A project meeting with members of CELL.
The 2015 ELO Conference’s call for papers states that "[e]lectronic literature is situated as an intermedial field of practice, between literature, computation, visual and performance art. The conference will seek to develop a better understanding of electronic literature’s boundaries and relations with other academic disciplines and artistic practices."
This roundtable discussion, led by both established and emerging e-lit scholars and artists, will explore the idea of electronic literature as an intermedial practice, looking at the topic from a wide range of forms including literature, performance, sound, computation, visual art, and physical computing. Drawing upon artistic work they have produced or studied, each panelist will provide a five-minute statement that touches on qualities related to intermediality like hybridity, syncretism, and collaboration. Following this series of brief presentations, the panelists, then, encourage engagement in a wider conversation with the audience.
Because it is our contention that multiple media in combination in a work of art provide endless opportunities for innovation, contemplation, and “fresh perspectives” (Kattenbelt), rendering the notion of an “end” impossible to reach, the goal of the panel is to engage the ELO community in a discussion about the shifting boundaries of electronic literature and its ongoing development as an art form.
(source: ELO 2015 conference catalog)
There are numerous essays and reviews on German-language electronic literature, which run from the mid nineties to the present day. Most of these texts, however, are written in German – a language that is no longer accepted and common as an universal language for science.
In order to present the overview of German language electronic literature, we filtered out some historical lines that may explain better how the development of individual genres came about. A good starting point may be the very first experiments of authors with computers to generate electronic poetry, a subject the international community mostly agrees upon.
The following model of historical lines of development is suggested:
A historical analysis shows that these five lines of net literature are based upon two prior German strands going back to philosophical, poetical and artistic experiments in the 1960s: On the one hand, the Stuttgart School by Max Bense with exponents Reinhard Döhl and Theo Lutz, the latter producing a first example of digital poetry in 1959. On the other hand, the computer graphics experiments of 1960 and the punched-card linker projects by artists Kurd Alsleben and Antje Eske in Hamburg.
The presentation for ELO Paris 2013 introduces this model of lineage for the development of German-language electronic literature. Taking time- and textspace constraints in consideration, the foucus is set on the strand „I Stuttgart School“ and the line „1. Concrete Experiments“. For all other lines the sympathetic reader finds descriptions and historical examples in the essay „From Theo Lutz to Netzliteratur“ in Cybertext Yearbook 2012.
The presenter has been part of the net literature community that spans Germany, Austria and Switzerland as a researcher, publisher and artist for twenty years.
(Source: Author's abstract, 2013 ELO Conference: http://conference.eliterature.org/critical-writing/lineages-german-lang…)
Electronic poetry encompasses works very different from one another. Talking about electronic poetry as if it were just one creative form seems to be inaccurate. On the other hand the interest to be had in electronic poetry seems to reside exactly in the diversity which electronic poetry has to offer to its reader.
This paper will feature an empirical approach to electronic poetry. The aim of this paper is a two-fold goal. On the one hand it will study the “development” of electronic poetry, and our hypothesis is: the text is disappearing in e-poetry; and on the other it will compare e-poems written in different languages to see if there are differences of style in composing e-poetry.
By comparing some of the e-poems published in the Electronic Literature Collection Vol. 1 and 2 we will try to see if there have been any changes in creating electronic poetry in more than a decade (“Windsound”, by John Cayley was first published in 1999); and if yes how e-poetry has changed and is changing. The two mentioned goals are strictly connected since in the Second Volume of the Electronic Literature Collection 7 languages are represented by works, besides in English and French, in Catalan, Dutch, German, Portuguese and Spanish. Do different cultural backgrounds and literary traditions still affect the creation of a kind of poetry that for its medium seems to be global? And if so, how?
By using the descriptive approach systematic aspects of electronic poetry will be singled out in order to trace the changes in e-poetry. A hermeneutic and analytic work will also be done. Finally, by locating rhetorical figures, new media-figures, emerging aesthetic forms we will try to describe the new text puts forward by e-poetry.
(Source: ELO 2013 Author's abstract)
This artist paper examines in detail and poetic dimensions both the content and construction of the Unknown Territories project. This project incorporates two literary histories constructed along paths dissecting imagined landscapes of the western Canyonlands. The first paths follow an exploration narrative and in the second, imagined 100 years later, users take on a landscape facing development and destruction. The presentation is based on forthcoming papers in the books Switching Codes (Chicago, 2010) and Picture This (Minnesota, 2011).
Some of the issues and challenges creatives face when working with computer technologies is that these technologies are developing at an increasingly rapid rate; they are increasingly ubiquitous and malleable in the public eye and hand; and expectations of contemporary western audiences includes exploitation of their own fascination with the new/the edge of technology. It is the new which garners our attention and captivates our historical memory. This is particularly true in the art world. How does today's cultural producer reconcile or mediate between the push to exploit the celebrity technology of the moment, and thus gain recognition in some aspect of the broader culture; with the integrity of their practice and the inherent desire (assumed) to be engaged in the communication of meaning, i.e. meaningful practice? Wylde discusses her work as a new media artist and considers the phenomena of technological seduction as a force to grapple with (or not).
A pratical discussion of the opportunities and challenges of developing digital narrative work for the iPad platform, published on the Netartery collaborative weblog.
Emerging media forms do not merely excite artists; they also inspire critics to develop innovative
scholarly works. For over seven years, the USC-based Vectors Journal has promoted webbased
scholarship by developing and publishing projects that utilize experimental design
interfaces, data structures, and digital authoring tools. In this presentation, Vectors’ Creative
Director Erik Loyer, Info Design Director Craig Dietrich, and 2011 Fellow Mark Marino will
present glimpses of critical works that use innovative platforms to explore their material.
Loyer will begin with a presentation that looks at several of his collaborations with scholars
to create the dynamic multimodal works of Vectors. Dietrich will follow with a look at the
new platform Scalar, a publishing platform based on Vectors’ workflows and Semantic Web
technology. Dietrich will also detail Magic, an experimental design fork of Scalar centered on
the presentation of software code. Marino will then present his Scalar piece based on the Magic
fork which analyzes a work of electronic literature, the Transborder Immigrant Tool, including
annotations of the tool’s code.
(Source: Author's abstract, 2012 ELO Conference site)