Judy Malloy, Editor

Begun in conjunction
with the 2008 Electronic
Literature Organization
Conference, this
resource was also a part
of the Computers and
Writing 2009 Online
Sessions hosted by
UC Davis
A resource for teachers and students of new media writing, who are exploring what authoring tools to use, for new media writers and poets, who are interested in how their colleagues approach their work, and for readers, who want to understand how new media writers and poets create their work, the Authoring Software project is an ongoing collection of statements about authoring tools and software. It also looks at the relationship between interface and content in new media writing and at how the innovative use of authoring tools and the creation of new authoring tools have expanded digital writing/hypertext writing/net narrative practice in this vibrant contemporary creative writing field.
New Media Literature and the Digital Humanities: News
May, 2012

Digital Humanities 2012 to be Held at the University of Hamburg, July 16 -22, 2012; Registration is Open.
April, 2012

First International Conference on Electronic Literature and New Media Art
to be held in Alcalá de Henares; Calls for Presentations
March, 2012

Apple Launches New iPad

New Books and Second Editions from O'Reilly Media: Programming Interactivity; Programming iOS 5; Head First HTML5 Programming; The Twitter Book and more
February, 2012

Critical Code Studies Working Group 2012 Addresses Reading Code in Context

New and Forthcoming Books Explore Digital Poetry; the Merging of Science and Technology with the Arts; Poetry and Image; and New Media in the Classroom

FILE, 2012 Electronic Language International Festival in São Paulo, Calls for Entries in Electronic Sonority, Interactive Arts, and Digital Language; deadline is February 29.

Computers and Writing 2012 to Focus on "ArchiTEXTure: Composing and Constructing in Digital Spaces"
January, 2012

Spring 2012 Books From MIT Press

Belgrade Resonate Festival to be Held March 16-17, 2012;
Will Look at the State of Technology in Arts and Culture

MLA 2012 to Feature Exhibition of Electronic Literature
Conferences, Festivals, Organizations, and Calls for Papers and Works

Digital Humanities 2012 to be Held at the University of Hamburg, July 16 -22, 2012; Registration is Open.

First International Conference on Electronic Literature and New Media Art
to be held in Alcalá de Henares; Calls for Presentations

Critical Code Studies Working Group 2012 Addresses Reading Code in Context

FILE, 2012 Electronic Language International Festival in São Paulo, Calls for Entries in Electronic Sonority, Interactive Arts, and Digital Language; deadline is February 29.

Computers and Writing 2012 to Focus on "ArchiTEXTure: Composing and Constructing in Digital Spaces"

Belgrade Resonate Festival to be Held March 16-17, 2012;
Will Look at the State of Technology in Arts and Culture

MLA 2012 to Feature Exhibition of Electronic Literature

ELMCIP E-literature in/with Performance Seminar to Convene at Arnolfini in Bristol, UK, May 3-4, 2012; Conference Calls for Proposals

Hypertext 2012 to be Held in Milwaukee, June 25-28, 2012

The Kitchen and the ELO to Present An Evening of Interactive Performative Readings

Seattle, January 5-8:
2012 MLA Convention to feature panels on Reading Writing Interfaces: Electronic Literature's Past and Present; Transmedia Stories and Literary Games

Boston: November 19-20, 2011: Dangerous Readings Will Explore Frontiers of New Narrative

Fourth International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling to be held November 28 to December 1, 2011 in Vancouver, Canada

Foundations of Digital Games 2012 to be held in Raleigh, North Carolina, Calls for Papers; Conference will include a Research and Experimental Game Festival

Elit to be Well Represented at ISEA2011, the 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art, Istanbul, September 14-21; Artists and Speakers include Mark Amerika, Roy Ascott, Maurice Benayoun, Jay Bolter, Dene Grigar, Davin Heckman, Kristy Kang, Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo, Donna Leishman, Rita Raley, Jill Walker Rettberg and Scott Rettberg

ELO 2012: Electrifying Literature, Affordances and Constraints to be held in Morgantown, West Virginia, June 20-23, 2012: Conference Calls for Papers and Works

University of Michigan to Host 2011 HASTAC Conference; Topics Include "Expanding the Digital Arts to Include the Humanities and Vice Versa"
Conference dates: December 2-3, 2011, Ann Arbor, MI

First Convention of Chinese/American Association for Poetry and Poetics to Include "Poetry and New Media" - Wuhan, China, September 29-30, 2011

The Electronic Literature Organization Moves to MIT

New Media Consortium Will Hold 2011 Summer Conference from June 15-18 in Madison, Wisconsin

ISEA2011, the 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art, to be held in Istanbul, September 14-21.

