English

Even before worldwide quarantines added impetus, material gaming had already become increasingly enacted in virtual spaces. Rather than virtual play replacing the material, as some speculated in the early days of videogames, material play has become increasingly entangled with virtuality. These increasingly complementary modes of play offer a rich space for exploring the multifaceted embodied and conceptual activity of play, the blending of material and virtual that in many ways defines games.The three panelists encompass a wide range of perspectives, including the perspective of a game maker translating material play into the digital realm, that of a Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) scholar who researched how players interact differently with the Catan boardgame and its digital implementations, and that of a theorist reflecting on how virtual spaces remediate material affects. Together, these diverse perspectives aim to explore the paradoxical yet generative spaces where materiality and virtuality intersect in gaming.The theoretical approach looks at analog games as capable of producing the specific circumstances that foreground the affective relationships between the players and the other pieces of the assemblage. Because of the procedural nature that necessitates specific types of interactions between parts of the play assemblage, analog games amplify the social interactions between players and differently produce affective orientations as a consequence of their systems. Then examines the ways that these games are remediated and adapted to digital platforms highlighting the things that are lost or changed in the move to digital, uncovering the types of experiences that are important for each type of adaptation.

The HCI approach presents Association Mapping (AM) in HCI; called so because the formation of a network is due to objects making associations in context. By recording the associations that form a network, it is possible to understand what objects are most central within that network. . This research contributes to the next paradigm of HCI by providing a new tool to understand use that is fragmented, distributed, and invisible. AM incorporates association as its measurement. This results in passive measures of attention, hybridity, and influence in network formation of any kind. It does this by making the systemic nature of use visible and capable of evaluation at any level.And finally the design approach applies design strategies for incorporating three main types of play: Screenplay, Gameplay, and Roleplay, seeking to answer questions about how to bridge the narrative and performance aspects of digital and analog play. This is particularly applicable to classic games that are associated with transmedia narratives and characters, such as the Clue board game, where there are established cinematic traditions and character roles.During the COVID-19 pandemic, board games have become a useful medium for examining our changing relationship with physical and digital interaction. In addition to presenting our own findings, this panel also offers several methodologies for furthering research into the intersections of the analog, digital, physical, and virtual.

From its earliest beginnings, electronic literature has eschewed canonization and institutionalization by manifesting itself as a “set of [dynamic] practices” (Pawlicka 2017; Ensslin 2007) that have responded to and generated new and perpetually morphing forms and methods of writing and reading. This processual, personalized and platform-contingent textuality can only adequately be studied in a concerted approach that takes into account the numerous platforms on which electronic literature has been accessible pre- and post-Web. Similarly, it raises important questions about original design and intent, and the breakage thereof across platforms. 

To demonstrate how platform contingency can lead to complementary, diachronically pertinent analyses, this panel focuses on a seminal, pre-web hypertext published in issue 1:3 (1994) of the Eastgate Quarterly Review of Hypertext. Kathryn Cramer’s In Small and Large Pieces first appeared in a folio containing two 3.5-inch floppy disks for Macintosh and PC, and later on a single CD-ROM requiring 2 MB RAM and a hard disk drive. It was originally written in Storyspace 1.08 and used 875K (Grigar et al. 2019). To access the work in its original format, historical machines such as a Macintosh Classic or Performa are required. However, there are other platforms on which the text can be rendered and emulated, including for example Eastgate’s Tinderbox and Windows XP emulators like Oracle VM VirtualBox. Focusing on these three hardware and software constellations and their individual aesthetic and embodied affordances, this panel will explore the ways in which reading “the same” work in different technological environments yields platform-specific analytical nuances, and how, collectively, these readings open up new forms of collaborative, connective textuality. Our work will deepen our understanding of how platform-conscious readings can shed light on discrepancies between reader experience and original design and intent, and how contemporary technologies might make it possible to bring back an obsolescent work. In doing so, we explore how platform studies can operate synchronically and diachronically, especially if combined with post-pandemic forms of remote collaboration and presentation that enable scholars to read from their own site-specific premises. 

Our presentation will begin with some introductory notes from Kathryn Cramer about the genesis of her work (8 min). This will be followed by three short analytical demos from the other panellists, with Grigar reading from a Macintosh Performa 5215CD (8 min), Pisarski from Tinderbox (8 min), and Ensslin from VirtualBox Windows XP (8 min). Cramer will close with a commentary on the analyses (8 min), followed by plenary discussion (20 min). 

