Judy Malloy, Editor
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A resource for teachers and students of new media writing, who are exploring what authoring tools to use, for new media writers and poets,
who are interested in how their colleagues approach their work, and for
readers, who want to understand how new media writers and poets create
their work, the Authoring Software project is an ongoing collection
of statements about authoring tools and software. It also looks at the
relationship between interface and content in new media writing and at
how the innovative use of authoring tools and the creation of new
authoring tools have expanded digital writing/hypertext writing/net
narrative practice in this vibrant contemporary creative writing field.
New Media Literature and the Digital Humanities: News
Conferences, Festivals, Organizations, and Calls for Papers and Works
Chercher le texte: the 2013 Conference of the Electronic Literature Organization Will Bring Electronic Literature to the Public in Paris, September 23-28
E-Poetry 2013 to be Held at Kingston University, London in June;
Program will Feature Presentations, Exhibitions, Performances, and a Pedagogy Colloquium
Center of Games and Playable Media at UC Santa Cruz to host
Inventing the Future of Games 2013 Interactive Storytelling Symposium 2013
May 10 at the Computer History Museum
With a Theme of "Avenues of Access", MLA2013 to Include an Exhibition of Electronic Literature
and over 60 Digital Humanities Panels
ELMCIP Invites Scholars and Artists to Remediating the Social,
Edinburgh, November 1-3, 2012
Milwaukee, June 25-28:
2012 ACM Hypertext and Social Media Conference to Focus on
Dimensions of Links in Hypertextual Systems
Leonardo Electronic Almanac Calls for Papers on "Generative & Algorithmic Art"
2012 Conference for the Electronic Literature Organization to be held at West Virginia
University from June 20-23; Media Art Exhibition Will Feature Work by 55 Artists
Digital Humanities 2012
to be Held at the University of Hamburg, July 16 -22, 2012;
Registration is Open.
First International Conference on Electronic Literature and New Media Art
to be held in Alcalá de Henares; Calls for Presentations
Critical Code Studies Working Group 2012
Addresses Reading Code in Context
FILE, 2012 Electronic Language International Festival in São Paulo,
Calls for Entries in Electronic Sonority, Interactive Arts, and Digital Language;
deadline is February 29.
Computers and Writing 2012 to Focus on "ArchiTEXTure: Composing and Constructing in
Digital Spaces"
Belgrade Resonate Festival to be Held March 16-17, 2012;
Will Look at the State of Technology in Arts and Culture
MLA 2012 to Feature Exhibition of Electronic Literature
ELMCIP E-literature in/with Performance Seminar to Convene at Arnolfini in Bristol, UK,
May 3-4, 2012; Conference Calls for Proposals
Hypertext 2012 to be Held in Milwaukee, June 25-28, 2012
The Kitchen and the ELO to Present An Evening of Interactive Performative Readings
Seattle, January 5-8:
2012 MLA Convention to feature panels on Reading Writing Interfaces:
Electronic Literature's Past and Present; Transmedia Stories and Literary Games
Boston: November 19-20, 2011: Dangerous Readings Will Explore Frontiers of New Narrative
Fourth International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling
to be held November 28 to December 1, 2011 in Vancouver, Canada
Foundations of Digital Games 2012 to be held in Raleigh, North Carolina, Calls for Papers;
Conference will include a Research and Experimental Game Festival
Elit to be Well Represented at ISEA2011, the 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art,
Istanbul, September 14-21;
Artists and Speakers include Mark Amerika, Roy Ascott,
Maurice Benayoun, Jay Bolter, Dene Grigar, Davin Heckman, Kristy Kang, Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo,
Donna Leishman, Rita Raley, Jill Walker Rettberg and Scott Rettberg
ELO 2012: Electrifying Literature, Affordances and Constraints to be held in
Morgantown, West Virginia, June 20-23, 2012: Conference Calls for Papers and Works
University of Michigan to Host 2011 HASTAC Conference; Topics Include
"Expanding the Digital Arts to Include the Humanities and Vice Versa"
Conference dates: December 2-3, 2011, Ann Arbor, MI
First Convention of Chinese/American Association for Poetry and Poetics
to Include "Poetry and New Media" - Wuhan, China, September 29-30, 2011
The Electronic Literature Organization Moves to MIT
New Media Consortium Will Hold 2011 Summer Conference from June 15-18
in Madison, Wisconsin
ISEA2011, the 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art, to be held in Istanbul,
September 14-21.
Texas Institute for Literary and Textual Studies
Symposium to Focus on the Digital Humanities
Hypertext 2011 to be Held in Eindhoven from June 6-9, 2011
E-Poetry Ten Year Anniversary Festival to be held May 18-21, 2011 at the University at Buffalo;
Registration Now Open
Interactive Fiction at PAX East: People's Republic of Interactive Fiction to Hold Mini-Convention;
IF Demo Fair to Showcase 23 works
Conference dates: March 11-13, 2011, Boston, MA
CHI 2011 to Focus on Diversity and on Connecting People, Cultures, Technologies, Experiences, and Ideas;
Featured Communities Include Games and Entertainment
Conference dates: May 7-12, 2011, Vancouver BC
2011 International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games to be held in Bordeaux, France;
Workshops on Procedural Content Generation and on Games and Video Game Accessibility Call
for Papers
Conference dates: June 28-July 1, 2011, Bordeaux, France
College Art Association Conference to Feature Sessions on "Data as Medium" and E-Publication
Conference dates: February 9-12. 2011, New York City
Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in
Practice Conference
Invites Creative Works
Conference dates: November 1-3, 2012
2011 MLA Convention in Los Angeles to Feature 60 Panels on the Narration of Lives
Conference dates: January 6-9, Los Angeles, CA
SITE 2011 - Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education Conference
Conference dates: March 7-11, Nashville, TN
Electronic Visualization and the Arts Calls for Proposals
Conference dates: July 6-8, 2011, London, UK
E-Poetry 2011 Announces Details; Calls for Proposals
Festival dates: May 18-21, 2011, to Buffalo, NY
Chicago Colloquium on Digital Humanities and Computer Science
International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling: papers
International Conference on Computational Creativity
Conference dates: April 27-29, 2011, Mexico City
International Conference to Focus on Latin American New Media Literature
Conference dates: May 19-20, 2011, Liverpool, UK
Critical Code Studies @ USC Explores Aspects of Code and Writing
2011 Independent Games Festival to Include Mobile, Handheld, and Experimental Games
Conference dates: February 28-March 4, San Francisco
2010 IDMAA Conference to Focus on The Digital Narrative
E-Poetry 2011 to be held in Buffalo
Archive and Innovate 2010 ELO International Conference & Festival
Interactive Digital Storytelling Invites Performance Submissions
Stanford Selected to host Digital Humanities 2011
SDH-SEMI in Montreal to Feature Hypertext Performance
Critical Code Studies to Host Conference at USC
New Books, Publications, and Resources
Winter 2012-2013: New and Forthcoming Books
New from MIT Press: 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
by Nick Montfort, Patsy Baudoin, John Bell, Ian Bogost, Jeremy Douglass,
Mark C. Marino, Michael Mateas, Casey Reas, Mark Sample, and Noah Vawter
Fall 2012: New and Forthcoming Books
C. T. Funkhouser: New Directions in Digital Poetry
Summer 2012 Books From MIT Press
New Books and Second Editions from O'Reilly Media:
Programming Interactivity;
Programming iOS 5; Head First HTML5 Programming; The Twitter Book
and more
New and Forthcoming Books Explore Digital Poetry; the Merging of Science and Technology
with the Arts; Poetry and Image; and New Media in the Classroom
Spring 2012 Books From MIT Press
New from the University of Michigan Press:
American Poetry in Performance From Walt Whitman to Hip Hop
From MIT Press: New Books on Digital Games
New from O'Reilly Media: Resources on HTML5
New Book from the University of Minnesota Press:
Digital Art and Meaning by Roberto Simanowski
Forthcoming from the University of Minnesota Press:
Mark Amerika's remixthebook
New Books from O'Reilly on Dreamweaver, Flash, Perl, and iPhone and iPad Development
New from MIT Press: Performing Mixed Reality
New Books from O'Reilly on HTML5, Processing, Audacity, JavaScript, and Python
The Proceedings of Critical Code Studies @ USC Available Online with Text and Video;
Keynote by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun addresses "Codes, Crises and Critical Pleasure"
ELMCIP Knowledge Base Goes Live; Features Access to Works of E-Literature, Criticism, Events,
and Teaching Resources
New and Forthcoming Books: Wendy Hui Kyong Chun: Programmed Visions;
Marina Grishakova and Marie-Laure Ryan: Intermediality and Storytelling; and
Aesthetics of Computer Art and Computer Games, and More
Amy Earhart and Andrew Jewell: The American Literature Scholar in the Digital Age
O'Reilly Manuals on Flash and Dreamweaver
New and Forthcoming Books
Recent Articles on HTML5
Emerging Language Practices - New E-Journal from the EPC
Software and Hardware Information and Updates
Apple Launches New iPad
New Books and Second Editions from O'Reilly Media:
Programming Interactivity;
Programming iOS 5; Head First HTML5 Programming; The Twitter Book
and more
Critical Code Studies Working Group 2012 Addresses Reading Code in Context
Adobe Previews Adobe Edge, an HTML5 Web Animation and Interaction Design Tool;
Invites Community Input
Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Enables Content Production on Mobile Platforms;
Includes Advances in HTML5 and Flash Authoring
The Proceedings of Critical Code Studies @ USC Available Online with Text and Video;
Keynote by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun addresses "Codes, Crises and Critical Pleasure"
Critical Code Studies @ USC Explores Aspects of Code and Writing
O'Reilly Manuals on Flash and Dreamweaver
Recent Articles on HTML5
Critical Code Studies to Host Conference at USC
Blogs
"Notes on the IF Community" - "Interactive Poetry Generation Systems"
September 20, 2013
Chercher le texte: the 2013 Conference of the Electronic Literature Organization Will Bring Electronic Literature to the Public in Paris, September 23-28
S
et in Paris, Cherchez le texte, the 2013 Conference of the Electronic Literature Organization, (ELO) will bring to the public and the International digital literature community
a multitude of forms of digital literature presented in exhibitions, performances, documentation, and panels/critical discussion -- beginning with a session on French digital poetry and also including two sessions on "Electronic Literature as World Literature".
Dominant themes at the heart of the Conference are:
a desire to present to a large public the many forms of electronic literature that have developed internationally
the presentation of historic genres of electronic literature, such as hyperfiction and generative poetry, in conjunction with contemporary genres and platforms of contemporary electronic literature, for example, the touch pad works by Collectif i-Trace, Caitlin Fisher, and Erik Loyer that are included in the exhibition
and the lineage of electronic literature in relationship to the work of younger practitioners
Cherchez le texte, the first ELO Conference to be held in Europe, is hosted by the Laboratoire Paragraphe and the EnsAD. (Ecole nationale suprieure des Arts Décoratifs) The organizing committee is chaired by Professor Philippe Bootz, (Paris 8) who is the co-founder of L.A.I.R.E, a French collective in digital literature and Transitoire Observable, an international collective in programmed poetry.
T
he official languages of the conference will be French and English. In their words:
"Au cours d'une semaine intense de débats, performances, conférences et expositions, la littérature
numérique s'offre à lire, à voir, à entendre, à jouer et à toucher en divers lieux culturels parisiens."
"The ELO is a family made up of hundreds of people distributed around the world but united by a love of electronic literature and experimental writing," observes incoming ELO President Dene Grigar, Director and Associate Professor of the Creative Media & Digital Culture Program at Washington State University Vancouver. "And so what I like about ELO 2013 Cherchez le texte is that it introduces the idea of an annual conference. We can now come together more frequently to reconnect and to share our ideas and work. It is a celebration of our family in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, one with a rich tradition of experimental literature, where electronic literature will be completely at home."
ELO Vice President and Director of West Virginia University's Center for Literary Computing, Sandy Baldwin points out that the conference will also be an excellent showcase for French electronic literature, as well as for emerging writers and scholars.
There is a long tradition of e-lit, particularly generative and algorithmic poetry and narrative in France, with its own unique characteristics, he explains. "As to young scholars and artists: many of the presenters are new faces, doing brilliant work, and looking at e-lit in new ways. In the end, this is the most important thing a conference can do -- keep the field fresh."
Launched under the leadership of the Laboratoire Paragraphe, (Universitè Paris 8) the Excellence Arts-H2H Lab, and Laboratory Music and Computer Marseille, Cherchez le texte is one of the most important international events of digital literature ever to have been organized in France.
"A lot of the credit goes to Professor Philippe Bootz of the University of Paris 8. (Saint Denis) Bootz and his colleagues worked hard to schedule events at tremendous venues, and of course Paris is full of amazing locations," Sandy Baldwin emphasizes. "We're starting with performances at the Pompidou Museum, followed by a day of presentations at the Bibliothè que Nationale de France. (BNF) The main conference events are at EnsAD, with additional performances at Le Cube. In all, these are tremendous showcases for e-lit, and the organization is honored to be featured in these venues."
E
LO 2013 will be followed by ELO 2014 in Milwaukee, and then the conference will return to Europe for ELO 2015 in Bergen Norway. "And hopefully we'll eventually hold conferences in Australia, South American, and elsewhere," Badwin notes.
Exhibitions and a Series of Performances Present Electronic Literature Throughout Paris
Phillipe Bootz: Detail from Ping Pong Poem --
to be presented in a series of Evenings of Performances at le Cube, Issy-les-Moulineaux
Les littèratures numèriques d'hier á demain
O
rganized by le laboratoire Musique et Informatique de Marseille (MIM) in collaboration with le Labo BnF, (Bibliothèque Nationale de France François-Mitterand) and le labex ARTS-H2H de l'universitè Paris 8, among others,
the exhibition Les littèratures numèriques d'hier á demain
will open on September 24 at le Labo BnF and run until December 1, 2013.
The gallery will feature digital poetry created for the exhibition by
Brian Barrachina, Douglas Duteil, Cassandra Ribotti,
as well as Amaranth Borsuk and Brad Bouse's Between Page and Screen.
The concurrent virtual gallery includes an international selection of web-based works of electronic literature.
Illya Szilak: title page from Queerskins. The title page includes images by Illya Szilak and Pelin Kirca; graphic design by Cyril Tsiboulski who also created the interactive experience for Queerskins. Queerskins will be on exhibition in the Virtual Gallery, le Labo BnF, through December 1, 2013.
Among many other works, the web-based exhibition at le Labo BnF includes:
- M.D. Coverley (USA) Tarim Tapestries
- Chris Funkhouser (USA) Funk's SoundBox 2012
- Catherine Lenoble (France) Petit bain
- Judy Malloy (USA) From Ireland with Letters
- Maria Mencia (UK) Transient self-portrait
- Jason Nelson (Australia) untitled art/poetry games
- Gao Tian (France) je l'ai dèjè oublièe;
- Elvia Wilk (Germany) Kenny Drama
plus works by Mez Breeze and Andy Campbell, J.R. Carpenter, Loss Pequeño Glazier. Jean-François Gleyze, Mark Marino, Mark Sample, Illya Szilak and many others.
JR Carpenter: ..and by islands I mean paragraphs
"...and by islands I mean paragraphs casts a reader adrift in a sea of white space dotted with computer-generated paragraphs whose fluid compositions draw upon a literary corpus of island texts ranging from Shakespeare's The Tempest, to Bishop's Crusoe in England. Collectively these islands constitute a topographical map of a sustained practice of reading and re-reading and writing and re-writing islands...and by islands, I do mean paragraphs."
on exhibition in the Virtual Gallery, le Labo BnF, through December 1, 2013.
Festival Evenings of Performances
D
uring Cherchez le texte, a series of elit-based performances will take place at venues including Petite salle du centre Pompidou; BnF François-Mitterand Grand Auditorium; Le Cube, Centre de crèation numèrique; and EnsAD.
Hortense Gauthier and Phillipe Boisnard will perform
Contact / HP Process at Le Cube:
"A man and a woman write to each other through intermediary screens and from behind their keyboards they improvise a dialogue in which they deconstruct and blur network chat and relationship codes in a poetic, performance-driven way."
Philippe Bootz will perform his Pong ping poème, a work which is part of his "little poems which are uncomfortable to read" series. In Pong ping poème, 50 texts are read in a random order. But the audio is controlled by a ping pong game, and the performer must win in order to be heard.
Works in the Cherchez le Texte Performance Festival also include, among many others:
- Sandy Baldwin and Alan Sondheim (USA) Svaha, Tantra, Death: A Second Life
- Philippe Castellin and Jean Torregrosa: (France) Lectures numériques assistées par ordinateur
- Jerome Fletcher and Caden Lovelace (UK) The Fetch
- Compagnie Alis et Collectif I-Trace (France) La Séparation / Separation
- Maria Goicoechea and Mark Marino (USA) Off Course: Escuela del Caos
- Emmanuel Guez and Annie Abrahams (France) ReadingClub
- Jason Edward Lewis (Canada) Vital to the General Public Welfare
- Cécile Portier (France) Étant donnée
Maria Goicoechea and Mark Marino: Off Course: Escuela del Caos
a performance art/pedagogy piece carried out in a Moodle Course Management System. ELO2013 Performance at EnsAD, September 27
Sessions, Panels, Roundtables, and a Workshop
From French Digital Poetry to "Aura in the Age of Computational Production"
B
eginning with presentations on French Digital Poetry by Samuel Petit, Florent Souillot, Alexandra Saemmer and Philippe Bootz, and Elodie Bertrand and Jean-Philippe Humblot, sessions include, among many others:
Game
- Patrick Jagoda, "Digital Games and Electronic Literature: Toward an Intersectional Analysis"
- Jim Brown, "Limbo and the Edge of the Literary"
- Stephanie Boluk & Patrick LeMieux, "The Phantom Pain, The Helen Keller Simulator, and Disability in Games"
- Respondent: Nick Montfort
Game Again
- Michael Heron, "Authorship and Autership in the Collaborative Development Process of Text-Based Games"
- Richard Holeton, "The Game Walkthrough as Novel: Linear Plaintext or Transmedia E-lit?"
Time, Space, Interface
- Maria Angel & Anna Gibbs, "The Ethos of 'Life': digital writing and the temporal animation of space"
- Will Luers, "'Make Me Think': Composing the Narrative Interface"
- Mark Marino, "Close Reading E-Literature"
Writers on Writing
- Samantha Gorman, "Community Repository of Writers on Writing"
- Johannah Rodgers, "Beyond Binaries: Continuity and Change in Literary Experimentation in Response to Print and Digital Technologies"
- Dene Grigar, "Curating Electronic Literature as a Critical Practice"
Image, Sound, Text
- John Barber, "Internet radio and electronic literature: locating the text In aural narratives"
- Bryan Barrachina, "Tierra de Extraccion: How Hypermedia Novels could enhance Literary Assessment"
- Claudia Kozak, "Out of Bounds: Searching Deviated Literature in Audiovisual Electronic Environments"
- Calum Rodger, "Reading the Drones: Working Towards a Critical Tradition of Interactive Poetry Generation"
Digital Distancing
Scott Rettberg, Jill Walker Rettberg, Elisabeth Nesheim and Luciana Gattass, "Distant Readings of a Field: Using Macroanalytic Digital Research Methods to Data Mine the ELMCIP Knowledge Base"
Close Reading E-Lit
- Anastasia Salter, "Spirals of Meaning: Exploring Nonlinearity through Prezi's Infinite Canvas"
- David Boyles, "A Machine Made of Words by a Machine Made of Numbers"-- Authorial Presence in Niemi's Stud Poetry"
- Stéphan Hyronde, "La double démesure de l'oeuvre textuelle metastable"
Aura in the Age of Computational Production (Roundtable)
Leonardo Flores, Kathi Inman Berens, J.R. Carpenter, Jason Edward Lewis, Erik Loyer, David Jhave Johnston and Nick Montfort
Electronic Literature as World Literature (2)
- Tiffany Zerby and Sandy Baldwin, "Editing Electronic Literature in the Global Publishing System"
- Laura Borràs & Isaias Herrero, "Real-Time Digital Poetry Experiments with Xbox Kinect"
- Carolina Gainza, "Modes of production and reception of electronic literature in Latin America. An analysis of 'Tierra de extracción' from Doménico Chiappe and Andreas Meier"
- Reheniglei Rehem, "Panorama de la production scientifique au Brésil : cyberculture et poésie numérique (2000-2010)
Cherchez le texte also includes a Digital Poetry Workshop --
designed and hosted by Alexandra Saemmer, research professor at Paris 8 and resulting in a performance of the experience. Participants will explore "the possibilities and impossibilities of restoring personal memory by using digital expression tools. Participants will use an open source writing tool, Prezi, whose basic features are 'diverted' in order to allow personal literary expression."
The Consortium for Electronic Literature (CELL)
A
dditionally, Joseph Tabbi, professor of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Sandy Baldwin, and Director of West Virginia University's Center for Literary Computing, will be presenting on the Consortium for Electronic Literature (CELL) at the CELL Roundtable on "Naming Authority and Interoperability in Paris".
Participants in the CELL Roundtable are, in addition to Tabbi and Baldwin,
Davin Heckman, Lisa Swanstrom, and Ewan Branda.
Tabbi explains that "The context is a development under way across eight literary databases, the Consortium for Electronic Literature. Under the leadership of NT2 in Montreal, and with input from the editorial group at the Electronic Literature Directory and the journal I edit, EBR,
we're developing a cross-site search engine; also we'll be creating a 'naming authority' so that we can locate authors whose names might appear differently when they're
signing different works, or the same works in different locations."
As regards the search engine, he points out that "for the first time, scholars, students, and the general
public will be able to search for bibliographical data on creative works of e-lit, drawing from eight databases from around the world."
Pourquoi l'avoir intitulé Chercher le texte ?
I
n response to the question -- Why the title Cherchez le texte? -- in
an interview available on the Conference website, Conference organizer Phillipe Bootz
replies that:
"La question du texte, sous -- entendu littéraire, est
au centre du questionnement adres
sé à ces types de productions
: est -- ce vraiment de la
'littérature' Avec le multimédia, l'interactivité
et d'autres caractéristiques que le festival donne à
voir, la question du texte et de sa place reprend
une pertinence qu'elle semblait avoir perdue.
Il ne donne pas à =voir ou à
'lire' de façon intuitive et
immédiate, mais à chacun selon sa vérité. Les
formes de la littérature numérique ouvrent sans
aucun doute une réflexion sur la littérature."
F
or more information on Chercher le texte -- the 2013 Conference of the Electronic Literature Organization, Paris, September 23-28 -- visit the Conferece website at
http://chercherletexte.org
June 10, 2013
E-Poetry 2013 to be Held at Kingston University, London in June;
Program will Feature Presentations, Exhibitions, Performances, and a Pedagogy Colloquium
Created by Zuzana Husárová and L'ubomír Panák, the interactive textual
and new media performance I : * ttter will be exhibited in the E-Poetry 2013
exhibition Words Unstable on the Table, at the Riverside Gallery,
curated by María Mencía.
F
ollowing Festivals in Buffalo, West Virginia, London, Paris, and Barcelona, E-Poetry,
a seminal International Festival of digital literature and scholarship, returns to London.
Presented by the Buffalo-NY based Electronic Poetry Center, with the support of Kingston University
London and the Watermans Art Centre, E-Poetry 2013 will take place from June 17-20 at Kingston
University.
"This Festival is intended as a worldwide gathering, different perspectives convening at one time,"
the Festival notes. "We hope to build connections that are sustainable, energizing, and that reach across
disciplines. More importantly, the 'poetry' in 'E-Poetry' does not signal a genre preference
but an ORIGIN -- MAKING as a means of realizing art, a delight in digital literary invention.
Our emphasis is on the multiple literary and artistic ramifications of digital media
writing and its critical reception through extending modes and practices that transcend
limits of genre or specific technologies. We celebrate new voices, emergent thoughtful
articulation, performance, and cultural breadth in expression."
"every presenter is a keynote"
Poets, scholars and researchers who will present at E-Poetry 2013 include Amaranth Borsuk,
Serge Bouchardon, Andy Campbell, John Cayley, Giovanna Di Rosario, Natalia Fedorova, Penny Florence,
Leonardo Flores, María Mencía, Nick Montfort, Jason Nelson, Sarah Tremlett, Talon Memmott,
Christine Wilks, and Jody Zellen, among many others. Conference presentations also include a
pre-festival Pedagogic Colloquium hosted by María Mencía, artist-researcher and Senior Lecturer in New Media Theory and Digital Media Practice in the School of Performance and Screen Studies
at Kingston University.
"Every presenter fits nicely and, as always, at E-Poetry -- every presenter is a keynote!"
Loss Pequeño Glazier, Director of the Electronic Poetry Center and the E-Poetry
festivals, emphasizes.
"Where else do you get so many keynotes, one after another?!"
"....twists and turns with dazzling treats at the end of gorgeously honed paths"
Poet Loss Pequeño Glazier, who is a professor in the Department of Media Study,
SUNY Buffalo, is also enthusiastic about the breadth and the open format of the program. "It's got range,
style, diverse conversations, threads, themes, motifs; a stunning range of innovative performances;
...it presents twists and turns with dazzling treats at the end of gorgeously honed paths;
it's rich with UK presenters; it includes special panels from Russia, on Latin American digital poetry,
presentations from Slovenia, Poland, Romania, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Australia, a special guest
winging it from Hong Kong, plus we also include Western Europe and North America. Lots of newcomers
all around!"
The program also
includes presenters from Peru, Iran, Mexico, Greece, Puerto Rico, Latvia, the Netherlands, Germany,
Spain, Norway, Sweden, France, Australia, Canada, and the US. "I am especially excited about the number
of women artists and scholars and younger participants, who appear in the program in highly visible places,"
Glazier notes.
A Pre-Festival Pedagogic Colloquium
E-Poetry 2013 will begin with a pre-festival Pedagogic Colloquium, produced by poet
and Kingston University Professor, María Mencía.
Among the professors, poets, and researchers in electronic
literature, who will address the practice and theory of electronic literature in the classroom,
are:
- Serge Bouchardon, University of Technology of Compiègne, France
- Leonardo Flores on teaching with ongoing scholarly blogging
- Judy Malloy (virtually) on Electronic Literature Authoring Systems
- María Mencía on "Theory as analysis and methodology in practice-based creative media"
- Jeneen Naji, National University of Ireland Maynooth
- Kate Pullinger on "pedagogy in the field of where creative writing
meets technology"
- Maya Zalbidea Paniagua, Universidad La Salle, Madrid
Other presenters include Amaranth Borsuk, University of Washington, Bothell;
Antonella Castelvedere, University Campus Suffolk; Maria Engberg, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden;
Zuzana Husárová, Comenius University and Masaryk University, Slovakia;
and Talan Memmott, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden.
Words Unstable on the Table
Curator María Mencía's invitation to the E-Poetry 2013 exhibition,
Words Unstable on the Table.
In her words from the catalogue:
"The works in
the exhibition touch upon a variety of themes, literary, cultural,
social and historical aspects such as; nature, identity, gender,
multilingualism, reading, remixing, translation, evanescence,
online-communication and digital culture. And they do so by
combining different software, programming languages, mobile
technology, network possibilities and new media tools, to produce a
wide spectrum of creative practice in the form of game like
structures, videos, digital-poems, net.art and language new media
art."
At Watermans Art Centre's Riverside Gallery, the exhibition Words Unstable on the Table,
will feature new works of electronic literature, including:
- Amaranth Borsuk, Jesper Juul, and Nick Montfort
The Deletionist
Created in
The Trope Tank at MIT, The Deletionist produces "an alternate Web of poems"
from the texts of World Wide Web pages. The project is informed by historical works that use
literary "erasure" to create a new works out
of existing works, such as Ronald Johnson's Radi os,
(based on Paradise Lost) Jen Bervin's Nets,
(based on Shakespeare's sonnets)
and Mary Ruefle's A Little White Shadow.
(based on a test "Published for the Benefit of a Summer Home for Working Girls")
"Our readings and analyses of these projects, and particularly those which invite curiosity
and wonder at language rather than seeking simply to amuse, informed our development of
The Deletionist," they explain.
The authoring system will be available at E-Poetry 2013 as free software,
as a JavaScript bookmarklet.
