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new forms review invites submissions to the Where We Create Project

The newly-built new forms review, a net art and digital literature portal/future peer-reviewed journal founded by Jason Nelson, invites submissions to its first major initiative, the Where we Create Project.

The Where We Create Project “is designed,” says Nelson, “to connect digital artists and writers (and analog creators as well) through a website featuring photos and descriptions of where artists/writers create. Our geographies and external landscapes are instrumental in altering and forming the creatures we create.”

To contribute to the project, send the following to Where We Create:

1. An image or two, 300 pixels X 300 pixels jpg, of where you create. This could be your office, your backyard, some coffee shop–whatever image depicts the physical space(s) where you work;

2. Some text about the place and its meaning to you, your work, your life, or whatever you feel represents the world in which you create; five to seven sentences maximum;

3. Your name, any other brief biographical information, and where the places you are talking about are geographically located;

4. A few urls so people can see the work you create in that place.

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Shelley Jackson at University of Maryland, College Park

The John and Bebe Petrou Foundation, the Department of English, and the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) are very pleased to announce the 2006 Bebe Koch Petrou Lectures on NEW MEDIA STORYTELLING at the University of Maryland, College Park. There will be two speakers associated with this event, coming to campus on separate days. All events are free and open to the public.

The first will be SHELLEY JACKSON on Monday, April 17th. She will present “Shelley Jackson’s Interstitial Library” at 3:30 in Susquehanna Hall 1120. There will also be a more casual colloquium discussion at MITH (McKeldin Library, B0131) earlier in the day at 11:00, which all are welcome to attend. Jackson is an internationally recognized writer, electronic artist, and theorist and practitioner of new performance media. Her work includes Patchwork Girl (published in 1995 by Eastgate Systems, it is a hypertext refashioning of Frankenstein, told–in part–from the vantage point of the female monster). “Perhaps the true paradigmatic work of the era,” writes Robert Coover, “Shelley Jackson’s elegantly designed, beautifully composed Patchwork Girl offers the patient reader, if there are any left in the world, just such an experience of losing oneself to a text, for as one plunges deeper and deeper into one’s own personal exploration of the relations here of creator to created and of body to text, one never fails to be rewarded and so is drawn ever deeper, until clicking the mouse is as unconscious an act as turning a page, and much less constraining, more compelling.” More recently, Jackson has gained notoriety for “Skin,” a short story “published” as individual words tattooed onto the skin of hundreds of willing participants. She has written experimental Web-based texts, including “My Body–a Wunderkammer” (available at http://www.altx.com/thebody/) and “Stitch Bitch” (http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/papers/jackson.html). She is also an illustrator of children’s books. Jackson teaches at the New School.

SCOTT McCLOUD will visit on Tuesday, May 2. Watch for further details.

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MITH Announces Spring Speakers Schedule

The Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities at the University of Maryland, College Park—ELO’s host institution as of July 1, 2006—is pleased to release its Spring Speakers Schedule. Between our weekly seminar series Digital Dialogues and a variety of special guests we are bringing to campus in partnership with other campus units, we are able to offer speakers and events in the digital humanities and electronic literature every week of the spring semester.

Alongside of showcasing a diverse array of current research by MITH’s Fellows and College Park faculty, MITH will host or co-host talks by such distinguished visitors as Jerome McGann and Johanna Drucker (University of Virginia), Alan Liu (UCSB), Joseph Tabbi (UIC), Scott Rettberg (Richard Stockton College, and co-Founder of the Electronic Literature Organization), Shelley Jackson (author of Patchwork Girl and Skin), and Scott McCloud (author of Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics).

MITH is located on the basement level of McKeldin Library. Unless otherwise noted, all talks are Tuesdays at 12:30 in the MITH Conference Room and are free and open to the public.

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University of Nebraska-Lincoln Creates Center for Digital Research in the Humanities

The new Center for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln aims to advance “collaborative, interdisciplinary research in the humanities by creating unique digital content, developing text analysis and visualization tools, and advancing knowledge of international standards and their implications for humanities computing.”

Co-directed by Kenneth M. Price and Katherine L. Walter, the CDRH will support research faculty fellowships, a Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities, and the Nebraska Digital Workshop to showcase and improve digital humanities work for outstanding early-career scholars.