References:

Ensslin, Astrid (2007) Canonizing Hypertext: Explorations and Constructions. London: Bloomsbury.Grigar, Dene, Nicholas Schiller, Holly Slocum, Mariah Gwin, Andrew Nevue, Kathleen Zoller, and Moneca Roath (2019) Rebooting Electronic Literature: Documenting Pre-Web Born Digital Media, Volume 2. https://scalar.usc.edu/works/rebooting-electronic-literature-volume-2/i…, Urszula (2017) “An essay on electronic literature as platform,” Przegląd Kulturoznawczy, 33, 430-444.

Writers workshops—the lifeforce of any writing movement. Electronic literature has had its share of writing workshops, and we’d like to revitalize that tradition. Yet electronic literature opens up dimensions of meaning—and just as reading electronic literature becomes convoluted and complex, so too does critiquing works in progress. Can a small, dedicated group of people be brought together to surmount these challenges? Are there people willing to commit 5 hours of their lives to yet more meetings, as well as homework? Probably. After all, we are crazy enough to write and deep read this stuff, so we may well be crazy enough to share our addictions.This engagement series would happen mostly before the ELO 2021 conference. We will provide a survey and ask for volunteers in early February for two pods of six writers each. Each pod would have a moderator. An introductory meeting with all pods would take place in early March, and then schedule two pod meetings in March and April. These working sessions would allot 30 minutes per work to discuss and react.Pod participants (max of 12 people unless we get someone else to moderate a new pod) would gain training in user interaction and reaction and be able to workshop their works in progress.

At the conference, a virtual engagement session with all participants would discuss what went well, what could be improved, and how this preliminary pod approach could be extended to provide an outlet for electronic literature creators to explore each other’s works. All ELO conference participants would discuss ways that reacting critique techniques, user experience and interface testing, and plain old writing workshops could help electronic literature creations.WritePODS will provide an outlet and a voice for works in progress. It will also be ideal for newcomers to electronic literature as this would ensure that participants will know at least the 6 others in their pod before the conference. WRITEPODS can also spark new collaborations and creations.

DURATION OF EVENT AT THE CONFERENCE: 90 minutes, with the first 30 showcasing some of the works, 30 minutes to discuss the pods, and 30 minutes to dream about the future.MAXIMUM NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS: 12 in the pods (unless someone else volunteers as a moderator for another pod) and unlimited in the conference event.

The Electronic Literature Second Tuesday Salon will discuss specific actions and solutions for ensuring that everyone can explore and enjoy electronic literature. Join us for breakout rooms for brainstorm sessions.* Electronic literature writing and reading solutions-- what are the barriers to finding, reading and writing e-lit and how can we address these? Samya Brata Roy moderating*Electronic literature conference solutions--what are the conferences out there, how do we make these more accessible? Maria Mencia moderating*Electronic literature discourse -- what are scholarly issues (curriculum, criticism, etc. that disadvantage specific groups, and how can we address these (e.g., canon, literary value, academia vs. practice, North American-centricity, etc.)? Lai-Tze Fan moderating* Electronic curriculum--how do we infuse and include electronic literature in classrooms and universities? What are the scholarly barriers? Sarah Lozier-Laiola moderating

Note that these conversations will not be recorded, but solutions will be placed in a living Google Doc for further expansion.

(Salon Invitation)

Join us for a fast paced, fascinating romp through some of Africa's electronic literature. Digitally born from so many different countries and languages, African elit spans interactive video games(pc, mobile and web), Twitterature, interactive poetry, hypertext fiction etc. Yohanna Waliya Jospeh, at the University of Calabar in Nigeria, is a digital poet, distant writer, novelist, playwright, winner of the Janusz Korczak Prize for Global South 2020, Electronic Literature Organization Research Fellow and UNESCO Janusz Korczak Fellow. He'll lead us on a whirlwind tour of his new African elit database, and we will discuss:How can we recognize hypertexts in African discourse and bring them to scholars' and readers' attention?What are the barriers for elit in African nations and how can we overcome these?

What would the next steps be in integrating the African elit database into other elit databases

(Salon invitation)

Electronic Literature as Digital Humanities: Contexts, Forms & Practices is a volume of essays that provides a detailed account of born-digital literature by artists and scholars who have contributed to its birth and evolution. Rather than offering a prescriptive definition of electronic literature, this book takes an ontological approach through descriptive exploration, treating electronic literature from the perspective of the digital humanities (DH) that is, as an area of scholarship and practice that exists at the juncture between the literary and the algorithmic.

The domain of DH is typically segmented into the two seemingly disparate strands of criticism and building, with scholars either studying the synthesis between cultural expression and screens or the use of technology to make artifacts in themselves. This book regards electronic literature as fundamentally DH in that it synthesizes these two constituents. Electronic Literature as Digital Humanities provides a context for the development of the field, informed by the forms and practices that have emerged throughout the DH moment, and finally, offers resources for others interested in learning more about electronic literature.

(Bloomsbury description)