Texas Institute for Literary and Textual Studies Symposium to Focus on the Digital Humanities

Hypertext 2011 to be Held in Eindhoven from June 6-9, 2011

E-Poetry Ten Year Anniversary Festival to be held May 18-21, 2011 at the University at Buffalo;
Registration Now Open

Interactive Fiction at PAX East: People's Republic of Interactive Fiction to Hold Mini-Convention;
IF Demo Fair to Showcase 23 works
Conference dates: March 11-13, 2011, Boston, MA

CHI 2011 to Focus on Diversity and on Connecting People, Cultures, Technologies, Experiences, and Ideas;
Featured Communities Include Games and Entertainment
Conference dates: May 7-12, 2011, Vancouver BC

2011 International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games to be held in Bordeaux, France; Workshops on Procedural Content Generation and on Games and Video Game Accessibility Call for Papers
Conference dates: June 28-July 1, 2011, Bordeaux, France

College Art Association Conference to Feature Sessions on "Data as Medium" and E-Publication
Conference dates: February 9-12. 2011, New York City

Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice Conference
Invites Creative Works
Conference dates: November 1-3, 2012

2011 MLA Convention in Los Angeles to Feature 60 Panels on the Narration of Lives
Conference dates: January 6-9, Los Angeles, CA

SITE 2011 - Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education Conference
Conference dates: March 7-11, Nashville, TN

Electronic Visualization and the Arts Calls for Proposals
Conference dates: July 6-8, 2011, London, UK

E-Poetry 2011 Announces Details; Calls for Proposals
Festival dates: May 18-21, 2011, to Buffalo, NY

Chicago Colloquium on Digital Humanities and Computer Science

International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling: papers

International Conference on Computational Creativity
Conference dates: April 27-29, 2011, Mexico City

International Conference to Focus on Latin American New Media Literature
Conference dates: May 19-20, 2011, Liverpool, UK

Critical Code Studies @ USC Explores Aspects of Code and Writing

2011 Independent Games Festival to Include Mobile, Handheld, and Experimental Games
Conference dates: February 28-March 4, San Francisco

2010 IDMAA Conference to Focus on The Digital Narrative

E-Poetry 2011 to be held in Buffalo

Archive and Innovate 2010 ELO International Conference & Festival

Interactive Digital Storytelling Invites Performance Submissions

Stanford Selected to host Digital Humanities 2011

SDH-SEMI in Montreal to Feature Hypertext Performance

Critical Code Studies to Host Conference at USC
New Books, Publications, and Resources

New Books and Second Editions from O'Reilly Media: Programming Interactivity; Programming iOS 5; Head First HTML5 Programming; The Twitter Book and more

New and Forthcoming Books Explore Digital Poetry; the Merging of Science and Technology with the Arts; Poetry and Image; and New Media in the Classroom

Spring 2012 Books From MIT Press

New from the University of Michigan Press:
American Poetry in Performance From Walt Whitman to Hip Hop

From MIT Press: New Books on Digital Games

New from O'Reilly Media: Resources on HTML5

New Book from the University of Minnesota Press: Digital Art and Meaning by Roberto Simanowski

Forthcoming from the University of Minnesota Press: Mark Amerika's remixthebook

New Books from O'Reilly on Dreamweaver, Flash, Perl, and iPhone and iPad Development

New from MIT Press: Performing Mixed Reality

New Books from O'Reilly on HTML5, Processing, Audacity, JavaScript, and Python

The Proceedings of Critical Code Studies @ USC Available Online with Text and Video; Keynote by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun addresses "Codes, Crises and Critical Pleasure"

ELMCIP Knowledge Base Goes Live; Features Access to Works of E-Literature, Criticism, Events, and Teaching Resources

New and Forthcoming Books: Wendy Hui Kyong Chun: Programmed Visions;
Marina Grishakova and Marie-Laure Ryan: Intermediality and Storytelling;
and Aesthetics of Computer Art and Computer Games, and More

