Exhibition

While there are strong centers of activity in electronic literature in North America and Western Europe, innovations in digital textuality are also taking place in Eastern Europe and in the Southern hemisphere. This exhibition focuses on electronic literature from Brazil, Peru, Poland, Portugal, and Russia.

This exhibition at 3,14 focuses on electronic literature produced by international authors and artists outside of the Anglo/American and Western European mainstream, including the countries Brazil, Canada, Peru, Poland, Portugal and Russia. The works in this exhibit were selected both via an open call and by curators from Poland (Piotr Marecki), Russia (Natalia Fedorova and Daria Khabarova), and Portugal (Álvaro Seiça). Both historical works and contemporary projects are represented. Bringing these diverse collections together provides an opportunity to consider how practices and genres in electronic literature are influenced both by the exchange of ideas on the global network and by important national and regional artistic traditions.

Works and Curated Exhibitions include:

• Nicola Harwood, Fred Wah, Jin Zhang, Bessie Wapp, Simon Lysander Overstall, Tomoyo Ihaya, Phillip Djwa, Thomas Loh, Hiromoto Ida and Patrice Leung. High Muck a Muck: Playing Chinese.

• Jose Aburto. Small poetic interfaces – the end of click.

• Francisco Marinho and Alckmar Santos. Palavrador.

• Jakub Jagiełło and Laura Lech. Labyrinth.

• Natalia Fedorova. “This Is Not a Utopia”—Russian Electronic Literature.

• Álvaro Seiça and Piotr Marecki: “p2p: Polish-Portuguese E-Lit.”

(Source: ELO 2015 catalog)

An exhibition addressing various aspects of the festival’s theme, the End(s) of Electronic Literature Festival exhibition at the University of Bergen Arts and Humanities Library includes kiosk displays of international web-based electronic literature, installations made specifically for the library context, an “Emergence of Electronic Literature” exhibit (documented in a separate catalog) featuring early works of electronic literature, antecedant works of print literature, posters and other ephemera from the history of the field, and an Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 3 preview exhibit.

(source: ELO 2015 catalog)

The Kid E-Lit exhibition showcases experimental electronic literature for children and teenagers alongside popular Nordic children’s and young adult’s book apps for tablets. The exhibition is organized in collaboration with Bergen Public Library and is funded by Nordic Cultural Point. The exhibition includes seven works selected from submissions to the ELO 2015 arts program as well as two works from each of the participating Nordic countries by Nordic researchers and librarians. The Kid E-Lit exhibition will be on display in the Bergen Public Library in August and September 2015, and the Kid E-Lit network will subsequently develop new versions of the exhibition to tour other Nordic libraries. A separate catalog in both English and Scandinavian language has been published and details the project more exensively.

“Language and the Interface” features a selection of 27 works, and results from research work carried out for the FCT PhD Programme in Materialities of Literature. The exhibition is curated by Daniela Côrtes Maduro, Ana Marques da Silva and Diogo Marques. It has been designed as an exploratory sample of writing strategies from different moments (1990-2015), in various languages (English, Portuguese, French), using diverse technologies (stand-alone and networked computer, tablets and mobile devices, augmented reality applications). The show is part of the international conference “Digital Literary Studies” hosted by the School of Arts and Humanities at the University of Coimbra, May 14-15, 2015. The works will be on display at the Faculdade de Letras (Room 6, 4th floor). For further information see: Exhibition “Language and the Interface”. (Source: Digital Literary Studies Conference 2015)

Curatorial Statement:

When considered as a simulating machine, the computer blurs the distinction among media or forms of representation. Sounds, images, films, animations and verbal language can now share the same inscriptional surface. Literary experience is impacted by this shift in media ecology. The concept of language itself can refer to spoken and written language, but also to other semiotic systems. Within the computer environment, the linguistic, visual, aural and kinetic forms are themselves made up of layered executable languages of computer codes. The computer can be described as a semiotic machine and processor of languages. It is through the conventions and structures of the graphical user interface that our interaction with digital objects is mediated. What is displayed on the screen is the result of multiple-order representations (or translations) that allow the inscription, processing, and presentation of data.

William S. Burroughs once wrote that “Language is a virus from outer space”. In electronic literature, the computer brings the concept of estrangement to a whole new level by rooting literary experience in an intersection between human and machine languages, and by using processing speed, data storage and programming to suggest further ways to validate or delay the production of meaning. The works presented here take creative, ludic, critical and experimental approaches to the interplay between language and interface. Choosing paths, touching words, generating new threads of meaning or jumping off a cliff are activities that the reader might be asked to perform.

The aim of the ‘Language and the Interface’ exhibit is twofold: on the one hand, to show different modes of processing and displaying language in networked programmable media; on the other hand, to call attention to the interface as both a constraining and enabling reading device. What happens when an understanding of literature as patterned verbal and written language is explored in conjunction with the metamedial affordances of the computer environment? What is the role of the interface in situating and constituting readers as subjects of digital literary works? How are the processing of language and the language of processing interfaced by the display?

This exhibit is part of the international conference “Digital Literary Studies” hosted by the School of Arts and Humanities at the University of Coimbra, May 14-15, 2015. Please feel free to join us and give it a try.

Daniela Côrtes MaduroAna Marques da SilvaDiogo Marques

The artists featured on Gallery of E-Literature First Encounters were not previously exhibited at a media arts show sponsored by the Electronic Literature Organization. In some cases, this is their first time exhibiting work in any setting.

(Source: ELO conference website)