Laurence Sterne (1713-68) wrote The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandyin Shandy Hall, Coxwold, York, in the 18th Century. The innovative nonlinear novel is often cited by contemporary new media writers as an influence on their creative practice. It was recently announced that Shandy Hall will now house Asterisk*, a center for the study and development of narrative. Rather than simply developing the site as a museum dedicated to Sterne’s life and works, the center will be dedicated to innovation in both old and particularly new work. Asterisk* will support residencies for artists, “we envisage that these residencies will take forward current practice in a variety of narrative engagements: with diverse media, non linearity, digression, interactivity and audience participation, particularly (though not exclusively) where these intersect with technology.” The center will also commission new works, host exhibitions and performances, lectures and events, and a web forum. Last year hypertext author Deena Larsen completed a short hypertext, Shandean Ambles, during a three-day residency at the site. Asterisk* is now accepting applications for two three-week residencies this fall, one intended for a new media artist and the second for a writer with minimal technical background interested in integrating new media into his or her practice. Asterisk* also intends to gather an extensive library of innovative interactive literature at Shandy Hall.
Thom Swiss Seminar at University of Queensland
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.
CFP/New Media Texts: Reading (and Writing) New Media
Editors Jim Kalmbach and Cheryl Ball invite submissions of essays and new media texts for a collection entitled Reading (and Writing) New Media. The anthology seeks to interrogate the act of reading in the context of digital new media texts. The selected new media texts, as well as selections from texts discussed in essays, will be published in an accompanying CD.
Topics to be addressed may include:
–What does it mean to read new media?
–How have digital spaces changed the act of reading?
–How does reading digital texts–including games, instant messaging, digital art and music, etc.–enlarge our conception of what a text is?
–Is there a digital canon forming, and what are the consequences of such a move?
–What happens when writing morphs into composition or design?
–What sorts of composing processes inform the creation and reading of new media texts?
–What teaching possibilities lie at the intersection between reading and composing new media texts?
Read the full call at http://cball.usu.edu/research/raw/
500-word abstracts are due October 1, 2005. Send inquiries to Jim Kalmbach or Cheryl Ball.
Mainframe Experimentalism Anthology
Douglas Kahn and Hannah Higgins are putting together an interdisciplinary collection on “the encounter of artists, musicians, poets and writers, and filmmakers working within avant-garde, experimental, and artistically innovative traditions with mainframe computers and institutionally-bound digital technologies during the 1960s and 1970s.” Mainframe Experimentalism: Early Digital Computing and the Experimental Arts will include papers by Benjamin Buchloh (Columbia University) on Alison Knowles’ “House of Dust” poem; Hannah Higgins (University of Illinois-Chicago) on the intermedia aspects of “House of Dust”; Douglas Kahn (UC Davis) on James Tenney at Bell Labs; Christoph Cox (Hampshire University) on Alvin Lucier’s “North American Time Capsule”; and Owen Smith (University of Maine) on Dick Higgins’ “Computers for the Arts”. Stay tuned for publication information.
July Topic on “Writing and the Digital Life”
The July discussion topic for Sue Thomas’ online community project, “Writing and the Digital Life,” is “the synthesis of language and visual art in the context of the digital environment.” Join the conversation by subscribing to the “Writing and the Digital Life” listserv, or just read the archive.
Interview with Sue Thomas on trAce
trAce Online Writing Centre has published Randy Adams’ new interview with Sue Thomas, a longtime director of trAce and now professor of New Media at the De Montfort University School of Media and Cultural Production. Thomas discusses her experiences at trAce, the transition to life at De Montfort, her books, her newest online commuity project, “Writing and the Digital Life,” and more.
Hear Past Banff New Media Institute Summits on Radio90’s “Archive Hour”
Radio90, an internet pirate radio station, has begun broadcasting audio recordings of past Banff New Media Institute Summits on its “Archive Hour”. Visit the Radio90 website for the broadcast schedule.
Yucef Merhi’s “Poetic Engineering” at the Orange County Museum of Art
New media artist Yucef Merhi’s “Poetic Engineering” project is on view at the Orange County Museum of Art’s Orange Lounge through August 28, 2005. Merhi’s digital texts explore the bond between natural languages and machine languages in a range of media, including electronic devices, the web, computer installations, and video game systems.
Interview with Turbulence.org’s Co-Director Helen Thorington
Read Domenico Quaranta’s recent interview with Helen Thorington, a founding organizer and current co-director of Turbulence.org, at Turbulence. Also forthcoming in Cluster #5. Thorington discusses the origin and development of Turbulence, which has produced over 300 projects over the last 15 years and currently has approximately 80 net art projects running.
Auto Mata: A New Label for Computer Lit, Art, and Games
Auto Mata, an independent label for extraordinary e-lit, digital art, and computer games, has just been launched by the six “drivers” of the blog Grand Text Auto: Mary Flanagan, Michael Mateas, Nick Montfort, Scott Rettberg, Andrew Stern, and Noah Wardrip-Fruin.
Façade, the long-awaited one-act interactive drama by Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern, is the first Auto Mata release. The interactive fiction Book and Volume is in the works now and will be coming from Auto Mata soon.