Amy Earhart and Andrew Jewell: The American Literature Scholar in the Digital Age

O'Reilly Manuals on Flash and Dreamweaver

New and Forthcoming Books

Recent Articles on HTML5

Emerging Language Practices - New E-Journal from the EPC
Software and AHrdware Information and Updates

Apple Launches New iPad

New Books and Second Editions from O'Reilly Media: Programming Interactivity; Programming iOS 5; Head First HTML5 Programming; The Twitter Book and more

Critical Code Studies Working Group 2012 Addresses Reading Code in Context

Adobe Previews Adobe Edge, an HTML5 Web Animation and Interaction Design Tool; Invites Community Input

Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Enables Content Production on Mobile Platforms; Includes Advances in HTML5 and Flash Authoring

The Proceedings of Critical Code Studies @ USC Available Online with Text and Video; Keynote by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun addresses "Codes, Crises and Critical Pleasure"

Critical Code Studies @ USC Explores Aspects of Code and Writing

O'Reilly Manuals on Flash and Dreamweaver

Recent Articles on HTML5

Critical Code Studies to Host Conference at USC
Blogs

"Notes on the IF Community" - "Interactive Poetry Generation Systems"
May 14, 2012

Digital Humanities 2012 to be Held at the University of Hamburg, July 16 -22, 2012; Registration is Open.

Digital Humanities, the annual International conference of the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations, will be held in Germany at the University of Hamburg from July 16-22, 2012. Keynote speakers will be Masahiro Shimoda, Department of Indian Philosophy and Buddhist Studies/Center for Evolving Humanities, the University of Tokyo and Claudine Moulin, Trier Centre for Digital Humanities, University of Trier.

The preliminary program is now available online. As currently listed, presentations, panels and poster sessions of interest to the digital writing community -- such as presentations on authoring systems and the analysis of literature -- include:

  • "Words made Image. Towards a Language-Based Segmentation of Digitized Art Collections"
    Florentina Armaselu

  • "Text Analysis Meets Text Encoding"
    Syd Bauman, David Hoover, Karina van Dalen-Oskam, Wendell Piez

  • "Contextual Factors in Literary Quality Judgments:
    A Quantitative Analysis of an Online Writing Community"
    Peter Boot

  • "Myopia: A Visualization Tool in Support of Close Reading"
    Manish Chaturvedi, Gerald Gannod, Laura Mandell, Helen Armstrong, Eric Hodgson

  • "May Humanists Learn from Artists a New Way to Interact with Digital Technology?"
    Stefano Franchi

  • "Computing and Visualizing the 19th-Century Literary Genome"
    Matthew Jockers

  • "'All Rights Worth Recombination':
    Post-Hacker Culture and ASCII Literature (1983-1993)"
    Joel Katelnikoff

  • "Computational Models of Narrative Structure"
    Benedikt Löwe, Bernhard Físseni, Carlos León, Rens Bod

  • "Writing with Sound: Composing Multimodal, Long-Form Scholarship"
    Jentery Sayers

  • "Semantically connecting text fragments – Text-Text-Link-Editor"
    Thomas Selig, Marc Wilhelm Küster,Eric Sean Conner

  • "Approaching Dickens' Style through Random Forests"
    Tomoji Tabata

  • "What is a text within the Digital Humanities, or some of them, at least?"
    Manfred Thaller

  • "Digital Editions with eLaborate: From Practice to Theory"
    Karina van Dalen-Oskam, Joris Job van Zundert

  • "The Electronic Oxford English Dictionary, Poetry, and Intertextuality"
    David-Antoine Williams

Workshops and tutorials include:

"Digital Methods in Manuscript Studies"
Christian Brockmann, Dorji Wangchuk

"Introduction to Literary Network analysis using R and Gephi"
Matthew Jockers, Elijah Meeks
For a complete program including updated presentation listings, visit the dh2012 website at http://www.dh2012.uni-hamburg.de/
April 29, 2012

First International Conference on Electronic Literature and New Media Art to be held in Alcalá de Henares; Calls for Presentations

The First International Conference on Electronic Literature and New Media Art, "A Humanist Inquiry into the Digital Age" will be held at Instituto Franklin, UAH Alcalá de Henares, Spain from October 4-6, 2012. Goals are:

  • "To provide an opportunity for international researchers to share and discuss their current research on electronic literature, e-poetry, cyber drama, digital narrative forms and new media artworks.

