romance

A computer mystery/romance set five minutes into the future of 1988. I can guarantee at least ONE of the following is a real feature: discover a vast conspiracy lurking on the internet, save the world by exploiting a buffer overflow, get away with telephone fraud, or hack the Gibson! Which one? You'll just have to dial in and see. Welcome to the 20th Century.

(Source: Authors's statement, ELC3)

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Christine Love’s Digital: A Love Story is a visual novel set “five-minutes into the future of 1988” and invites the player back into the early days of the Internet through the interface of an Amiga-esque computer. The graphical interface of white text on a blue background accompanies the metaphor of the local BBS (bulletin board system) as a happening space for conspiracy and flirting. All the core interaction takes place through dialing into this system, which has multiple characters and threads that can be explored through sending out replies to advance the story. The work is strongly grounded in early hacker culture and William Gibsen-inspired models of artificial intelligence.

(Source: Editorial Statement, ELC3)

With the classic text of Gustave Flaubert as its starting point, this multi-channel installation is scheduled for exhibition internationally from early 2014. A work about the link between capitalism and romance, Mieke Bal and Michelle Williams Gamaker’s revisionist take on the 19th century novel was filmed in Åland, Finland in summer 2012 and Paris, France in winter 2013. The installations bring together the brilliant talents of actors Marja Skaffari, Thomas Germaine and Mathieu Montanier and many others. By creating deliberate anachronism and intertextuality, the work attempts to show how Flaubert was in many ways a post-modernist and feminist. It explores the way dominant ideologies – specifically capitalism and its association with emotions, and romantic love with its commercial aspects – are still dominant after 150 years. The Madame B. installation offers a radically new interpretation of the text, replete with powerful symbolism that evokes this reimagining. In this way, it questions visually the role of women in a society driven by masculine impulses. The installation pieces explore different visual modes, and demonstrate how these have themselves the power to create an immersive experience.

(Source: http://www.miekebal.org/artworks/installations/madame-b/madame-b-instal…)

Analogue: A Hate Story is a visual novel in the style of many Japanese titles in the same genre . It was first published on the author's website and then on the gaming service Steam. The game tells an interactive story of transhumanism, traditional marriage, loneliness, and cosplay. The journey through the final section of the history of a generation spaceship before its failure. The two major characters you interact with in the story are the ships two remaining AI, an archivist AI named *Hyun-ae and a security AI named *Mute, the two ask the player vastly different questions and give entirely different views on the fall of the generation ship. The player is tasked with finding the truth of the tale by listening to both AI as well as building a sort of relationship with them and can end the story at any time by downloading what data they have and leaving the ship to its final fate, however this presents us with the worst of the possible endings. The choices the player makes throughout the story also affect the sequel of the work Hate Plus continuing the interactive work to show another section of the generationships story and gives more insight into the AI themselves. The game also features more traditional gaming segments where the player must solve puzzles in order to continue the story using a console system similar to modern computers the ending of which locks the player into one of the two AIs paths for the rest of the story, though a third alternate path is possible if the player knows specific keywords to unlock specific conversations early though this would require the player to either have researched the game before playing or have played the game before. The story itself keeps the player engaged by asking questions about the themselves and while the story is primarily about the history of this space ship, some might say the true story is the player and their burgeoning relationship with *Hyun-ae and *Mute

This 41 th kiss of love is a sonnet whose first six couplets consist, for each of their 2 verse 13 monosyllables. The poet has planned to leave to the reader the illusory care to swap them all. 

This work is set up as a fake hotmail account where the reader is positioned as though he or she is peeking into someone else's email account without permission. The reader sees all the emails that the fictional protagonist sends and receives. The story is a soap opera about love and sex, set in India.

This is a romantic-spy story rendered into the genre of Recombinant Fiction. Four characters told a fiction using dialogues shown on several media channels. The cloned identity of a real spy was used to portray a story about the political and sentimental weakness of our era characterised by a dysfunctional sociality being created by social media communications. Actions in public environments completed the set of stages upon which the story was acted and audiences had an active role by unfolding and creating other pieces of fiction. The drama deconstructed language and symbolism of ideologies by remixing characters' lives and identities with real-world patterns.

The work has been exhibited as an installation and there is also a web version.

An e-mail romance. Description on Steadman's website in 2001 read as follows: "Two Solitudes is a short work of fiction delivered through e-mail. Upon subscription to the service, readers receive, over the course of several weeks, carbon copies of messages exchanged between two persons familiar with each other, as they send them. Mentioned in many magazines and newspapers, on several radio shows, and on a European television program. Subscription requests should be addressed to ; place the word "subscribe" in the Subject line or anywhere in the body of the message. 23 September 1994." ELMCIP's editors have not verified whether or not the email server is still active, but the full text is still available at Intertext Magazine.

The story of Lisa Doyle, a single, slightly desparate woman looking for love, whose email inbox is open for readers to explore. A version of the story was later published as a print novel, The Armchair Bride (2008).