It’s not too late to register to attend Computers and Writing 2005 at Stanford University, June 16-19. This year’s conference features a keynote address by Stanford University Professor of English and Director of the Stanford Program on Writing and Rhetoric, Andrea Lunsford, who will speak on “Writing, Technologies, and the Fifth Canon”. In addition to workshops and town hall discussions, presenters from around the world will discuss a wide range of topics, from computer gaming and its use in the classroom to the use of technology as a rhetorical choice.
Transliteracies Project at UCSB: Conversation Roundtables on Online Reading
ELO board member Alan Liu is organizing a gathering – and launching a larger project – that will bring together theorists and practitioners from the humanities, arts, social sciences, computer science, and industry to talk about the fate of reading in the new media age. The “UCSB Conversation Roundtables on Online Reading” Conference will serve to launch the Transliteracies Project. It all takes place June 17-18, 2005, in the University of California, Santa Barbara’s McCune Room (6020 HSSB). Read more Transliteracies Project at UCSB: Conversation Roundtables on Online Reading
8th Annual Digital Storytelling Festival, October 7-9, 2005
Plans are underway for the 8th Annual Digital Storytelling Festival, to be held for the first time in its home town, San Francisco, California. The festival is an annual event where the digital storytelling community gathers to examine compelling projects, share new and useful information and ideas, and inspire, invigorate and create a thoughtful dialogue about current issues in digital narrative.
Two Digital Storytelling Bootcamp Workshops are planned, one before the festival, October 5-7, and one after the festival, October 10-12. These three-day courses are project-based introductions to creating and publishing a digital narrative.
To learn about the festival schedule and register for the festival and workshops, visit the Digital Storytelling Festival website.
Robert Coover in Seoul, Beijing, and Tokyo
As part of the 2nd Seoul International Forum for Literature, Robert Coover lectures on “Literary Hypermedia and the Cave” May 26, 2005 at the Convention Center and Conference Hall of the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts in Seoul, South Korea. The Forum is organized by the Daesan Foundation and the Korean Culture and Arts Foundation. Other stops on Coover’s Asian lecture tour include Tsinghua University in Beijing on May 20, the Tokyo section of the American Literature Society’s meeting on May 28, and several other Tokyo universities.
Literary VR at Brown
This weekend and next (April 30 & May 1 // May 7 & 8) there will be two different exhibitions of literary virtual reality at Brown University. The exhibitions will employ a room-sized immersive stereo display (Brown’s Cave) and a spatialized sound system (controlled by Max/MSP) to present 10 projects created by writers, musicians, visual artists, and computer scientists. Because shows will be small (6 people) and spread out at 45 minute increments over the course of the day (11am to 5pm), reservations are required. Reservations are made by calling Brown’s David Winton Bell Gallery at 401-863-2932. This show, “Works from the Cave II,” is the sequel to Brown’s Cave exhibition for the 2003 Boston Cyberarts Festival.
2004 XYZZY Awards
The big event, interactive fiction’s Oscars, was held Sunday March 20th at 4pm EST (9pm GMT), on ifMUD. Now ifwiki has the list of 2004 XYZZY winners.
ELit at GDC
A number of events at this year’s Game Developer’s Conference have connections to electronic literature, including the panel discussion Why Isn’t the Game Industry Making Interactive Stories and presentations of computer game concepts based on the poetry of Emily Dickinson (by Clint Hocking, Peter Molyneux, and Will Wright).
The Institute for the Future of the Book
Bob Stein, the founder of the late 80s/early 90s CD-ROM publisher Voyager, has moved from Nightkitchen (the e-book development platform his team developed from the mid 90s until earlier in this decade) to The Institute for the Future of the Book, which was founded last year. It looks like many aspects of Nightkitchen will be preserved within the Institute, but moved from a for-profit to a not-for-profit framework. The Institute for the Future of Book has secured generous funding from the Mellon Foundation (a $1.3 million grant), the MacArthur Foundation, and its colocated host institutions, The Annnenberg Center for Communication at the University of Southern California and Columbia University. Read more The Institute for the Future of the Book
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.