approach to electronic literature

We Descend: Archives Pertaining to Egderus Scriptor first appeared in electronic form in 1997, published by Eastgate Systems on a floppy disk as a Storyspace Reader for Macintosh computers; as of 2018, the work is available on the internet, encoded in HTML5 and CSS3, the latest in a series of at least a dozen necessary "upgrades" to its software instantiation. Throughout this period, techology for presenting archival material has continued to transform at an increasing rate. At the same time, previously unknown writings have come to light; new methods of processing writings have been developed; and certain assumptions guiding the preparation of previous volumes have had to be updated as well. This paper will focus on some of the most pressing issues facing the primary "minder of gaps" in such an enterprise, the Curator, of which Bill Bly is only the most recent. Perhaps the largest gap to be bridged in our comprehension of such an enterprise is that between the impression of tidiness and order that any "finished" instantiation — with its neatly labeled apparati, finding aids, annotations, and commentary — presents to the reader, in contrast to the extensive dithering, fussing, and floundering actually required to herd together a collection of writings that have been gathered and transmitted over a span of many generations. Once brought together, these texts must be arranged, sequenced, and linked to one another in an organization that facilitates their being read, understood (each by itself and as a member of a group), pondered, and then easily located again after being laid aside. The immaterial "space" defined by this "placement" of such "objects" in relation to each other — as if they were furniture and other appurtenances arranged in a room — is useless until its design can be mentally grasped by the reader, and some person must perform this essentially hospitalic function, that of welcoming the reader into the space inhabited by the writings of the Archives. In doing so, this hôtelier (the Curator, whether named or not), leaves a trace that itself can be "read". In We Descend, all such persons are regarded as of equal importance to the original Authors whose work the reader has come here to encounter. The first Curator was Egderus himself, a scribe who discovered a cache of ancient texts, to which he added writings by his contemporaries as well as his own recorded thoughts and memories, thereby creating the first "holdings" that form the kernel of the Archives now bearing his name. This process of amalgamation was recapitulated some generations later by an unknown Scholar who rediscovered the long-forgotten holdings of Egderus and passed it along, bridging the gap between Egderus and Bill Bly, whose mission has been to render the Archives into hypertext form.

Source: https://sites.grenadine.uqam.ca/sites/nt2/en/elo2018/schedule/614/Welco…

What are we talking about when we say “digital literature” today? If the early works of electronic literature – hypertext fiction, hypermedia literature, generative texts – could be identified by the distinguishing feature of hyperlink or technology in a wider sense, nowadays Twitterature, literary blogs, and Facebook writings challenge more and more the possibility to define this kind of literature under a solely technology-based perspective. The Canada Research Chair on Digital Textualities' project “Répertoire des écrivaines et écrivains numériques,” inspired by the CELL project, is an attempt to mind the existing gap between these new textual objets and literary studies. In this presentation, we will show and discuss the criteria upon which we have defined what is a digital literary object and a digital author, the archiving modalities of those objects, and the epistemological structure of our project in order to think about the impact of the digital turn on literary concepts such as author, authorship, literary work, and genre.

Source: https://sites.grenadine.uqam.ca/sites/nt2/en/elo2018/schedule/619/The+%…

In 1985, Italo Calvino wrote a series of lectures (later published as ‘memos’) in which he proposed six values he deemed crucial to literature as it moved into the next millennium: lightness, quickness, ‘crystal’ exactitude, visibility, multiplicity, and consistency. Though never a writer of electronic literature, Calvino has frequently been associated or referenced in relation to digital works. His 'If on a winter’s night a traveller…' and 'Castle of Crossed Destinies' are often referenced in relation to digital structures (the former’s ‘pumpkin vine’ structure in relation to early hypertext works, and the latter’s infinite-structures in relation to codex/programmable fiction), and his early hypotheses and fictions on computer writers and readers are referenced in relation to contemporary computer writer/reader projects. J.R. Carpenter’s web-based work 'The Gathering Cloud' (2016) (hereafter TGC) exhibits Calvino's values. TGC was commissioned by North East of North (NEoN) in Dundee, UK, in 2016. As well existing as a web-based work, it has also been performed as a poetic work with accompanying graphics and disseminated as a print book. The latter, Carpenter argues, ‘further confuses boundaries between physical and digital, scarcity and waste’. TGC is informed by Howard’s 1803 'Essay on the Modifications of Clouds'. Howard’s ‘frontispiece’ and five ‘plates’ are used in Carpenter’s web-based work. Poetry is then superimposed on these repurposed illustrations. Situated ‘within’ the poetry, animated gif collages play, sometimes due to the reader’s actions or of their own accord. Where Calvino in his memos writes that he considers the virtues of the binary opposites of his values (i.e. weight, lingering, 'flame' exactitude, ambiguity, singularity, and inconsistency) no less compelling, Carpenter’s work suggests that Calvino's values (or rather the absence or removal of their binary opposites) are not only preferable in terms of contemporary literary challenges, but an ethical imperative in relation to environmental impact as it relates to contemporary media, dissemination, and indeed everyday life.In this analysis of TGC, Calvino’s values (i.e. lightness, quickness, etc.) will be discussed in relation to each of the work’s six sections (i.e. the ‘frontispiece’ and five ‘plates’). I argue that there exists a gap in the understanding of Calvino’s influence on contemporary digital literary aesthetics and approaches that is exemplified by TGC.

E-lit authors Stephanie Strickland and Marjorie Luesebrink organized a panel on the “Future of E–Lit” at the ELO 2012 conference, allowing emerging and early career authors to articulate institutional and economic, as well more familiar technological, developments that constrain and facilitate current practice. The panel papers were released in ebr in March 2014. Luesebrink and Strickland followed up with comments on the papers, offering a “progress report” on the future of the field. The individual responses are available as glosses on the essays and in full here. (Source: ebr)

This is a two-part meditation on where electronic literature came from, some of the places it’s been, and how (and why) it might possibly go on.

Espen Aarseth will look at the roots of electronic literature in the period before 1997, discussing the origins of digital writing in terms of contemporary art and theory. Particular attention will be given to interactive fiction and what happened to it.

Stuart Moulthrop skips over the really important bits (1997-2010) and concentrates on the state of electronic literature in the current decade, especially the intersection of various text-generation schemes with latter-day conceptualism and “the new illegibility.”

Both keynote speakers will offer critical prospects on the very idea of electronic literature, the meaning of the name, and various present and future ontologies for our discourse.

(source: ELO 2015 conference catalog)

Alan Bigelow tells in this interview how he started publishing online works of digital poetry around the year 1999 and where his inspirations for his work come from. Furthermore he explains why he chose to change from working with Flash to working with HTML5 and in which way this decision subsequently changed his way of writing. Then he considers the transition from printed books to digital literature from the point of view of the reader also in regards of the aesthetics of digital born literature. In the end he gives his opinion about the status of electronic literature in the academic field.

In this interview Andy Campbell talks about his first works in video games programming during his teens and how he got involved with digital literature in the mid-1990s. He then gives insight into his work by focusing on the importance of the visual and the ludic elements and the use of specific software or code language in some of his works. In the end he describes the way he looks at digital born works in general.