Series

Jacob Edmond argues that while postmodernism might be useless as a theoretical concept or periodization, it nevertheless illuminates changes, both local and global, in the final decades of the twentieth century. Edmond analyzes the uses of postmodernism in the United States, New Zealand, Russia, and China. He shows how the various and even contradictory uses of the term postmodernism allowed it to represent both sides in the unfolding tension between globalization and localism in late twentieth-century culture.

(source: ebr)

The original editors of Critical Ecologies, Joseph Tabbi and Cary Wolfe, constructed this green and grey thread “to explore convergences among natural and constructed ecosystems, green politics and grey matter, silicon chips and sand.” Texts from this period include a 2004 Joseph McElroy Festschrift that hints at the literary implications of an ecological, medial turn in literary theory. The Critical Ecologies thread will continue these explorations under the editorship of Stacy Alaimo, who encourages inquiry and debate on new materialisms, animal studies, posthumanism, and science studies.

(Source: EBR)

Reflecting on the genealogy and histories of “transgressive textualities” and text generators, Aquilina offers readings of texts by Swift, Dahl, Orwell, and Borges to consider the terms and issues involved in situating text generators as transgressive.

Source: EBR 

music/sound/noise is an ebr thread.

Thread editor from 2006-07: Trace Reddell. MusicSoundNoise was initiated in the winter of 2000/01 by Cary Wolfe and Mark Amerika. msn logo and animation created by Cynthia Jacquette.

(Source: ebr)

Platforms have been around for decades, right under our video games and digital art. Those studying new media are now starting to dig down to the level of code to learn more about how computers are used in culture, but there have been few attempts to go deeper, to the metal — to look at the base hardware and software systems that are the foundation of computational expression.

Platform Studies investigates the relationships between the hardware and software design of computing systems and the creative works produced on those systems.

By choosing a platform, new media creators simplify development and delivery in many ways. Their work is supported and constrained by what this platform can do. Sometimes the influence is obvious: A monochrome platform can't display color, a video game console without a keyboard can't accept typed input. But there are more subtle ways that platforms interact with creative production, due to the idioms of programming that a language supports or due to transistor-level decisions made in video and audio hardware. In addition to allowing certain developments and precluding others, platforms also encourage and discourage different sorts of expressive new media work. In drawing raster graphics, the difference between setting up one scan line at a time, having video RAM with support for tiles and sprites, or having a native 3D model can end up being much more important than resolution or color depth.

Particular platform studies may emphasize different technical or cultural aspects and draw on different critical and theoretical approaches, but they will be united in being technically rigorous and in deeply investigating computing systems in their interactions with creativity, expression, and culture. While being addressed to readers without a computer science background, the Platform Studies books will drive deep into the workings of computers, opening an exciting new level for scholars, students, and general readers.

(Source: http://platformstudies.com/)

A series of technical reports published by the Trope Tank at MIT.

Anomalie Digital_Arts is a yearly review carried out collectively. Each issue explores a different theme in the fields of arts and digital technologies, illustrating at once historical, technical and aesthetic developments. Anomalie Digital_Arts is a bilingual review. A research and diffusion aid, it is also a platform of exchanges and experimentation.

Electronic Literature is not just a "thing" or a "medium" or even a body of "works" in various "genres." It is not poetry, fiction, hypertext, gaming, codework, or some new admixture of all these practices. E-Literature is, arguably, an emerging cultural form, as much a collective creation of new terms and keywords as it is the production of new literary objects. Both the "works" and their terms of description need to be tracked and referenced. Hence, a Directory of Electronic Literature needs to be, in the first place, a site where readers and (necessarily) authors are given the ability to identify, name, tag, describe, and legitimate works of literature written and circulating within electronic media. This essay grew out of practical debates among the ELO's Working Group on the Directory, established in the Spring of 2005 and active through the Winter of 2006. The essay offers a set of practical recommendations for development, links to potentially affiliated sites, and an overall vision of how literary form is created in a networked culture. The essay is intended to set a direction for the next phase of Directory development (Fall 2007), central to the ELO's mission of making a place for literary work (and works) in electronic environments. Finally, and as yet tentatively, the essay offers speculations on how this curatorial activity can be coordinated with similar initiatives in the arts and with stakeholders in the current development of a Semantic Web.

Source: author's article abstract