Seminar

Symposium and Exhibition concluding a two year AHRC reserch project exploring our aesthetic and cognitive responses to visual-poetic art works, including concrete poetry, artist's books, poetic prints, poem-photography, text film, and digital poetry.

A five day (6-12 December 2010) workshop in Sydney to develop a set of methodological principles and practical procedures, including future funding applications, for the international collaborative development of a Glossary of Literary Terms For Digital Environments. Participants included Anna Gibbs, Maria Angel (University of Western Sydney), Scott Rettberg and Jill Walker Rettberg (ELMCIP), Peter Gendolla and Jörgen Schäfer (University of Siegen/Media Upheavals Project), Joseph Tabbi, Dene Grigar, and Davin Heckman (ELO), and a number of Australian writers, authors and theorists working in the field.

 In 2010-2011, the University of Jyväskylä conducted a survey and produced a report on European electronic literature publication and distribution. The final report will be published by November, 2012. This seminar was organized, in part, to provide a forum in which to discuss the findings on electronic-literature publishing in Europe.

Day 1The first day of the seminar focused on the draft of the survey report. Following a presentation of the report, the seminar offers an invited commentary by Mark C. Marino (U. of Southern California). In the afternoon, there were presentations by Marko Niemi,one of the editors of the Finnish Nokturno.org portal for electronic poetry, Laura Borras Castanyer, founder and director of the Vinaròs Prize for Electronic Literature (Spain), and Nia Davies from the non-profit organization Literature Across Frontiers (UK). The day ended with a workshop on using the ELMCIP Electronic Literature Knowledge Base led by Eric Dean Rasmussen (Norway). 

Day 2The second day of the seminar included presentations of selected publications and their editorial policies (George P. Landow on The Victorian Web (US), Philippe Bootz on Alire (France), Beat Suter on Netzliteratur.de and Edition Cyberfiction (Germany/Switzerland), Laura Borras Castanyer on the Electronic Literature Collection, Vol. 2 (US), Peggy Hughes on Electric Bookshop (UK)). The seminar was closed with a panel discussion charting promising directions for future collaboration. A primary aim was to establish a tighter European electronic-literature-publishing network, one able to expand the audience for e-lit and to increase recognition within cultural institutions and organizations for digital-literary practice and works. 

The first seminar of the ELMCIP Project was held September 20-21, 2010 in Bergen at Landmark Café at the Kunsthall and the University of Bergen. The seminar focused on how different forms of community, based on local, national, language groups, shared cultural practices and interest in particular literary and artistic genres, form and are sustained, particularly electronic literature communities.

The program included a day-long public seminar on September 20th at the Landmark Kunsthall, where participants examined specific cultural traditions in electronic literature, include examples from France, the Netherlands, the Scandinavian countries, the USA, the community of interactive fiction, the Poetry beyond Text project in the UK, and others. Participants also heard from organizers of electronic arts and literary communities in Bergen.

That evening the recently released documentary on interactive fiction "Get Lamp" was screened, and the audience had the opportunity to discuss the film with its director, Jason Scott. The public program concluded the following evening with readings and demonstrations of electronic literature.