Interview

In this interview Dene Grigar tells about her approach to electronic literature in the early 1990s and about her work as curator for the exhibit "Electronic Literature and Its Emerging Forms" in 2015. She goes on describing some distinguishing features of electronic literature and explaining her 'conceptual shift' on regard to the way of working with computers. Finally she suggests some methods of analysis for the understanding of electronic literature for both academic scholars and mainstream audience.

A video interview with Mark Jeffrey and Judd Morrissey about their electronic literature / performance piece "The Final Problem." Conducted at the Remediating the Social Conference in Edinburgh, Nov. 3. 2012. Photography by Richard Ashrowan.

A video interview about the installation "How It Is in Common Tongues" at the Remediating the Social exhibition with John Cayley and Daniel Howe. Interview conducted by Scott Rettberg 3 Nov. 2012 at Inspace, Edinburgh. Photography by Richard Ashrowan.

Rob Wittig & Mark Marino share a friendship based on destabilizing literary norms with comedy, computers, and collaborations.Their ongoing conversations range over decades of their work from anecdotes of Wittig's early writing process experiments that preceded the internet by a decade (IN.S.OMNIA, 1983) to a work they are completing together currently net-improv fiction distributed using hashtags.Both these writers have consistently explored radically playful modes of writing that emerge through message boards, emails, and now twitter. Marino offers cogent critique on the underlying notions of connection that exist as a thematic under all Rob's practices; then describes his early comedy magazine Bunk, 'a playground for writers'. Douglas Adams emerges as the lifter of the 'bag of rocks' and both convert into ravens, black wings gouging the page into inky screens.

Interview 2012-06-23 at ELO Morgantown.

(Source: David Jhave Johnston, Vimeo)

Phillippe Bootz originally trained as a physicist which may explain his esoteric and intense concern with the dense implications of the structure of reading experience in mediated environments and the capacity of algorithms to augment human thought. Or as Phillippe wrote in reply to this : "De mon point de vue, les algorithmes augmentent, non la pensée, mais le pouvoir de représentation de l'artiste mais sont insuffisants pour porter ces représentations jusqu'à leur dimension sensible, celle-ci ne peut advenir que dans la physicalité du dispositif numérique, à savoir l'exécution du programme (car cette exécution explicite le non-dit des algorithmes, mais cela n'est pas abordé dans la vidéo)"In 1988 he was one of the founding members of the group ALIRE which arose in opposition and co-option with visual language experiments, ALIRE published directly onto diskette in order to emphasize the dynamic of machinic screens and executable code.

Interview 2012-06-21 ELO Morgantown.

(Source: David Jhave Johnston, Vimeo)

Manuel Portela collaborates with the PO.EX archive of Portuguese media poetry.

As a scholar, he explores reflexive qualities in reading operations. For Portela, formal analysis of the processes of reading and viewing reveal a continuity that transcends apparent differences in distribution technology: meaning, recursive as a worm, burrows into the mind on a path of words.

For a thorough discussion of these issues, see Manuel`s book "Scripting Reading Motions: The Codex and the Computer as Self-Reflexive Machines" (MIT Press, 2013, forthcoming).

Interview 2012-06-22 at ELO Morgantown.

(Source: David Jhave Johnston, Vimeo)

Kathi Inman Berens is a literary scholar with an enthusiasm for e-lit. Among many other activities, she co-curated with Dene Grigar MLA 2012 and then MLA 2013; and is now (as of early 2013) co-curating with her a new show, the first exhibit of e-literature at the Library of Congress.Her candidness about the difficulties traditionally trained literary scholars encounter when they read e-lit helps to humourize a situation that often staleley devolves into ideologies. Berens agile deft comedic scrutiny combined with a tactile sensual playfulness, makes her a formidable viewer and critic and in the future (perhaps) locative poet.

Interview 2012-06-23 at ELO Morgantown.

(Source: David Jhave Johnston, Vimeo)