- Andy Campbell and Christine Wilks
Inkubus
"a first-person playable
coming-of-age story, in 2D and 3D, that centers on a teenage girl, immersed in contemporary
digital culture"
- Zuzana Husárová and L'ubomír Panák
I : * ttter (at Studio2)
The multilingual multimedia (text, visuals, sound) artists' project I : * ttter is based
on the Kinect 3D sensor. In the artist's words: "This interactive installation utilizes the remake
principle in two ways: a textual level -- interacting with leading works of international Net.Art
and a sonic level -- in relation to the fundamentals of the theremin." They explain that
"The performance refers to the constant remixing of the textual as well as media material.
It also questions the use and perception of the text that is excluded from its original
media environment. It wants to direct
the attention to the history of media art in Central Europe and bring
to the public the possibility to remix the works in real time."
Also in the exhibition Words Unstable on the Table are works by:
Johannes Heldén
Martha McCollough
María Mencía and J. Miftah-R. Yacouby
Jason Nelson
Ottar Ormstad
and Martin Rieser.
"...the celebration of digital literature in its cultural richness, diversity,
and pure literary innovation"
With additional events taking place at Tate
Britain, the Poetry Centre, and the Watermans Art Centre,
E-poetry 2013 also includes evening performances by Pierre Fourny and Serge Bouchardon,
Kate Pullinger, Penny Florence, John Cayley, Loss Pequeño Glazier, jhave, John Ferguson
and Diana Salazar and Hazel Smith, among others.
"I am especially pleased with the seventh biennial E-Poetry conference, now spanning 14 years as a distinct voice among other events in the field,"
Festival Director, Loss Pequeño Glazier, emphasizes. "E-Poetry, the original and longest running
digital literature conference, fulfills a special role in the field: it is a premier site for
the celebration of digital literature in its cultural richness, diversity, and pure literary innovation. Our continued attention on emerging voices and original
ideas shows that it has clearly paid off, E-Poetry 2013 Kingston-London is presenting one of the most diverse and richest selection of works ever.
I am truly delighted to be a part of E-Poetry's second London conference!"
More Information
E-poetry 2013 is presented by the
Electronic Poetry Center, Dept. of Media Study, State University of New York, Buffalo
with the support of the
Kingston Writing School
the Practice Research Unit
the
School of Performance &
Screen Studies
Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences,
Kingston University London
and the
Watermans Art Centre.
For complete information and registration, visit
http://epc.buffalo.edu/e-poetry/2013/
April, 22, 2013
Center of Games and Playable Media at UC Santa Cruz to Host
Inventing the Future of Games: Interactive Storytelling Symposium 2013
at the Computer History Museum
On May 10, 2013, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, the Center of Games and
Playable Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) will host creators, thinkers,
researchers, and industry representatives at an event that will, in their words. "delve deeply
into the technologies and designs of games that enable new ways to craft and deliver narratives".
With a focus on exploring storytelling in game environments, Inventing the Future of Games:
Interactive Storytelling Symposium 2013 will address play, techno-creativity, authoring systems,
and the future of interactive storytelling in a day of talks, discussions, game-making community,
and refreshment.
In an opening presentation, Michael Mateas, Associate Professor of Computer Science at UCSC
and creator (with Andrew Stern) of the interactive narrative/drama Façade,
will ask the question: "Why Interactive Storytelling?".
Game designer Warren Spector (Deus Ex, Epic Mickey) will deliver the keynote,
and Brenda Romero, (Wizardry 8, Train) game designer in residence, at U.C.
Santa Cruz, will close the Symposium with "He Wouldn't Walk Away: Stories from Train"
Three panels will focus on core issues at the intersection of
contemporary games and interactive narrative. They are:
- Session One: Storytelling Current Practice
With Clint Hocking, Kevin Bruner, and Richard Rouse
Moderator: Michael Mateas
- Session Two: Tools and Authorship for Next-Generation Narratives
With Emily Short, Asa Kalama, and Stéphane Bura
Moderator: Noah Wardrip-Fruin
- Session Three: Immersive Transmedia Storyworlds
With Matt MacLaurin, Susan Bonds, and Tawny Schlieski
Moderator: Brenda Laurel
A complete schedule, a registration form, and more information about
Inventing the Future of Games: Interactive Storytelling Symposium 2013
are available at
http://ifogevents.com
Twitter: @playableUCSC
hashtag: #IFOG2013
January, 22, 2013
Winter 2012-2013: New and Forthcoming Books
From Critical Theory and the Digital by David Berry to
Speaking Code, Coding as Aesthetic and Political Expression by Geoff Cox and Alex McLean,
to the paperback edition of Mary Flanagan's Critical Play: Radical Game Design,
new and forthcoming books of interest to the electronic literature
community address issues of code; game and interactive media design; social media;
and literature in a digital humanities era.
They include:
- David M. Berry
Critical Theory and the Digital
Bloomsbury Academic, due 2013
- Alison Byerly
Are We There Yet?
Virtual Travel and Victorian Realism
Ann Arbor, MI University of Michigan Press, 2012
- Geoff Cox and Alex McLean
Speaking Code, Coding as Aesthetic and Political Expression
Foreword by Franco "Bifo" Berardi
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, November 2012
- Ulrik Ekman, ed.
Throughout
Art and Culture Emerging with Ubiquitous Computing
Foreword by Matthew Fuller
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, November 2012
Includes Jay David Bolter, Mark Hansen, N. Katherine Hayles, Susan Kozel, Lev Manovich, and Simon Penny,
among many others
- Mary Flanagan
Critical Play: Radical Game Design
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, paperback edition, due February 2013
- Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green
Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture
NY: NYU Press, January 2013
- Jose van Dijck
The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media
Oxford University Press, 2013
- Roger Whitson and Jason Whittaker
William Blake and the Digital Humanities: Collaboration,
Participation, and Social Media
Routledge, 2012
- David Wood
Basics Interactive Design 01: Interface Design
AVA Publishing, 2013
See also 2012 Authoring Software Book Lists and Reviews:
New from MIT Press: 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
by Nick Montfort, Patsy Baudoin, John Bell, Ian Bogost, Jeremy Douglass,
Mark C. Marino, Michael Mateas, Casey Reas, Mark Sample, and Noah Vawter
Fall 2012: New and Forthcoming Books
C. T. Funkhouser: New Directions in Digital Poetry
Summer 2012 Books From MIT Press
New Books and Second Editions from O'Reilly Media:
Programming Interactivity;
Programming iOS 5; Head First HTML5 Programming; The Twitter Book
and more
New and Forthcoming Books Explore Digital Poetry; the Merging of Science and Technology
with the Arts; Poetry and Image; and New Media in the Classroom
Spring 2012 Books From MIT Press
January 1, 2013
With a Theme of "Avenues of Access", MLA2013 to Include an Exhibition of Electronic Literature
and over 60 Digital Humanities Panels
Held in Boston from January 3-6, 2013, the 128th Modern Language Association (MLA) Annual
Convention will present over 700 panels. Set by current MLA President
Michael Bérubé, the Presidential Theme, "Avenues of Access", encompasses
student access to higher education; tenure-track jobs for PhDs; disability
studies for the humanities; and open access and the future of scholarly communication.
"The four topics I have in mind are bound by the multivalence of the term access
-- that is to say, by the multiple desires aand aspirations we attach to it," Bérubé notes in his statement.
The over 60 MLA2013 panels on the Digital Humanities range from Digital Diasporas, chaired by
Shelley Fisher Fishkin; (Stanford University) to Networked Chicanas/os,
chaired by Domino Renee Perez; (University of Texas, Austin) to Social Media and
Scholarship: The State of Middle-State Publishing;
(chaired by Alexander Reid, University at Buffalo, State University of New York) to
Games for Teaching Language, Literature, and Writing. (chaired by Brian Croxall,
Emory University)
Amaranth Borsuk and Brad Bouse, the creators of
Between Page and Screen, demonstrate the work's convergence of print and electronic media.
Between Page and Screen is included in the MLA2013 exhibition of electronic literature,
Avenues of Access.
Avenues of Access:
An Exhibit & Online Archive of New 'Born Digital' Literature
In the field of Electronic literature, a highlight of the MLA2013 Convention will begin at noon on January
3 with the opening of Avenues of Access: An Exhibit & Online Archive of New 'Born Digital' Literature curated by Dene Grigar
and Kathi Inman Berens. Featuring multimodal narrative, multimodal poetry, literary games, e-essays, and mobile/locative works,
Avenues of Access will take place at the Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention Center and
run through January 5, 2013.
"Avenues of Access: An Exhibit and Online Archive of New Born Digital Literature marks the second
exhibit that my co-curator Kathi Inman Berens and I have mounted for the Modern Language Association,"
Dene Grigar notes in her curatorial statement. Grigar, who is Associate Professor
and Director of the Creative Media & Digital Culture Program at Washington State University Vancouver,
explains that "This year's show builds on last year's exhibit, which resulted in numerous scholarly references
in Digital Humanities Now, Kairos, Authoring Software, and HASTAC,
as well as visits to the show by over 600 MLA participants and over 3500 viewers to the online archive --
and it does so by introducing many new authors and newly created works of electronic literature.
As such, Avenues of Access aims to show that because of its close connection to digital technologies,
electronic literature is as an art form both vibrant and evolving, one that has found a comfortable home
among the Digital Humanities."
Emphasizing the importance of live exhibitions of electronic literature, co-curator Kathi Inman Berens,
who is a professor at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School of Communication and a
Fellow at the Annenberg Innovation Lab, observes in her statement that "One is much more likely to
encounter difference, make spontaneous and serendipitous associations, at a live event". As an example,
she relates one of her favorite moments from MLA2012 "when Renaissance
scholar Janelle Jenstaad and Invisible Seattle artist Rob Wittig mashed up
London 1560 and Seattle mid-1980s. Janelle unscrolled her gigantic London map and she and Rob poured
over it talking narrative, urbanism, and who knows what else. Experiences like that don't happen
when you read e-lit alone. Convergence".
Image from Megan Heyward's of day, of night (2002; Eastgate 2005)
"an experimental new media work that is part narrative, part game, part memory and dream".
of day, of night is included in the MLA2013 exhibition, Avenues of Access.
In a curatorial response to the MLA2013 Theme, Avenues of Access, the exhibition presents
a selection of contemporary media art and electronic literature that highlights diverse approaches to
digital textuality, such as the use of commented code to enhance literary experience and contingently,
the relationship of interface to narrative content; such as the influence of concrete poetry, artists books,
and conceptual text art on contemporary electronic literature; such as how in certain works,
migration to a new platform results in an elegantly translated narrative environment; and such as
the continuing innovative use of graphic images, video, sound, and found information in literary contexts.
For instance, in JR Carpenter's Notes on the Voyage of Owl and Girl, a voyage narrative is
navigated with Wikipedia pages that are linked into the text at places where information is important
to the understanding of this imagined journey.
To describe Opacity, his short interactive story in four parts, Serge Bouchardon writes:
"We live in an age of obsession with transparency especially in politics and business.
But in our personal relationships, what is the point of being transparent to oneself and to others?
The following interactive narrative commends a kind of opacity which is meant as an in-between.
It is the story of a journey from a dream of transparency to a desire for opacity."
In The P.o.E.M.M. cycle: What They Speak When They Speak to Me,
Jason Edward Lewis -- who is Assistant Professor of Digital Image/Sound and the Fine Arts at
Concordia University, as well as founding director of the OBX Laboratory for Experimental
Media and co-director of Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace -- creates You've Got No Choice
About the Terminology?, an evocative touch-poem of dense continuously flowing text
on which the viewer interactively superimposes visual text and graphic imagery redolent
of native culture.
The theme of translating/migrating works of electronic literature is illustrated in the exhibition by
the journey -- from other platforms to IPad app -- of works by Steve Tomasula, Jody Zellen, and Judy Malloy.
(the Eastgate iPad edition of Malloy's its name was Penelope, previously published by Eastgate on
disk and CD) Contingently, in The Quaker Oat Box
- Infinite Regress, M.D. Coverley explorres changes in the look and feel of electronic literature,
and in the process, she looks at issues of aesthetics and evolving hardware and
software.
On Friday, January 4, 2013, at Emerson College's Bordy Theatre in Boston, the curators are hosting an
evening of performances by artists featured in the exhibition, including
Alan Bigelow, Bill Bly, Amaranth Borsuk, Caitlin Fisher, Mark Marino, Nick Montfort, Stephanie Strickland,
Laura Zaylea, and some of the 10 authors of the collaboratively authored MIT Press book
10 PRINT CHR$ (205.5+RND (1)); : GOTO 10.
A complete list of the artists and works in this exhibition is available on the Avenues of Access
exhibition website at
http://dtc-wsuv.org/elit/mla2013/index.html
and is also available at the
conclusion of this article.
From Alchemies of Old and New Media to Video Games: Digital
Humanities Sessions at MLA2013
As electronic literature has become a more integral part of digital humanities
and of the literature and language curriculum, this inclusion has been mirrored in contemporary MLA
programs. Although, from the point of view of this writer/editor, the inclusion of electronic
literature in dedicated panels is a continuing need, it is also important that
electronic literature is integrated into MLA sessions, as it is this year in sessions such as
Crossed Codes: Print's Dream of the Digital Age,
Digital's Memory of the Age of Print; (chaired by Marta L. Werner, D'Youville College)
and such as Convergent Histories of the Book: From Manuscript to Digital, a session,
chaired by Alex Mueller, University of Massachusetts, Boston, which
will bring together scholars of manuscripts, print, and digital
media to discuss "how contemporary forms of textuality intersect with,
duplicate, extend, or draw on manuscript technologies."
Additionally, many of this year's presentations -- for example,
Digital Pedagogy: An Unconference Workshop, chaired by
Brian Croxall, Emory University and Adeline Koh, Richard Stockton College of New Jersey --
are of interest to teachers and students of electronic literature and digital textuality.
Below are details about some of the MLA2013 sessions of potential interest to readers of Authoring
Software and to teachers in related fields in the digital humanities. Complete listings
and details can be found in the MLA2013 Program at
http://www.mla.org/program
- Archaic Returns: Alchemies of Old and New Media
Presiding: Elissa Marder, Emory University
"A Sub-sublibrarian for the Digital Archive,"; Jamie Jones, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor;
"Gangs of New York: Fetishizing the Archive, from Benjamin to Scorsese,"
Melissa Tuckman, Princeton University; "Pocket Wireless and the Shape of Media to Come, 1899-1920,"
Grant Wythoff, Princeton University
- Avenues of Access: Digital Humanities and the Future of Scholarly Communication
Presiding: Michael Bérubé, Penn State University, University Park
"The Mirror and the LAMP," Matthew Kirschenbaum, University of Maryland, College Park;
"Access Demands a Paradigm Shift," Cathy N. Davidson, Duke University;
"Resistance in the Materials," Bethany Nowviskie, University of Virginia
- The Classroom as Interface
Presiding: Kathi Inman Berens, University of Southern California
"The Campus as Interface: Screening the University," Elizabeth Mathews Losh,
University of California, San Diego; "Being Distracted in the Digital Age," Jason Farman,
University of Maryland, College Park;
"Virtual Classroom Software: A Medium-Specific Analysis," Kathi Inman Berens;
"The Multisensory Classroom," Leeann Hunter, Georgia Institute of Technology
- Convergent Histories of the Book: From Manuscript to Digital
Presiding: Alex Mueller, University of Massachusetts, Boston
Kathleen Fitzpatrick, MLA; Martin Foys, Drew University;
Matthew Kirschenbaum, University of Maryland, College Park; Stephen G. Nichols,
Johns Hopkins University, MD; Kathleen A. Tonry, University of Connecticut, Storrs;
Sarah Werner, Folger Shakespeare Library
- Crossed Codes: Print's Dream of the Digital Age,
Digital's Memory of the Age of Print
Presiding: Marta L. Werner, D'Youville College;
"'Every Man His Own Publisher': Extraillustration and the Dream of the Universal Library,"
Gabrielle Dean, Johns Hopkins University, MD;
"Interactivity and Randomization Processes in Printed and Electronic Experimental Poetry,"
Jonathan Baillehache, Rutgers University, New Brunswick;
"Mirror World, Minus World: Glitching Nabokov's Pale Fire," Andrew Ferguson, University of Virginia;
Designed Futures of the Book," Kari M. Kraus, University of Maryland, College Park
- The Dark Side of Digital Humanities
Presiding: Richard A. Grusin, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Speakers: Wendy H. Chun, Brown University; Richard A. Grusin; Patrick Jagoda, University of Chicago;
Tara McPherson, University of Southern California; Rita Raley, University of California, Santa Barbara
- Digital Diasporas
Presiding: Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Stanford University
"Living Word," Corrie Claiborne, Morehouse College;
"Digital Griots," Adam Banks, University of Kentucky;
"Hip-Hop Archives," Marcyliena Morgan, Harvard University
- Digital Humanities and Theory
Presiding: Stefano Franchi, Texas A&M University, College Station
"Theoretical Things for the Humanities," Geoffrey Rockwell, University of Alberta
"From Artificial Intelligence to Artistic Practices: A New Theoretical Model for the Digital
Humanities," Stefano Franchi
"Object-Oriented Ontology: Escaping the Title of the Book," David Washington, Loyola University, New Orleans
- Digital Pedagogy: An Unconference Workshop
Presiding: Brian Croxall, Emory University
Adeline Koh, Richard Stockton Coll. of New Jersey
- Digital Technology, Environmental Aesthetics, Ecocritical Discourse
Presiding: Elizabeth Swanstrom, Florida Atlantic University
"Decoding the Desert: Reading the Landscape through the Transborder Immigrant Tool,"
Mark C. Marino, University of Southern California;
"Thoreau in Process: Reanimating Thoreau's Environmental Practice in Digital Space,"
Kristen Case, University of Maine, Farmington;
"Networks, Narratives, and Nature: Teaching Globally, Thinking Nodally,"
Melanie J. Doherty, Wesleyan College.
Responding: Stephanie Ann Smith, University of Florida
- Francophonies numérisées / Digital Francophonies
Presiding: Eileen Lohka, University of Calgary;
Catherine Perry, University of Notre Dame
"The Internet Poetics of Patrick Chamoiseau and Édouard Glissant," Roxanna
Curto, University of Iowa; "Toussaint en Amérique: Collaborations, dialogues et
créations multi-disciplinaires,"
Alain-Philippe Durand, University of Arizona;
"Bandes dessinées téléchargeables: Un nouveau moyen de mesurer la diffusion
de la langue française au 21ème siècle," Henri-Simon Blanc-Hoang,
Defense Language Institute
- Games for Teaching Language, Literature, and Writing
Presiding: Brian Croxall, Emory University
Speakers: Evelyn Baldwin, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville; Mikhail Gershovich, Baruch College,
City University of New York; Janice McCoy, University of Virginia;
Ilknur Oded, Defense Language Institute; Amanda Phillips, University of California,
Santa Barbara; Anastasia Salter, University of Baltimore; Elizabeth Swanstrom,
Florida Atlantic University
- How I Got Started in Digital Humanities: New Digital Projects from DHCommons
Presiding: Ryan Cordell, Northeastern University; Katherine Singer, Mount Holyoke College
Gert Buelens, Ghent University; Sheila T. Cavanagh, Emory University; Malcolm Alan Compitello,
University of Arizona; Gabriel Hankins, University of Virginia; Alexander C. Y. Huang,
George Washington University; Kevin Quarmby, Emory University; Lynn Ramey,
Vanderbilt University; Matthew Schultz, Vassar College
- Image, Voice, Text: Canadian Literature
Presiding: Sophie McCall, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby
"AvantGarde.ca: Toward a Canadian Alienethnic Poetics of the Internet,"
Sunny Chan, University of British Columbia; "Intermedial Witnessing in Karen Connelly's
Burmese Lessons," Hannah McGregor, University of Guelph; "Aboriginal New Media: Alternative
Forms of Storytelling," Sarah Henzi, University of Montreal
- MLArcade -- a rountable presenting separate, yet unified, digital writings on laptops
Sarah J. Arroyo, California State University, Long Beach; R. Scot Barnett,
Clemson University; Ron C. Brooks, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater; Geoffrey V. Carter,
Saginaw Valley State University; Anthony Collamati, Clemson University;
Jason Helms, University of Kentucky; Alexandra Hidalgo, Purdue University,
West Lafayette; Robert Leston, New York City Coll. of Tech., City University of New York
- Networked Chicanas/os
Presiding: Domino Renee Perez, University of Texas, Austin
"'Machete Don't Text': Robert Rodriguez's Media Ecologies," William Orchard, Colby College;
"Convergence Cultura? Reevaluating New Media Scholarship through a Latina/o Literary Blog, La Bloga,"
Jennifer Lozano, Univedrsity of Illinois, Urbana; "César Chávez's Video Library; or, Farm Workers and the
Secret History of New Media," Curtis Frank Márez, University of California, San Diego.
- New Materialism and Cultural Critique
Presiding: Kimberly DeFazio, University of Wisconsin, La Crosse
"Contemporary Technogenesis: Implications for the New Materialism," N. Katherine Hayles, Duke University;
"The Apocalyptic Logic of Speculative Materialism," Kevin Kearney, University of California, Santa Barbara;
"'Theory Too Becomes a Material Force': Militant and Messianic Materialism," Stephen C. Tumino,
Kingsborough Community College, City University of New York
- The Poetry of Uncertainty, the Uncertainty of Poetry
Presiding: Anthony Geist, University of Washington, Seattle
Speakers: Silvia Bermúdez, University of California, Santa Barbara;
Luis Charry, University of Maryland, College Park;
Michelle A. Clayton, Brown University; James Staig Limidoro, University of Texas, Austin;
Sharon Keefe Ugalde, Texas State University; Santiago R. Vaquera-Vásquez, University of Iowa
Responding: Anthony Geist
- Reading the Invisible and Unwanted in Old and New Media
Presiding: Lori A. Emerson, University of Colorado, Boulder
"Apple Macintosh and the Ideology of the User-Friendly," Lori A. Emerson;
"OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and the Vestigial Aesthetics of Machine Vision,"
Zach Whalen, University of Mary Washington; "Lost in Plain Sight: Microdot Technology and the Compression
of Reading," Paul Benzon, Temple University, Philadelphia; "An Account of Randomness in Literary
Computing," Mark Sample, George Mason University
- Reading, Reading Machines, and Machine Reading
Presiding: Jessica Pressman, American Council of Learned Societies
"Phonographic Reading Machines," Matthew Rubery, University of London, Queen Mary College;
"Mechanical Mediations of Miniature Text: Reading Microform," Katherine Wilson, Adelphi University;
"Between Human and Machine, a Printed Sheet: The Early History of OCR (Optical Character Recognition),"
Mara Mills, New York University
- Representing Race: Silence in the Digital Humanities
Presiding: Adeline Koh, Richard Stockton Coll. of New Jersey
Moya Bailey, Emory University; Anne Cong-Huyen, University of California, Santa Barbara;
Hussein Keshani, University of British Columbia; Maria Velazquez, University of Maryland,
College Park. Responding: Alondra Nelson, Columbia University
- Rewards and Challenges of Serial Scholarship
Presiding: Mark Sample, George Mason University
Douglas M. Armato, University of Minnesota Press;
Kathleen Fitzpatrick, MLA; Frank Kelleter, University of Göttingen;
Kirstyn Leuner, University of Colorado, Boulder; Jason Mittell, Middlebury College;
Ted Underwood, University of Illinois, Urbana
- Social Media and Scholarship: The State of Middle-State Publishing
Presiding: Alexander Reid, University at Buffalo, State University of New York
Heather Duncan, University at Buffalo, State University of New York; Matthew K. Gold,
New York City College of Tech., City University of New York;
Eileen Joy, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville;
Richard E. Miller, Rutgers University, New Brunswick;
Daniel Schweitzer, University at Buffalo, State University of New York.
Responding: Alexander Reid
- South Asian-izing the Digital Humanities
Presiding: Rahul Gairola, University of Washington, Seattle
"Creating Alternate Voices: Exploring South Asian Cyberfeminism,"
Suchismita Banerjee, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee;
"Digitizing Pakistani Literary Forms; or, E/Merging the Transcultural," Waseem Anwar,
Forman Christian College; "Reimagining Aesthetic Education: Digital Humanities in the Global South,"
Rashmi Bhatnagar, University of Pittsburgh. Responding: Amritjit Singh, Ohio University, Athens
- Theories and Practices of the Literary Lab
Presiding: Andrew Piper, McGill University
Mark Algee-Hewitt, Stanford University; Lindsey Eckert, University of Toronto;
Matthew Jockers, University of Nebraska, Lincoln;
Laura C. Mandell, Texas A&M University, College Station; Jeffrey Thompson Schnapp, Harvard University
- Theorizing Digital Practice, Practicing Digital Theory
Presiding: Victoria E. Szabo, Duke University
"What Text Mining and Visualizations Have to Do with Feminist Scholarly Inquiries," Tanya E. Clement,
University of Texas, Austin; "Building the Infrastructural Layer: Reading Data Visualization in
the Digital Humanities," Dana Solomon, University of California, Santa Barbara;
"What Should We Do with Our Games?" Stephanie Boluk, Vassar College
- Two Tools for Student-Generated Digital Projects: WordPress and Omeka in the Classroom
Presiding: Gabrielle Dean, Johns Hopkins University, MD
Amanda L. French, George Mason University; George Williams, University of South Carolina, Spartanburg.
Responding: Victoria E. Szabo
- Video Games
Presiding: Hillary L. Chute, University of Chicago
"Playful Aesthetics," Mary Flanagan, Dartmouth College; "Losing the Game: Gamification
and the Procedural Aesthetics of Systemic Failure," Patrick Jagoda, University of Chicago;
"Acoustemologies of the Closet: The Wizard, the Troll, and the Fortress,"
William Cheng, Harvard University
Detail from Steve Tomasula: TOC, A New-Media Novel, included in
the Avenues of Access Exhibition at MLA2013
Other artists and works in Avenues of Access:
An Exhibit & Online Archive of New 'Born Digital' Literature,
curated by Dene Grigar and Kathi Inman Berens, are as follows:
e-Essay
Mark Amerika: Grammatron
Evan Bissell and Erik Loyer: Knotted Line
Will Luers: 217 Views of the Tokaido Line
Alexandra Saemmer: Böhmische Dörfer
Multimodal Poetry
Jim Andrews: Aleph Null
Alan Bigelow: Last Word
Amaranth Borsuk and Brad Bouse: Between Page and Screen
Jhave: Mups
Nick Montfort and Stephanie Strickland: Sea and Spar Between
Jody Zellen: Spine Sonnet (which will will also be shown in its app format)
Multimodal Narrative
Bill Bly: We Descend 2.0
Serge Bouchardon: Opacity
J.R. Carpenter: Notes on the Voyage of Owl and Girl
M.D. Coverley: Quaker Oat Box --
Infinite Regress
Caitlin Fisher: "Circle"; (an augmented reality installation)
Megan Heyward: Of Day Of Night
Alexander Mouton: Passing Through
Aaron Reed: Almost Goodbye
Literary Games
Eric LeMay: Losing the Lottery
A. J. Patrick Liszkiewicz: Afeeld
Mark Marino: Living Will
Christine Wilks: Rememori
Mobile and Locative Works
Jason Edward Lewis: The P.o.E.M.M. cycle: What They Speak When They Speak to Me
Judy Malloy: its name was Penelope" (available for viewing at the exhibit
by permission of Eastgate Systems)
Jason Nelson: Uncontrollable Semantics
Paul Notzold: MCTXTM
Jörg Piringer: Konsonant
Manuel Portela: Google Earth: a poem for Voice and Internet
Steve Tomasula: TOC
Laura Zaylea: #Speak2MeinCode
Jody Zellen: Spine Sonnet
More information about Avenues of Access:
An Exhibit & Online Archive of New 'Born Digital' Literature, including complete curatorial statements
is available at
http://dtc-wsuv.org/elit/mla2013/index.html
Information about the MLA2012 electronic literature exhibition is in the Authoring Software article:
Dene Grigar, Lori Emerson, and Kathi Inman Berens,
"Impact Report for the Electronic Literature Exhibit
at the 2012 Modern Language Association Convention"
The top page for MLA2013 is at
http://www.mla.org/convention
The complete MLA2013 Program is at
http://www.mla.org/program
November 19, 2012
New from MIT Press: 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
by Nick Montfort, Patsy Baudoin, John Bell, Ian Bogost, Jeremy Douglass,
Mark C. Marino, Michael Mateas, Casey Reas, Mark Sample, and Noah Vawter
This month, MIT Press is releasing 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10,
a wiki-written book that uses an elegant line of code as a springboard to discuss
the cultural, historic, and exploratory uses of code.