  • "To create a forum for international authors of electronic literature and new media artists to share and disseminate their work."

  • "To present international research projects related to electronic literature and new media art."

The Conference is calling for papers, presentations of creative works and group panel sessions related to three main themes: Electronic Literature in the U.S., Latin America and Europe; Teaching Electronic Literature; and Gender and Identity in Cyberspace

Other areas of interest include Electronic Literature and Sustainability; Race in Electronic Literature/Cyberspace; Video Games; Webcomics; Recording, Archiving, and Preserving E-lit; and proposals for research network activities such as archiving projects, publications, and pedagogical resources.

The deadline for proposals is May 30, 2012.

For complete details, visit the
website of the Instituto Franklin
March 27, 2012

Apple Launches New iPad

Launched on March 16, 2012, Apple's new iPad, the successor to iPad 2, features Apple's advanced Retina display technology that -- utilizing 2048 by 1536 resolution and heightened color saturation -- delivers ultra high resolution text and images.

With 3.1 million pixels, the new iPad has the highest resolution display ever seen on a mobile device, according to Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing.

The new iPad also includes Apple's A5X chip with quad-core graphics and a 5 megapixel iSight camera with advanced optics for photos and 1080p HD video. The iSight camera uses backside illumination to improve low-light performance, as well as video image stabilization to improve hand-held device video-capture quality.

As of March 19, Apple had sold three million new iPads.

For complete information , visit http://www.apple.com/ipad/
March 6, 2012

New Books and Second Editions from O'Reilly Media: Programming Interactivity; Programming iOS 5; Head First HTML5 Programming; The Twitter Book and more

O'Reilly Media continues to publish and/or distribute useful and state of the art guides and manuals for programming languages, software applications, and new platforms. Recent books and second editions available from O'Reilly and of interest to the new media writing community include Programming Interactivity; Programming iOS 5, Fundamentals of iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Development; The Developer's Code; Head First HTML5 Programming; The WordPress Anthology; and The Twitter Book. The details are:

For continuing information about O'Reilly Media publications and other books available from O'Reilly Media, visit
http://oreilly.com/store/index.html
February 27, 2012

Critical Code Studies Working Group 2012 Addresses Reading Code in Context

With a series of online panels on Ethics, Literacy, and Play, as well as 27 code critiques contributed by working group participants, the Critical Code Studies Working Group 2012 (CCSWG12) addressed humanities and computer science interdisciplinary issues in the study, teaching, use, and significance of code. Organized by Jeremy Douglass and Mark C. Marino and coordinated by Jason Lipshin, the virtual conference brought together a diverse and knowledgeable group of panelists and participants. CCSWG12 took place from January 30 - February 20, 2012, but code critiques are continuing, and the electronic book review will be publishing curated threads from the Working Group discussions.

The Critical Code Studies Working Group is sponsored by the University of Southern California-based Humanities and Critical Code Studies Lab. (HaCCS) Panelists for CCSWG12 Reading Code in Context were:

  • Ethics: Evan Buswell, Scott Dexter, Craig Dietrich, Elizabeth Losh
  • Literacies: David M. Berry, micha cardenas, Stephen Ramsay, Annette Vee
  • Play: Stephanie Boluk, Jeremy Douglass, Patrick LeMieux, Mark Sample

New media literature writers, scholars and students who were selected as participants included Sandy Baldwin, Philippe Bootz, Mez Breeze, Leonardo Flores, Fox Harrell, Dennis Jerz, Inés Laitano, Clarissa Lee, Judy Malloy, Mark Marino, Jarah Moesch, Nick Montfort, Jessica Pressman, Rita Raley, Aaron Reed, Warren Sack, Zach Whalen, and Mark Wolff.

From a code learning perspective, the main themes were supplemented by discussions of how participants learned to program, how they taught programming, the role of code-visible games, (such as The Naked Game) and recommendations for increasing code literacy. Also, through the use of code critiques, CCSWG12 served as a programmers' studio where participants could explore and comment on code and code issues that ranged from toy problems to creating effective literate code.

