Category: Other News

Mark Marino of UC Riverside seeks chatbot users and creators for a survey which will be available through the end of this week. He writes:

If you have used or have built chatbots, or conversational agents, please participate in my online study of these research communities and their priorities. (Chatting with Non-Player Characters in video games counts here, too).

I am looking to get a sense of who make bots, who use them, and in what ways. The questions will only take a few minutes to answer, but participants can return to participate in ongoing discussions.

To participate, go to: http://wrt.ucr.edu/wordpress/chatbot-survey/

At the recent Hypertext 2005 conference in Salzburg, Austria, Stuart Moulthrop won The Douglas Engelbart Best Paper Award for “What the Geeks Know: Hypertext and the Problem of Literacy”. The Ted Nelson Newcomer award was given to J. Nathan Matias for “Philadelphia Fullerine: A Case Study in Three-Dimensional Hypermedia”.

The latest issue of the online undergraduate writing journal Actions Forms Technique, edited by UC Riverside Professor of English James Tobias is entitled Digital Divides, Digital Domains: Negotiating the Boundaries”. AFT, published quarterly, features work by UC Riverside undergraduates on “the cultures, aesthetics, and technologies of print, audiovisual, and interactive media”.

The UCSB Media Arts and Technology (MAT) proposal for a PhD in Media Arts and Technology was approved by the University of California on 20 September 2005.

MAT will be accepting applications for Fall 2006 admission to the PhD program. Prospective applicants should apply online through the UCSB Graduate Division.

The Admissions information page on MAT’s web site will be updated before 1 November, a month before the early application deadline.

This month’s conversation on the empyre mailing list will be on the topic “Digital Writing.” The guests will include digital authors and commentators Bill Seaman (an ELO board member), Brigid McLeer, Friedrich Block, Giselle Beiguelman, and Sue Thomas.

IAWIS/AIERTI 7th International Conference on Word & Image Studies:
Elective Affinities
Philadelphia, 23-27 September, 2005

[The conference includes four sessions dealing with electronic literature: Words on Screen: Hierarchies of Text and Picture in Cyberculture and VVV-on-line: Verbal-Visual-Vocal Poetries in Hyperspace I, II, and III. ELO directors Matthew G. Kirschenbaum and Nick Montfort will be among those presenting in these sessions.]

The University of Pennsylvania hosts the 7th International Conference on Word & Image Studies. The conference title is borrowed from Goethe’s 1809 novel Elective Affinities. In the novel, the chemical term “elective affinities” extends to human relationships, both intimate and political. Like the alkalis and acids of which Goethe’s characters speak, words and images, though apparently opposed, may have a remarkable affinity for one another. At the same time, as one of the characters in the book objects, such affinities are problematic, and “are only really interesting when they bring about separations.

How words and images represent and whether they enjoy a harmonious kinship, engage in border skirmishes, or seek to annihilate one another, are not merely formal matters. The history of iconoclasm tells us about the ideological stakes of the debate. Contemporary discussions of memorialization seem to demand multi-media expression, and urban inscriptions such as graffiti and mural arts express political positions. New technologies for meshing words and images – such as medical imaging, virtual archives, the Internet – will also be discussed. Themes of the conference are: the arts of the book; early correspondences; political inscriptions; sacred words, sacred images; scientific imaging; spaces, places; photographic texts.

Professors Peter Stallybrass (Penn) and Yve-Alain Bois (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton), and author Art Spiegelman will offer keynote lectures.

For more information, details about registration, and a list of speakers, panels, topics, times and locations, please visit: archive of: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/affinities/

PLEASE LINK AND DISTRIBUTE WIDELY.

The Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) at the
University of Maryland, College Park is pleased to be able to offer an
immediate residential fellowship available to any one faculty member
or ABD doctoral candidate at an institution closed by Hurricane
Katrina.

Housed in the campus’s primary research library, MITH is a community
of scholars devoted to the application of new media and digital
technologies to humanities scholarship and teaching. Projects have
typically taken the form of electronic editions, scholarly databases,
or high-end teaching materials. See examples here:

http://www.mith2.umd.edu/research/index.php

While colleges and universities seem to be moving very fast to
accommodate displaced undergraduates, the careers of graduate students
and faculty also have to be protected and tended to. We are therefore
able to offer a scholar his or her personal workspace, the use of our
extensive hardware and software resources, easy access to the
university’s library collections (and a base from which to access the
unparalleled academic and cultural institutions of the DC area
besides), and expert-level consulting about digital scholarship.

While we regret we are unable to offer a stipend, *funding is
available* for temporary relocation and some initial start-up
expenses.

To apply, please send a letter of inquiry describing the project to be
undertaken (either new or continuing research), a CV, and contact
information for three references. Application materials may be sent
electronically to mith@umd.edu or by fax to 301-314-7111 or by post to
Neil Fraistat, Acting Director, MITH, McKeldin Library, University of
Maryland, College Park, MD 20742. Consideration of applications to
begin immediately. Applications from women and minorities and graduate
students and faculty at Historically Black Colleges and Universities is
encouraged.

Neil Fraistat, Acting Director (301-405-3817)
Matthew Kirschenbaum, Acting Associate Director
Carl Stahmer, Acting Associate Director

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