Written in BASIC for the Commodore 64,
the one-line program 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10 was originally published in the
historic Commodore 64 User's Guide. It utilizes characters -- 205 \ and 206 / --
from the Commodore-specific character set, PETSCII in order to generate a (possibly) endless array
of screen-based maze-like pattern.
Incubated in the 2010 Critical Code Studies Working Group, the book's close study of 1980's PC culture and
programming was created by 10 writers: Nick Montfort, Patsy Baudoin, John Bell, Ian Bogost, Jeremy Douglass,
Mark C. Marino, Michael Mateas, Casey Reas, Mark Sample, and Noah Vawter.
Emphasizing the project's value as a seminal "intensive reading of code, its contexts,
and its relationship to culture",
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10 lead author
Nick Montfort, Associate Professor of Digital Media at MIT and the co-author of
Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System, (MIT Press, 2009) explains
that the book is "specifically a look at a line of BASIC for the Commodore 64, opening up a new consideration of how hobbyist
programming, recreational computing, and popular access to programming were influential in the
early 1980s and remain desirable today."
"The book was written collaboratively in a single voice by a fairly large group of authors -- ten of us --
showing that there is a new mode in which we can do scholarly work," Montfort emphasizes.
"This should be of interest to all sorts of researchers and scholars, even if they are not in the
digital media field specifically. It is a new and radically different sort of book that ten people
wrote together in a single voice, using a mailing list, a wiki, and other means."
"10 PRINT is the first book-length work of scholarship emerging out of Critical Code Studies,
specifically the 2010 Critical Code Studies Working Group," observes co-author Mark Marino, Associate
Professor and director of the Humanities and Critical Code Studies (HaCCS) Lab at the University of
Southern California. "What began as a discussion in one of the 'code critique' threads became a
collaborative interdisciplinary analysis taking up each token of an extremely concise little program.
10 PRINT stands as a powerful sign of the multitude of fascinating paths scholars can pursue when
they take the source code as their avenue into a digital object or into computational culture more broadly."
Co-author Jeremy Douglass, a postdoctoral researcher in software studies at the
University of California, San Diego, adds that "Our author group considered the program
and its cultural milieu in a wide variety of different contexts, including relationships
to computer science, psychology, art, design, mythology, and religion among many others.
We also examined the program in many incarnations and at many levels of operation:
as it circulated in print journals, as at appeared in pixels on a cathode ray tube, as code executing
on the physical hardware, and so forth."
Topics of discussion in the MIT Press title 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
include the use of emulators, such as the Commodore 64 emulator VICE;
the history of the BASIC language and its origins at Dartmouth; randomness;
the Commodore 64 computer; and the significance and uses of mazes -- from ancient mythology,
to early computer science; (such as Claude Shannon's Theseus Maze)
to contemporary translations of the program.
"Authors engaged in a creative process of adaptation, modifying or re-implementing the original program
in different ways in order to explore its possibility spaces and their implications," Jeremy Douglass
notes. "Many of these code variants-on-a-theme appear throughout the book. Making and discussing
these variants added a sense of wonder and whimsy to the project, reminding us that criticism
can be deeply creative."
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10, Mark Marino points out, also documents the
importance of Critical Code Studies (CSS) in looking at a wide range of programs --
from extensive commented code to a one line long program that leads to in depth dialogue in which
"as the scholars move through the code into discussions of the C64, BASIC, computer culture of the 1980s
and more, they trace the intersections of CCS with software and platform studies as well as
media archaeology, showing the interrelation of all of these approaches."
For more information about 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
visit the book's MIT Press page at:
http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/10-print-chr2055rnd1-goto-10-0
The Humanities and Critical Code Studies Lab
October 23, 2012
ELMCIP Invites Scholars and Artists to Remediating the Social, Edinburgh, November 1-3, 2012
Detail: Phillipe Bootz, "l'e-rabot poète" ("th'e-plane poet")
Hosted by Edinburgh College of Art, in collaboration with New Media Scotland
and University College Falmouth, and within the framework of the Electronic Literature as a
Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice research project, (ELMCIP)
the Remediating the Social conference and exhibition will take place at Inspace
in Edinburgh, Scotland from November 1-3, 2012.
ELMCIP Project Leader, Scott Rettberg observes that Remediating the Social is the last event
of this HERA-funded project
and is the seventh conference in a series focused on electronic literature communities,
publishing venues, pedagogy, and e-lit in
the context of new media art, digital poetics, and performance.
Rettberg, who is also a writer of electronic literature and an Associate Professor of digital culture
in the Department of Linguistic, Literary and
Aesthetic Studies at the University of Bergen, Norway, notes that "the conference in Edinburgh returns us to our more essential research question,
which is what we can learn about contemporary network-mediated creative communities through the example of electronic literature.
We are going to hear from a wide variety of critics, theorists, and artists addressing this topic in different ways."
The Conference, he emphasizes, " is very important for the field of electronic literature and particularly for electronic literature in the European context."
In keeping of the Conference theme, the conference will be e-cast on Bambuser at the channel:
http://bambuser.com/channel/ELMCIP, and remote attendees will be able to monitor events
and put questions to the conference.
Keynote and Plenary Session Speakers are Nick Montfort (MIT) - "Programming for Fun, Together", with
Rita Raley, (UC Santa Barbara, NYU) as respondent; Roberto Simanowski, (University of Basel) -
"The Compelling Charm of Numbers", with Friedrich Block (Kassel) as respondent; and
James Leach, (University of Aberdeen) Plenary Session: "Creativity as a Social Relation".
Among many others, artists, writers, and critics who will present at this conference are
Mark Amerika; (USA) Phillippe Bootz; (France) Andy Campbell (UK) and Kate Pullinger; (Canada/UK)
JR Carpenter; (Canada) John Cayley (US) and Daniel Howe; (UK) Shu Lea Cheang; (France)
Natalia Fedorova; (Russia/US)
Leonardo Flores; (Puerto Rico/Norway) Loss Pequeño Glazier; (US) Chris Joseph; (UK)
Donna Leishman; (Scotland)
Judd Morrissey and Mark Jeffery; (US) Søren Bro Pold; (Denmark) Eugenio Tisselli; (Spain)
and Christine Wilks. (UK)
Details: Donna Leishman: Borderline
Conference sessions include:
- Emergent Frameworks
"How do social media and network culture impact on communities?..."
Janez Strehovec - "Derivative Writing"
Yvonne Spielman - "Thinking in Networks"
Alexandra Saemmer - "Evaluating Digital Literature"
- Artist's Voices
"Close reading plays an important role in the exposition and
analysis of creative writing..."
Romy Achituv - "Embodied Algorithms"
Loss Pequeño Glazier - "Stringing Disturbances in Poetic Array Spaces"
Roderick Coover - "Spatial Remediations"
- Ludic Tactics
"Artist's play games and game-play can be art, as Duchamp showed..."
Leonardo Flores - "Authorial Scholarship 2.0"
Chris Funkhouser and Andrew Klobucar - "Players only Love you when they're Playin' "
Daphne Dragona - "The New Gamified Social"
- Practices in Context
"New writing practices emerge from and, in turn, help form communities...."
Natalia Fedorova - "Where is e-lit in Rulinet?"
Cécile Chevalier - "Rendezvous"
Donna Leishman - "Out of Place"
Remediating the Social Exhibition and Performances
"One of the most important aspects of this conference is the fact that we are concurrently launching an exhibition of commissioned artworks and
literary works that also address this topic -- most of them involving some contributory or participatory component in their making, and all developed
specifically for this event," Scott Rettberg emphasizes. "Another important aspect of this conference is that we are releasing a book, edited by
Simon Biggs and his team at the University of Edinburgh's Edinburgh College of Art, which includes both the papers that will be presented
and documentation of the works presented in the exhibition and performances."
Additionally Remediating the Social will be the site of initial release of the ELMCIP Anthology of European Electronic Literature,
edited by Maria Engberg and Talan Memmott at Blekinge Institute of Technology. "The anthology will include works of electronic literature
produced in a variety of European contexts and languages, and represent diverse formal approaches to electronic literature," Rettberg explains.
"It will also include a treasure trove of pedagogical resources useful to educators and students."
Initial copies of the ELMCIP Anthology of European
Electronic Literature will be available on USB drives at the conference.
A World Wide Web version will be released on the ELMCIP site shortly thereafter.
Detail: Phillipe Bootz: "les amis sur le seuil" (Friends on the doorstep)
The jury for the exhibition was Giselle Beiguelman, (University of Sao Paulo)
Simon Biggs; (University of Edinburgh), Friedrich Block; (Stiftung Brückner-Kühner, Kassel),
Laura Borràs Castanyer; (University of Barcelona) Mark Daniels; (New Media Scotland) Yra
Van Dijk; (University of Amsterdam) Jerome Fletcher; (University College Falmouth) Raine
Koskimaa; (University of Jyväskylä) Talan Memmott, (Blekinge Institute of Technology)
Scott Rettberg; (University of Bergen) and Janez Strehovec, (University of Ljubljana)
All the selected works were developed for and will premiere at the Remediating the Social
exhibition. In the words of the Conference, the selected works
"address how network-based creative practice can effect and reflect upon community formation and the role of creativity in social
ontologies."
The Remediating the Social Exhibition will take place November 1-25,
at Inspace, (a joint research partnership between the School of Informatics and
New Media Scotland) and ECA (Edinburgh College of Art) and will feature the following artists and works:
- Romy Achituv - "The Garden Library database"
- Philippe Bootz - "small uncomfortable reading poems"
- Mez Breeze - "_The_Tem(Cor)p(oral)_Body_"
- Andy Campbell and Kate Pullinger - "Duel"
- J. R. Carpenter - "The Broadside of a Yarn"
- John Cayley and Daniel Howe - "Common Tongues"
- Shu Lea Cheang - "Baby Work"
- Johannes Helden - "Natural History"
- Aya Karpinska - "Absurd in Public"
- Donna Leishman - "Borderline"
- Judd Morrissey - "The Final Problem"
- Jason Nelson - "Textual Skyline"
Detail: JR Carpenter: Broadside of a Yarn
Broadside of a Yarn was one of the works commissioned for the Remdiating the Social exhibition.
Her Authoring Software statement about this work is printed below:
In theory, The Broadside of a Yarn is a multi-modal performative pervasive networked narrative attempt to
chart fictional fragments of new and long-ago stories of near and far-away seas with nought but a QR reader and a hand-made map
of dubious accuracy. In practice, this project is, in a Situationist sense, willfully absurd endeavor. How can I, a displaced native of rural
Nova Scotia (New Scotland), perform the navigation of a narrative route through urban Edinburgh (Old Scotland)? How can any inhabitant
of dry land possibly understand the constantly shifting perspective of stories of the high seas?
The Broadside of a Yarn may perhaps be best understood as an assemblage - a collection of stories, a folio of broadsides,
a poli-vocal performance script, an unbound atlas of impossible maps, a network of interrelated narrative elements
mediated across a continuum forms. This assemblage is composed of a combination of visual
and textual sources from history, literature and cartography, and my own drawings, photographs,
and computer-generated narratives. Eponymously, The Broadside of a Yarn remediates the broadside,
a form of networked narrative popular from 16th century onward. Broadsides were written
on a wide range of topical subjects, cheaply printed on single sheets of paper (often with images),
widely distributed, and posted and performed in public.
During the Remediating the Social exhibition in Edinburgh,
The Broadside of a Yarn will be posted in a light-box in Inspace gallery. This print map,
and a series of freely distributed broadside-sized subsets of it, will be embedded with QR codes
which will link mobile devices to a set of separate yet interrelated digital texts. These may serve as scripts
for poli-vocal performances. They may propose imprecise and possibly impossible walking routes through the city.
Or they may suggest a journey of another kind, a pervasive performative wander through a sea of stories.
The combinatorial powers of computer-generated narrative conflate and confabulate characters, facts, and forms of narrative accounts
of fantastical islands, impossible pilots, and voyages into the unknown undertaken over the past 2340 years.
Performances at Remediating the Social will include:
- Annie Abrahams - "Huis Clos / No Exit - Beyond"
- Mark Amerika - "Re:Mix"
- Johannes Auer, Beat Suter and René Bauer - "Search Trilogy"
- Philippe Bootz - "Small uncomfortable reading poems"
- Andy Campbell and Kate Pullinger - Duel
- JR Carpenter - "The Broadside of a Yarn"
- Cris Cheek - "B A C K L I T"
- Brendan Howell - "Exquisite Code"
- Aya Karpinska - "Absurd in Public"
- Donna Leishman - "Borderline"
- Judd Morrissey & Mark Jeffrey - "The Final Problem"
More information about Remediating the Social is available at:
http://elmcip.net/conference
The complete program is available at
http://elmcip.net/conference/program
Information about Inspace is available at
http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/informatics/outreach/inspace
Although this is the project's final event,
ELMCIP will continue as a funded project until June of next year,
and several more publications will be released during that time. The ELMCIP
Electronic Literature Knowledge Base will also continue to
be available and will be developed further.
September 12, 2012
Fall 2012: New and Forthcoming Books
From How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis by N. Katherine Hayles to
the 4th edition of Game Coding Complete, new and forthcoming books of interest to the electronic literature
community address issues in new media and the Digital Humanitites.
They include:
- Anne Burdick, Johanna Drucker, Peter Lunenfeld, Todd Presner, and Jeffrey Schnapp
Digital_Humanities
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, October, 2012
- Wolfgang Ernst
Digital Memory and the Archive
edited and with an Introduction by Jussi Parikka
Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2012
- Markku Eskelinen
Cybertext Poetics: The Critical Landscape of New Media Literary Theory
Lond; NY:Continuum, 2012
- Alexander R. Galloway
The Interface Effect
Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA: Polity, October 2012
- N. Katherine Hayles
How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis
Chicago, IL: University Of Chicago Press, 2012
- Mike McShaffry and David Graham
Game Coding Complete, Fourth Edition
Boston, MA: Course Technology PTR, 2012
- Robin Nixon
Learning PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, and CSS 2nd Edition
O'Reilly Media, 2012
- Roberto Simanowski, Jörgen Schäfer, Peter Gendolla, eds.
Reading Moving Letters: Digital Literature in Research and Teaching. A Handbook
Bielefeld, Germnay: Transcript Verlag, 2012
August 2, 2012
C. T. Funkhouser: New Directions in Digital Poetry
As electronic literature comes of age and begins to take its place in the literary canon,
criticism, arts writing, and documentation are important in shaping different schools
within the growing body of work in the field.
New Directions in Digital Poetry by C.T. Funkhouser (NY: Continuum, 2012) is the first book in
Continuum's new book series, International Tests in Critical Media Aesthetics.
With an introduction by series founding editor Francisco J. Ricardo, New Directions in Digital Poetry
focuses on computer-mediated poetry, with an emphasis on works with elements of
concrete poetry, visual poetry, fluxus influence, visual typography, fragmented composition,
words in motion, and words interactively revealed. The book looks also at the role of sound
and image in digital poetics, for instance, Jason Nelson's use of sound in
I made this, you play this. we are enemies.. "Digital poetry appeals to me," Funkhouser notes,
"because it offers forms of artistry inviting (and uniting) processed interconnections between sound,
image and language." (p.4)
New Directions in Digital Poetry does not purport to be a survey of digital poetry.
And -- a valid approach in a widening field -- it can be looked in terms of both Funkhouser's own
aesthetic and of his intent of showcasing work created in the public access era of the World Wide Web.
"The book records a specific moment in the genre's continuum, when it has arrived on a global,
multimedia computer network for the first time," he explains in an "Epilogue". Within this framework,
the book looks not only at work that is published on the Web but also at work that uses Web-based
systems as content, such as Jim Andrews' dbCinema, an interactive "graphic synthesizer"
that algorithmically creates animated images from results of web searches.
The core of the book consists of three sections of "case studies" that focus on:
"continuity & diversity in online works", digital poetry early in the twenty-first century",
and "poems of the Web, by the Web, for the Web. Works discussed in
New Directions in Digital Poetry include the work of Serge Bouchardon; John Cayley: Wotclock;
Angela Ferraiolo, Map of a Future War; Deena Larson: Carving in Possibilities, Jim Rosenberg:
Diagram Series 6:6.4; Mary Flanagan: [theHouse]; Alan Sondheim and Sandy Baldwin: Second Life Performances; and
Stephanie Strickland, Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo, and Paul Ryan: slippingglimpse, among many others.
Chris Funkhouser is an Associate Professor in Humanities and Director of the
Communication and Media Program at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
In New Directions in Digital Poetry, he approaches digital poetry
through the lens of his experience as creator, critic, teacher, and close reader of works of digital poetry.
His role as a guide/agent (in the interface sense) is the role every reader takes to a certain
extent in exploring a literature where each reader path may be different.
Indeed, the book would be useful in teaching students different ways of exploring digital poetry.
Contingently, his critical discussions of reader/creator roles in electronic literature are important.
"Who has the upper hand here, author or viewer?" he asks about
Mary Flanagan's [theHouse]. "Viewers partially control the literature and images,
but Flanagan provides the verbal and symbolic programmic content and thus
remains in charge of the experience's general domain." (p. 156)
Funkhouser's books include Prehistoric Digital Poetry: An Archaeology of Forms, 1959-1995.
(University of Alabama Press, 2007) In his
statement for Authoring Software about his own work,
he describes how he used Eugenio Tisselli's MIDIPoet software for the real-time composition and
performance of interactive visual poetry sound and projection "songs" from vast databases of related
words and phrases.
For more information about New Directions in Digital Poetry is available on the Continuum
website at
http://www.continuumbooks.com/books/detail.aspx?BookId=162051&SearchType=Basic
Many of the works discussed in this book are included in the Electronic Literature Organization's
Electronic Literature Collection
July 2, 2012
Summer 2012 Books From MIT Press
New and forthcoming MIT Press books of interest to the Authoring Software community
include Art and Culture Emerging with Ubiquitous Computing,
edited by Ulrik Ekman, with a foreword by Matthew Fuller and including
chapters by Jay David Bolter, Mark Hansen,
N. Katherine Hayles, and Lev Manovich;
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10 with chapters by Nick Montfort, Patsy Baudoin, John Bell,
Ian Bogost, Jeremy Douglass, Mark C. Marino, Michael Mateas, Casey Reas, Mark Sample and Noah Vawter;
and A Cultural History of Children's Software by Mizuko Ito.
Selected MIT Press new and forthcoming titles are:
- Janet Abbate
Recoding Gender - Women's Changing Participation in Computing
Cambridge MA: MIT Press
due: October 2012
- Geoff Cox and Alex McLean
Speaking Code - Coding as Aesthetic and Political Expression
Foreword by Franco "Bifo" Berardi
Cambridge MA: MIT Press
due: November 2012
- Ulrik Ekman, ed.
Throughout - Art and Culture Emerging with Ubiquitous Computing
Foreword by Matthew Fuller
with contributions by Jay David Bolter, Mark Hansen, N. Katherine Hayles, and Lev Manovich,
among others.
Cambridge MA: MIT Press
October 2012
- George Skaff Elias, Richard Garfield and K. Robert Gutschera
Characteristics of Games
Cambridge MA: MIT Press
- Raya Fidel
Human Information Interaction
An Ecological Approach to Information Behavior
Cambridge MA: MIT Press
- Jan Rune Holmevik
Inter/vention
Free Play in the Age of Electracy
Foreword by Gregory Ulmer
Cambridge MA: MIT Press
- Mizuko Ito
Engineering Play
A Cultural History of Children's Software
Cambridge MA: MIT Press
- Daniel Jackson
Software Abstractions - Logic, Language, and Analysis
Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Revised Edition
- Matthew G. Kirschenbaum
Mechanisms
New Media and the Forensic Imagination
Cambridge MA: MIT Press, paperback edition
- Nick Montfort, Patsy Baudoin, John Bell, Ian Bogost, Jeremy Douglass,
Mark C. Marino,
Michael Mateas, Casey Reas, Mark Sample and Noah Vawter
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Cambridge MA: MIT Press due December 2012
- Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman
Networked The New Social Operating System
Cambridge MA: MIT Press
- Howard Rheingold
Net Smart
How to Thrive Online
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
- Yvonne Spielmann
Hybrid Culture - Japanese Media Arts in Dialogue with the West
Cambridge MA: MIT Press
December 2012
- Noah Wardrip-Fruin
Expressive Processing
Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, paperback edition
For complete information about MIT Press publications, visit
http://mitpress.mit.edu/main/home/default.asp
June 23, 2012
Milwaukee, June 25-28: 2012 ACM Hypertext and Social Media Conference to Focus on
Dimensions of Links in Hypertextual Systems
Held in Milwaukee from June 25-28, the 2012 ACM Hypertext and Social Media Conference
will focus on "dimensions of links in hypertextual systems", with tracks including:
Track 1: Social Media (Linking people)
Track 2: Semantic Data (Linking data)
Track 3: Adaptive Hypertext and Hypermedia (Linking resources)
Track 4: Hypertext and Narrative Connections (Linking stories)
Among others, papers of interest to the new media writing community include:
- Alex Mitchell and Kevin Mcgee
"The Paradox of Rereading in Hypertext Fiction"
- David Kolb
"Story/Story"
- Annika Wolff, Paul Mulholland, and Trevor Collins
Storyspace: a story-driven approach for creating museum narratives
- Charlie Hargood, Rosamund Davies, David Millard, Matt Taylor, and Samuel Brooker
"Exploring (the Poetics of) Strange (and Fractal) Hypertexts"
Organized by Charlie Hargood, University of Southampton, UK and David Millard, University of Southampton, UK,
the HT 2012 Narrative and Hypertext Workshop will feature the following presentations:
- Geoffrey Draper
"An Approach to Hypertext Fiction for Mobile Devices"
- Heather Packer
"MemoryBook: Generating Narratives from Lifelogs"
- Charlie Hargood, Michael O. Jewell, David E. Millard
"The Narrative Braid: A Model for Tackling The Narrative Paradox in Adaptive"
- Alex Mitchell
"The HypeDyn Hypertext Fiction Authoring Tool"
- Carolyn Hill
"Hypertext as an Expression of the Rhizomatic Self"
- Mark Bernstein
"Gothic"
- Anne Canavan
"WE INTERRUPT THIS BROADCAST: HIGHLY RELIABLE NARRATORS IN RADIO DRAMA"
- Stacey Mason
"Glitched Lit: Possibilities for Databending Literature"
For more information about the
2012 ACM Hypertext and Social Media Conference, visit:
http://www.ht2012.org
For more information about the HT 2012 Narrative and Hypertext Workshop, visit:
http://nht.ecs.soton.ac.uk/2012/index.htm<.a>
June 17, 2012
Leonardo Electronic Almanac Calls for Papers on "Generative & Algorithmic Art"
Leonardo Electronic Almanac is calling for papers for a special issue
that will investigate the history of generative and algorithmic art,
from historical predecessors to contemporary computational artworks.
The senior editors for this issue -- Lanfranco Aceti, Meredith Hoy, and Kris Paulsen --
invite proposals for articles, artists' projects and pictorial essays.
The note that "Submissions might investigate issues of authorial control, predictability and unpredictability,
chance and 'aleatoric' methods of art making, or might propose theoretical and philosophical
explorations of the concepts of hardware and software, the materiality of generative systems,
video feedback as a generative system, the relationship between generative art and cinematic practices,
or the historically expansive and ever expanding range of technologies capable of executing
generative systems."
The new Leonardo Electronic Almanac is a collaborative effort between The MIT Press;
Leonardo/ISAST; Goldsmiths, University of London; FACT; and Sabanci University.
Editor in Chief Lanfranco Aceti is Visiting Professor at Goldsmiths College,
department of Art and Computing, London, and he teaches Contemporary Art and Digital Culture
at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Sabanci University, Istanbul.
The deadline is for the issue on "Generative & Algorithmic Art" is September 15, 2012.
For complete details, visit
http://www.leoalmanac.org/generative-algorithmic-art-lea-call-for-papers/
May 31, 2012
2012 Conference for the Electronic Literature Organization to be Held at West Virginia
University from June 20-23; Media Art Exhibition Will Feature Work by 55 Artists
"Electrifying Literature: Affordances and Constraints", the 2012 Conference for the
Electronic Literature Organization, (ELO2012) will be held at West Virginia University
in Morgantown from June 20-23. The Conference will feature panels and presentations,
workshops, readings, gallery exhibitions, and performances.
From pre-conference workshops on documenting, archiving, and authoring electronic literature,
to a series of panels on E-Lit Around the World: Cultures of Electronic Literature,
ELO2012 will address core issues in the past, present, and future of electronic literature.
Presenters include Sandy Baldwin, Kathi Inman Berens, Philippe Bootz, Astrid Ensslin,
Loss Pequeño Glazier, Dene Grigar, Fox Harrell, Carolyn Guertin, Sueyeun Juliette Lee,
Mark Marino, Stacey Mason, Maria Mencia, Mez, Nick Montfort, Stuart Moulthrop,
Andrew Plotkin, Aaron Reed, Giovanna di Rosario, Jessica Pressman, Alexandra Saemmer,
Stephanie Strickland, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Jichen Zhu, and Rob Wittig, among many others.
The keynote will be given by media theorist, researcher, and early web creator Florian Cramer.
"The conference subtitle 'affordances and constraints' was meant to invoke the diverse approaches
to the field, as well as our sense that scholars and practitioners are increasingly aware of the
technology they work with," explains Conference Chair Sandy Baldwin, who is Associate
Professor and Director of the Center for Literary Computing at West Virginia University.
He observes that with this always existing yet renewed awareness, the field is more cognisant of the "constraints,
or better the contexts" with which and in which electronic literature is created.
Johannes Auer and AND-OR (René Bauer, Beat Suter, and Mirjam Weder)
Searchsonata 181
Detail of a work included in the ELO2012 Media Arts Show
Curated by Dene Grigar, Associate Professor and Director of the Creative Media & Digital Culture Program,
Washington State University Vancouver, and Sandy Baldwin, the ELO2012 Media Art Show
will feature the work of 55 artists from Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Korea, Norway,
Switzerland, the US, and the UK. Held across the conference site in venues including
the Monongalia Arts Center, the Arts Monongahela Gallery, WVU Downtown Library, WVU's Colson Hall,
and the Hazel Ruby McQuain Amphitheater, the 2012 Media Art Show will also host retrospectives of
the work of five artists: Alan Bigelow, J. R. Carpenter, M.D. Coverley, Judy Malloy, and Jason Nelson, as well as a commissioned
geo-locative work by Jeff Knowlton.
Complete Story including Program Schedule and Regisitration Information
May 14, 2012
Digital Humanities 2012 to be Held at the University of Hamburg, July 16 -22, 2012;
Registration is Open.
Digital Humanities, the annual International conference of the Alliance of Digital Humanities
Organizations, will be held in Germany at the University of Hamburg from July 16-22, 2012.
Keynote speakers will be Masahiro Shimoda, Department of Indian Philosophy and Buddhist
Studies/Center for Evolving Humanities, the University of Tokyo and Claudine Moulin, Trier Centre
for Digital Humanities, University of Trier.
The preliminary program is now available online. As currently listed, presentations, panels and poster sessions
of interest to the digital writing community -- such as presentations on
authoring systems and the analysis of literature -- include:
- "Words made Image. Towards a Language-Based Segmentation of Digitized Art Collections"
Florentina Armaselu
- "Text Analysis Meets Text Encoding"
Syd Bauman, David Hoover, Karina van Dalen-Oskam, Wendell Piez
- "Contextual Factors in Literary Quality Judgments:
A Quantitative Analysis of an Online Writing Community"
Peter Boot
- "Myopia: A Visualization Tool in Support of Close Reading"
Manish Chaturvedi, Gerald Gannod, Laura Mandell, Helen Armstrong, Eric Hodgson
- "May Humanists Learn from Artists a New Way to Interact with Digital Technology?"
Stefano Franchi
- "Computing and Visualizing the 19th-Century Literary Genome"
Matthew Jockers
- "'All Rights Worth Recombination':
Post-Hacker Culture and ASCII Literature (1983-1993)"
Joel Katelnikoff
- "Computational Models of Narrative Structure"
Benedikt Löwe, Bernhard Físseni, Carlos León, Rens Bod
- "Writing with Sound: Composing Multimodal, Long-Form Scholarship"
Jentery Sayers
- "Semantically connecting text fragments - Text-Text-Link-Editor"
Thomas Selig, Marc Wilhelm Küster,Eric Sean Conner
- "Approaching Dickens' Style through Random Forests"
Tomoji Tabata
- "What is a text within the Digital Humanities, or some of them, at least?"
