Taking over the reins from Joseph Tabbi will be incoming President Nick Montfort and Vice President Dene Grigar. Also, ELO announces 3 new members to the ELO Board of Directors: Fox Harrell, Carolyn Guertin, and Jason Nelson. Sandy Baldwin will take over as Treasurer and Mark Marino will continue as Director of Communication.

The term of the ELO President is three years.

Below you will find bios:

Nick Montfort, President

Nick Montfort writes computational and constrained poetry, develops computer games, and is a critic, theorist, and scholar of computational art and media. He is associate professor of digital media in the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He earned a Ph.D. in computer and information science from the University of Pennsylvania.

Montfort’s digital media writing projects include the group blog Grand Text Auto, the ppg256 series of 256-character poetry generators; Ream, a 500-page poem written on one day; Mystery House Taken Over, a collaborative “occupation” of a classic game; Implementation, a novel on stickers written with Scott Rettberg; and several works of interactive fiction: Book and Volume, Ad Verbum, and Winchester’s Nightmare.

Montfort, with Ian Bogost, wrote Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System (MIT Press, 2009), the first book in the Platform Studies series. He wrote Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction (MIT Press, 2003), and, with William Gillespie, 2002: A Palindrome Story (Spineless Books, 2002), which the Oulipo acknowledged as the world’s longest literary palindrome. He also edited The Electronic Literature Collection Volume 1 (with N. Katherine Hayles, Stephanie Strickland, and Scott Rettberg, ELO, 2006) and The New Media Reader (with Noah Wardrip-Fruin, MIT Press, 2003). His current work is on narrative variation in interactive fiction and the role of platforms in creative computing.

Dene Grigar, Vice President:

Dene Grigar is an Associate Professor and Director of the Digital Technology and Culture Program at Washington State University Vancouver who works in the area of electronic literature, emergent technology and cognition, and ephemera. She is the author of “Fallow Field: A Story in Two Parts” and “The Jungfrau Tapes: A Conversation with Diana Slattery about The Glide Project“, both of which have appeared in the Iowa Review Web, and When Ghosts Will Die (with Canadian multimedia artist Steve Gibson), a piece that experiments with motion tracking technology to produce networked narratives. Her most recent project is the “Fort Vancouver Mobile Project,” a locative / mixed media effort that brings together a core team of 20 scholars, digital storytellers, new media producers, historians, and archaeologists to create location-aware nonfiction content for mobile phones to be used at the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site. She serves as Associate Editor for Leonardo Reviews

New Board Members

Fox Harrell:

Fox Harrell is a researcher, author, and artist exploring the relationship between imaginative cognition and computation. He and his laboratory, the Imagination, Computation, and Expression [ICE] Lab/Studio develop new forms of computational narrative, gaming, and related digital infrastructures and technical-cultural media with a basis in computer science, cognitive science, and digital media arts. He is an Assistant Professor of Digital Media in the department of Literature, Communication, and Culture at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Carolyn Guertin:

Carolyn Guertin has a dual appointment in new media. She is Director of the eCreate Lab and Assistant Professor of Digital Media in the Department of English at the University of Texas at Arlington. She is also a faculty member at Transart Institute in Berlin, Germany and Linz, Austria, an international low residency MFA program in new media at Danube University Krems. She is curator of the celebrated collection Assemblage: The Online Women’s New Media Gallery out of the U.K., and was Senior McLuhan Fellow at the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto, where she was SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow from 2004-06. She has been a Literary Adviser to the Electronic Literature Organization since its inception, is a member of the MLA Committee on Information Technology, and is an editorial board member of Convergence.

She earned her PhD with a study of cyberfeminist digital narrative and the technologies of memory in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta, Canada. She has taught, exhibited and published internationally, and does theoretical work in: cyberfeminism, hacktivism, born-digital arts and literatures, (global) film futures, information aesthetics, postliteracy and the social practices surrounding technology (especially social networking and participatory culture). She is working on a new book on new media art, authorship and the politics of creation in our digital world.

