A Morning of Discussion on Electronic Literature at Maryland
Please join MITH for a morning of discussion on electronic literature. In preparation for the Electronic Literature Organization’s impending move to MITH (www.eliterature.org), two of the ELO’s directors, ALAN LIU (Professor of English, University of California Santa Barbara) and JOE TABBI (Professor of English, University of Illinois Chicago) will visit to present talks on the preservation and collecting of electronic literature, as well as a new curriculum (at Santa Barbara) to support its teaching.
The talks will take place from 9:30-12:00 on Friday, April 28 in the McKeldin Library Special Events room (#6137), University of Maryland, College Park. The schedule will be as follows:
* ALAN LIU, “Preserving Electronic Literature” (9:30-10:00)
* JOSEPH TABBI, “The Directory of Electronic Literature” (10:00-10:30)
* Discussion with Liu and Tabbi (10:30-11:00)
* Break (11:00-11:15)
* ALAN LIU, “The University of California Transliteracies Project: Research in the Technological, Social, and Cultural Practices of Online Reading” (11:15-12:00)
ALAN LIU, Professor of English at UC Santa Barbara, is one of the most accomplished theorists in the digital humanities today. He is the initiator of numerous digital projects, including the Voice of the Shuttle (http://vos.ucsb.edu/index.asp), the earliest and still the largest humanities portal on the Web. His most recent book is _The Laws of Cool: Knowledge Work and the Culture of Information_ (University of Chicago Press, 2004). JOE TABBI, Professor of English at University of Illinois Chicago, is the author most recently of _Cognitive Fictions_ (University of Minnesota Press, 2002) and is the founding editor of _ebr_ or the _electronic book review_ (http://www.electronicbookreview.com/), which has evolved into an essential hub for writing and scholarship on new media and electronic literature.
Contact: Neil Fraistat, Acting Director, MITH (www.mith.umd.edu, mith@umd.edu, 301-405-5896).
In “Recycled,” Giselle Beiguelman has taken an “artifact” of electronic technology, the object-follow-cursor feature, and transposed it into a moving metaphor. Across a field of bright yellow, the letters RECYCLED enter the screen, track the cursor, disappear if gathered, and finally clump together and vanish, only to begin migrating, again, from the margins. The letters, then, are constantly being “recycled” — and the reader is the agent in effecting the transformation. Beiguelman’s piece is an example of the way in which minimal text can join with technological trope in a “reading” of e-lit.
Judy Malloy’s “Interlude” is part of a longer work entitled Dorothy and Sid. This story focuses on the lives of contemporary artists in the San Francisco Bay area; it unfolds in four parts: “Dorothy Abrona McCrae”; “Interlude — Dorothy and Sid”; “A Party at Silver Beach”; and “Afterwards.” Each of these narratives is characterized by multilinear story segments that can be accessed by the reader in varying order. “Dorothy Abrona McCrae” was begun as an online serial in April 2000. A new installment was added each month. The final installment was posted in December 2000. In “Interlude — Dorothy and Sid,” in a series of trips and intimate moments, Dorothy and Sid change their long-term but occasional relationship into a more serious commitment.
“Terror Nullus” was commissioned for the Venue/AFTRS Short Cuts online narrative exhibition in 1997. This 1 to 3 minute docudrama examines the hunt for an Australian identity — from prosaic places like Jenny’s place or Oscar’s office to unwieldy places like the unseen. This is a byte-sized piece of entertainment, with astonishingly intricate graphics and nuances.