In addition to The Featured Code Critique: Transborder Immigrant Tool in Scalar: Platforms for CCS, active code critiques included:

  • Mark Wolff: Programming potentiality: an example of Oulipian code
    programming language: APL
    Using a sample of a code that generates aphorisms according to an algorithm devised by Marcel Bénabou, (from Paul Braffort, "Prose et combinatoire" in Oulipo, Atlas de littérature potentielle) Wolff's critique both introduced this historical code and asked questions about choices of programming languages.

  • Nick Montfort: Yes
    Programming language: C
    In a linked technical report The Trivial Program "yes", (from The Trope Tank at MIT) Montfort sets forth his critique in this way:
    "A trivial program, one that simply prints 'y' or a string that is given as an argument repeatedly, is explicated and examined at the levels of function and code. Although the program by itself is neither interesting or instructive, the argument is presented that by looking at 'yes' it is possible to better understand how programs exist not only on platforms but also in an ecology of systems, scripts, and utilities."
    The topic looked at the role of toy problems in educational programming situations and elicited comments on the evocative nature of this particular program.

  • Judy Malloy: YOU! – A Late BASIC Era Generative Array
    Programming language: GWBASIC
    You! is a classic work of late BASIC-era interactive generative text which was effective in gallery situations. Viewers could input their own sentence and immediately see their words placed in an array, their name in the credits, and, if a printer was available, receive a printout of the array that contained their sentence. The creation of interactive generative text looks back to Christopher Strachey's 1952 love letter generator to which YOU! makes reference in its subject matter. This critique looked at historical uses of code to create interactive artworks that were computer-mediated both in input and output. It also explored translating BASIC works to contemporary systems and issues of code seen/code unseen.

  • Mark Marino: 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
    Programming language: BASIC for C64
    From the first CCSWG Forum and spear-headed by Nick Montfort, came a (forthcoming from MIT Press) 10-authored book with the same name as the single-line code it celebrates: 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10.
    In this critique -- citing papers that range from an exploration of RND and pseudo-randomness to a new program with the original program at its core -- Marino points out how this single line of code was used by the book's authors to address historical, social and technical approaches to the study of code in context.

  • Clarissa Lee: Pythia (Ver 8 and Ver 6)
    Programming languages for various versions: FORTRAN, C++
    Among other things, this presentation of Pythia looked at a classic particle physics simulation tool (whose name references the ambiguous nature of prophesies of the Pythia at the Oracle of Delphi) in terms of subjectivity and directed attention to the program's literate documentation. "Do not accept the myth that everything available in Monte Carlo form represents ages-old common knowledge, tested and true...," Torbjorn Sjostrand writes in the PYTHIA 5.7 and JETSET 7.4 Physics and Manual.

    Eric Rochester: A tokenizer/lexer written in Haskell
    Programming language: Haskell
    In this code critique and in a linked overview of this Code Critique, Rochester explains his Bakers 12 bootcamp-style Haskell learning project, provides documentation, and asks a series of situational questions about literate code in terms of desirability and methodology.

For more information about the Critical Code Studies Working Group 2012, visit the CCSWG2012 Public Page and the Critical Code Studies website.
February 18, 2012

New and Forthcoming Books Explore Digital Poetry; the Merging of Science and Technology with the Arts; Poetry and Image; and New Media in the Classroom


Terri Cohn, ed, Pairing of Polarities: The Life and Art of Sonya Rapoport

New and forthcoming books of interest to the digital writing and humanities community include Chris Funkhouser's New Directions in Digital Poetry, a celebration of the life and work of Sonya Rapoport, edited by critic and curator Terri Cohn; Releasing the Image. From Literature to New Media, edited by Jacques Khalip and Robert Mitchell; and a collection of approaches to teaching literary theory in the digital age edited by Paul Budra and Clint Burnham.

Details are:
  • C.T. Funkhouser
    New Directions in Digital Poetry
    Introduction: Francisco J. Ricardo
    London: Continuum, January 2012
    Series: International Texts in Critical Media Aesthetics
    "Examines a range of innovative practices and processes in digital poetry published on the global computer network during the past decade."
    C.T. Funkhouser is an Associate Professor at New Jersey Institute of Technology.

  • Terri Cohn, ed
    Pairing of Polarities: The Life and Art of Sonya Rapoport
    Afterword: Roger Malina
    Berkeley, CA: Heyday, July 2012
    "...Rapoport combines her formal training as a painter and her clear bent toward mathematical thinking with audience participation and web-based media, always pushing boundaries and creating meaningful relationships across seemingly unrelated fields..." Writer, curator, and art historian Terri Cohn was a contributing editor to Artweek magazine for twenty years and she teaches in the Interdisciplinary Studies Department at the San Francisco Art Institute.