Jason Nelson:

Born from the computerless land of farmers and spring thunderstorms, Jason Nelson somehow stumbled into creating awkward and wondrous digital poems and interactive stories of odd lives. Currently he teaches Net Art and Electronic Literature at Griffith University in the Gold Coast’s contradictory lands. Aside from coaxing his students into breaking, playing and morphing their creativity with all manner of technologies, he exhibits widely in galleries and journals, with work featured around globe in New York, Mexico, Taiwan, Spain, Singapore and Brazil, at FILE, ACM, LEA, ISEA, ACM, ELO and dozens of other acronyms. But in the web based realm where his work resides, Jason is most proud of the millions of visitors his artwork/digital poetry portal http://www.secrettechnology.com attracts each year.

The workshop, attended by approximately 150 electronic literary scholars and artists, marks a look back at the foundational work of Robert Coover and the continuation of the ELO PAD project (ARCHIVE) and an the group’s visionary glimpse at the future of electronic literature.

Conference details can be found here.

Twitter stream is tagged: #ELOAI streaming from @eliterature

Among with readings, performances, screenings, and critical panels, the conference will also announce the Electronic Literature Directory 2.0 and the Electronic Literature Collection, volume 2.

The conference features a number of tributes to Robert Coover, including artwork and panels that re-explore the work that continues to fascinate and drive this digital avant-garde.

Two opportunities are now available at the University of Bergen’s Digital Culture program (http://www.uib.no/rg/digitalculture) for scholars of electronic literature.

FULBRIGHT SCHOLAR/LECTURER IN DIGITAL CULTURE http://catalog.cies.org/viewAward.aspx?n=1543

POSTDOC IN ELECTRONIC LITERATURE BIBLIOGRAPHY

Details:

FULBRIGHT SCHOLAR/LECTURER IN DIGITAL CULTURE http://catalog.cies.org/viewAward.aspx?n=1543

For the 2011-2012 and 2012-2013 years (or any single semester within that time frame), a Fulbright scholar position will be available at the University of Bergen. The scholar will take part in the teaching and research activities of the Digital Culture program and Digital Culture research group in the Department of Linguistic, Literary, and Aesthetic Studies at the University of Bergen. The scholar will be expected to teach three courses in digital culture and digital media aestheics over the course of the year (1.5 courses if a single semester) and to evaluate student work. This is equivalent to a 2/1 teaching load in the American system. Courses will run 13 teaching weeks, with two two-hour meetings per week. Courses will be lecture and seminar. Depending on needs and expertise, courses the scholar might teach include DIKULT103: Digital Genres: Digital Art, Electronic Literature and Computer Games; DIKULT105: Web Design; DIKULT203: Electronic Literature; DIKULT251: Critical Perspectives on Information Technologies and Society; DIKULT303: Digital Media Aesthetics; or DIKULT304: Graduate Seminar: Topics in Digital Culture. The scholar will also be expected to participate in and contribute to the biweekly meetings of the Digital Culture research group and to give one public lecture on a central topic of his/her research.

Fulbright scholarships are available to USA citizens residing in the USA. The position is open to a PhD with at least two years teaching experience, though candidates with another terminal degree in a relevant field, such an MFA in digital writing or an MLIS with a concentration in digital humanities, might also be considered.

Contact Scott Rettberg via the address on the catalog listing for further information. The application deadline for 2011-2012 August 1, 2010. A letter of invitation is recommended.

POSTDOC IN ELECTRONIC LITERATURE BIBLIOGRAPHY

At the Department of Linguistic, Literary, and Aesthetic studies there is a vacant position as postdoctoral fellow in digital culture, for a period of 20 months. The position is financed by Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA), as part of the project “Developing a Network-Based Creative Community: Electronic Literature as Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice” (ELMCIP – http://elmcip.net).

A postdoctoral  position is a temporary appointment.  The term of employment for this position is 20 months, beginning in Fall 2010. It is not possible for any person to work under more than one temporary appointment for the same institution.