The inaugural workshop will be held September 22-23, 2006. The CDRH invites proposals for presentations from advanced graduate students, post-doctoral scholars, and pre-tenure faculty. Selected scholars will receive full travel funding and an honorarium, and will have the opportunity to present their work to senior scholars in the humanities. Deadline for application to participate in the first Nebraska Digital Workshop is May 1, 2006. Visit the CDRH for additional information, or contact workshop committee Chair William G. Thomas, III.

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Agrippa Files Site Launch

http://agrippa.english.ucsb.edu

Agrippa (A Book of the Dead) appeared in 1992 as a collaboration between artist Dennis Ashbaugh, author William Gibson, and publisher Kevin Begos, Jr.

The Agrippa Files is a scholarly site that presents selected pages from the original art book (with the permission of the publisher); a unique archive of materials dating from the book’s creation and early reception; a simulation of what the book’s intended “fading images” might have looked like; a video of the 1992 “transmission” of the work; a “virtual lightbox” for comparing and studying pages from the book; commentary by the book’s publisher and scholars; an annotated bibliography of scholarship, press coverage, interviews, and other material; a detailed bibliographic description of the book; and a discussion forum. Read more Agrippa Files Site Launch

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Brown E-Writing Fellowship Deadline

There’s just one week left to apply for Brown University’s yearly graduate fellowship for electronic writing, the first ever offered in the U.S. (deadline December 15th). It comes with two years of support, three workshops with world-class writers, four other courses at Brown of your choice, and a nice MFA at the end. Last year’s graduate was William Gillespie, and the year before’s was Talan Memmott.

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Online Creative Writing & Technology MA taught by Sue Thomas & Kate Pullinger

Applications are now being considered for Autumn 2006 entry to the Master’s Degree in Creative Writing & Technology at De Montfort University, Leicester. The course will be taught 95% online, plus one week on campus in Leicester, UK.

The course is devised and taught by Sue Thomas, formerly Artistic Director of the trAce Online Writing Centre, and Kate Pullinger, well-known novelist and new media writer.

The program is designed for writers wishing to experiment with the creative opportunities of technology and the internet and is ideal for those preferring to study online.

For more details and information on how to apply, visit the De Montfort U. Creative Writing & Technology MA Program.

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“The Agrippa Files” Launch Event

The UC Santa Barbara Department of English will host a launch event for William Gibson’s “The Agrippa Files” website on December 1, 2005, from 4:00-6:00 p.m, in the Mary Cheadle Room (Room 3591) of UCSB’s Davidson Library. The event will include an exhibition of a rare copy of William Gibson’s 1992 collaborative book project, which featured a “disappearing” poem by Gibson that was included on a read-once-only, self-encrypting diskette. There will also be a panel discussion about the project and the book, with UCSB Department of English professors Alan Liu and James Hodge, and UCSB Department of Art professors Harry Reese and Brian Springer.

“The Agrippa Files” website, whose URL will not be released until the launch event, will include rare images of pages from the book, a unique archive of correspondence and other materials dating from the book’s creation and early reception; a simulation 0f what the book’s intended “fading images” might have looked like; a “virtual lightbox” for comparing and studying pages from the book; commentary by the book’s publisher and scholars; and an annotated bibliography.

For more information about the event, visit the UCSB Department of English website. Visit the UCSB website for parking and directions.

For parking and directions to UCSB and the Davidson Library, visit the UCSB

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Jason Nelson @ UCLA November 15

Digital writer/artist Jason Nelson will give a presentation at UCLA on Tuesday, November 15, at 6 pm, in the EDA room at 11000 Kinross Ave., Westwood. The event will also be streamed live on the web.

Nelson, currently an instructor at Australia’s Griffith University, has had his works shown at galleries and in online journals around the world. He promises that his presentation will be a “combination of digital magic show, technical tutorial, and poetry reading.” For anyone interested in electronic textuality, Nelson’s rare appearance in L.A. is not to be missed.

Check out his work at heliozoa.com and secrettechnology.com .

View the archived webcast at the EDA website.

Jointly sponsored by the UCLA Department of English, UCLA Design/Media Arts, and the Electronic Literature Organization, and the Griffith University Centre for Public Culture and Ideas, this event is free and open to the public.