Manfred Thaller
- "Digital Editions with eLaborate: From Practice to Theory"
Karina van Dalen-Oskam, Joris Job van Zundert
- "The Electronic Oxford English Dictionary, Poetry, and Intertextuality"
David-Antoine Williams
Workshops and tutorials include:
"Digital Methods in Manuscript Studies"
Christian Brockmann, Dorji Wangchuk
"Introduction to Literary Network analysis using R and Gephi"
Matthew Jockers, Elijah Meeks
For a complete program including updated presentation listings, visit the dh2012 website at
http://www.dh2012.uni-hamburg.de/
April 29, 2012
First International Conference on Electronic Literature and New Media Art
to be held in Alcalá de Henares; Calls for Presentations
The First International Conference on Electronic Literature and New Media Art,
"A Humanist Inquiry into the Digital Age" will be held at Instituto Franklin,
UAH Alcalá de Henares, Spain from October 4-6, 2012. Goals are:
- "To provide an opportunity for international researchers to share and discuss their current
research on electronic literature, e-poetry, cyber drama, digital narrative forms and new media artworks.
- "To create a forum for international authors of electronic literature and new media artists to share and disseminate their work."
- "To present international research projects related to electronic literature and new media art."
The Conference is calling for papers, presentations of creative works and group panel sessions
related to three main themes: Electronic Literature in the U.S., Latin America
and Europe; Teaching Electronic Literature; and Gender and Identity in Cyberspace
Other areas of interest include Electronic Literature and Sustainability;
Race in Electronic Literature/Cyberspace; Video Games; Webcomics;
Recording, Archiving, and Preserving E-lit; and proposals for research network activities
such as archiving projects, publications, and pedagogical resources.
The deadline for proposals is May 30, 2012.
For complete details, visit the
website of the Instituto Franklin
March 27, 2012
Apple Launches New iPad
Launched on March 16, 2012, Apple's new iPad, the successor to iPad 2,
features Apple's advanced Retina display technology that -- utilizing 2048 by 1536 resolution and
heightened color saturation -- delivers ultra high resolution text and images.
With 3.1 million pixels, the new iPad has the highest resolution display ever seen on a
mobile device, according to Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president
of Worldwide Marketing.
The new iPad also includes Apple's A5X chip with quad-core graphics and a 5 megapixel iSight
camera with advanced optics for photos and 1080p HD video. The iSight camera uses backside
illumination to improve low-light performance, as well as video image stabilization
to improve hand-held device video-capture quality.
As of March 19, Apple had sold three million new iPads.
For complete information , visit
http://www.apple.com/ipad/
March 6, 2012
New Books and Second Editions from O'Reilly Media: Programming Interactivity;
Programming iOS 5; Head First HTML5 Programming; The Twitter Book
and more
O'Reilly Media continues to publish and/or distribute useful and state of the art
guides and manuals for programming languages, software applications,
and new platforms. Recent books and second editions available from O'Reilly and of interest to the new media
writing community include Programming Interactivity;
Programming iOS 5, Fundamentals of iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Development;
The Developer's Code; Head First HTML5 Programming;
The WordPress Anthology; and The Twitter Book. The details are:
- Ka Wai Cheung
The Developer's Code
Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2012
- Eric Freeman and Elisabeth Robson
Head First HTML5 Programming - Building Web Apps with JavaScript
O'Reilly Media, 2011
- Matt Neuburg
Programming iOS 5 - Fundamentals of iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Development
O'Reilly Media, 2012
- Joshua Noble
Programming Interactivity, A Designer's Guide to Processing, Arduino, and openFrameworks.
2nd Edition
O'Reilly Media, 2012
- Tim O'Reilly and Sarah Milstein
The Twitter Book. 2nd Edition
O'Reilly Media, 2011
- Mick Olinik and Raena Jackson Armitage
The WordPress Anthology
SitePoint, 2011
For continuing information about O'Reilly Media publications and other books available from O'Reilly Media,
visit
http://oreilly.com/store/index.html
February 27, 2012
Critical Code Studies Working Group 2012 Addresses Reading Code in Context
With a series of online panels on Ethics, Literacy, and Play, as well as 27 code critiques contributed
by working group participants, the Critical Code Studies Working Group 2012
(CCSWG12) addressed humanities and computer science interdisciplinary issues in the study,
teaching, use, and significance of code. Organized by Jeremy Douglass and Mark C. Marino
and coordinated by Jason Lipshin, the virtual conference brought together a diverse and knowledgeable
group of panelists and participants. CCSWG12 took place from January 30 - February 20, 2012,
but code critiques are continuing, and the electronic book review will be publishing curated threads from the
Working Group discussions.
The Critical Code Studies Working Group is sponsored by the University of Southern California-based
Humanities and Critical Code Studies Lab. (HaCCS) Panelists for CCSWG12 Reading Code in Context
were:
- Ethics: Evan Buswell, Scott Dexter, Craig Dietrich, Elizabeth Losh
- Literacies: David M. Berry, micha cardenas, Stephen Ramsay, Annette Vee
- Play: Stephanie Boluk, Jeremy Douglass, Patrick LeMieux, Mark Sample
New media literature writers, scholars and students who were selected as participants included
Sandy Baldwin, Philippe Bootz, Mez Breeze, Leonardo Flores, Fox Harrell, Dennis Jerz,
Inés Laitano, Clarissa Lee, Judy Malloy, Mark Marino, Jarah Moesch, Nick Montfort,
Jessica Pressman, Rita Raley, Aaron Reed, Warren Sack, Zach Whalen, and Mark Wolff.
From a code learning perspective, the main themes were supplemented by discussions of how
participants learned to program, how they taught programming, the role of code-visible games, (such as
The Naked Game) and recommendations for increasing code literacy. Also, through the use of
code critiques, CCSWG12 served as a programmers' studio where participants could explore
and comment on code and code issues that ranged from toy problems to creating effective literate code.
In addition to The Featured Code Critique:
Transborder Immigrant Tool in Scalar: Platforms for CCS, active code critiques included:
- Mark Wolff: Programming potentiality: an example of Oulipian code
programming language: APL
Using a sample of a code that generates aphorisms according to an algorithm devised by
Marcel Bénabou, (from Paul Braffort, "Prose et combinatoire" in Oulipo, Atlas
de littérature potentielle) Wolff's critique both introduced this historical code
and asked questions about choices of programming languages.
- Nick Montfort: Yes
Programming language: C
In a linked technical report
The Trivial Program "yes", (from
The Trope Tank at MIT) Montfort sets forth his critique in this way:
"A trivial program, one that simply prints 'y' or a string that is given as an argument
repeatedly, is explicated and examined at the levels of function and code. Although the program by
itself is neither interesting or instructive, the argument is presented that by looking at 'yes'
it is possible to better understand how programs exist not only on platforms but also in an
ecology of systems, scripts, and utilities."
The topic looked at the role of toy problems in educational programming situations
and elicited comments on the evocative nature of this particular program.
- Judy Malloy: YOU! – A Late BASIC Era Generative Array
Programming language: GWBASIC
You! is a classic work of late BASIC-era interactive generative text which was effective
in gallery situations. Viewers could input their own sentence and immediately see their
words placed in an array, their name in the credits, and, if a printer was available,
receive a printout of the array that contained their sentence.
The creation of interactive generative text looks back to Christopher Strachey's 1952
love letter generator to which YOU! makes reference in its subject matter.
This critique looked at historical uses of code to create interactive artworks that were
computer-mediated both in input and output. It also explored translating BASIC works to contemporary systems
and issues of code seen/code unseen.
- Mark Marino: 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Programming language: BASIC for C64
From the first CCSWG Forum and spear-headed by Nick Montfort,
came a (forthcoming from MIT Press) 10-authored book with the same name as the
single-line code it celebrates: 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10.
In this critique -- citing papers that range from an exploration of RND and pseudo-randomness
to a new program with the original program at its core --
Marino points out how this single line of code was used by the book's
authors to address historical, social and technical approaches to the study of code in context.
- Clarissa Lee: Pythia (Ver 8 and Ver 6)
Programming languages for various versions: FORTRAN, C++
Among other things, this presentation of
Pythia looked at a classic particle physics simulation tool
(whose name references the ambiguous nature of prophesies of the Pythia at the Oracle of Delphi)
in terms of subjectivity and directed attention to the program's literate documentation.
"Do not accept the myth that everything available in Monte Carlo form represents ages-old common knowledge,
tested and true...," Torbjorn Sjostrand writes in the PYTHIA 5.7 and JETSET 7.4 Physics and Manual.
Eric Rochester: A tokenizer/lexer written in Haskell
Programming language: Haskell
In this code critique and in
a linked overview of this Code Critique, Rochester explains his Bakers 12 bootcamp-style
Haskell learning project, provides documentation, and asks a series of situational questions about
literate code in terms of desirability and methodology.
For more information about the Critical Code Studies Working Group 2012, visit the
CCSWG2012 Public Page
and the
Critical Code Studies website.
February 18, 2012
New and Forthcoming Books Explore Digital Poetry; the Merging of Science and Technology with the Arts;
Poetry and Image; and New Media in the Classroom
Terri Cohn, ed, Pairing of Polarities: The Life and Art of Sonya Rapoport
New and forthcoming books of interest to the digital writing and humanities community
include Chris Funkhouser's New Directions in Digital Poetry, a celebration of the
life and work of Sonya Rapoport, edited by critic and curator Terri Cohn;
Releasing the Image. From Literature to New Media, edited by
Jacques Khalip and Robert Mitchell; and a collection of approaches to teaching literary theory
in the digital age edited by Paul Budra and Clint Burnham.
Details are:
C.T. Funkhouser
New Directions in Digital Poetry
Introduction: Francisco J. Ricardo
London: Continuum, January 2012
Series: International Texts in Critical Media Aesthetics
"Examines a range of innovative practices and processes in
digital poetry published on the global computer network during the past decade."
C.T. Funkhouser is an Associate Professor at New Jersey Institute of Technology.
Terri Cohn, ed
Pairing of Polarities: The Life and Art of Sonya Rapoport
Afterword: Roger Malina
Berkeley, CA: Heyday, July 2012
"...Rapoport combines her formal training as a painter and her clear bent toward mathematical thinking
with audience participation and web-based media, always pushing boundaries
and creating meaningful relationships across seemingly unrelated fields..."
Writer, curator, and art historian Terri Cohn was a contributing editor to Artweek magazine for
twenty years and she teaches in the Interdisciplinary Studies Department at the San Francisco Art Institute.
Jacques Khalip and Robert Mitchell
Releasing the Image. From Literature to New Media
Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011
Contributors include Giorgio Agamben, Peter Geimer, Mark B.N. Hansen,
Jean-Luc Marion, Tim Murray, Vivian Sobchack, and Kenneth Surin among others.
"...The essays included here cover historical periods from the Romantic era to the present and
address a range of topics, from CTzanne's painting, to images in poetry, to contemporary audiovisual art.
They reveal the aesthetic, ethical, and political stakes of the project of releasing images and
provoke new ways of engaging with embodiment, agency, history, and technology."
Jacques Khalip is Associate Professor of English and Modern Culture and Media at Brown University;
Robert Mitchell is Associate Professor of English at Duke University
Paul Budra and Clint Burnham, eds.
From Text to Txting
New Media in the Classroom
Bloomington, IN; Indiana University Press, August 2012
"...Contributors give a brief description of their subject, investigate how it confronts
traditional notions of the literary, and ask what contemporary literary theory can illuminate about their
text before explaining how their subject can be taught in the
21st-century classroom."
Paul Budra teaches Shakespeare and early modern literature
at Simon Fraser University where he Associate Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social
Sciences; poet and writer Clint Burnham is Associate Professor of English at Simon Fraser University.
February 10, 2012
FILE, 2012 Electronic Language International Festival in São Paulo,
Calls for Entries in Electronic Sonority, Interactive Arts, and Digital Language
FILE - Electronic Language International Festival is open for new entries through February 29, 2012.
Accepted works will be included in the FILE 2012 exhibition in São Paulo from July and August, 2012,
to be held in the Art Gallery of SESI-SP at FIESP Ruth Cardoso Cultural Center.
They are calling for:
- Electronic Sonority, which includes sounds, Sound Performance, Sound Installations, Sound Art,
Genetic Music, Biological Music, Erudite Electronic Music, Pop-Electronic Music, Radio Drama,
Radio Art, Sound Landscape, Sonic Robotics, Video Music, and Sound Poetry, among other other possibilities. .
- Interactive Arts, including installations, performances, internet projects, virtual reality,
augmented reality, multitouch tables, digital objects, outdoor projections, projects for mobile phones,
electronic graffiti, VRML, among other other possibilities. .
- Digital Language: Digital Games, Animation, Digital Films, Machinima, Digital Video,
Digital Architecture, Digital Fashion, Digital Design, Robotics, Artificial Life, Biologic Art,
Transgenic Art, Software Art, New Interfaces, Second Life Performances, Anime, Hypertext,
Non-Lineal Scripts, Artificial Intelligence, Digital Picture-Panoramas, Programming Language,
Digital Poetry, Digital Dance, among other possibilities. .
Proposals for lectures and workshops for FILE Symposium and Workshop 2012 are also welcome.
The deadline is February 29, 2012. For complete details, visit
http://www.filefestival.org/site_2007/pagina_conteudo_livre.asp?a1=308&a2=308&id=2
February 1, 2012
Computers and Writing 2012 to Focus on "ArchiTEXTure: Composing and Constructing in
Digital Spaces"
With a theme of "ArchiTEXTure: Composing and Constructing in Digital Spaces",
Computers and Writing 2012 will be held at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC,
from May 17-20.
Computers and Writing 2012 encouraged presentations that looked "at a variety of aspects focused
on the production of digital texts in the writing classroom, from changes
in process and publication to administrative and practical challenges to
implementing multi-modal compositions". Accepted papers
address questions that range from "What are the material and/or immaterial barriers
and considerations involved in creating new media/digital texts?" to
"How do new media objects and digital paces help us to build identities as scholars,
instructors, and/or students?" Among many others, they include:
- "ArchiTEXTure of Invention in Two Writing Centers: New Media and the Multimodal Invention Process"
Sohui Lee, Stanford University; Russell Carpenter, Eastern Kentucky University; and Christine Alfano,
Stanford University
- "Building Gaming Pedagogy: The Convergence of Gaming Principles and Course Design"
Justin Hodgson, The University of Texas at Austin
- "Collaborating in 140 Characters: Storify, Twitter, and Flash Fiction in the Composition
Classroom"
Shea Stuart, Gardner-Webb University
- "Pinch, Tap, Swipe: Using iPads to Rethink the Construction of Digital Texts and Spaces"
Dianna Baldwin, John Lauckner, Rachael Hodder, Casey Miles, and Dean Holden, Michigan State
- "Recreating bpNichol's "First Screening"
Brent Simoneaux, Samara Mouvery, and Fernanda Duarte, North Carolina State University
- "Textual Relations, Digital Creations: Readers, Writers, Players, Texts"
Rik Hunter, St. John Fisher College; Naomi Silver, University of Michigan;
Scott Reed, Georgia Gwinnett College; and Byron Hawk, University of South Carolina
Keynote Speakers are:
- David Parry, Assistant Professor of Emerging Media and Communications,
the University of Texas at Dallas
- Anne Wysocki, Associate Professor of English, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
- Alex Reid, Associate Professor, English Department, University at Buffalo
Workshops will include in "Writing Virtual Worlds" in which Dennis Jerz and Shaun Martin
will present the interactive fiction programming language Inform.
For complete and continuing information, visit
http://chasslamp.chass.ncsu.edu/~cw2012/
January 16, 2012
Spring 2012 Books From MIT Press
MIT Press forthcoming books for Spring 2012 look at digital culture and history
-- from Grace Hopper and the Invention off the Information Age to
Mizuko Ito's A Cultural History of Children's Software -- and include Howard
Rheingold's Net Smart - How to Thrive Online and the paperback edition of
Noah Wardrip-Fruin's Expressive Processing - Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies.
Selected MIT Press forthcoming releases from MIT Press are:
- Kurt W. Beyer
Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age
Cambridge MA: MIT Press, due April 2012
- George Skaff Elias, Richard Garfield and K. Robert Gutschera
Characteristics of Games
Cambridge MA: MIT Press, due June 2012
- Raya Fidel
Human Information Interaction
An Ecological Approach to Information Behavior
Cambridge MA: MIT Press, due March 2012
- Jan Rune Holmevik
Inter/vention
Free Play in the Age of Electracy
Foreword by Gregory Ulmer
Cambridge MA: MIT Press, due March 2012
- Mizuko Ito
Engineering Play
A Cultural History of Children's Software
Cambridge MA: MIT Press, due April 2012
- Jesper Juul
A Casual Revolution
Reinventing Video Games and Their Players
Cambridge MA: MIT Press, due April 2012 paperback edition
- Matthew G. Kirschenbaum
Mechanisms
New Media and the Forensic Imagination
Cambridge MA: MIT Press, due March 2012 paperback edition
- Howard Rheingold
Net Smart
How to Thrive Online
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, due April 2012
- Steven L. Tanimoto
An Interdisciplinary Introduction to Image Processing - Pixels, Numbers, and Programs
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, due May 2012
- Noah Wardrip-Fruin
Expressive Processing
Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, due April 2012 paperback edition
For complete information about MIT Press publications, visit
http://mitpress.mit.edu/main/home/default.asp
January 8, 2012
Belgrade Resonate Festival to be Held March 16-17, 2012;
Will Look at the State of Technology in Arts and Culture
In Belgrade this Spring from March 16-17, an International group of artists and software artists will
address networking, information, knowledge sharing, and education. Directed by visual artist/producer
Maria Jelesijevic, the festival will encompass art and discussion on topics -- ranging from
software engineering and new platforms for artistic expression; to visual arts theory; to
institutional collaborations -- and in their words also "create a bridge between
culturally separated segments of the artistic and intellectual scene through a
comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach."
From Europe, Asia and North America, participants in talks, workshops, panel discussions, performances and
concerts will include FIELD, a studio for digital art and graphic design based in London and led by
Marcus Wendt and Vera-Maria Glahn; the collaborative generative book project Written Images;
Martial Geoffre-Rouland, a digital artist/interactive developer based in Lyon; writer/curator
Régine Debatty; Brussels-based LAb[au]; and onedotzero, an international moving image and
digital arts organization, among many others.
A core aim of Resonate is to "create a platform for education, knowledge exchange and information",
and the festival will mainly be held at Belgrade's Dom Omladine, a center and gathering place for the
young people of Belgrade. that promotes programs for youth in the sphere of contemporary art and culture --
from visual arts and new media, to film, theatre and music.
"Resonate" is an initiative by Magnetic Field B in collaboration with CreativeApplications.Net and
Dom Omladine, Belgrade.
For more information, visit
http://resonate.io/2012/#home
December 28, 2011
MLA 2012 to Feature Exhibition of Electronic Literature
Showcasing a diverse selection of Electronic literature, on January 5-7, 2012
at the annual Modern Language Association Convention in Seattle, the exhibition
Electronic Literature will include hyperfiction, generative literature,
digital poetry, live performance, multimedia narrative, and much more.
In an opening statement available on the exhibition website at
http://dtc-wsuv.org/mla2012/index.html, curators
Dene Grigar, Kathi Inman Berens, and Lori Emerson note that "...the exhibit aims to
provide humanities scholars with the opportunity to experience, first-hand,
this emergent form of literature, one that we see as an important form of expression
in, as Jay David Bolter calls it, this 'late age of print.'"
Curated by Dene Grigar, the section on "Works on Desktop" will include electronic literature
from The Eastgate School -- represented by Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl,
Michael Joyce's afternoon: a story, Deena Larsen's Marble Springs,
Judy Malloy's its name was Penelope, and Stuart Moulthrop's Victory Garden
-- as well as the complete Electronic Liiterature Collections 1 and 2 -- two multilingual collections
(edited by the Electronic Literature Organization) with over 100 works by writers such as
Peter Cho, Caitlin Fisher, Bjørn Magnhildøen;,
Kate Pullinger and Chris Joseph, Scott Rettberg, Eugenio Tisselli, and Noah Wardrip-Fruin.
"Works on Desktop" will also feature (among other works) MD Coverley's Califia,
Nick Montfort's Ad Verbum,
Stephanie Strickland's The Ballad of Sand and Harry Soot, Thom Swiss', Shy Boy,
and electronic literature on desktop by undergraduates from U.S. Universities.
Curated by Kathi Inman Berens, the section on "Mobile Works and Geolocative Works"
will present Mark Amerika's Immobilité, Aya Karpinska's
Shadows Never Sleep, Erik Loyer's Ruben and Lullaby, Teri Rueb's
Core Sample, and much more, including mobile works by undergraduates from U.S. Universities.
Curated by Lori Emerson, an evening of "Readings and Performances", associated with the exhibition
will feature Kate Armstrong's Why Some Dolls Are Bad, John Cayley's
Terms of Use," "III=II=I=I=II=III", Mark Marino's LA Flood, and much more.
For more information, visit the Electronic Literature exhibition
website at
http://dtc-wsuv.org/mla2012/index.html
For further more coverage of electronic literature at MLA 2012, visit
2012 MLA Convention to Feature Panels on Reading Writing Interfaces:
Electronic Literature's Past and Present; Transmedia Stories and Literary Games and more.
MLA 2012 Convention site:
http://www.mla.org/convention
December 18, 2011
ELMCIP E-literature in/with Performance Seminar to Convene at Arnolfini in Bristol, UK,
May 3-4, 2012: Conference Calls for Proposals
Under the aegis of the University College Falmouth, the Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity in
Practice (ELMCIP) seminar/conference on E-literature in/with Performance will take place
May 3-4, 2012 at Arnolfini, a leading center for contemporary art located on the harbor in Bristol, England.
The event will explore the convergence of performance and new media literature and text,
exploring, for instance, the performative use of computer-mediated interactivity, screen-based text,
interface, and code -- as well as e-literature as performance and the sites and contexts of
e-literature performance.
Artists already invited include Annie Abrahams, (Netherlands) Donna Leishman, (UK), Cris Cheek, (UK)
J.R. Carpenter, (Canada), and Joerg Piringer. (Austria).
The conference is calling for proposals. The deadline for abstracts for papers and
workshops is December 30, 2011. Conference proceedings and artist's pages will be published
in a 2013 dedicated issue of Performance Research.
For more information, visit
http://elmcip.net/story/e-literature-inwith-performance-elmcip-seminar-cfp-call-paperspresentations
ELMCIP is a three year collaborative research project, funded by the Humanities
in the European Research Area (HERA) Joint Research Programme for Creativity and Innovation.
Partners and leaders include:
- The University of Bergen, Norway (Scott Rettberg, Jill Walker Rettberg)
- the Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland (Simon Biggs, Penny Travlou)
- Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden (Maria Engberg, Talan Memmott)
- The University of Amsterdam, Netherlands (Yra Van Dijk)
- The University of Ljubljana, Slovenia (Janez Strechovec),
- The University of Jyväskylä, Finland (Raine Koskimaa)
- University College Falmouth at Dartington, England (Jerome Fletcher)
- New Media Scotland (Mark Daniels)
For more information about ELMCIP, visit:
http://elmcip.net
December 9, 2011
Hypertext 2012 to be Held in Milwaukee, June 25-28, 2012
Hypertext 2012, the 23rd ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media
will be held in Milwaukee, WI from June 25-28, 2012.
Organized around four tracks -- Social Media; Semantic Data; Adaptive Hypertext
and Hypermedia; and Hypertext and Narrative Connections, HT2012
is concerned with all aspects of modern hypertext research including social media,
semantic web, dynamic and computed hypertext and hypermedia as well as narrative
systems and applications."
Workshop/tutorial submissions are due: January 10, 2012.
Full and short paper Submissions are due February, 6 2012.
The deadline for the Student Research Competition is February 21, 2012.
For complete information and updates visit:
http://www.ht2012.org
November 27, 2011
New from the University of Michigan Press:
American Poetry in Performance From Walt Whitman to Hip Hop
Although not focused on the performance of new media literature,
the publication of Tyler Hoffman's American Poetry in Performance From Walt Whitman to Hip Hop
by the University of Michigan Press is of interest to the new media writing and reading community, where,
as with other literary genres, the hearing of exploratory poetry in reading and performative
situations allows different entry ways to an understanding of the work. Increasingly perfomative
readings are a significant part of the work of e-poets. Examples include Chris Funkhouser
performing with Eugenio Tisselli's MIDIPoet and Fox Harrell and
Joseph Goguen's "The Griot Sings Haibun". And in some cases -- the work of Antoinette LaFarge and
the Plaintext Players, for instance -- performative creation is intertwined with
the work.
Tyler Hoffman, the author of American Poetry in Performance From Walt Whitman to Hip Hop
is Professor of English and Associate Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at
Rutgers University—Camden. The University of Michigan Press notes that "Relating the performance
of poetry to shifting political and cultural ideologies in the United States, Hoffman argues
that the vocal aspect of public poetry possesses (or has been imagined to possess) the ability
to help construct both national and subaltern communities."
The book covers the work of Vachel Lindsay, Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson,
Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Nikki Giovanni, Bob Holman, Sonia Sanchez,
Anne Waldman, and Lisa Martinovic, among many others.
For complete details, visit
http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=3091522
November 21, 2011
The Kitchen and the ELO to Present An Evening of Interactive Performative Readings
In New York City on December 13, 2010, the Kitchen and The Electronic Literature
Organization (ELO) will present performative readings of five works of electronic literature that
range from kinetic poetry to works of video and text imagery. The writers and the works they will
read/perform are:
Oni Buchanan: The Mandrake Vehicles
Jhave: Sooth
Illya Szilak: Reconstructing Mayakovsky
Sandy Baldwin: The Mandrake Vehicles
Stephanie Strickland and Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo; Paul Ryan: video: slippingglimpse
The works to be presented were selected from the Electronic Literature Collection,
Volume 2, 2011, a multilingual collection featuring works by new media writers and
poets from countries including Austria, Australia, Canada, Colombia, France, Germany, Israel,
The Netherlands, Portugal, Peru, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Programming Languages, markup languages, and software applications used to create
the work in this collection -- which range from hypertext to interactive fiction to mash-ups to codework
-- include Flash, Processing, Java, JavaScriipt, Inform, HTML, and C++.
This year celebrating its 40th anniversary,
The Kitchen was founded in 1971 by video art pioneers Steina and Woody Vasulka. In
the ensuing years, The Kitchen has continued to be an important New York City space for performance, video,
film, music, dance and literature.
For complete information about An Evening of Interactive Performative Readings, visit,
http://www.thekitchen.org/event/283/0/1/
The Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 2 is available online at:
http://collection.eliterature.org/2/
November 14, 2011
Seattle, January 5-8:
2012 MLA Convention to Feature Panels on Reading Writing Interfaces:
Electronic Literature's Past and Present; Transmedia Stories and Literary Games and more
To be held in Seattle from January 5-8, the 127th Modern Language Association (MLA) Annual
Convention will focus on "Language, Literature, Learning". With topics ranging from
Sessions of interest to the new media writing
community include:
Reading Writing Interfaces: Electronic Literature's Past and Present
Presiding: Marjorie Luesebrink, Irvine Valley College, CA
- "Early Authors of E-Literature, Platforms of the Past,"
Dene M. Grigar, Washington State University, Vancouver
- "Seven Types of Interface in the Electronic Literature Collection Volume Two,"
Marjorie Luesebrink; Stephanie Strickland, New York, NY
- "The Digital Poem against the Interface Free,"
Lori A. Emerson, University of Colorado, Boulder
- "Strange Rain and the Poetics of Motion and Touch," Mark L. Sample, George Mason University
An associated exhibition and readings will feature the work of Mark Amerika,
Ingrid Ankerson and Megan Sapnar, CFC Media Lab Toronto, John Cayley, Deena Larsen,
Michael Joyce, Marjorie Luesebrink, Judy Malloy, Mark Marino, Talan Memmott, Nick Montfort,
Stuart Moulthrop, Stephanie Strickland, Brian Kim Stefans, and Thom Swiss among many others.