The position entails 75% work on the ELMCIP project and 25% independent research related to the indexing, archiving, and dissemination of born-digital literature. Work on ELMCIP will include the development of an online bibliography of works and contextual information about twentieth century and contemporary electronic literature. Working with researchers in the digital culture group, the postdoctoral fellow will have primary responsibility for developing the standards and information architecture of the knowledge base, for writing and contributing records to the database,and for editing and preparing materials contributed by other researchers.

Applicants must have achieved a Norwegian doctorate or equivalent education abroad, or have presented the dissertation for assessment by the closing date for applications.  It is a prerequisite that the dissertation has been approved before appointment is granted.

Additional information about the position is available by contacting:

The framework for the Electronic Literature Directory version 2.0 is now online:
http://eld.eliterature.org/

Think of this as an open house in a model home for e-lit.

Start by creating an account and submitting creative or critical works or collection sites. Those submissions will be delivered to our Directory team for evaluation and review.We’re looking forward to the re-launch of this flagsite enterprise of ELO.

Watch for full announcements to follow including thanks to the team who have been working so hard to make this a possibility.

At the start of the new decade, it is impossible to predict what new forms of literature will emerge, but you at least know where you can find them: the Electronic Literature Directory.

[Also, reminder, ELO AI deadline: January 15, 2010 or 011501]

The Electronic Literature Organization’s
Fourth International Conference
& Program of Digitally Mediated Literary Art

June 3-6, 2010
Brown University
Providence, Rhode Island, USA
Organized by the ELO and Writing Digital Media
at the Brown University Literary Arts Program
dedicated to Robert Coover

The Electronic Literature Organization and Brown University’s Literary Arts Program invite submissions to the Electronic Literature Organization 2010 Conference to be held from June 3-6, 2010 in Providence, Rhode Island, USA.
electronic literature . writing digital media . language-driven digital poesis . literal art

We welcome papers and presentations on a broad range of topics. The conference will focus on the theory, criticism, close-reading, practice and archiving of language-driven digital art and poetics. Our gathering will also embrace all the related cultural practices that continue to be addressed by scholars and artists in our growing field:

expressive processing, computational art, artificial cognition and intelligence, aesthetic gaming, information art, codework, digitally mediated performance, network & media art & activism.

In addition we will give a special welcome to papers that engage with the contribution that Robert Coover has made to our field. A festschrift comprised of papers from the conference is proposed and Professor Coover will be our chief featured eWriter. (Other featured speakers to be announced shortly.)

In conjunction with the three-day conference, there will be a juried Program of Language-Driven Digital Art, concentrating on but not confined to installation works. We plan to show the selected work in gallery spaces close to the conference venue in downtown Providence over a two week period. Subject to funding restrictions, selected artists will be awarded bursaries to assist with attending the conference. Submission guidelines will be posted on the conference website by mid November.

Deadline for Submissions: December 15, 2009
Notification of Acceptance: January 25, 2010
PLEASE NOTE: Deadline for full papers will be May 1, 2010 to allow for reflection and exchange on the papers prior to the conference and to get head-start in the publication process.

The basic cost of the conference is $150; graduate students and non-affiliated artists pay only $100. Conference registration covers access to all events, the reception, some meals, and shuttle transportation. All conference attendees are also expected to join the ELO before the conference and this can be done at registration.

We are planning to implement online submission and registration. Before submitting, please consult the conference website at …

http://ai.eliterature.org

… where these facilities will be available and where you will find much more information about both the content and the form of the conference and arts program.

After consulting the website, for further queries and all email correspondence contact:
elo.ai [at] eliterature.org

The above address should be used for all conference business. It will checked by myself and also those colleagues and students who will be assisting me with the conference organization. But I appreciate that you may sometimes also want to get in touch with the conference organizer: John Cayley Literary Arts Program – Box 1923, Brown University, 68 1/2 Brown Street, Providence, RI 02912, USA. office: +1 401 863 3966, John_Cayley [at] brown.edu

. . . . . . . .

FURTHER SUPPORT AND SPONSORSHIP SOLICITED
The Conference is currently sponsored and supported by The Electronic Literature Organization, Brown University Literary Arts Program, Brown University Creative Arts Council, Brown University Library, and the RISD D+M Program. Any organization or individual in receipt of this call who would like to sponsor and support this major international conference, please get in touch. External sponsors are being sought and will be appropriately acknowledged.

