Electronic Literature Organization

Electronic literature (re)takes the Pacific northwest!

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.

“mediartZ” 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.

Call for Papers and Works: Seminar on Electronic Literature in Europe

September 11-13th, 2008 at the University of Bergen in Bergen, Norway.

The Fall 2008 Bergen Seminar on Electronic Literature in Europe will build upon the work of the e-poetry seminar held in Paris in February 2008 at the University Paris 8, the 2007 e-poetry conference in Paris, the 2007 Remediating Literature Conference in Utrecht, and other recent activity in the field of electronic literature in Europe. The goals of this gathering are:

1) To provide an opportunity for European researchers to share and discuss their current research on electronic literature, e-poetry, and digital narrative forms.

2) To provide a forum for European authors of electronic literature to share, demonstrate, read, or perform their work.

3) To discuss and explore the foundation of a European research network focused on electronic literature, funding opportunities for such a network, and network activities.

The seminar will last three days and will include about 20-30 participants. The day-long meetings during the first two days will consist of short presentations of papers in panel format. Additionally, there will be performances, readings, and demonstrations of electronic literature in the evenings. The third day of the conference will be dedicated to proposing and discussing the formal establishment of a research network on electronic literature in Europe. Paper presentations should be in English. Presentation and performances of works can be made in English or in the native language of the presenter. (more…)

Calling all Southern California Elit Authors:

Calling All creators (and fans) of Electronic Literature: authors, designers, and programmers.  Sign up now to present your new or favorite work of elit in our Open Mic/Open Mouse.

Venue: Outdoors under the stars at the Institute for Multimedia Literacy, 746 West Adams Blvd., LA, CA 90089 at the University of Southern California.

Potential Genres:

• Electronic Poetry
• Hypertext
• Interactive Fiction
• Interactive Drama
• Conversational Agents
• Video Mashups
• Serious Games
• Flash Works
• Codeworks

Any work that could be labeled “Electronic Literature” is welcome or you may read an excerpt of one of your favorite Elit works.
Performance Spots Length: 7 Minutes Max
The performance will be Free and Open to the public.
To sign up, contact Jeremy Douglass [jeremydouglass [at] gmail]

Organized by Mark Marino, Jeremy Douglass, and Jessica Pressman with support from Holly Willis of the Institute for Multimedia Literacy and from the Electronic Literature Organization.
For more information go here.

October 4th and 5th, at UC Irvine, an exhibition opening, symposium, and performance features the work of ELO Vice-Presidents Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort and ELO Co-Founder Scott Rettberg.

LOCATION: The Beall Center for Art and Technology, UC Irvine

OPENING RECEPTION: October 4th, 6:30pm-9:00pm, Beall Center

SYMPOSIUM: October 5th, 1:00-5:00pm, Studio Art Bldg. 712, Room 160, UC Irvine

PERFORMANCE: October 5th, 6:00-8:00pm, Winifred Smith Hall, UC Irvine

GENERAL CONTACT: (949) 824-4339 or http://beallcenter.uci.edu

OVERVIEW

Many blogs have become books – from The Baghdad Blog to Belle de Jour. But Grand Text Auto is the first blog ever to become a gallery exhibition. It opens October 4th and runs through December 15th at UC Irvine’s Beall Center for Art and Technology. The exhibition features the work of Grand Text Auto members Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Mary Flanagan, Michael Mateas, Andrew Stern, Nick Montfort, Scott Rettberg, and their collaborators.

Grand Text Auto is a blog about the potential of digital media, from literary websites to experimental computer games. At the exhibition, the blog members will put these ideas into practice, showing a variety of cutting edge works. Some use the latest in artificial intelligence technology, such as Mateas and Stern’s interactive drama Facade” of which The New York Times says, “This is the future of video games.” The Beall exhibition will feature the first public showing of a life-sized “augmented reality” version of Facade, created in collaboration with Georgia Tech’s GVU Center. Virtual reality is also on display, as with Wardrip-Fruin’s collaborative work Screen, a literary game played with 3D text” never seen before outside of a research lab and presented with support from UC San Diego’s Center for Research in Computing and the Arts. On the other hand, some works in the exhibition use decidedly do-it-yourself techniques, such as Montfort and Rettberg’s Implementation, an experimental novel distributed around the world on mailing labels. Others are quirky, such as Flanagan’s [giantJoystick], a replica Atari 2600 joystick so large that two people must work together to play (this has its North American debut at the Beall show).

In addition to the gallery show, the members of Grand Text Auto are working together with the Beall Center to present a live symposium and performance evening, both on October 5th. The afternoon symposium (1-5 p.m.) will discuss the power of collaborative blogging, new directions for computer games, and the place of language in digital media. The evening performance (6-8 p.m.) will feature the disturbing and humorous interactive cinema experience Terminal Time (which automatically creates outrageously biased documentaries of the past millennium) and a live performance of the award-winning hypertext novel The Unknown (which tells the tale of a rollicking cross-country book tour). Parking for these events is available in the Student Parking structure at the corner of Campus Drive and West Peltason.

Online, Grand Text Auto (http://grandtextauto.org) is a blog with more than 200,000 visitors a month, collectively authored by six artists and scholars. Offline, Grand Text Auto members have been shown in major art museums, been written about in leading national periodicals, and shipped games that have met wide acclaim and sold millions of copies. The Grand Text Auto exhibition is the first time that these artists will show their work together. Delve into Grand Text Auto’s digital depths October 4 – December 15, 2007 (closed November 22-26) and witness the live debut of blog-meets-reality.