Conference

2013 marks the 10th anniversary of HASTAC’s founding. In that spirit HASTAC 2013 is showcasing work that is either reflective or prescient, that evaluates our digital histories and seeks to construct our digital future(s). We invited contributors to take this opportunity to look back, theorize and archive. We invited them to engage in the creative, if impossible, attempt to glimpse the digital future. We challenged them to shape it. And researchers from across Canada, the United States and Europe and from as far away as Australia are coming to Toronto to share how they and their teams, their research labs,their classrooms and their students are building the technologies and subjects of the future right now or imagining new horizons of possibility for the ways in which we will make, teach, learn and find community in the coming decade(s).

HASTAC 2013 brings together 5 keynote speakers, 150 refereed papers, panels and demos, a maker space, curated digital performances and over 250 attendees including established and emerging scholars, artists and authors, tech entrepreneurs and teachers,  to explore alternative modes of creating, innovating, and critiquing that better address the interconnected, diverse, interactive global nature of knowledge today, both in the academy and beyond. Our scheduled sessions will deepen our understanding of the role of digital technologies and media and the changes in behaviour and ways of learning and working currently underway.

(Source: HASTAC 2013 site)

This symposium explores the future potential of the book by engaging practitioners and performers of this versatile technology to ask some key questions: is the book an artifact on its deathbed or a mutable medium transitioning into future forms? What shape will books of the future take? Grounded in this technology’s history, we will reflect critically on possible futures, promises, and challenges of the book, showcasing practices by writers and artists, putting them in conversation with scholars and thinkers from across the disciplines who are framing discourse and questions about book-related technotexts. This symposium hopes to foster a lively discussion where audience members participate and invoke their multiple perspectives of the book.

Confirmed speakers included:Keynote Speaker: Ted NelsonPlus: Paul Brown, Alan Sondheim, Tim WrightAlso featuring: Kate Pullinger, Steve Gibson, Simon Widdowson

2004 saw the third Incubation, the premier international event for writers working on the web providing ideas, information and debate for the new media writing community. There were opportunities to experience recent works and lively discussions about the ways new media texts are made, discussed, and reviewed. We also explored methods of teaching and digital archiving in a creative context. Incubation aims to encourage interdisciplinary creativity and cross-fertilisation, and we were especially interested in introducing the form to writers and artists for whom it is a new idea as well as helping practitioners to share and expand their work.

ThemesThe themes for 2004 were:A. Developing a new form: contemporary textual works in new media and performanceB. The practice of making: creative and professional practice; online teaching and learning.C. Critique and criteria: criticism, reviewing, defining, and archiving of new media writing.

(Source: trAce Archive, conference site)

Incubation2 was the second trAce International Conference on Writing & the Internet, and the premier international event for writers working on the web. It provided a showcase for the writing of the future and offered a glimpse into the work of writers who use the internet to develop ground-breaking content: poetry with sound and images, personal histories, news, journalism, stories with multiple endings. This is writing on the web, for the web, and about the web.

Speakers included:

Lizzie Jackson, Editor, Communities, BBCiTalan Memmott Hypermedia artist/writer Robin Rimbaud (Scanner) Sound artist

The conference was a significant opportunity for writers to extend their professional development, learn new skills, and interact with some of the leading writers and artists working online today. There were opportunities to meet with writers who have made a significant contribution to this new form, as well as the chance for writers to show their own work and look at other people's. There werevskills-based workshops and feedback workshops, panel discussions, presentations, demonstrations and performances, and plenty of opportunity to network and meet those people you only ever knew online.

Our themes in 2002 were:

Process:

How do we collaborate on the web?What is the difference between electronic writing and print-based writing?Is new media writing literature?

Learning:

How do we learn and teach writing on the web?How is the online workshop different from the physical workshop?How has the web changed what we learn and how we learn it?

Culture:

How is the web enabling writers to address diversity and difference?Is there a cultural divide between writers who use the web, and those who don't?How is the interdisciplinary culture of the web affecting traditional funding models for writing?

(Source: trAce Archive, 2002 Incubation conference site)

The internet offers great opportunities for writers. There are fascinating new forms of writing to be discovered; interesting people to meet, and swathes of research material to be mined. But it also brings concerns. Authors are worried about copyright and intellectual property. They are wondering how they can earn money from working online. They fear that The Book may be dying. This conference brings together an international group of professional authors and educators with extensive experience of the internet to address some of these anxieties and provide informed opinion about the potential of the net for the artistic community.

Conference Programme

DALE SPENDER

Digital Arts: Breaking The Boundaries Through Online Authorship

Socrates framed one of the fundamental objections to writing; it was "one-way", it fixed ideas, it required readers simply to follow someone else's argument - which is why he would put nothing in writing. But even Socrates would change his mind if he could be an online author. For online writing is two way, it engages readers to forge their own meanings, and to become a new generation of writers in the process.

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MARK AMERIKA

Hypertext, Web Publishing and Virtual Narrativity

In this presentation, Mark Amerika will trace his most recent research and development focusing on the similarities and differences between novel writing, hypertext authoring, journal publishing and digital art curation. Discussing issues such as online networking, copyleftism, and pla(y)giarism, Amerika will showcase both his GRAMMATRON project and the Alt-X Online Network.

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CYNTHIA HAYNES & JAN RUNE HOLMEVIK

Reading with Others, Writing in Time

In recent years technology has enabled interactivity in exciting ways. At Lingua MOO writers can build a virtual space using only words, and work together in real time with others around the world. When texts are interactive, new modes of teaching and learning quickly evolve. Lingua MOO is also host to the online headquarters of the trAce International Online Writing Community.

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Panel: New Ways to Write

Authors who write on and about the net discuss the potential of this new creative form. Featuring journalist Liz Bailey; editor Keith Brooke, novelist Molly Brown and poet Peter Howard.

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Panel: Online Copyright

A panel discussion featuring Heather Rosenblatt, Legal Adviser for the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society plus authors Dale Spender and Mark Amerika.

Panel: Plenary

Summing up the day's discussions.

(Source: Conference website, trAce Archive)