See “mediartZ: Art as Experiential, Art as Participatory, Art as Electronic” an enticing collection of works on display October 2-31 at the North Bank Artists Gallery in Vancouver.

“mediart” will feature Second Life performance, video and sound installations, animation, interactive art, and a Halloween-morning cartoon fest. See e-lit and electronic arts rock stars: Mark Amerika, Brian Evans, Jim Bizzochi, Doug Jarvis, Will Luers, Doug Gast, and Reza Safavi. Dene has also brought in works from local artists,
Hoolinganship and Jeannette Altman, are also featured.  The exhibit is free and open to all.

A kick-off party will be held on Friday, October 2 featuring the Willamette Radio Project. The kick-off will also celebrate the launch of a special issue of Hyperrhiz. Hyperrhiz remains one of the premier outlets for electronic literature. The special issue features papers and art from the fabulous 2008 ELO conference Visionary Landscapes.

For info, go to the exhibit web site, or contact curator and ELO Board-Member Dene Grigar grigar [at] vancouver.wsu.edu.  Dene is Director of the Digital Technology and Culture Program at WSU Vancouver.

Let us know about events in your area. Also tune into our new Twitter tag: #elo_events.  And follow us on Twitter.

From the Call:

PLEASE SUBMIT….
Critical papers, criti-fictional presentations, fiction readings, performance pieces (digital, sound, and otherwise), electronic and multimedia projects, and cross genre work of all kinds. Pieces that address linguistic transgressions, the limits of genre, or works that promote interdisciplinary explorations are particularly encouraged. Proposals can be for individual readings, critical panels, creative panels, and/or roundtable discussions. (See the full call here)

In a note to ELO, Steve speaks of his desire from the start to include electronic literature as a literary genre, as opposed to a specialty or an oddity. Past &Nows have featured the electronic works of Stephanie Strickland, Rob Wittig, Scott Rettberg, and MD Coverley.

As another sign of the ELO-link, this year’s festival features Robert Coover.

This should be an excellent showcase for ELO works. Please submit or join us there.

First and foremost a night of readings: Electronic Literary Arts Performances, curated by Jessica Pressman and Mark C. Marino.

From the call:

Each performance is limited to 5-7 minutes and should take the form of interactive engagement with the audience and dramatic presentations of creative digital-born works.

Second, two tracks in particular may appeal to ELO folks:

• Software/ platform studies, hosted by Jeremy Douglass and Noah Wardrip-Fruin
• Cognition and creativity, hosted by Fox Harrell
• A Space-Time of Ubiquity and Embeddedness — hosted by Ulrik Ekman and Mark Hansen.

Please see the official call for all the details.

This grant marks another sign of international interest and national arts investment in the exploration of electronic literature.

Below is news from their announcement:

Researchers at the Universities of Dundee and Kent have just been awarded a major grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, to study poetry ‘beyond text’.

The project, entitled Poetry Beyond Text: Vision, Text and Cognition involves researchers in English, Comparative Literature, Psychology and Fine Art in a 2-year partnership between the two universities. The team will be led by Dr Andrew Michael Roberts of the Dundee School of Humanities English Programme.

Funded by the AHRC’s multi-million pound Beyond Text Scheme, the project will combine the methods of literary criticism, creative practice and human experimental psychology to study a wide range of works: digital poetry, books of poetry and photography, artists’ books and concrete and pattern poetry. Involving poets, artists, scholars, scientists, students and members of the public, it will explore some of the rich interactions of text and image in contemporary culture, and produce both creative and analytical results, to be made available through exhibitions, new works of art, a website and an on-line gallery.

Researchers:
Dr Andrew Michael Roberts, Dr Martin Fischer, Dr Mary Modeen (University of Dundee);
Dr Anna Katharina Schaffner, Dr Ulrich Weger (University of Kent)

Contacts:
Dr Andrew Roberts – email A.M.Roberts[at]dundee.ac.uk

Dr Anna Katharina Schaffner – email A.K.Schaffner[at]kent.ac.uk