The New River (Spring 2011)

As I edited this issue, I looked for additional places (other than Facebook, blogs, or Twitter) where new electronic writers might be. As an academic, because it was most familiar to me, I set my sights on current or recent graduates from new media or electronic literature programs. What I learned is these programs are full of talented writers and artists who are happily exploring new and exciting ways to tell a story or express a poem. They are using generative poetry, user-generated story paths, RSS feeds, social networks, and spambots. They are creating Firefox add-ons, interactive videos, phone apps, and 3D immersive environments. They are experimenting with locative media, Wikipedia as source material, and Google image searches. And they are using a hundred other ways to share their genius with the rest of us.

In including the following six works, I followed a few criteria. Since The New River is web-based, it made sense to include only web-based work. I also wanted the works to be interactive. I received many excellent submissions--some truly outstanding in their originality and inventiveness--in video, still image, wearable art, animation, and documentation of installations/performances, but they did not seem the right fit.

What I finally decided on were a combination of what I call "concept" pieces (a broad term and insufficient to fully describe the complexity of the works) and some other pieces that adhere to more traditional narrative lines.