Transmedia Stories and Literary Games
- "Hundred Thousand Billion Fingers: Oulipian Games and Serial Players," Patrick LeMieux, Duke University
- "Make Love, Not Warcraft: Virtual Worlds and Utopia," Stephanie Boluk, Vassar College
- "Oscillation: Transmedia Storytelling and Narrative Theory by Design," Patrick Jagoda, University
of Chicago
- Responding: Victoria E. Szabo, Duke University
New Media Narratives and Old Prose Fiction
Presiding: Amy J. Elias, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
- "New Media: Its Use and Abuse for Literature and for Life," Joseph Paul Tabbi, University of Illinois, Chicago
- "Contrasts and Convergences of Electronic Literature," Dene M. Grigar, Washington State University,
Vancouver
- "Computing Language and Poetry," Nick Montfort, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Digital Narratives and Gaming for Teaching Language and Literature
Presiding: Barbara Lafford, Arizona State University
- "Narrative Expression and Scientific Method in Online Gaming Worlds," Steven Thorne,
Portland State University
- "Designing Narratives: A Framework for Digital Game-Mediated L2 Literacies Development,"
Jonathon Reinhardt, University of Arizona; Julie Sykes, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque
- "Close Playing, Paired Playing: A Practicum," Edmond Chang, University of Washington,
Seattle; Timothy Welsh, Loyola University, New Orleans
- Responding: Dave McAlpine, University of Arkansas, Little Rock
Reconfiguring the Literary: Narratives, Methods, Theories
Program arranged by the Association for Computers and the Humanities
Presiding: Susan Schreibman, Trinity College, Dublin
- Alison Booth, University of Virginia
- Mark Stephen Byron, University of Sydney
- Øyvind Eide, University of Oslo
- Alexander Gil, University of Virginia
- Rita Raley, University of California, Santa Barbara
New Media, New Pedagogies
Presiding: Rebecca L. Walkowitz, Rutgers University, New Brunswick
- "Steampunk Wells: Game Design as Narrative Pedagogy," Jay Clayton, Vanderbilt University
- "Technologies That Describe: Data Visualization and Contemporary Fiction,"
Heather Houser, University of Texas, Austin
- "Better Looking, Close Reading: How Online Fiction Builds Literary-Critical Skills,"
John David Zuern, University of Hawai'i, Manoa
Close Playing: Literary Methods and Video Game Studies
Presiding: Mark L. Sample, George Mason University
- Edmond Chang, University of Washington, Seattle
- Steven E. Jones, Loyola University Chicago
- Jason C. Rhody, National Endowment for the Humanities
- Anastasia Salter, University of Baltimore
- Timothy Welsh, Loyola University, New Orleans
- Zach Whalen, University of Mary Washington
Self-Narrating Lives: Genre-Bending Autobiographical Works
Presiding: Johanna Drucker, University of California, Los Angeles
- Maria Faini, University of California, Berkeley
- Anna Gibbs, University of Western Sydney
- William Kuskin, University of Colorado, Boulder
- Vanessa Place, Les Figues Press
- Christine Wertheim, California Institute of the Arts
For complete information visit the Conference site at
http://www.mla.org/convention
November 4, 2011
Boston: November 19-20, 2011: Dangerous Readings Will Explore Frontiers of New Narrative
To be held in Boston from November 19-20, 2011, Dangerous Readings,
an "unconference on strange hypertexts and narrative play" will bring together artists, computer
scientists, researchers, and critics to creatively explore new frontiers in narrative.
"Following the 'unconference' style of BarCamp, RailsCamps, and E-LitCamp, participants will propose
sessions throughout the event and collectively decide the direction in which the
conference will go," Eastgate Editor Stacey Mason explains, noting that it is a format that
"encourages creative breakout sessions, spirited debate, and smaller,
more personal collaborations."
Discussions are likely to address the relationship between games and eLit, technical constraints in
narrative, eLit publishing models, and collaborative authoring. The agenda will be informal and
may change as the event develops. Currently scheduled presentations are:
- Jeremy Ashkenas (Interactive News, The New York Times) - Coffescript/Open source publishing
- Bill Bly (We Descend) premiering new work - We Descend, Vol 2
- Angela Chang (MIT)- reading hypertext with children
- Rob Kendall (A Life Set For Two) - premiering new work: Life Story
- Paul LaFarge ( Luminous Airplanes) - the process of writing eLit
- Andrew Plotkin (Hoist Sail for the Heliopause and Home - IF authoring
- Patrick McSweeney (University of Southampton) - Fractal Narratives
- Stacey Mason (Editor, Eastgate Systems) - Glitch Art, relationship between eLit and Games
Other scheduled participants include Mary-kim Arnold, author of Lust;
John Cayley, (Brown University) author of riverIsland;
Steve Ersinghaus, author of The Life of Geronimo Sandoval; Diane Greco, co-author of
The Zodiac Of Paris; and J.Nathan Matias. (MIT)
At the event closing, Eastgate chief scientist Mark Bernstein will debut a
dramatic reading from The Trojan Girls, a hyper-drama, cast with local acting students,
which is never improvised but changes in each performance.
For More information, visit
http://eastgate.com/DangerousReadings/
For more information about Eastgate, visit
http://www.eastgate.com
October 23, 2011
The Fourth International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling
to be held November 28 to December 1, 2011 in Vancouver, Canada
Held this year in Vancouver, Canada from November 28-December 1, the Fourth International
Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling will feature invited speakers
Chris Crawford, (Storytron.com) Mary DeMarle, (Eidos Montreal)
and Keith Oatley. (University of Toronto)
The Conference looks at Interactive Digital Storytelling (IDS)
as redefining "the experience of narrative by allowing its audience to actively
participate in the story. As such, IDS offers interesting
new possibilities for games, training, and learning, through the enriching
of virtual characters with intelligent behavior, the collaboration of humans and
machines in the creative process, and the combination
of narrative knowledge and user activity into novel, interactive artefacts."
This year core issues are addressed in a series of workshops that include, among others:
Presentations of interests to the new media writing community include, among many others:
- Research In Interactive Drama Environments, Role-Play and Story-telling
Ruth Aylett, Sandy Louchart and Allan Weallans
- "Why Paris Needs Hector and Lancelot Needs Mordred: Using Traditional Narrative Roles
and Functions for Dramatic Compression in Interactive Narrative"
Janet H. Murray
- "Agent-Oriented Methodology for Interactive Storytelling"
Yundong Cai, Zhiqi Shen and Chunyan Miao
- "Being in the Story: Readerly Pleasure, Acting Theory, and Performing a Role"
Joshua Tanenbaum
- "Extensible Tools for Practical Experiments in IDN – The Advanced Stories Authoring
and Presentation System"
Hartmut Koenitz
- "Director Agent Intervention Strategies for Interactive Narrative Environments"
Seung Y. Lee, Bradford W. Mott, and James C. Lester
- "I’m sure I made the right choice! –
Towards an Architecture to Influence Player’s Behaviors in Interactive Stories"
Rui Figueiredo and Ana Paiva
- "Framing Storytelling with Games"
Karl Bergstrom
- "How Authors Benefit from Linear Logic in the Authoring Process of Interactive Storyworlds"
Kim Dung Dang, Steve Hoffmann, Ronan Champagnat and Ulrike Spierling
- "Imagining New Design Spaces for Interactive Digital Storytelling"
Joshua Tanenbaum
- "Exploration of User Reactions to Different Dialog-based Interaction Styles"
Birgit Endrass, Christoph Klimmt, Gregor Mehlmann, Elisabeth André and Christian Roth
For a complete program, visit
http://icids2011.wp.rpi.edu/
October 10, 2011
From MIT Press: New Books on Digital Games
This year MIT Press has released a series of new books and new paperback editions of books on computer games and gaming
that range from Digital Culture, Play, and Identity to the Handbook of Computer Game Studies.
They include:
- Celia Pearce and Artemesia
Communities of Play
Emergent Cultures in Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds
Foreword by Tom Boellstorff and Bonnie A. Nardi
paperback edition
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011
- Hilde G. Corneliussen and Jill Walker Rettberg
Digital Culture, Play, and Identity
A World of Warcraft Reader
paperback edition
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011
- Henry Lowood and Michael Nitsche, eds.
The Machinima Reader
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011
- Gordon Calleja
In-Game
From Immersion to Incorporation
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011
- Miguel Sicart
The Ethics of Computer Games
paperback edition
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011
- Joost Raessens and Jeffrey Goldstein, eds.
Handbook of Computer Game Studies
paperback edition
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011
For more information on MIT Press,
visit:
http://mitpress.mit.edu/main/home/default.asp
September 19, 2011
New from O'Reilly Media: Resources on HTML5
HTML5 is still under development, which should be taken under consideration by creators of
literature for whom continuing stability is important. However, HTML5's potential for
working with multimedia and animation on many platforms and without the need for plugins makes it of growing interest
in new media literature authoring systems, and it is important to follow the development
and/or experiment with such a potentially important authoring tool. This year O'Reilly Media
is releasing and/or distributing a substantial collection of print and Ebook resources on HTML5 that include,
among others:
For more information about O'Reilly Media, visit
http://oreilly.com
Books on HTML5 from other publishers include:
Bruce Lawson and Remy Sharp
Introducing HTML5. 2nd Edition
Peachpit/New Riders, October, 2011
Continuing information on the development of HTML5 is available on the
website of The World Wide Web Consortium
at
http://www.w3.org
September 12, 2011
Foundations of Digital Games 2012 to be held in Raleigh, North Carolina, Calls for Papers;
Conference will include a Research and Experimental Game Festival
FDG 2012, the International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games,
will be held in Raleigh, North Carolina from May 30 to June 1, 2012,
with workshops taking place on May 29.
A concurrent Research and Experimental Game Festival
will showcase innovative and experimental game design and technologies.
With a goal of the advancement of the study of digital games, the conference is calling for
academic papers on research and education in/with games, including new game technologies,
capabilities, designs, applications, educational uses, and modes of play. They invite paper, poster, panel,
doctoral consortium, demo, and workshop submissions.
The Conference Chair is Magy Seif El-Nasr, Simon Fraser University,
and the Program Committee Co-Chairs are Mia Consalvo, Concordia University, and Steven Feiner,
Columbia University.
Game tracks include:
- Game Studies
- Game design
- Serious games
- Games education
- Artificial Intelligence
- Game development
- Graphics and Interaction
Full paper and panel submissions are due December 19, 2011;
Research and Experimental Game Festival Submissions:
are due January 19, 2012.
For complete details on submitting papers, visit
http://fdg2012.org/drupal/Papers
More information about the Conference is available at
http://fdg2012.org/drupal/
Society for the Advancement of the Science of Digital Games
http://www.sasdg.org
September 1, 2011
Elit to be Well Represented at ISEA2011, the 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art,
Istanbul, September 14-21; Artists and Speakers include Mark Amerika, Roy Ascott,
Maurice Benayoun, Jay Bolter, Dene Grigar, Davin Heckman, Kristy Kang, Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo,
Donna Leishman, Rita Raley, Jill Walker Rettberg and Scott Rettberg
Hosted by Sabanci University in Istanbul, Turkey, ISEA2011, the 17th International Symposium on
Electronic Art will take place from September 14-21. In addition to the inclusion of new media literature
designer and theorist, Jay Bolter, as one of the keynote speakers, electronic literature is well
represented in this International Gathering with sessions including:
- Zones of Contact and Fields of Consistency in Electronic Literature
Chairs: Davin Heckman and Dene Grigar
__Davin Heckman, "Tagging Practices and the Disturbed Dialectic of Literary Criticism"
__Dene Grigar, "Narrative in Social Media"
__Anna Gibbs and Maria Angel, "At the Time of Writing: Digital Media, Gesture and Handwriting"
__Scott Rettberg, "Making Connections Visible: Building a Knowledge Base for Electronic Literature"
- Creativity as a Social Ontology
Chairs: Scott Rettberg and Simon Biggs
__Simon Biggs, "The Creative Imperative"
__Ruth Catlow, "We are the Medium - the Context - the Source of Networked Creativity"
__James Leach, "Can We Help Being Creative?"
__Talan Memmott, "Creative Communities: Nooks, Niches, and Networks"
__Scott Rettberg, "Electronic Authorship, Collaboration, Community, and Practice"
__Jill Walker Rettberg, "The Geneology of a Creative Community: Why is afternoon the 'granddaddy'
of hypertext fiction?"
Exhibitions which feature new media narrative include
UNCONTAINABLE: Hyperstrata at the Kasa Gallery with work by Mark Amerika, Roy Ascott,
(whose seminal La Plissure du Texte
will be the subject of a Symposium panel) Sean Montgomery, Elif Ayiter, Max Moswitzer, and Selavy Oh.
Other sessions of interest to the electronic literature community include:
- Theories of Social Media, chaired by Therese Tierney
- Voicing Electronic Arts, chaired by sound/media artist Norie Neumark,
- Transmedia Narrative: Modes of Digital Scholarship and Design Across
Public Space, Chaired by Kristy Kang
- Without Sin: Taboo and Freedom within Digital Media, chaired by Donna Leishman
- If You See Something Say Something: Art, War, Surveillance and the Sustainability of
Urgency in the Post 9/11 Era, chaired by Joseph DeLappe.
Panel participants include Bernadette Buckley, Wafaa Bilal, and Hasan Elahi.
New media and new media literature critic Rita Raley is the discussant.
In addition to new media designer and theorist Jay Bolter -- who will be speaking on the status of art and
culture in an era of digital media, the subject of his forthcoming MIT Press book on "The Digital Plenitude"
-- keynotes will be presented by Sean Cubittt, Semir Zeki, Oliver Grau, William Uricchio, Sara Diamond,
Christiane Paul, and Terrence Masson.
Among many other writers and artists featured in the ISEA2011 program are:
Stefan Müller Arisona, Maurice Benayoun, Zach Blas, Charles Csuri, Ayoka Chenzira,
Renate Ferro, Baruch Gotlieb, Diane Gromala, Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo,
John Kim, Timothy Murray, Helen Varley Jamieson, Andrea Polli, and Cynthia Beth Rubin.
ISEA2011 will also host "Bosphorus Networking Cruises" as part of this year's Symposium.
A boat provided by Istanbul Sehir Hatlari "will travel at dusk one day while on the other it
will float across the reflections of the city lights for an evening cruise. A fantastic opportunity to
network, show your portfolio, find out 'who is doing what' or just have a great time out cruising
between two continents."
For complete information on ISEA2011, visit
http://isea2011.sabanciUniversityedu
Founded in the Netherlands in 1990, the
Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts (ISEA)
is currently headquartered at the University of Brighton in the U.K.
ISEA 2012, will take place in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico,
with major events held on and near the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.
A call for entries is on the website.
ISEA Symposiums are archived at
http://www.isea-webarchive.org
August 23, 2011
Adobe Previews Adobe Edge, an HTML5 Web Animation and Interaction Design Tool;
Invites Community Input
Adobe Systems, which has recently announced plans to focus on content authoring and digital marketing,
has released a public preview of Adobe Edge, a HTML5 animation and interaction
design tool that allows web designers to create websites using animation, similar to that created in
Flash Professional, using authoring tools such as HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. Utilizing an open
development methodology while it is in this public preview stage, Adobe Edge is free as an online download,
and the company is asking for user input to help shape the final product.
"Now, with Adobe Edge, we're taking our HTML5 tooling to a whole new level and
look forward to getting some really useful feedback from the community over the next few months,
as we refine the product," explains Paul Gubbay, Vice President of Adobe Design and Web Engineering.
Content created with Edge is designed to work on modern browsers including those on
Android, BlackBerry Playbook, iOS, HP webOS, and other smartphone mobile devices, as well as on Firefox,
Google Chrome, Safari, and Internet Explorer 9.
Complimenting Adobe's existing Web tools, such as Dreamweaver and Flash, "The Adobe Edge preview works
natively with HTML," Adobe notes. "It enables users to add motion to existing HTML documents without
hampering design integrity of CSS-based layouts, and it also enables users to easily create visually
rich content from scratch, using familiar drawing tools that produce HTML elements styled with CSS3.
Users can import standard Web graphics assets such as SVG, PNG, JPG and GIF files and style them using CSS3."
To download the software, visit
http://www.labs.adobe.com
To find out more about Adobe Edge Preview
visit
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/edge/
August 16, 2011
ELO 2012: Electrifying Literature, Affordances and Constraints to be held in
Morgantown, West Virginia, June 20-23, 2012: Conference Calls for Papers and Works
The international Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) Conference, last held at
Brown University, will be held in Morgantown, West Virginia from June 20-23, 2012,
at the site of West Virginia University. In addition to presentations
and panels, the Conference will feature an exhibition at the Monongalia
Arts Center in Morgantown, from June 18-30, and an accompanying online exhibition will
bring works from the Conference to a wider audience.
The Electronic Literature Organization and West Virginia University's Center for Literary Computing invite
titles and proposals to the ELO 2012 Conference by the deadline of November 30, 2011.
Selected conference presentations will be published within a few months of the conference
in the electronic book review. For complete details, visit
http://el.eliterature.org/cfp.html
The Conference Planning Committee is Sandy Baldwin, West Virginia University; (Chair)
Philippe Bootz, University of Paris 8; Dene Grigar, Washington State University Vancouver;
Margie Luesebrink, Irvine Valley College; Mark Marino, University of Southern California;
Stuart Moulthrop, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee; and Joseph Tabbi, University of Illinois, Chicago.
Recently relocated to the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Electronic Literature Organization is a non-profit
international organization and community
that includes writers, artists, teachers, scholars, and developers. Since its founding in 1999,
the ELO has worked "to foster and promote the reading, writing, teaching, and understanding of literature
as it develops and persists in a changing digital environment." In addition to the international conference,
projects include the Electronic Literature Directory; and the Electronic Literature Collection.
Further details on the Conference will be available on an ongoing basis at
http://el.eliterature.org
and
http://conference.eliterature.org
For more information about the ELO, visit
http://www.eliterature.org
August 5, 2011
New Book from the University of Minnesota Press: Digital Art and Meaning by Roberto Simanowski
Available from the University of Minnesota Press, Roberto Simanowski's Digital Art and Meaning,
Reading Kinetic Poetry, Text Machines, Mapping Art, and Interactive Installations
covers a wide range of topics relevant to new media writing and reading -- from a introduction: "Close Reading"
to an Epilogue on "Code, Interpretation, Avant-Garde".
Observing that in our contemporary, digital-dominated world, there is a need for "clear,
deeply informed, and highly elucidating demonstration of how such new media critical
work can be done", Simanowski, a Professor at the Institut for Media Studies, University of Basel,
Switzerland and Founding Editor of the online journal on digital literature and arts, dichtung-digital,
notes that "Digital Art and Meaning offers a series of close readings of varied examples from different
genres of digital art such as kinetic concrete poetry, computer generated text, interactive installation,
mapping art, and the viewer's behavior."
And in a description of the book, sent via email to Authoring Software,
he speaks of "images that are progressively destroyed by the human gaze; of a curtain of little screens
compiling chunks of text from online conversations; of text-machines generating nonsense sentences out of
a Kafka story; of a light show above Mexico City's historic square, created by Internet users all
over the world."
Emphasizing a rich, integrative approach to close reading, Roberto Simanowski explains
that the book combines close
readings "with a theoretical discussion that employs art philosophy and history
a crucial step toward bringing the digital arts into the traditions of art history and criticism as well
as expanding those traditions to embrace the digital. The aim of this book is to start close to the
actual work before reading it in light of its broader context. The legacy that this book hopes to
convey to digital media studies is the skill and acumen of close (that is, semiotic) reading."
For more information about
Roberto Simanowski's Digital Art and Meaning,
Reading Kinetic Poetry, Text Machines, Mapping Art, and Interactive Installations,
visit
http://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/digital-art-and-meaning
In addition to Mark Amerika's
remixthebook, due in September, Digital Art and Meaning
joins a series of critical writings about new media from the University of Minnesota Press
that also include Victoria Vesna, editor,
Database Aesthetics, Art in the Age of Information Overflow,
Rita Raley,
Tactical Media,
and Jaishree K. Odin,
Hypertext and the Female Imaginary.
July 26, 2011
University of Michigan to Host 2011 HASTAC Conference; Topics Include
"Expanding the Digital Arts to Include the Humanities and Vice Versa"
The University of Michigan will host the annual HASTAC Conference on December 2-3, 2011
in Ann Arbor, Michigan. This year's theme is "Digital Scholarly Communication".
Topics will include, among many others, "Expanding the digital arts to include
the humanities and vice versa"; "Web design and digitization of archives for multiple and different
constituencies"; and "New forms of research, digitally based, in the humanities".
The deadline for submitting proposals for presentations has been rescheduled to September 15, 2011.
HASTAC is a multi-disciplinary consortium of scholars and artists, organizations and individuals
that in their words on their website is "inspired by the possibilities
that new technologies offer us for shaping how we learn, teach, communicate, create, and organize
our local and global communities." Pronounced "haystack", the name is an acronym for
Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory.
For more information about HASTAC, visit their new (or soon to be new) website at
http://www.hastac.org
For more information about the 2011 HASTAC Conference, visit
http://www.hastac.org/blogs/admin/2011-hastac-v-conference-digital-scholarly-communication
Proposals for presentations (deadline September 15, 2011) can be submitted at:
http://tinyurl.com/HASTAC2011-Proposal
July 16, 2011
First Convention of Chinese/American Association for Poetry and Poetics
to Include "Poetry and New Media" - Wuhan, China, September 29-30, 2011
The Chinese/American Association for Poetry and Poetics will hold its first
Convention in Wuhan, China from September 29-30, 2011. With a focus on
"Dialog on Poetry and Poetics", topics will include "Sound, Performance, Text:
the Boundaries of Poetry"; "Poetry and New Media"; and "Issues of Identity in 21st C Poetry".
Headquartered at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing,
the Chinese/American Association for Poetry and Poetics focuses, "in their words, "on the scholarship and
translation of the international poetry, with special emphasis on the study and translation
of North American poetry in China and Chinese poetry in North America, but also with a commitment
to see North American poetry and Chinese poetry in a global context." The Convention will honor
contemporary poetry critic
Marjorie Perloff and will include topics
on "Critical Writings of Marjorie Perloff: Retrospective Readings of the Works".
The deadline for submitting abstracts is August 20, 2011
For more information, visit
http://writing.upenn.edu/news/CAAP-2011-conference-cfp.html
July 8, 2011
Forthcoming from the University of Minnesota Press: Mark Amerika's remixthebook
In his forthcoming remixthebook, new media writer and critic Mark Amerika
approaches the mashup in historical and contemporary contexts. "In remixthebook,
Mark Amerika explores the mashup as a defining cultural activity in the digital age,"
The University of Minnesota Press (UMP) notes on its webpage that documents the book.
UMP will publish Amerika's
remixthebook in September of 2011, and the print book will be accompanied by an
extensive website with collaborative components.
"remixthebook is a hybrid publication and performance project that has both print and digital features,"
says Amerika, whose work includes the seminal new media trilogy GRAMMATRON, PHON:E:ME, and
FILMTEXT. "The print book is a series of remixed texts that mash-up
contemporary art theory with personal narrative, poetry, comedy and the history of remix practices.
It reads like a kind of performance art manifesto that attempts to challenge traditional scholarly discourse
while maintaining an allegiance to intellectual writing."
With contributions from over 25 artists and theorists -- including Kate Armstrong,
Giselle Beiguelman, Curt Cloniger, David Gunkel, Gary Hall, Will Luers, mez, Out-of-Sync,
Rick Silva, Darren Tofts, and Gregory Ulmer -- the remixthebook.com website is a central
component of the project.
"The remixthebook.com website is not a supplement to the book," Amerika explains.
"It's a central part of the overall project and includes contributions from over 25
contemporary artists and media theorists. I remixed various samples from the book into
stand-alone text pieces, audio tracks, and even video footage of me performing the work, and
this source material was then sent to the various participants who could do
whatever they wanted with it -- or not use it all, as in some cases."
The website also includes a pedagogical component. "There's a section of the site labeled 'The Course'
that also experiments with enabling anyone who wants to teach the project to do so," Mark Amerika
told Authoring Software. "The idea is to encourage innovative forms of remix writing
that expand the possibilities of composing contemporary theory on media/art/culture."
A Professor of Media Arts in the Department of Art and Art History at the
University of Colorado in Boulder, Mark Amerika has created new media literature, cult novels,
video and films, and experimental artists books. His work has been published, screened, and exhibited
widely including the Whitney Biennial of American Art; the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London;
the American Museum of the Moving Image, New York; Black Ice Books; the Walker Art Center;
the FILMWINTER Festival, Stuttgart; transmediale, Berlin; the National Museum of Contemporary Art,
Athens; and the 2011 Biennale de Montréal.
Orders are being accepted, and more information about the book is available on the
University of Minnesota Press website at
http://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/remixthebook
For more information about Mark Amerika, visit
http://markamerika.com
July 3, 2011
New Books from O'Reilly on Dreamweaver, Flash, Perl, and iPhone and iPad Development
This summer O'Reilly Media has released a series of new and new editions
of guides and manuals for programming languages, software applications, and new platforms.
New releases from O'Reilly of particular interest to the new media writing community include:
Also available from O'Reilly is
For continuing information about O'Reilly Media publications, visit
http://oreilly.com/store/index.html
June 20, 2011
The Electronic Literature Organization Moves to MIT
On July 1, 2011, the Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) will move to the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, from its current headquarters at the University of Maryland's Institute of
Technology in the Humanities.
"ELO and MIT have already been successful in advancing the state of the art in electronic literature,"
said ELO President Nick Montfort, who is an Associate Professor of Digital Media in the
Writing and Humanistic Studies Department at MIT. "Now, by working together, we have a chance to sustain
ELO's core operations and projects and to further MIT's existing commitment to electronic literature.
ELO's coming to MIT will be a chance to find new opportunities for collaboration,
here in Cambridge and beyond."
The Electronic Literature Organization is a non-profit international organization and community
that includes writers, artists, teachers, scholars, and developers. Since its founding in 1999,
the ELO has worked "to foster and promote the reading, writing, teaching, and understanding of literature
as it develops and persists in a changing digital environment." Projects include an International
biannual conference; the Electronic Literature Directory; the Electronic Literature Collection; (which recently released a second volume)
and the eliterature.org website.
ELO is coming to MIT with the support of MIT's world-renowned Comparative Media Studies (CMS) program,
which has an undergraduate major, a graduate program, as well as several large-scale research projects.
The ELO press release notes that the program is "committed to the art of thinking across media forms,
theoretical domains, cultural contexts, and historical periods. The program considers media change
and the rise of new forms of writing in different eras, including our current one." ELO's supporting
and collaborating organizations at MIT include the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences; the
Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies;
the Council for the Arts at MIT; Hyperstudio; the Literature Section; and the Singapore/MIT GAMBIT Game Lab.
There is already a substantial amount of work in electronic literature ongoing at MIT, including,
in addition to the work of ELO President Nick Montfort, the work of new media writer Fox Harrell,
who is an ELO Board member.
With organizations such as the Institute for Contemporary Art, (ICA) the Media Lab,
Eastgate Systems, the Boston Cyberarts Festival, Turbulence.org, Do While Studio, AXIOM,
the Upgrade! Boston series, and the People's Republic of Interactive Fiction,
the Boston area has long been central in the creation and exhibition of new media literature
and art.
The ELO was founded in 1999 by writer Robert Coover, new media writer Scott Rettberg, and
Internet business leader Jeff Ballowe. Initially it was operated from Chicago, In 2001, it moved to UCLA,
and since 2006, it has been headquartered at the University of Maryland's
Institute of Technology in the Humanities. (MITH)
"ELO's relationships with its academic hosts have been extremely productive for the organization,"
said Montfort. "We're very grateful for the ways that UCLA and MITH have helped us to accomplish
our mission, sustain and add projects, and develop as an organization. With work from ELO's directors,
members, and collaborators, we're now going to try to establish a long-term home for ELO at
MIT that will allow the organization and the campus to continue to benefit from their
collaboration for many years."
For more information, visit the ELO website at
http://www.eliterature.org
or contact ELO Secretary and Director of Communications Mark Marino
at
markcmarino @ gmail.com
The Electronic Literature Collection
is available at
http://collection.eliterature.org
June 12, 2011
New from MIT Press: Performing Mixed Reality
Performing Mixed Reality, edited by Steve Benford and Gabriella
Giannachi, will be available from MIT Press in September 2011.
The book concentrates on performances developed at the University of Nottingham’s Mixed Reality
Laboratory, specifically on performance works using digital technologies, including computer-mediated
interaction, and it documents collaborations with artists, including the group Blast Theory.
Steve Benford is Professor of Collaborative
Computing in the School of Computer Science at the University of Nottingham.
Gabriella Giannachi is Professor in Performance and New Media and Director of the Centre for Intermedia
in the Department of English at Exeter University.
