Book
State of the Arts CD/Book is now available. Contact the ELO office for details on how to purchase one!