For more information, visit:
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12718
June 5, 2011
New Media Consortium Will Hold 2011 Summer Conference in Madison, Wisconsin, from June 15-18
Hosted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the annual New Media Consortium (NMC) Summer Conference
will take place in Madison from June 15-18, 2011. With a wide range of speakers, panels, and workshops
devoted to each, in 2011, the conference will feature four main
themes:
- Emerging Technologies
- New Media and Learning
- New Media and Leadership
- Tools and Techniques
Special Recognition will be given to Internet pioneer
Vinton Cerf, recipient of the 2011 NMC Fellows Award, who will speak about
"The Internet of Things".
The NMC is an international consortium of organizations dedicated to the exploration and use of
new media and new technologies. NMC member organizations are institutions of higher learning,
including among many others Arizona State University, Auburn University,
Boston College, Cornell University,
Dartmouth College, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, (Vancouver, Canada)
Harvard University, Iowa State University, Johns Hopkins University,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, National University of Ireland,
New York University,
National University of Ireland, Galway,
Princeton University, Stanford University, University of British Columbia,
University of California, Davis, and the University of Melbourne.
(Melbourne, Australia)
Members also include cultural institutions,
such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,
and software and hardware creators, such as Adobe Systems and Apple.
For more information, visit
http://www.nmc.org/cal
May 23, 2011
Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Enables Content Production on Mobile Platforms;
Includes Advances in HTML5 and Flash Authoring
Adobe Systems, an industry leader in software for creative applications,
has announced a new Creative Suite product lineup, headed by the Adobe Creative Suite 5.5
Master Collection, which features Adobe's creative tools in a one package,
including Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat, Flash Builder Premium,
Flash Catalyst, Flash Professional, Dreamweaver, Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effect.
Given the difficulties in designing for both large screens and mobile platforms, Adobe's emphasis
on the ability to create and scale content for multiple platforms, operating systems, Web browsers,
smartphones and tablets -- such as Android, BlackBerry Tablet OS, and Apple iOS devices --
is of particular interest.
"The explosion of smartphones and tablets is drastically changing how content is distributed
and consumed, and Web Premium CS5.5 ensures that designers and developers can target mobile
platforms first, helping them secure the widest possible reach of their interactive
content and applications on devices," said Lea Hickman, Adobe's Vice President of Creative Suite
Design and Web product management. "Thanks to advances in HTML5 and Flash tooling,
the delivery of browser content and new rich interactive apps has never been easier across
Android, BlackBerry Tablet OS and iOS."
Although Adobe's introduction of subscription pricing may be helpful for some,
Creative Suite 5.5 packages are expensive for individual users, who
may not need all the applications. However, education pricing for students, faculty
and staff in K-12 and higher education is available from Adobe Authorized
Education Resellers and the Adobe Education Store at
http://www.adobe.com/education/purchasing/education_pricing.html
More information regarding education
volume licensing for higher education and K-12 institutions
is available at
http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/volumelicensing/education
For more information about Adobe Creative Suite including available packages and subscription pricing,
visit
http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite.html
May 15, 2011
ISEA2011, the 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art, to be held in
Istanbul, September 14-21
Hosted by Sabanci University, ISEA2011, the 17th International Symposium on
Electronic Art will take place in Istanbul, Turkey, from September 14-21. Keynote speakers are
Oliver Grau, Jay Bolter, Sara Diamond, Christiane Paul, and Terrence Masson.
Panels of interest to the electronic literature community include:
- "If You See Something Say Something: Art, War, Surveillance and the Sustainability of
Urgency in the Post 9/11 Era", chaired by new media artist Joseph DeLappe, whose works have included
social media interventions on Twitter and Second Life. Panel participants include
Bernadette Buckley, Wafaa Bilal, and Hasan Elahi. New media and new media literature critic
Rita Raley is the discussant.
- "Voicing Electronic Arts", chaired by sound/media artist Norie Neumark,
with participants including Nermin Saybasili,
Igor Stromajer, and Isabelle Arvers.
Also of interest, among many others, is a panel on "Hybrid Cultures", chaired by
Kerstin Mey and Yvonne Spielmann.
For complete information on ISEA2011, visit
http://isea2011.sabanciUniversityedu
Founded in the Netherlands in 1990, the
Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts (ISEA)
is currently headquartered at the University of Brighton in the U.K.
ISEA 2012, will take place in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico,
with major events held on and near the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.
ISEA Symposiums are archived at
http://www.isea-webarchive.org
May 9, 2011
Texas Institute for Literary and Textual Studies
Symposium to Focus on the Digital Humanities
From May 26-28 , 2011 at the University of Texas at Austin,
the Texas Institute for Literary and Textual Studies
(TILTS) will host a symposium on "The Digital and the Human(ities)".
TILTS notes that "In this symposium, scholars will be encouraged to investigate digital humanities
from a critical standpoint as it impacts both the disciplines within the humanities
and the people who practice them."
The Keynote lecture, "Humanist Computing at the End of the Individual Voice", will be given by
book artist and critic Johanna Drucker. Participants include Nick Montfort, N. Katherine Hayles, and
Josh Iorio. Panels of particular interest to the electronic literature community include:
-
Automation and the Digital Vernacular
Chair: Robert K. Nelson
Speakers: Patricia Yeager, "Luminous Trash: Throwaway Robots in Blade Runner,
The Terminators, A. I. and WALL-E"
Lauren Squires, "Automatic Genres: Views of Language from the Digital Armchair"
Jason Baldridge, "Computational Grounding of Texts in Real World Proxies"
- The Structure of Being on the Internet
Chair: Douglas Bigham
Speakers: Chris Ortiz y Prentice, "Writing Mass Effect Online: Reading User-Generated Content"
Joseph Thompson, "Magical Machines and Affective Actants: What Can Vital Materialism Mean for
Video Game theory?"
Josh Iorio, "The Social Meaning of Linguistic Structure on the Internet"
José Enrique Navarro, "Liquid Authorship"
- The Situations of Digital Humanities
Chair: Andrew J. Torget
Speakers: Matthew Kirschenbaum, "Digital Humanities as/is a Tactical Term"
Kim Christen, "Digital Humanities Centers and Margins: Creating a Dialog"
Nick Montfort, "The Digital Rear-View Mirror"
Comment: N. Katherine Hayles
"The Digital and the Human(ities)" is the third symposium of a 2011 series that also featured
symposiums on "Access, Authority, & Identity" and "Digital Humanities: Teaching & Learning".
For more information, visit
http://tilts.dwrl.utexas.edu/symposia/third
April 27, 2011
New Books from O'Reilly on HTML5, Processing, Audacity, JavaScript, and Python
O'Reilly Media continues its central to the field work in providing guides and manuals to programming
languages and software applications with new editions of classics and new and forthcoming books.
Titles of particular interest to new media creators include:
For more information on O'Reilly Media and continuing updates on new publications,
visit their website at
http://oreilly.com
April 18, 2011
The Proceedings of Critical Code Studies @ USC Available Online with Text and Video;
Keynote by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun addresses "Codes, Crises and Critical Pleasure"
New media writer and University of Southern California (USC) Associate Professor of Writing, Mark Marino,
has announced the online publication of the proceedings of Critical Code Studies @ USC, a conference
held at USC on July 23, 2010.
"You'll notice that the proceedings were published on a unique platform called Thoughtmesh, which
was developed by USC's Vectors journal and presenter Craig Dietrich in particular," Marino writes
on Critical Code Studies. "Thoughtmesh was chosen for its ability to present and connect publications
in much the same way that you'd expect from a live
conference. I'm particularly excited about the Peer Review feature, which allows users to create
conversation in and around the papers on the site."
Available at
http://vectorsjournal.org/thoughtmesh/critcode,
the proceedings feature text and video from conference presentations and panel,
including a video of "Codes, Crises and Critical Pleasure", the keynote by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun,
Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University, and author of the new MIT book,
Programmed Visions: Software and Memory. Wendy Chun's background includes
both systems design engineering and English literature; her creative ideas are of interest
to humanists who are reading code as well as to programmers who are interested in discourse on
the state of programming in today's automated programming environments.
Critical Code Studies @ USC Conference papers address advanced uses of authoring software
in terms of writer/code relationships; "literate" programming that focuses on documentation and
human language; recreational code; and other approaches to code use and understanding.
Among many presentations of interest are:
- Jeremy Douglass, Casey Reas, Nick Montfort, Studying Software by Porting and Reimplementation
A BASIC Case"
The authors present the work of a larger group (including also, Patsy Baudoin, John Bell, Ian Bogost,
Mary Flanagan, Mark Marino, Michael Mateas, Warren Sack, Mark Sample,
and Noah Vawter) that focuses on a maze-generating one-line BASIC program:
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5 + RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Their presentation encompasses BASIC, recreational computing, how programs are transmitted,
mazes, creative variations to the program, and randomness.
"This program is a gateway to explaining important concepts in computation,
creative and recreational computing, programming languages in general and BASIC
particularly, home computing, and the relationship of computing to text, typography,
and visual art," they explain. "It uses randomness and creates a two-dimensional pattern from a repeating,
one-dimensional process. It employs character graphics, elements meant to be fitted together
like a mosaic which were implemented on top of an essentially typographical system. While
the program is compelling, it does not easily fit into any standard category ("video game,"
"productivity software," "educational exercise") that we know of today."
- Marisa Plumb, {untitled on "Domain-Specific Languages"}
The author looks at code and information as narrative, focusing on her own work in a discussion that
encompasses the idea of give and take between narrative and programming; ways to access
data as a component of narrative plot and character development; and the benefits of using
Domain-specific languages. (an approach to software solutions for very specific uses)
- Aaron Reed, "Knock's Memories: Creating an Emotional Story Space with Inform 7"
Reed discusses the creation of his 2010 Interactive fiction Sand-dancer,
using the literate Interactive fiction application, Inform 7.
- Jeremy Douglass, "Comments on Comments in Code"
"Like footnotes or endnotes, code comments are paratexts -- continuous with and yet set apart
from the source.
Where they serve as actual *commentaries*, these paratexts enabling programmers to signal intentions,
record histories, and render aesthetic judgements: comments enable the vital processes of software
development culture," he notes.
-
Plus Elizabeth Losh, "Academic Discourse and Text Generators," John Williams,
"Techne-Zen and the Codes of Interface Design", and much more.
Mark Marino invites readers to read and contribute to the proceedings:
"I encourage you to explore the proceedings and continue the CCS conversation in
the Peer Review area on Thoughtmesh. Happy meshing! "
The Proceedings of Critical Code Studies @ USC are available at
http://vectorsjournal.org/thoughtmesh/critcode
April 7, 2011
Hypertext 2011 to be Held in Eindhoven from June 6-9, 2011
Hypertext 2011, the 22nd Annual ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia, will be held
this year in Eindhoven, the Netherlands from June 6-9. Keynote speakers are Marti Hearst,
School of Information, University of California Berkeley; Wendy Hall, Dean of the Faculty of Physical and
Applied Sciences, Southampton, UK; and Noshir Contractor, Director of the Science of Networks
in Communities (SONIC) Research Group at Northwestern University.
Sessions of particular interest to the new media literature community include
a track on "Interaction, Narrative, and Storytelling", chaired by
Mark Bernstein, Eastgate Systems, and Frank Nack, University of Amsterdam.
Additionally, a workshop on "Narrative and Hypertext", chaired by Charlie Hargood and David Millard,
University of Southampton, will "bring together individuals from the humanities
and science communities to share research and discuss state-of-the-art research on narrative
from both a technical and aesthetic perspective".
More program information will be available soon on the
ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)
Hypertext 2011 website at
http://www.ht2011.org/index.html
March 18, 2011
ELMCIP Knowledge Base Goes Live; Features Access to Works of E-Literature, Criticism, Events,
and Teaching Resources
Produced at the University of Bergen in Norway as part of ELMCIP: the Electronic Literature as a
Model of Creativity
and Innovation in Practice project, Knowledge Base is an e-literature community-created database
of information about critical writing, authors, publishers, organizations, teaching resources,
events in the field, and works of electronic literature,
including, among many other recent bibliographic entries,
Rob Wittig's Friday's Big Meeting, Alexandra Saemmer's Etang, and the collaboratively
created Noon Quilt.
The resource --
http://elmcip.net/knowledgebase
-- has been opened to readers and contributors while the development process continues.
Describing the resource's breadth, the project notes that:
"The Knowledge Base will be as comprehensive as possible, including
presentation materials from all of the seminars conducted under the ELMCIP project, downloadable
versions of articles produced as a result of the research, downloadable versions of the reports,
exhibition catalogue, and ethnographic study, online versions of the works or documentation included
in the exhibition DVD and the anthology, information about active and historical network-based creative
communities, information about individual works of electronic literature, information about scholarship
about electronic literature and resources specific to the ELMCIP project itself."
Other Knowledge Base goals are bibliographic usefulness, including
the creation of structured, searchable data; open access; sustainability, including long-term hosting and
archiving by established archives, such as the Internet Archive and the Norwegian National Library;
and extensive cross-referencing.
ELMCIP is a three year collaborative research project running from 2010-2013, funded by the Humanities
in the European Research Area (HERA) Joint Research Programme for Creativity and Innovation. Partners include:
- The University of Bergen, Norway (PL Scott Rettberg, Co-I Jill Walker Rettberg)
- the Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland (PI Simon Biggs, Co-I Penny Travlou)
- Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden (PI Maria Engberg, Co-I Talan Memmott)
- The University of Amsterdam, Netherlands (PI Yra Van Dijk)
- The University of Ljubljana, Slovenia (PI Janez Strechovec),
- The University of Jyv,skyl,, Finland (PI Raine Koskimaa)
- University College Falmouth at Dartington, England (PI Jerome Fletcher)
- New Media Scotland.
"Focusing on a particular creative community, of electronic literature practitioners,
the central
research question of the ELMCIP collaborative research project is how creative communities of
practitioners
form within transnational and transcultural contexts, within a globalised and distributed
communications environment," ELMCIP Project Leader Scott Rettberg,
Associate Professor of Digital Culture at the University of Bergen,
writes in his paper The ELMCIP Knowledge Base
and the Formation of an
International Field of Literary Scholarship and Practice.
"We seek to gain insight into and understanding of the social effects and
manifestations of creativity."
They are planning to collaborate and share information with other databases
in the field, such as the Electronic Literature Organization's Electronic Literature Directory,
NT2's French-language electronic literature database, and Hermeneia's online catalogue of electronic
literature.
Sources/Resources:
ELMCIP
ELMCIP Knowledge Base
Knowledge Base screencast
Scott Rettberg, "The ELMCIP Knowledge Base and the Formation of an International Field
of Literary Scholarship and Practice"
The Electronic Literature Organization's
Electronic Literature Directory
March 15, 2011
E-Poetry Ten Year Anniversary Festival to be held May 18-21, 2011 at the University at Buffalo;
Registration Now Open
After Festivals in West Virginia, London, Paris, and Barcelona, E-Poetry
-- a biennial International event and dialogg which focuses on emerging issues in digital,
visual, sound, and language-based artistic/literary practice --
returns to Buffalo, New York. This year celebrating the tenth year since it began at Buffalo in 2001,
E-poetry 2011 will be held from May 18-21 at the State University of
Buffalo, with programming including readings, events, and performances by
Joan La Barbara, Squeaky Wheel, Reina María Rodríguez, Lucio Agra, Wilton Azevedo,
and Upton/Drever; a RiTa E-Poetry Workshop; and much more to be announced soon.
Co-directed by new media poets Loss Pequeño Glazier, Department of Media Study, SUNY Buffalo,
and Sandy Baldwin, Center for Literary Computing, West Virginia University, the Festival
encompasses a broad range of new media approaches that, in addition to computer-mediated screen-based
works include, among other forms, performance, visual, sound-based, conceptual, and book art.
"Its emphasis is on literary practice in an encompassing sense, i.e.,
the practice of thinking through engagement with the material aspects of
inscribed media forms, the building of community, and the exchange of ideas across languages,
borders, and ideologies. Rather than considering 'new form' a qualifying criterion,
it seeks to locate innovative artistic practice in its cultural, conceptual, and media milieu,"
the Festival notes.
The 2011 E-Poetry website is at
http://epc.buffalo.edu/e-poetry/2011
Registration for the conference is now open at
http://epc.buffalo.edu/e-poetry/2011/register.html
An archive-in-progress of past E-Poetry Festivals can be found on the Electronic Poetry Center
website at
http://epc.buffalo.edu/e-poetry/archive/
March 12, 2011
New and Forthcoming Books: Wendy Hui Kyong Chun: Programmed Visions;
Marina Grishakova and Marie-Laure Ryan: Intermediality and Storytelling; and
Kevin Jackson-Mead and J. Robinson Wheeler, IF Theory Reader
Encompassing philosophical investigations of contemporary code; new uses of narrative in digital media; and the history,
craft and theory of interactive fiction; (IF) new books of interest to the electronic literature community include:
- Wendy Hui Kyong Chun
Programmed Visions, Software and Memory
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12570
- Marina Grishakova and Marie-Laure Ryan, eds.
Intermediality and Storytelling, Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010.
http://www.degruyter.de/cont/fb/li/detailEn.cfm?isbn=9783110237733&sel=kw
- Kevin Jackson-Mead and J. Robinson Wheeler. eds.
IF Theory Reader, Lulu, 2011
http://www.lulu.com/product/file-download/if-theory-reader/15050862
The IF Theory Reader is available both online and in a print edition. Article of
interest to Authoring Software readers include, among others:
Paul O'Brian, "Landscape and Character in IF"; Stephen Granade, "Descriptions Constructed";
Robb Sherwin, "NPC Dialogue Writing"; and Emily Short, "NPC Conversation Systems".
A complete table of contents is available on the Interactive Fiction Wiki at
http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/IF_Theory_Reader
Also of interest is:
Becky Herr-Stephenson, Diana Rhoten, Dan Perkel, and Christo Sims
Digital Media and Technology in Afterschool Programs, Libraries, and Museums
Cambridge, MA; MIT Press, 2010
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12574
March 4, 2011
Interactive Fiction at PAX East: People's Republic of Interactive Fiction to Hold Mini-Convention;
IF Demo Fair to Showcase 23 works
Held this year in Boston from March 11-13, PAX East is a three day content-rich game
festival which includes concerts,
panel discussions, an exhibition hall of new works from game publishers and developers,
a tournament area, and the opportunity to meet fellow creators in the field. The 2011 Keynote will be delivered by game designer, and games researcher
and philosopher Jane McGonigal, Director of Game Research & Development at the Institute of the Future in Palo Alto.
In conjunction with PAX East, the Boston-based
People's Republic of Interactive Fiction will present an Interactive Fiction Mini-Convention
with presentations and gatherings that include a panel discussion on design challenges for "Non-gamers gaming"; a panel discussion on
"Setting as character in narrative games"; an opportunity to meet IF community members; and a "Collaborative IF play event".
("We put an IF game up on the projector screen; someone reads; someone collects suggestions from the audience
and types commands", they explain.)
Highlights of the Interactive Fiction Mini-Convention at PAX East also include Nick Montfort's presentation of
Curveship, his newly released IF development system, and an IF Demo Fair hosted by interactive fiction writer, designer, programmer
and consultant, Emily Short.
"We have 23 pieces, including interactive poetry, journalism, and documentary; experiments with styles of interaction that
go beyond the puzzle, and modes of input other than the standard parser form; new prototype authoring tools; and new interpreters,
both serious and whimsical," Emily Short notes to describe the event. "Recent years have seen a great diversification for interactive fiction.
It is appearing on new platforms phones, mobile devices, and browsers and in new contexts -- classrooms, independent game shows, science
fiction magazines. These changes are exciting, but they put pressure on authors to make their works more accessible
and more attractive to novice players than ever before, and to investigate new aspects of IF craft."
"As the audience for interactive fiction grows more diverse," she observes. "there may be a need to re-evaluate traditional
ways of creating and presenting IF. The IF Demo Fair provides an opportunity for authors and
tool designers to share their visions for the future of interactive fiction. We hope that it will be a source of useful feedback
and support for those who take part,
and give the community a hint of things to come."
Juhana Leinonen: Vorple
Among the works to be showcased at the IF Demo Fair are Jonathan M. Guberman and Jim Munroe's Automatypewriter,
Aaron Reed's what if im the bad guy?, Juhana Leinonen's Vorple user interface library, and procedurally generated
narrative puzzles by Clara Fernandez Vara, Michaela Lavan, and Alec Thomson, Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab.
Other works likely to be demoed are:
Talkpack - by Bob Clark
"Jean-Luc Godard said that the best form of film-criticism was filmmaking itself.
Why can't the same be true of game-criticism and game-design? In this one-button platformer,
players navigate through randomly-generated spike-filled caverns in order to reach and interview sprites
from the indie-hits 'Canabalt' and 'Kill Jet', in conversations that are structured as RPG-style turn based battles.
Defend against your enemy by guessing the correct response from the choices of Yes, No& Answer, or fight back by
asking a Question of your own."
Life Flashes By - by Deirdra Kiai
"Charlotte Barclay, a novelist of moderate success, one day finds herself in a car accident while on her way to the next leg of
her book tour. She then wakes up in the hazy world of her own memories and, accompanied by an impish pixie-like creature called Trevin,
finds herself whisked away on a whirlwind journey to relive various vignettes of her life so far. In doing so, Charlotte attempts to make sense of who
she is and who she's become, as well as who she could have been had she done things differently..."
Jason and Medea - by Victor Gijsbers
"...we look at the possibility of modeling conversation as combat. For that
purpose we turn Inform ATTACK into a conversation system where all attacks are verbal, arguments function as weapons,
and the price of failure is not measured in blood."
Frotzophone - by Adam Parrish
"The Frotzophone is an interface for making music with interactive fiction.
The topography simulated in the game is used to generate sound, as is the player's path through the game.
A Frotzophone 'performance' looks just like playing a text adventure; but in addition to playing a game, you're also playing music."
To find out more about the IF Demo Fair, including descriptions of Automatypewriter,
what if im the bad guy?, Vorple and procedurally generated
narrative puzzles, visit the IF Demo Fair page on Emily Short's Blog at
http://emshort.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/preview-of-the-if-demo-fair/
For more information about all of the People's Republic's events, visit
http://pr-if.org/event/pax-2011/
Among mainstage PAX East events of interest from an authoring software point of view are:
- Interactive Drama: Dialogue as Gameplay
Jonathon Myers, Co-Founder, Writer, Reactive Games
Stephen Dinehart, Chief Wizard, NarrWare
Dan Tanguay, Design Specialist, Vicarious Visions
Emily Short, Interactive Fiction Author, Independent
Jeff Orkin, PhD Candidate, AI Researcher, MIT Media Lab
Martin VanVelsen, Senior Research Engineer, Carnegie Mellon University
- From Background To Center Stage: Building Game Worlds As Main Characters
Julian Murdoch Ken Levine, Creative Director, Irrational Games
Shawn Robertson, Lead artist, Irrational Games
Nate Wells, Art Director, Irrational
Stephen Alexander, Senior Effects Artist, Irrational Games
- Females on Female Characters
Moderated by Elizabeth Grunewald, Not Games Editor of The Escapist
Susan Arendt, Senior Editor of The Escapist
Kathleen de Vere, star of LoadingReadyRun
Lisa Foiles, Actor, The Escapist
AJ Glasser, News Editor, GamePro
- Game Art & Design Roundtable
John Comes, Creative Director, Uber Entertainment
Terrence Masson, Director of Creative Industries, Northeastern University
Mark Soderwall, Art Director & Visual Game Design Consultant
Bert Snow, VP of Design & Content, Muzzy Lane
Anne Toole, Writer & Narrative Designer
A complete list of PAX East 2011 panels and presentations is available at
http://east.paxsite.com/schedule.php
PAX East main page:
http://east.paxsite.com
February 22, 2011
CHI 2011 to Focus on Diversity and on Connecting People, Cultures, Technologies, Experiences, and Ideas;
Featured Communities Include Games and Entertainment
CHI 2011, the conference of the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction has been held annually since 1982
and is a core International gathering of people who work in the field. Held in Vancouver BC, from May 7-12, 2011,
this year CHI 2011 will focus on diversity and connecting people, cultures, technologies, experiences, and ideas.
This year's featured communities include Games and Entertainment.
Papers and Sessions of interest to the Authoring Software community include:
- Eden: A Professional Multitouch Tool for Constructing Virtual Organic Environments
Kenrick Kin Pixar, Animation Studios/University of California, Berkeley
Tom Miller, Pixar Animation Studios
Björn Bollensdorff, Technische, Universit,t Berlin
Tony DeRose, Pixar Animation Studios
Björn Hartmann, University of California, Berkeley
Maneesh Agrawala, University of California, Berkeley
- Placing a Value on Aesthetics in Online Casual Games
Erik Andersen, University of Washington
Yun-En Liu, University of Washington
Rich Snider, University of Washington
Roy Szeto, University of Washington
Zoran Popović, University of Washington
- Kineticons: Using Iconographic Motion in Graphical User Interface Design
Chris Harrison, Carnegie Mellon University
Gary Hsieh, Michigan State University
Karl D. D. Willis, Carnegie Mellon University
Jodi Forlizzi, Carnegie Mellon University
Scott E Hudson, Carnegie Mellon University
- Panel: World of Warcraft as a Global Artifact
Jeffrey Bardzell, Indiana University
Shaowen Bardzell, Indiana University
Bonnie Nardi, University of California--Irvine
- Workshop: Feminism and Interaction Design
Shaowen Bardzell, Indiana University
Elizabeth Churchill, Yahoo! Research
Jeffrey Bardzell, Indiana University
Jodi Forlizzi, Carnegie Mellon University
Rebecca Grinter, Georgia Institute of Technology
Deborah, Tartar Virginia Tech
For more information on ChI2011 visit
http://chi2011.org/index.html
For more information about ACM, (Association for Computing Machinery)
visit
http://www.acm.org
February 15, 2011
Electronic Literature Organization Announces the Official Launch of the Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 2
Edited by Laura Borràs, Talan Memmott, Rita Raley, and Brian Kim Stefans, the
Second Volume of the Electronic Literature Collection is now officially available from the
Electronic Literature Organization. (ELO) With a goal of making the collection
widely accessible to readers and available for classroom and reference use, both on and off the net,
the collection has been published on the World Wide Web, as well as on DVD-ROM.
The Electronic Literature Collection Volume 2 (College Park, Maryland: Electronic Literature Organization, 2011)
features about 60 works by new media writers and poets from countries including
Austria, Australia, Canada, Colombia, France, Germany, Israel, The Netherlands, Portugal, Peru, Spain, the United Kingdom,
and the United States, and in addition to English, this multilingual collection includes works written in Catalan, Dutch, English, French, German,
Portuguese, and Spanish. Among the many writers whose works are published in the Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 2
are Annie Abrahams; Sandy Baldwin; J. R. Carpenter; Peter Cho; Roderick Coover; Caitlin Fisher; Bjørn Magnhildøen;
Chico Marinho; Mark C. Marino; Nick Montfort; Judd Morrissey; Stuart Moulthrop; Jason Nelson; Kate Pullinger and Chris Joseph;
Scott Rettberg, William Gillespie, Dirk Stratton, and Frank Marquardt; Stephanie Strickland, Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo. and Paul Ryan; Eugenio Tisselli;
Noah Wardrip-Fruin; Sarah Waterson, Elena Knox, and Christyn Davies; and Christine Wilks. Programming Languages, markup languages, and software applications used to create their works
-- which range from hypertext to
interactive fiction to mash-ups to codework -- include Flash, Processing, Java, JavaScript, Inform, HTML, and C++.
"As a complement to our Electronic Literature Directory, and a continuation from Volume 1, this collection
offers an anthology of works that pushes through the boundaries of literary forms, creating new kinds of experiences for interacting readers,"
the ELO notes on their website at
http://www.eliterature.org
Since its founding in 1999, the Electronic Literature Organization has worked
"to foster and promote the reading, writing,
teaching, and understanding of literature as it develops and persists in a changing digital environment."
The Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 2 is available as a free DVD-ROM from the ELO at:
Electronic Literature Organization
Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH)
B0131 McKeldin Library
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742
The collection is also available online at:
http://collection.eliterature.org/2/
The first volume of the series is available at
http://collection.eliterature.org
and it was included in
Electronic Literature New Horizons for the Literary by N. Katherine Hayles.
(Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008)
February 6, 2011
2011 International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games to be held in Bordeaux, France;
Workshops on Procedural Content Generation and on Games and Video Game Accessibility Call for Papers
The International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG 2011)
will take place in Bordeaux, France from June 28-July 1, 2011 with papers and presentations on game
technologies, game play, and game design.
"The goal of the conference is the advancement of the study of digital games, including new game technologies, capabilities,
designs, applications, educational uses, and modes of play," they state.
The Second International Workshop on Procedural Content Generation in Games, (PCGames 2011)
which will take place concurrently in Bordeaux on June 28, is calling for papers. The workshop will bring
researchers together to advance the state of the art of procedural content generation in games --
with discussions of innovative research and issues on algorithmically generating computer game content.
The deadline for submission of papers is March 11, 2011. For complete details visit
http://pcgames.fdg2011.org
Other workshops calling for papers include a workshop on Video Game Accessibility: Extreme Interaction Design
which seeks to build a community of researchers interested in making video games that are accessible for players with disabilities.
Noting the increasing number of people interested in playing video games "and with video games increasingly being used
for other purposes than entertainment, such as education, rehabilitation or health", they emphasize that "it is important we research how video
games can be made accessible, especially when players with disabilities could benefit from the social, educational and
health opportunities that games offer the most." The deadline for submissions is March 24, 2011.
The organizers are Eelke Folmer, University of Nevada; Sri Kurniawan, UC Santa Cruz; and Lennart Nacke, University of Saskatchewan.
For more information, visit
http://ga.fdg2011.org
For updated information on the International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games,
visit
http://www.fdg2011.org
January 28, 2011
New from West Virginia University Press: Regards Croisés:
Perspectives on Digital Literature
West Virginia University Press has announced the publication of Regards Croisés:
Perspectives on Digital Literature, a collection of essays on digital literature
co-edited by new media writer and West Virginia University Associate Professor of English Sandy Baldwin,
who is the Director of the University's Center for Literary Computing and University of Paris 8 Assistant Professor of Hypermedia,
new media writer Philippe Bootz, who is the co-founder of L.A.I.R.E, a French collective in digital literature and Transitoire Observable,
an international collective in programmed poetry.
With a diverse global perspective, the book features contributions by authors from eight countries and
three continents, including in addition to the editors, Shuen-Shing Lee, Alckmar Luiz dos Santos, Camille Paloque-Bergès,
Eugenio Tisselli, Janez Strehovec, and Alexandra Saemmer.
West Virginia University Press notes that "the collection presents points of view on a transcontinental practice of digital literature.
It also opens dialogues with expanded critical paradigms of digital literature, beyond earlier critical concern with the aesthetics of the
screen as a space of hypertext
links. Many of the essays recognize a rich history and ongoing literary practice engaged with the basic fact of the computer as a
programmable device. Other essays explore the latest developments in social media and Web 2.0 as venues for digital literature."
More information about Regards Croisés: Perspectives on Digital Literature, is available on the West Virginia University Press website at
http://wvupressonline.com/bootz_baldwin_regards_croises_9781933202471
January 20, 2011
College Art Association Conference to Feature Sessions on "Data as Medium" and E-Publication
In New York City from February 9-12. 2011, The College Art Association (CAA) will celebrate its
one-hundredth anniversary, since its founding in 1911 with its 99th Annual Conference and Centennial.
Sessions of particular interest to the new media writing community will include:
- ARTspace: Data as Medium
Chair: Jeff Thompson, University of Nebraska, Lincoln
"Data and Its Expression," George Legrady, University of California, Santa Barbara
"From Kandinsky to the Database, (Point, Line, Plane: Variable, Array, Table)" Brian Evans, University of Alabama
"Web as Index and Archive," Penelope Umbrico, Bard College and School of Visual Arts
"Art that Decodes: Making Sense of Data Process," Heidi May, Emily Carr University of Art and Design and University of British Columbia
- Art Historians of Southern California: Shockwrite: Changing the Game
Chairs: Jeanne S. M. Willette, Otis College of Art and Design; Deana Hight, Mount San Antonio College
"Publishing the Future: Shockwrite", Jeanne S. M. Willette, Otis College of Art and Design
"The Future of the Book", Wendy Slatkin, California Polytechnic State University at Pomona
"New Opportunities for Scholarship", Deana Hight, Mount San Antonio College
"Expanding the Field." Michele McFaull, Otis College of Art and Design
"From Papyrus to Pixel: Innovation and Continuity in Disseminating Art Texts", Irina Costache, California State University, Channel Islands
Among other sessions of potential interest are:
- Cel-Culture: The Hybrid Intersections of Art, Video Games, and Manga
Chairs: Kirstin Ringelberg, Elon University; Michael R. Salmond, Northumbria University
- Digital Craftsmanship: How Artists Are Making Physical Objects from Virtual Data
Chairs: Jeremy Gardiner, Ravensbourne; Bruce Wands, School of Visual Arts
- Leonardo/International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology
New Media, Art-Science, and Mainstream Contemporary Art: Toward a Hybrid Discourse?
Chair: Edward Shanken, University of Amsterdam
- Art/Technology Global Sample
Chairs: Mark Tribe, Brown University; Chris Csikszentmihalyi, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- New Media Caucus: Fight the Power: Open Source, Free Software, and Critical Digital Practice
Chair: Ben Chang, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
- Technology and Collaboration in the Art History Classroom
Chair: Marjorie Och, University of Mary Washington
- Beyond the Slideshow: Teaching the History of Art and Material Culture in the Age of New Media
Chair: Johanna Bauman, ARTstor
For complete information, visit the CAA Conference website at
http://conference.collegeart.org/2011/
January 11, 2011
Remediating the Social:
Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in
Practice Conference
Invites Creative Works
The Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in
Practice (ELMCIP) research project invites submissions for an electronic
literature and digital arts commissioning program. Selected works will be
presented in an exhibition and performance event as part of the ELMCIP
project conference, Remediating the Social, to be held in Edinburgh,
November 1-3, 2012, hosted by Edinburgh College of Art in
collaboration with New Media Scotland and University College Falmouth within
the framework of the ELMCIP research project.
They welcome proposals for installations, artworks and performances that
address how network-based creative practice can effect and reflect upon
community formation and the role of creativity in social ontologies.
Submitted works should engage "born digital" literary and artistic
practices -- including works that employ generative, interactive,
networked and/or hypermedia techniques. Works which could exist without the
computer being involved in their production and diffusion will not be
considered. Projects that engage "liveness" and the performative in media are
especially welcome.
Remediating the Social will be held at
Inspace, a University of Edinburgh research and exhibition facility that
facilitates engagement with developments in new technologies, scientific research and creative practice.
The exhibition will continue during November,
and in keeping with the theme, the conference will be e-cast to remote participants.
The deadline for creative works is March 31, 2011.
There will be a separate call for conference papers and presentations later in 2011.
More information about the conference and details of how to submit work
are available on the Conference website at
http://www.elmcip.net/conference
The ELMCIP Project
Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice (ELMCIP) is a 3-year collaborative research project
running from 2010-2013, funded by the Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA) JRP for Creativity and Innovation.
"The project involves seven European academic research partners and one non-academic partner who will investigate how creative communities
of practitioners form within a transnational and transcultural context
in a globalized and distributed communication environment. Focusing on the electronic literature community in Europe as a model
of networked creativity and innovation in practice, ELMCIP is intended both to study the formation and interactions of that community
and also to further electronic literature research and practice in Europe."
Partners include:
The University of Bergen, Norway (PL Scott Rettberg, Co-I Jill Walker Rettberg)
the Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland (PI Simon Biggs, Co-I Penny Travlou)
Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden (PI Maria Engberg, Co-I Talan Memmott)
The University of Amsterdam, Netherlands (PI Yra Van Dijk)
The University of Ljubljana, Slovenia (PI Janez Strechovec),
The University of Jyv,skyl,, Finland (PI Raine Koskimaa)
and University College Falmouth at Dartington, England (PI Jerome Fletcher)
and New Media Scotland.
For more information, visit the project website at
http://www.elmcip.net
January 7, 2011
New MIT Press Books: MediaArtHistories, Vocal Aesthetics in Digital Arts and Media, Persuasive Games and more
Recent books from MIT Press cover a wide range of issues of interest to new media writers and artists.
They include:
-
The Audio Programming Book
edited by:
Richard Boulanger, Professor of Electronic Production and Design at the Berklee College of Music
and Victor Lazzarini, Senior Lecturer in the Music Department and Director of the Music Technology Laboratory, National University of Ireland, Maynooth
Foreword by Max Mathews
-
Designing Media
by Bill Moggridge, Director of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York City
-
Designing Sound
by Andy Farnell, a computer scientist who specializes in digital audio signal processing and has
worked as a sound effects programmer for BBC radio
-
Digital Media and Democracy
Tactics in Hard Times
edited by Megan Boler, Professor in Theory and Policy Studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto
-
MediaArtHistories
edited by Oliver Grau, Professor for Image Science and Dean of the Department for Cultural Studies, Danube University Krems
with contributions by Rudolf Arnheim, Andreas Broeckmann, Ron Burnett, Edmond Couchot, Sean Cubitt, Dieter Daniels, Felice Frankel,
Oliver Grau, Erkki Huhtamo, Douglas Kahn, Ryszard W. Kluszczynski, Machiko Kusahara, Timothy Lenoir, Lev Manovich,
W. J. T. Mitchell, Gunalan Nadarajan, Christiane Paul, Louise Poissant, Edward A. Shanken, Barbara Maria Stafford and Peter Weibel
-
Persuasive Games
The Expressive Power of Videogames
by Ian Bogost, Associate Professor in the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture, at Georgia Institute of Technology and Founding Partner, Persuasive Games LLC
-
Video
The Reflexive Medium
by Yvonne Spielmann, Chair of New Media in the School of Media, Language and Music at the University of Paisley, Scotland
-
VOICE
Vocal Aesthetics in Digital Arts and Media
edited by:
Norie Neumark, Professor of Media Studies, La Trobe University, Melbourne
Ross Gibson, Professor of Contemporary Art, Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney
Theo van Leeuwen, Professor of Media and Communication at University of Technology, Sydney
Contributors: Mark Amerika, Isabelle Arvers, Giselle Beiguelman,
Philip Brophy, Ross Gibson, Brandon LaBelle, Thomas Levin, Helen Macallan,
Virginia Madsen, Meredith Morse, Norie Neumark, Andrew Plain, John Potts, Theresa M. Senft,
Nermin Saybasili, Amanda Stewart, Axel Stockburger, Michael Taussig, Martin Thomas, Theo Van Leeuwen, Mark Ward
December 22, 2010
2011 MLA Convention in Los Angeles to Feature 60 Panels on the Narration of Lives
The narration of lives is the Presidential Forum theme of the Modern Language Association
Convention to be held this year in Los Angeles from January 6-9, 2011. Among many panels of
interest to the new media writing community in this comprehensive and remarkably interesting series
of sessions are:
- Literature and/as New Media
Presiding: Jon McKenzie, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Speakers:
Sarah Allison, Stanford University;
N. Katherine Hayles, Duke University.;
Richard E. Miller, Rutgers University, New Brunswick;
Todd Samuel Presner, University of California, Los Angeles;
Craig J. Saper, University of Central Florida;
Holly Willis, University. of Southern California;
Michael L. Witmore,
University of Wisconsin, Madison
"This session engages the nexus of literature and new media from several perspectives, ranging from emerging forms
of electronic literature to computer-enabled modes of literary analysis to the broader implications of IT and new media
for literary and cultural study..."
- Textual Scholarship and New Media
Presiding: Michael Eberle-Sinatra, Université de Montréal
"Comic Book Markup Language: An Introduction and Rationale" - John A. Walsh, Indiana University, Bloomington
"Crowdspeak: Mobile Telephony and TXTual Practice" - Rita Raley, University of California, Santa Barbara
"Alternate Reality Games and Transmedia Textuality: Interpretive Play and the Immaterial Archive" - Zach Whalen, University of Mary Washington
- Electronic Literature: Off the Screen
Presiding: Jessica Pressman, Yale University
"A Pixel or a Grain of Sand: Jenny Holzer's Projections" - Leisha J. Jones, Penn State University
"Locative Narrative: Reorganizing Space in Mobile E-Literature" - Mark Marino, University of Southern California
"E-Literature as Event: Seeing Space and Time in Kinetic Typography" - Jeremy Douglass, University of California, San Diego
- Close Reading the Digital
Presiding: Jeremy Douglass, University of California, San Diego
"The Code of Hacktavism: A Critical Code Study Case Study" - Mark Marino, University of Southern California
"Close Reading Campaign Rhetorics: Procedurality and MyBarackObama.com - James J. Brown, Wayne State University
"Criminal Code: The Procedural Logic of Crime in Video Games" - Mark L. Sample, George Mason University
Respondent: Matthew Gary Kirschenbaum, University of Maryland,
College Park
- Sound Reproduction and the Literary
Presiding: Jentery Sayers, University of Washington, Seattle
"Sound as Sensory Modality in Electronic Literature" - Dene M. Grigar, Washington State University, Vancouver
"'Cause That's the Way the World Turns': John Edgar Wideman's Sent for You Yesterday and the Mnemonic Jukebox" - Jürgen E. Grandt, Gainesville State College, GA
"Analog History: Kevin Young's To Repel Ghosts and the Textuality of the Turntable" - Paul Benzon, Temple University
- Narrative Studies Today: Three Perspectives
Presiding: Susan S. Lanser, Brandeis University
"Are We There Yet? The Intersectional Future of (Feminist) Narratology" - Susan S. Lanser
"Narrative and Authenticity" - Elinor Ochs, University of California, Los Angeles
"Narrative Arc and Reader Choice" - N. Katherine Hayles, Duke University
Other sessions of interest include:
- Lives and Archives in Graphic and Digital Modes
Presiding: Julia Watson, Ohio State University, Columbus
- In and out of the Archive: Biography, Autobiography, and Constructing the " Self"
Presiding: June Howard, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
- Biographical Truth: Literary Biography and Experiments with Form
Katharine Streip, Concordia University
- The Lives That Digital Archives Write
Presiding: Ruth E. Mack, University at Buffalo, State University of New York
- Transmedial and Interdisciplinary Narrative Theory
Presideing: David Herman, Ohio State University, Columbus
- Analog and Digital: Texts, Contexts, and Networks
Presiding: Victoria E. Szabo, Duke University
- The Epistolary Poem in a Twentieth-Century Context
Presiding: Heather Treseler, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- The Grand Piano, An Experiment in Collective Autobiography: A Reading and Discussion
Presiding: Hélène Aji, Université Paris-Nanterre
- Serial Narrative: Theory and Practice
Presiding: Steven J. Venturino, Loyola University, Chicago
- New Thresholds of Interpretation? Paratexts in the Digital Age
Presiding: Dorothee Birke, Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies
- Electronic Lives
Presiding: Alison Booth, University of Virginia
- Literary Research in/and Digital Humanities
Presiding: James Raymond Kelly, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE) and the Scholarly Edition
Presiding: Paul Werstine, University of Western Ontario
- Old Media
Presiding: Kate Flint, Rutgers University, New Brunswick
- The History and Future of the Digital Humanities
Presiding: Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Pomona College
The diversity of narrated lives is also primary at this year's MLA Convention with many interesting approaches --
from Silent Night: The Archives of the Deaf and Blind to Transmedial and Interdisciplinary Narrative Theory -- and including
among many others:
- African Women Writers: Living New Lives, Telling New Stories
- Autobiographies from the Arab World in European Languages
- Crossing Genres, Connecting Centuries: Life Stories in the Celtic World
- Feminist Transnational Spaces: Narrating Lives of Asian Women
- Narrated Lives, Mediated Histories in the Oeuvre of Claude Lanzmann
- Narrating Lives: An Indigenous Perspective
- Personal Narratives of Home and Displacement: Mexico and the USA
- Retheorizing Modernism in Yiddish Poetry
- Still Connecting: A Queer Celebration of the Howards End Centennial
- Toward a Pan-American Literature
- Women Narrating Their Lives: The Feminine
as Agent and Icon of Textual Production
For complete information on the 2011 MLA Convention, visit
http://www.mla.org/convention
Digital Humanties sessions are listed on the
Association for Computers and the Humanities website at
http://www.ach.org/mla/mla11/guide.html
December 9, 2010
SITE 2011 - Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education Conference to be Held in Nashville,
Calls for Presentations
The 22nd Annual Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education Conference, SITE 2011, will be held from March 7 - 11 in Nashville, Tennessee.
With a focus on instructional technologies in teacher education programs, SITE promotes knowledge, research, and practice with conferences, books, projects,
and the Journal of Technology and Teacher Education. SITE is a society of the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education. (AACE)
The Conference invites proposals on Information Technology and Teacher Education from all levels of education on topics related to:
- the use of information technology in teacher education, and
- instruction about information technology in
- Preservice
- Inservice
- Graduate Teacher Education
- Faculty & Staff Development
Accepted papers will be published by AACE in the Conference Proceedings and internationally distributed via their online
EdITLib - Education & Information Technology Digital Library.
The deadline is January 3, 2011.
For complete information on the conference, visit
http://site.aace.org/conf/
The complete call for presentations is at
http://site.aace.org/conf/call.htm
November 29, 2010
Electronic Visualization and the Arts London 2011 Calls for Proposals
With a theme of new and emerging technologies and applications in visualization for the arts and culture,
the Electronic Visualization and the Arts (EVA) London Conference
-- to be held July 6-8, 2011 --
is calling for proposals on topics including visualizing ideas and concepts;
imaging and images in museums and galleries; digital performance; music, sound,
film and animation; digital and computational art and photography; and immersive environments,
as well as technologies of digitization; virtual and augmented worlds; technologies in art and
culture; and digital visualization of performance and music. The Conference is co-sponsored by the Computer Arts Society,
a Special Interest Group of the British Computer Society,(BCS) and by the BCS.
Proposals of papers, demonstrations or short performances, and workshops or panel discussions are invited.
The deadline for submitting proposals is January 15, 2011.
For complete details, visit
http://www.eva-conferences.com/eva_london/2011/call_for_proposals
November 23, 2010
Center for Digital Discourse and Culture 10th Anniversary E-book on the Digital Humanities
Available Online
Edited by Timothy W. Luke and Jeremy Hunsinger,
Putting Knowledge to Work and Letting Information Play: The Center for Digital Discourse and Culture
commemorates the 10th anniversary of
The Center for Digital Discourse and Culture -- located at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg --
with a series of papers by scholars, editors, and writers.
Available as free pdf download,
the anniversary edition addresses issues and creativity in the digital humanities.
Articles of particular interest to the new media writing community include
"The New River: Collected Editors' Notes", by writer and editor Ed Falco et. al.,
that reviews the history of The New River, a seminal venue in the online literary publishing
environment. (which in the early days of the World Wide Web also included the Eastgate Web Workshop and the
literary journal The Blue Moon Review, among others)
Noting that since 1996 when, with the technical support of Len Hatfield, Falco posted the first issue of
The New River, there has been a radical transformation in the widespread use of digital technology
and emphasizing the influence/potential influence of artists and writers who have created work on computer screens
in contemporary literature and art, the article gives an overview of the new media literature
the journal has published, including the work of M.D.Coverley, Gita Hashemi, Rob Kendall, Deena Larsen, Stuart Moulthrop, Nick Montfort,
and Stephanie Strickland, among many others.
Other articles with a new media writing and/or reading focus include:
"The Pleasures of Collaboration" by poet Thom Swiss, who describes his collaborative
web-based work, such as Hey Now which was created using Flash in collaboration with
programmer/artist Motomichi Nakamura, and talks about how collaborative processes
allow readers and writers to look at their work in different, surprising, and pleasurable ways .
Jean-Claude Guédon
"What Can Technology Teach Us about Texts? (and Texts about Technology?)",
which includes an in depth discussion of e-book readers
and
Brian Opie
Textscapes and Landscapes: A Settler Poet Goes On-Line
-- about putting online the New Zealand-baseed work of British poet William Golder
Putting Knowledge to Work and Letting Information Play: The Center for Digital Discourse and Culture
is available with a complete Table of Contents at
http://www.cddc.vt.edu/10th-book/
November 10, 2010
Chicago Colloquium on Digital Humanities and Computer Science
Will Explore Current and Future Digital Humanities Research and Scholarship
The Annual Chicago Colloquium on Digital Humanities and Computer Science --
which brings together researchers and scholars to look at current and future directions in
the digital humanities -- will be hosted by Northwestern University
from November 21-22 in Evanston, Illinois. In general, Chicago Colloquium papers focus on history and
cultural histories, but many of the tools and approaches to be presented are of interest
to writers and students in the new media literary arts.
In addition to papers on indexing and annotating texts, on digital preservation, and on
virtual image repositories, papers of particular interest include:
Doug Reside, Associate director of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities
at the University of Maryland, who has worked on projects that include the Shakespeare Quartos Archive,
the Ajax XML Encoder, (AXE) and Music Theatre Online will present a paper on "Linking Images of Text to Transcriptions"
and
Brian Pytlik Zillig, (University of Nebraska Library) the creator of
the text analysis and visualization TokenX, will present a paper on
textual encoding and the textual pattern analysis environment MONK:
"TEI Texts that Play Nicely: Lessons of the MONK Project"
Featured speakers include Jon Orwant, (Google) who will speak on "Stuff and more things to do with it".
Respondents will include Neil Fraistat, Sarah Pritchard, and Jeremy York.
Information about the Chicago Colloquium is available at
http://chicagocolloquium.org
The program is available at
http://chicagocolloquium.org/dhcs-program-2010/
October 26, 2010
E-Poetry 2011 Announces Details; Calls for Proposals
"E-poetry is an artist-oriented gathering, in the tradition of the historic poetry festivals
of the 20th century that influenced and advanced literary and arts communities in the past.
Its community encompasses to countries across three continents, and it seeks to advance such
a spirit of poetics, literary, and media arts practice into the digital present."
After Festivals in West Virginia, London, Paris, and Barcelona, the biennial E-Poetry
-- an International event and dialog which ffocuses on emerging issues in digital,
visual, sound, and language-based artistic/literary practice --
will return to Buffalo, New York.
Co-directed by new media poets Loss Pequeño Glazier, Department of Media Study, SUNY Buffalo,
and Sandy Baldwin, Center for Literary Computing, West Virginia University,
E-poetry 2011 will be held from May 18-21, 2011 at the State University of Buffalo.
The Festival will have a special focus on innovative/multicultural
poetries, emerging younger artists, and
artists from
developing countries.
E-Poetry 2011 has issued
a Call for Papers with a "Take 1" deadline of November 1, 2010.
"In a traditional sense, there is no formal CFP for E-Poetry 2011," they note. "What we seek to achieve is a flexible and
multi-formatted event e-poetry festival, celebrating the state of our art in its present moment. To this end,
we seek proposals that directly reflect what you would like to express, in its most inventive sense. Thus, we encourage you
to let your imagination be free."
Due to the need for advance planning, they are asking that
proposals be sent as soon as possible. Early submissions will receive preference.
For complete details on the Call for Papers, visit
http://epc.buffalo.edu/e-poetry/2011/cfp.html
For more information about the Festival, visit
http://epc.buffalo.edu/e-poetry/2011/about.html
October 22, 2010
Third International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling to Present
Papers on "Characters and Decision-making", "Story Generation", and Much More
To be Held in Edinburgh, Scotland, from November 1-3, 2010,
the Third International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling
will be introduced on October 31 by an evening of language in digital performance at
Inspace in Edinburgh -- with works
by Martin John Callanan, JR Carpenter, Jerome Fletcher, Donna Leishman, Mez,
Stanza, and Christine Wilks.
Michael Mateas, Associate Professor, Computer Science Department at UC Santa Cruz, and co-creator of
the interactive drama Façade, will lead off the Conference
with a talk that he describes in this way:
"Artificial Intelligence methods open up new possibilities in interactive storytelling,
enabling the creation of believable characters with rich personalities and emotions, interactive
story systems that incorporate player interaction into the construction of dynamic plots, and story
generation systems that capture large and well-formed collections of potential stories. The goal of
these approaches is not to replace human authorship, but rather to move human authorship to a meta-level,
and thus to support a richness and depth of player interaction that is not otherwise possible. However,
there are significant authoring challenges in creating AI-based
interactive stories. This talk will describe current research efforts to support authors
in telling stories in this new medium."
Other invited speakers are Alex Whittaker, We R Interactive, and
Carl Heath, GR Experimental Learning, Sweden.
Beginning with a session on "Characters and Decision-making" that includes the following papers:
Richard Paul, Darryl Charles, Michael McNeill and David McSherry
" MIST: An Interactive Storytelling System with Variable Character Behavior"
Mei Si, Stacy Marsella and David Pynadath
"Importance of Well-motivated Characters in Interactive Narratives: An Empirical Evaluation"
Rui Figueiredo and Ana Paiva
"'I want to slay that Dragon!' - Influencing Choice in Interactive Storytelling",
the conference will also feature:
- a session on "Story Evaluation and Analysis"
including, among others, Ulrike Spierling and Steve Hoffmann's paper on "Exploring Narrative Interpretation and Adaptation for Interactive
Story Creation"
- two sessions on "Story Generation", including, among others:
Yoshiyuki Nakamura, Maiko Kobayakawa, Chisato Takami, Yuta Tsuruga, Hidekazu Kubota, Masahiro Hamasaki, Takuichi Nishimura and Takeshi Sunaga,
"Zuzie: Collaborative Storytelling Based on Multiple Compositions"
and
Wolfgang Mueller, Ido Aharon Iurgel, Nuno Otero and Ute Massler,
"Teaching English as a Second Language Utilizing Authoring Tools for Interactive Digital Storytelling "
- sessions on "Arts and Humanities", "Narrative Theories and Modelling Systems", and "Systems",
and a concluding session on "Applications".
The complete program is available at
http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/icids2010/Conference_Progamme.html
Registration is still open at:
http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/icids2010/Registration.html
October 16, 2010
New Books: Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7
and A Networked Self
New books of interest to creators and teachers of new media literature include
Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7 by Aaron Reed and
A Networked Self, Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites,
edited by Zizi Papacharissi.
Written by Aaron Reed, author of Sand-dancer and Blue Lacuna, an extensive interactive story,
which Reed recently
read/performed in prose and source code at the 2010 Electronic Literature Organization Conference
at Brown University,
Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7
(Course Technology PTR, 2010) includes a foreward by seminal adventure story programmer and creator Don Woods
and closing thoughts by MUD pioneer Richard Bartle, the author of
Designing Virtual Worlds.
Originally created by British mathematician and poet Graham Nelson,
Inform 7 is a natural language-based programming language and design system
for the "Interactive Fiction" (IF) genre. In addition to Aaron Reed's works, contemporary works authored in Inform 7
include Emily Short's Galatea and Varicella by Adam Cadre.
Using Reed's work Sand-dancer as an example, Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7
looks at IF creation, including elements of design, construction, and testing.
Visit
http://inform7.textories.com for more information about the book.
In A Networked Self, Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites,
(Routledge, 2010) Zizi Papacharissi, Professor and Head of the Department of Communication
at the University of Illinois at Chicago, brings together scholars in different fields who
look at issues of identity and community in online social networking communities.
Among many other papers, the book includes
"A Research Agenda for Technology Convergence"
by Joseph B. Walther, Professor, Department of Communication and
Department of Telecommunication,Information Studies & Media, Michigan State University,
Caleb Carr, Scott Seung W. Choi, David DeAndrea, Jinsuk Kim, Stephanie Tom Tong, and Brandon Van Der Heide
"Social Network Sites as Networked Publics: Affordances, Dynamics, and Implication"
by danah boyd, Social Media Researcher at Microsoft Research New England
"Social Network Sites as Virtual Communities"
by Malcolm R Parks, University of Washington
"From Dabblers to Omnivores: A Typology of Social Network Site Usage"
by Eszter Hargittai and Yu-li Patrick Hsieh, Communication Studies Department Media, Technology & Society Program,
Northwestern University
"Working the Twittersphere: Microblogging as professional identity construction"
by Dawn Gilpin, Assistant Professor, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, Arizona State University
"Copyright, Fair Use and Social Networks"
by Patricia Aufderheide, Professor of Film and Media Arts,
School of Communication, American University,
Washington, DC, and Director of the Center for Social Media
"Conclusion: A Networked Self"
by Zizi Papacharissi
For more information, visit
http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415801812/
October 8, 2010
"Notes on the IF Community" from Post Position
"Interactive Poetry Generation Systems" on netpoetic.com
Blog resources continue to be important sources of information on
electronic literature -- past and present. Two recent articles of interest
are Nick Montfort's "Notes on the IF Community", posted on his blog,
Post Position, and Edde Addad's "Interactive Poetry Generation
Systems: an Illustrated Overview", available on netpoetic.com.
"Notes on the IF Community"
Summarizing some thoughts he presented at the recent ELMCIP (Electronic Literature
as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice) Seminar,
Nick Montfort presents an informed/informal look at what constitutes the classic definition of
"interactive fiction". (IF) Noting that in his dissertation he defined interactive
fiction as: "A form of text-accepting,
text-generating computer program that narrates what is happening in a simulated world in reply
to input from a user, or interactor...," he points out the differences between IF and other kinds
of electronic literature and looks at the history and resources of the IF community, including
the
IF Archive and
The People's Republic of Interactive Fiction.
Nick Montfort is an Associate Professor of Digital Media in the Program in
Writing and Humanistic Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Visit
Post Position to read his recent thoughts on IF Fiction and more.
____________
The
Bergen Seminar on Electronic Literature Communities, September 20-21, 2010
Nick Montfort,
Generating Narrative Variation in Interactive Fiction, Dissertation,
University of Pennsylvania, 2007
Post Position home
"Interactive Poetry Generation Systems"
Netpoetic.com features a good addition to the literature of poetry and narrative generators:
"Interactive Poetry Generation Systems: an Illustrated Overview".
Written by computer scientist and writer Edde Addad, the article describes and provides graphic figures for
selected contemporary poetry generators, including Gnoetry, ePoGeeS, JanusNode, and Mchain.
Addad also cites historical examples such as
Christopher Stratchey's Love Letter Generator
and the Kurtzweil Cybernetic Poet.
Visit
"Interactive Poetry Generation Systems"
to read the article.
_____________
netpoetic.com is hosted by Jason Nelson and Davin Heckman.
More information about poetry generators is also available at
Gnoetry Daily, which continues to document interactive
poetry generation programs.
Historic poetry generators, including the Kurtzweil Cybernetic Poet, are documented by Cliff Pickover
in Computers and the Imagination, NY: St Martin's Press, 1991. (The preprint that Pickover provided
the Authoring Software editor in 1991 gives the title of the article as "Computer-Generated Poetry" and
the pages as 317-322.)
A classic text on seminal computer-generated art and literature, which includes early computer-mediated
text, as well as music and art, is Jasia Reichardt, Cybernetic Serendipity, NY, Praeger, 1969.
October 3, 2010
International Conference on Computational Creativity - Call for Papers
" Although it seems clear that creativity plays an important
role in developing intelligent computational systems, it is less
clear how to model, simulate, or evaluate creativity in such
systems," note the organizers of the 2nd International Conference on
Computational Creativity. "In other words, it is often easier to recognize
the presence and effect of creativity than to describe or prescribe it."
To be held in Mexico City from April 27-29, 2011, the 2nd International Conference on
Computational Creativity will explore creativity in computational systems.
Of particular interest to the electronic literature community will be a look at software-mediated
creativity support that will include the creation of user interfaces, interaction design,
decision support, and data modeling techniques that lead to the development of
intelligent assistants. They are also calling for papers on authoring software for music, language,
narrative, poetry, the arts, architecture and entertainment, among other applications.
Original contributions are solicited in all areas related to
computational creativity, including but not limited to:
- computational paradigms for understanding creativity, including heuristic search,
analogical and meta-level reasoning, and re-representation;
- metrics, frameworks and formalizations for the evaluation of creativity in
computational systems, note: quasi-formal approaches that, for example, argue for
recognition without definition or that define the absence of creativity may
have interesting implications for computational creativity);
- perspectives on computational creativity, including philosophy, models of cognition
and human behavior, and intelligent systems;
- development and assessment of computational creativity-support tools;
- creativity-oriented computing in learning, teaching, and other
aspects of education;
- innovation, improvisation and related pursuits investigating the production
of novel experiences and artifacts within a computational framework;
- computational accounts of factors that enhance creativity, including emotion,
surprise, unexpectedness), conflict, diversity, motivation, knowledge, intuition,
reward structures, and technologies, e.g. modeling, simulation, human-in-the-loop,
human/machine collaboration, etc.);
- computational treatment of social aspects of creativity, including the relationship between
individual and social creativity, diffusion of ideas, collaboration and creativity,
formation of creative teams, and creativity in social settings, e.g. modeling, simulation,
human-in-the-loop, human/machine collaboration, etc.);
- specific applications, with a computational component) to music, language, narrative, poetry,
the arts, architecture, entertainment, mathematical and scientific discovery, programming and/or design;
- detailed system descriptions of creative systems, including engineering difficulties
faced, example sessions and artifacts produced, and applications of the system;
- domain-specific vs. generalized creativity -- does the domain of study affect,
the perception of) creativity? Are there general, computational) creative principles that
can be applied across domains?
The submission deadline is 2010. Complete details are available at
http://iccc11.cua.uam.mx
September 30, 2010
2011 ACM Hypertext Conference to Be Held in Eindhoven
The 22nd ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia will be held on June 6-9, 2011
in Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
For over twenty years, the Association for Computing Machinery's ACM Hypertext Conference
has presented core research and creative endeavor on hypermedia theory, hypermedia systems and practices,
the development and sematics of the World Wide Web, Social Networking, hypernarrative,
and collaborative hypermedia environments. For hypertext literature, the annual HT
Conference has been a forum for authoring tools, interface, link strategies,
navigation strategies, and the role of hypermedia in society, among many other topics.
HT 2011 Tracks will include:
- Dynamic and Computed Hypermedia,
- Emerging Structures and Ubiquitous Hypermedia
- Social Media (Linking People and Things)
- Interaction, Narrative, and Storytelling
Deadlines for submission of workshops and papers are:
December 29, 2010: Workshop/Tutorial submissions
January 29, 2011: Full and Short paper submissions
May 1, 2011: Poster/Demo submissions
For more information about the ACM Hypertext Conference, visit
http://www.ht2011.org/index.html
For more information about ACM publications, news, and the important role of ACM in
educational and scientific computing,
visit their website at
http://www.acm.org
September 22, 2010
International Conference at the University of Liverpool to Focus
on Latin American New Media Poetry, Fiction, and Literary Blogs
On May 19-20, 2011, the School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies at the University of Liverpool will
host an International Conference on Latin American Cybercultural Studies:
Exploring New Paradigms and Analytical Approaches. The conference will focus on literary blogs,
digital storytelling, digital poetry, hypertext novels, hypermedia fiction, net.art,
and online performance art and will explore Latin American new media literature in a series
of presentations as well as in workshops on hypermedia narrative and digital poetry,
Confirmed Speakers Include: Diego Bonilla, (California State University) Andrew Brown,
(Washington University in St Louis) Debra Castillo, (Cornell University)
Margaret Clarke, (University of Portsmouth) Luis Correa-Díaz,
(University of Georgia at Athens) Héctor Perea, (UNAM) Thea Pitman,
(University of Leeds) and Scott Weintraub. (University of Georgia at Athens)
Papers are especially invited on, but are not restricted to:
- Locality and Embeddedness in Hispanic Cyberliteratures
- Latin American Digital Poetry and Hypermedia Narratives
- Remixing and Mash-Ups in Latin American net.art
- Latin American Literature in the Age of Re-mediation and Inter-mediation
- Countering the Importation of Cybercultural Paradigms
- Research-Led Teaching in the Digital World
The instructions for submissions are listed as follows:
The organizers welcome proposals both for panels and for individual 20-minute papers,
which may be given in English, Spanish or Portuguese. Alternative formats - round tables,
discussion papers, work-in-progress, multimedia presentations - are positively encouraged, as are postgraduate submissions.
Abstracts for individual papers should be between 300-350 words; proposals for panels should include panel title,
names of panel members and abstracts.
Abstracts and panel proposals should be sent by December 1, 2010 to the conference organizer, Dr Claire Taylor. (c.l.taylor@liv.ac.uk)
The complete call is available at:
http://www.dur.ac.uk/hispanists/lat-am-cybercultural.pdf
September 14, 2010
Authoring Software Begins a Continuing Look at Interface Design
This month, in the
Tools and Applications section, Authoring Software
begins a continuing look at interface -- the way the reader (the "user" in computer technology)
communicates with the work -- with a review of a classic text: The Art of Human-Computer
Interface Design, edited by Brenda Laurel. The book is of interest both
for the history of interface design and for an exploration of interface design, including
conversational interfaces, animated interfaces, lessons from computer game design, color, audio,
personified agents, narrative guides, and much more.
"If it is to be like magical paper, then it is the magical part that is all important
and that must be most strongly attended to in the user interface design,"
Alan Kay writes about the computer screen in his chapter "User Interface: A Personal View".
Visit
Authoring Software's Tools and Applications page
to find out more.
September 7, 2010
New Publications on the Digital Humanities, the Aesthetics
of Computer Art and Computer Games, and the Future of Electronic Books
Recent Books look at issues of aesthetics in computer art and computer games;
at building an infrastructure for digital scholarly research; and at the role of
electronic books in the digital humanities. They include:
Christine L. Borgman
Scholarship in the Digital Age Information, Infrastructure, and the Internet
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010
Christine Borgman is a Professor in Information Studies at the University of
California, Los Angeles and the author of From Gutenberg to the Global Information Infrastructure:
Access to Information in the Networked World. (also from MIT Press)
Dominic Lopes
A Philosophy of Computer Art
UK: Routledge, 2009
Dominic Lopes is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of
British Columbia and the editor (with Berys Gaut) of The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics.
David Myers
Play Redux: The Form of Computer Games
Ann Arbor, MI: digitalculturebooks, (a joint imprint of the University of Michigan Press and the
Scholarly Publishing Office of the University of Michigan Library) 2010.
David Myers is a Professor at the School of Mass Communication, Loyola University New Orleans.
His books also include The Nature of Computer Games : Play as Semiosis. (P. Lang)
Catherine C. Marshall
Reading and Writing the Electronic Book
San Rafael, CA: Morgan & Claypool, 2009
Cathy Marshall is a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research Silicon Valley
and the author (with Judy Malloy) of Forward Anywhere. (Eastgate)
August 28, 2010
Critical Code Studies @ USC Explores Code and Writing
The Critical Code Studies
project looks at code from a digital humanities point of view, applying literary methodologies to
explore aspects of code that are symbolic, narrative focused,
and/or extra-functional.
Held at the University of Southern California (USC) on July 23, 2010,
Critical Code Studies @ USC was organized by new media writer Mark Marino, who teaches
writing at USC.
The Conference featured a Keynote by
Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University.
and author of Programmed Visions: Software and Memory.
(forthcoming from MIT Press in 2010) Wendy Chun's background includes both systems design engineering
and English literature, and in her work she explores issues of technology and culture,
including the relationships between code, pop culture, race, new media, and the Internet.
Conference papers will be available with conference videos.
In the meantime abstracts are available on the website at
http://criticalcodestudies.com/wordpress/abstracts
Several conference papers address advanced uses of authoring software in terms of writer/code
relationships or "literate" programming that focuses on documentation, human language, hypertextual
structure and other approaches to code understanding. For instance, in Aaron Reed's abstract for
his paper "Knock's Memories: Creating an Emotional Story Space with Inform 7",
he discusses the creation of his 2010 Interactive fiction "Sand-dancer,"
using the literate Interactive fiction program,
Inform 7.
"In the abstract, he notes, "I create this system
in Inform 7 code and commentary which reveals the uniquely expressive power of the language for
simultaneously building constructs in both story and code."
In her abstract for an untitled paper on Domain-Specific Languages
(an approach to software solutions for very specific uses) writer and programmer
Marisa Plumb comments that
"the expressive power of a programming language is directly related to its utility
and its creative role in molding narrative landscapes." In her paper, she looks at available authoring software
and suggests the benefits of using Domain-specific languages for optimizing a writer's relationship
with her code-base, stating in the abstract that "On the whole, a desire to represent narrative spaces with code
has driven my interest in programmatic approaches to narrative design, with a bias towards non-linear,
imaginary narratives."
In the abstract for "When Relational Isn't Enough: Software Architectures for Scholarly
Production", USC Institute for Multimedia Literacy faculty member, Craig Dietrich, observes
that relational database structures developed for industrial applications aren't always
completely applicable in humanities situations, and he approaches the challenges of software
in the digital humanities with interesting examples of systems in development, such as
a content manager based on Aboriginal cultural protocols; an art archive registry produced
by the University of Maine's
Still Water lab; Scalar, a media studies publishing platform
by USC's Vectors Journal; and
Magic, a system that annotates code with cultural material
and cultural material with code.
Other abstracts of particular interest in the Authoring Software field are
- Elizabeth Losh
"Academic Discourse and Text Generators: Manifestos, Servers, Languages, and Code"
- Nick Montfort, Patsy Baudoin, John Bell, Ian Bogost, Jeremy Douglass,
Mary Flanagan, Mark Marino, Michael Mateas, Casey Reas, Warren Sack, Mark Sample,
and Noah Vawter
"Studying Software by Porting and Reimplementation: A BASIC Case"
Critical Code Studies @ USC
was hosted by The Center for Transformative Scholarship and The
Institute for Multimedia Literacy.
For more information, visit Critical Code Studies at
http://criticalcodestudies.com/wordpress
August 15, 2010
2011 Independent Games Festival to Include Mobile, Handheld, and
Experimental Games
Encouraging game development innovation and promoting independent game developers,
the 2011 Independent Games Festival will be held in San Francisco from February 28-March 4.
This year submission categories have been broadened to include mobile and handheld game developers,
as well as an expanded focus on alternative and experimental game design.
The deadlines for submissions are:
October 18, 2010 - for the Main Competition
November 1, 2010 - for the Student Competition
For more information, visit
http://www.igf.com
August 2, 2010
Amy E. Earhart and Andrew Jewell, eds:
The American Literature Scholar in the Digital Age
The American Literature Scholar in the Digital Age,
a forthcoming book from the University of Michigan Press, brings together experts in
American literary studies and digital technologies. Edited by Amy E. Earhart, Assistant Professor in the
Department of English at Texas A&M University, and Andrew Jewell, Associate Professor of Digital Projects,
University Libraries, at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the book includes articles on the development of tools,
usability, editing and textual scholarship, digital librarianship and issues of race and ethnicity in
digital humanities, among other issues.
The American Literature Scholar in the Digital Age will be available in November 2010.
Among many other titles of interest in this field from the University of Michigan Press are:
Joseph Turow and Lokman Tsui, eds.
The Hyperlinked Society: Questioning Connections in the Digital Age, 2008
and
Robert E. Cummings and Matt Barton, eds.
Wiki Writing: Collaborative Learning in the College Classroom, 2009
Both of which are published by
digitalculturebooks -- an imprint of the University of Michigan Press and
the Scholarly Publishing Office of the University of Michigan Library, which is working
to publish work in the field of new media studies and the digital humanities.
July 19, 2010
2010 International Digital Media Arts Association Conference to Focus on The Digital Narrative
Held from November 4-6, 2010 at Emily Carr University in Vancouver B.C.,
the
International Digital Media Arts Association Conference 2010
will address "The Digital Narrative".
The conference will feature keynote speakers, panels, papers, workshops, networking and social events,
as well as a chance to explore innovative new media research and art in Vancouver's increasingly
influential digital media industry and Emily Carr's state of the art
digital studios.
Speakers will include Adrian Allene, Chief Technology Officer, United Media Partners;
Fiona Bowie, Assistant Professor, Integrated Media, Emily Carr University; Gordon Durity,
Studio Audio Director, Electronic Arts Canada; Carol Gigliotti, Associate Professor,
Interactive Media and Critical and Cultural Studies, Emily Carr University;
Amielle Lake, Founder/CEO, Tagga Media; Kenneth Newby, Media
Artist and Researcher; Colleen Nystedt, Founder/President/CEO, MovieSet; Lisa Osborne
Founder, Jigsaw Global; and Ian Verchere,
Artist/Designer in Residence, Design + Dynamic Media, Emily Carr University.
Information about the program, including a call for papers and artworks
is available on the
website. The deadline for abstracts for papers is August
30, 2010.
July 7, 2010
New Books on Flash and Dreamweaver Available in O'Reilly's Missing Manual Series
O'Reilly has released new Missing Manuals on Flash and Dreamweaver.
They are:
Chris Grover
Flash CS5: The Missing Manual,
O'Reilly Media / Pogue Press, May 2010
Chris Grover is an experienced technical writer, who has also authored O'Reilly Missing Manuals on
Word 2007 and Premiere Elements.
A table of contents for Flash CS5: The Missing Manual
is available at
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9781449380250/
and
David Sawyer McFarland
Dreamweaver CS5: The Missing Manual,
O'Reilly Media, June 2010
A web developer since 1995, David Sawyer McFarland is president of the
Portland-based web development company Sawyer McFarland Media. His experience
also includes webmaster at the University of California at Berkeley,
the Berkeley Multimedia Research Center, and the CSS-driven redesign of
Macworld.com. He teaches in the Portland State University multimedia program
and is the author of Missing Manual titles on JavaScript.
The table of contents for Dreamweaver CS5: The Missing Manual
is available at
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9781449381813/
According to O'Reilly, the books in the Missing Manual series are written with
"enough clarity for the novice, and enough depth and detail for the power user."
Missing Manuals present an overview of the application, point
out bugs, and offer detailed professional coverage of each feature, including
a comprehensive guide to commands and dialog boxes.
July, 2010
Featured Work: Intimate Alice by Kate Pullinger and Chris Joseph
Statements by writers and artists about how their work was created are
an important component of Authoring Software. Not only do they
inform writers about the work of their colleagues, but also they provide
teachers, scholars, students, and readers with a way of looking at how new
media literature is being created.
For instance, how new media writers use
Adobe Flash in a variety of ways is illustrated in statements by writers
who use Flash as an integral part of the process:
Mark Amerika
Alan Bigelow
Chris Joseph
Rob Kendall
Stuart Moulthrop
Alexander Mouton
Regina Pinto
Stephanie Strickland,
Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo
Nanette Wylde
July's featured work on Authoring Software is
Inanimate Alice, created by Kate Pullinger and Chris Joseph,
using Photoshop, Premiere, Sound Forge, Acid, and Flash.
Kate Pullinger, who writes for print, digital media, radio,
and film, is Reader in Creative Writing and New Media at De Montfort University.
Her 2009 novel The Mistress of Nothing received the Canadian Governor General's
Literary Award for Fiction.
Digital writer Chris Joseph is the Editor of post-dada magazine and the
network 391.org. In his contribution to Authoring Software, he explains
how Flash was used to combine authoring elements and create and distribute
the final work. He also addresses the reasons Flash was chosen, including a large user base;
"the relatively simple creation of randomized, non-linear and
interactive elements"; and access to a large variety of animation styles. Visit
Chris Joseph's statement about Intimate Alice to find out more.
Writers work in many different ways. Thus, it is important to consider
individual vision in designing a work of new media literature.
Among the many alternatives to the use of Flash are those utilized by J.R. Carpenter
in
her statement about
Entre Ville. Steve Ersinghaus writes about his use of Eastgate's Storyspace
in
his statement on The Life of Geronimo Sandoval.
Mark Marino's use of the adaptive hypertext system Literatronica,
created by Juan B. Guiterrez, is presented in
his statement on a show of hands,
and Joel Weishaus explains how he used Dreamweaver and Photoshop in
his words about The Way North.
June 27-29, 2010
New and Forthcoming Publications Include Books by Mark Amerika;
Mark Bernstein and Diane Greco; Ruth Catlow, Marc Garrett,
and Corrado Morgana; Jörgen Schäfer and Peter Gendolla;
Adalaide Morris and Thomas Swiss; Jaishree Odin; and Noah Wardrip-Fruin
Heralding a renewed interest in the creation, study, and criticism of computer-mediated narrative, poetry, and
text, recent and forthcoming books have focused/will focus on new media poetics, hypertext, female imagery
in creative hypertext, beyond the screen interfaces, computer gaming, and software studies.
They include:
Mark Amerika
META/DATA - A Digital Poetics, MIT Press, 2009
Mark Bernstein and Diane Greco, eds.
Reading Hypertext, Eastgate Systems, 2009
Ruth Catlow, Marc Garrett, Corrado Morgana
Artists Re: Thinking Games, Liverpool University Press, 2010
More information is on the
Furtherfield.org website.
Adalaide Morris and Thomas Swiss, eds.
New Media Poetics - Contexts, Technotexts, and Theories
MIT Press, 2009
Jaishree K. Odin
Hypertext and the Female Imaginary, University of Minnesota Press,
available October 2010
Jörgen Schäfer and Peter Gendolla, eds,
Beyond the Screen - Transformations of Literary Structures,
Interfaces and Genres, transcript, 2010
Noah Wardrip-Fruin
Expressive Processing - Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and
Software Studies, MIT Press 2009
June 17, 2010
Recent Articles on HTML5
Web-based works of art do not always conform to what web developers would
consider useability issues, and the importance of the tools used by artists
and writers to create their work and of continued support for existing web-based
literature and art may not be taken into consideration by the developers of HTML5.
For instance, HTML5 could simplify the use of video on websites, but artists and writers
should be aware of the potential impact on the support of Flash. Additionally,
bookmarking issues may not be of primary interest to an artist who is using frames
because frames allow flexible, specifiable display of different web content on one page,
yet partially because of bookmarking issues, the support of frames may be minimal in
HTML5.
It will probably be quite a few years before HTML5 becomes the standard, but
Authoring Software will begin looking at the issues for artists and writers,
probably setting up a section to keep readers current on the issues.
Meanwhile, here are links to some recent articles and resources.
"Microsoft Announces Hardware-Accelerated HTML5, Pushes Boundaries on Web and Cloud Development",
Microsoft News Center, March 16, 2010
Apple
HTML5 Showcase
Matthew David
"Inside HTML5: The Browser becomes a first class RIA citizen",
O'Reilly InsideRIA, January 5, 2010
Kevin Lynch
Open Access to Content and Applications
Adobe Featured Blogs, February 2, 2010
Erick Schonfeld
Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch Defends Flash, Warns HTML5 Will Throw The Web "Back To The Dark Ages Of Video",
TechCrunch, February 2, 2010
Rich Tretola
"Adobe Adds HTML5 Support for Dreamweaver CS5",
O'Reilly InsideRIA, May 19, 2010
June 10, 2010
E-Poetry 2011 to be held in Buffalo
Returning to America, after Festivals in Barcelona,
Paris, and London, E-Poetry 2011 will be held
in Buffalo where the historic
E-Poetry 2001 was held ten years ago.
E-Poetry is hosted by the
Electronic Poetry Center, which is sponsored
by the Department of Media Study in collaboration with the Department of English
Poetics Program at the University at Buffalo, in collaboration with the
Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing and the Department of English at
the University of Pennsylvania.
Details are forthcoming.
June 3-6, 2010
Archive and Innovate
The biennial conference of The Electronic Literature Organization takes
place June 3-6, 2010 at Brown University.
This year's
4th International Conference & Festival of the Electronic
Literature Organization honors
Robert Coover, as well as addressing
the issues of archiving and innovation. "Seeded speakers" are Adalaide Morris,
Alan Sondheim, Bill Seaman, Francisco Ricardo, Friedrich Block,
George Landow, Jessica Pressman, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Penny Florence,
Rita Raley, Scott Rettberg, Talan Memmott, and Wendy Chun.
It is a good time to be thinking about the future of computer-mediated
literature while at the same time, we celebrate the continuing work
of pioneers.
May 30, 2010
International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling
Invites Submissions for Digital Text Performances at the
University of Edinburgh
For Language in Digital Performance. the
Third International Conference on Interactive
Digital Storytelling, in conjunction with New Media Scotland,
is inviting proposals for performance and short duration installation art works
in which digital text and interactivity are the primary artistic components,
including computer-mediated works that utilize generative, interactive,
networked and/or hypermedia techniques.
Submission Deadline: July 31, 2010. Details are available
here
Performances: October, 31, 2010, Inspace, University of Edinburgh, UK
Conference: November 1-3, 2010, The Hub, Edinburgh, UK
"The performance event will be held on Halloween.
The proposals may wish to engage the spirit of this festival," they note.
May 24, 2010
Stanford Selected to host Digital Humanities 2011
SDH-SEMI in Montreal to Feature Hypertext Performance
and Papers on Computer-Mediated Narrative
SDH-semi, the annual conference of the Canadian-based Society for
Digital Humanities / Société pour l'étude des médias interactifs
will be held in Montreal from May 31 - June 2, 2010.
Among the papers of particular interest to the Authoring Software constituency are:
- Ray Siemens: "Research Foundations for Understanding Books and Reading in the Digital Age"
- Susan Brown: "Digging the Poetess: Exploring Social Networks in Orlando"
- Richard Cunningham, Paul Caton, Alan Galey, Brent Nelson, Ray Siemens, and Paul Werstine:
"The Architecture of the Book for a Digital Age"
- Sandra Gabriele, Stéfan Sinclair, Jennifer Roberts-Smith, Stan Ruecker, Omar Rodriguez,
Marcelo Hong, "From Surface to Space: Adding a Dimension to a Theatrical Visualization Interface"
- Carolyn Guertin: _iStoreys_ c: Creating an augmented, psychogeographic narrative app
- Jon Saklofske, "Corrected Misunderstandings: Fortifying connections between Game Studies,
Literary Studies and the Digital Humanities"
- Marc Plamondon: Echoes of the Elizabethan Poetic Past: Computational Phonostylistics using Bigrams, Trigrams, and Syllabic Components
The Conference will also include A Hypertext Performance of Joanna Baillie's
Witchcraft (Joint Session with Canadian Association for Theatre Research)
followed by commentaries by Patrick Leroux and Michael Eberle-Sinatra
May 21, 2010
New Electronic Journal from EPC to Include Digital Poetry,
Media Theory, Textual Experimentation, and Creative Gaming
In Buffalo, NY, The Electronic Poetry Center in Buffalo announces
Emerging Language Practices, (ELP)
a new electronic journal, produced in collaboration with SUNY Buffalo's
series of International E-Poetry Festivals. ELP will include digital poetry,
media theory, textual experimentation, and creative gaming.
The Executive Editor is Loss Pequeño Glazier and the Editor-in-Chief
is Sarah JM Kolberg. Submissions for the Fall, 2010 issue are due
September 1, 2010.
Critical Code Studies to Host One Day Conference at USC in July
On
Critical Code Studies, Mark Marino announces a one day conference
at the University of Southern California on July 23, 2010. Hosted by The Center
for Transformative Scholarship & The Institute for Multimedia Literacy, the
conference will feature Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Brown University, as Keynote Speaker.
Authoring Software News Archive
For information about the Authoring Software resource, email Judy Malloy at jmalloy@well.com
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Authoring Software feature:
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Writers and Artists
Talk about Their Work
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Current Pages
Mark Amerika
Mark Bernstein:
__Interview wirh Mark Bernstein
Bill Bly
Jay Bushman
J. R. Carpenter
__
The Broadside of a Yarn
__
Entre Ville
__
STRUTS
M.D. Coverley
__
Egypt: The Book of
Going Forth by Day
__
Tin Towns
Chris Funkhouser
Dene Grigar
__
24-Hr. Micro-Elit
__
Fallow Field
Fox Harrell
Megan Heyward
Adriene Jenik
Antoinette LaFarge
Deena Larsen
Judy Malloy
Mark C. Marino
__Nick Montfort and
Stephanie Strickland
Sea and Spar Between
__
Interview with Stuart Moulthrop
Karen O'Rourke
Regina Pinto
Andrew Plotkin
Sonya Rapoport:
__Interview with Sonya Rapoport
Aaron Reed
Scott Rettberg
Stephanie Strickland
__Nick Montfort and Stephanie Strickland
Sea and Spar Between
Archived Pages
These pages are in the process
of being converted to the
new format.
Stefan Muller Arisona
Alan Bigelow
J. R. Carpenter
__
Chronicles of Pookie and JR
Steve Ersinghaus
Caitlin Fisher
Susan M. Gibb
Dylan Harris
William Harris
Ian Hatcher
Chris Joseph
Rob Kendall
Donna Leishman
Mez
Ethan Miller
Nick Montfort
__Lost One
Judd Morrissey
Stuart Moulthrop
__Under Language
and Deep Surface
Alexander Mouton
Kate Pullinger
Jim Rosenberg
__Stephanie Strickland and Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo
Vniverse and slippingglimpse
Sue Thomas
Eugenio Tisselli
Noah Wardrip-Fruin
Joel Weishaus
Nanette Wylde
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