  • Jacques Khalip and Robert Mitchell
    Releasing the Image. From Literature to New Media
    Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011
    Contributors include Giorgio Agamben, Peter Geimer, Mark B.N. Hansen, Jean-Luc Marion, Tim Murray, Vivian Sobchack, and Kenneth Surin among others.
    "...The essays included here cover historical periods from the Romantic era to the present and address a range of topics, from CTzanne's painting, to images in poetry, to contemporary audiovisual art. They reveal the aesthetic, ethical, and political stakes of the project of releasing images and provoke new ways of engaging with embodiment, agency, history, and technology."
    Jacques Khalip is Associate Professor of English and Modern Culture and Media at Brown University;
    Robert Mitchell is Associate Professor of English at Duke University

  • Paul Budra and Clint Burnham, eds.
    From Text to Txting
    New Media in the Classroom
    Bloomington, IN; Indiana University Press, August 2012
    "...Contributors give a brief description of their subject, investigate how it confronts traditional notions of the literary, and ask what contemporary literary theory can illuminate about their text before explaining how their subject can be taught in the 21st-century classroom."
    Paul Budra teaches Shakespeare and early modern literature at Simon Fraser University where he Associate Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences; poet and writer Clint Burnham is Associate Professor of English at Simon Fraser University.
    February 10, 2012

    FILE, 2012 Electronic Language International Festival in São Paulo, Calls for Entries in Electronic Sonority, Interactive Arts, and Digital Language

    FILE - Electronic Language International Festival is open for new entries through February 29, 2012. Accepted works will be included in the FILE 2012 exhibition in São Paulo from July and August, 2012, to be held in the Art Gallery of SESI-SP at FIESP Ruth Cardoso Cultural Center.

    They are calling for:

    • Electronic Sonority, which includes sounds, Sound Performance, Sound Installations, Sound Art, Genetic Music, Biological Music, Erudite Electronic Music, Pop-Electronic Music, Radio Drama, Radio Art, Sound Landscape, Sonic Robotics, Video Music, and Sound Poetry, among other other possibilities. .

    • Interactive Arts, including installations, performances, internet projects, virtual reality, augmented reality, multitouch tables, digital objects, outdoor projections, projects for mobile phones, electronic graffiti, VRML, among other other possibilities. .

    • Digital Language: Digital Games, Animation, Digital Films, Machinima, Digital Video, Digital Architecture, Digital Fashion, Digital Design, Robotics, Artificial Life, Biologic Art, Transgenic Art, Software Art, New Interfaces, Second Life Performances, Anime, Hypertext, Non-Lineal Scripts, Artificial Intelligence, Digital Picture-Panoramas, Programming Language, Digital Poetry, Digital Dance, among other possibilities. .

    Proposals for lectures and workshops for FILE Symposium and Workshop 2012 are also welcome.

    The deadline is February 29, 2012. For complete details, visit
    http://www.filefestival.org/site_2007/pagina_conteudo_livre.asp?a1=308&a2=308&id=2
    February 1, 2012

    Computers and Writing 2012 to Focus on "ArchiTEXTure: Composing and Constructing in Digital Spaces"

    With a theme of "ArchiTEXTure: Composing and Constructing in Digital Spaces", Computers and Writing 2012 will be held at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC, from May 17-20.

    Computers and Writing 2012 encouraged presentations that looked "at a variety of aspects focused on the production of digital texts in the writing classroom, from changes in process and publication to administrative and practical challenges to implementing multi-modal compositions". Accepted papers address questions that range from "What are the material and/or immaterial barriers and considerations involved in creating new media/digital texts?" to "How do new media objects and digital paces help us to build identities as scholars, instructors, and/or students?" Among many others, they include:

    • "ArchiTEXTure of Invention in Two Writing Centers: New Media and the Multimodal Invention Process"
      Sohui Lee, Stanford University; Russell Carpenter, Eastern Kentucky University; and Christine Alfano, Stanford University
    • "Building Gaming Pedagogy: The Convergence of Gaming Principles and Course Design"
      Justin Hodgson, The University of Texas at Austin
    • "Collaborating in 140 Characters: Storify, Twitter, and Flash Fiction in the Composition Classroom"
      Shea Stuart, Gardner-Webb University
    • "Pinch, Tap, Swipe: Using iPads to Rethink the Construction of Digital Texts and Spaces"
      Dianna Baldwin, John Lauckner, Rachael Hodder, Casey Miles, and Dean Holden, Michigan State
    • "Recreating bpNichol's "First Screening"
      Brent Simoneaux, Samara Mouvery, and Fernanda Duarte, North Carolina State University
    • "Textual Relations, Digital Creations: Readers, Writers, Players, Texts"
      Rik Hunter, St. John Fisher College; Naomi Silver, University of Michigan; Scott Reed, Georgia Gwinnett College; and Byron Hawk, University of South Carolina

    Keynote Speakers are:

    • David Parry, Assistant Professor of Emerging Media and Communications, the University of Texas at Dallas
    • Anne Wysocki, Associate Professor of English, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
    • Alex Reid, Associate Professor, English Department, University at Buffalo

    Workshops will include in "Writing Virtual Worlds" in which Dennis Jerz and Shaun Martin will present the interactive fiction programming language Inform.

    For complete and continuing information, visit
    http://chasslamp.chass.ncsu.edu/~cw2012/
    January 16, 2012

    Spring 2012 Books From MIT Press

    MIT Press forthcoming books for Spring 2012 look at digital culture and history -- from Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age to Mizuko Ito's A Cultural History of Children's Software -- and include Howard Rheingold's Net Smart - How to Thrive Online and the paperback edition of Noah Wardrip-Fruin's Expressive Processing - Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies.

    Selected MIT Press forthcoming releases from MIT Press are:

    For complete information about MIT Press publications, visit http://mitpress.mit.edu/main/home/default.asp
    January 8, 2012

    Belgrade Resonate Festival to be Held March 16-17, 2012;
    Will Look at the State of Technology in Arts and Culture

    In Belgrade this Spring from March 16-17, an International group of artists and software artists will address networking, information, knowledge sharing, and education. Directed by visual artist/producer Maria Jelesijevic, the festival will encompass art and discussion on topics -- ranging from software engineering and new platforms for artistic expression; to visual arts theory; to institutional collaborations -- and in their words also "create a bridge between culturally separated segments of the artistic and intellectual scene through a comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach."

    From Europe, Asia and North America, participants in talks, workshops, panel discussions, performances and concerts will include FIELD, a studio for digital art and graphic design based in London and led by Marcus Wendt and Vera-Maria Glahn; the collaborative generative book project Written Images; Martial Geoffre-Rouland, a digital artist/interactive developer based in Lyon; writer/curator Régine Debatty; Brussels-based LAb[au]; and onedotzero, an international moving image and digital arts organization, among many others.

    A core aim of Resonate is to "create a platform for education, knowledge exchange and information", and the festival will mainly be held at Belgrade's Dom Omladine, a center and gathering place for the young people of Belgrade. that promotes programs for youth in the sphere of contemporary art and culture -- from visual arts and new media, to film, theatre and music.

    "Resonate" is an initiative by Magnetic Field B in collaboration with CreativeApplications.Net and Dom Omladine, Belgrade.

    For more information, visit http://resonate.io/2012/#home
    December 28, 2011

    MLA 2012 to Feature Exhibition of Electronic Literature

    Showcasing a diverse selection of Electronic literature, on January 5-7, 2012 at the annual Modern Language Association Convention in Seattle, the exhibition Electronic Literature will include hyperfiction, generative literature, digital poetry, live performance, multimedia narrative, and much more.

    In an opening statement available on the exhibition website at
    http://dtc-wsuv.org/mla2012/index.html, curators Dene Grigar, Kathi Inman Berens, and Lori Emerson note that "...the exhibit aims to provide humanities scholars with the opportunity to experience, first-hand, this emergent form of literature, one that we see as an important form of expression in, as Jay David Bolter calls it, this 'late age of print.'"

    Curated by Dene Grigar, the section on "Works on Desktop" will include electronic literature from The Eastgate School -- represented by Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl, Michael Joyce's afternoon: a story, Deena Larsen's Marble Springs, Judy Malloy's its name was Penelope, and Stuart Moulthrop's Victory Garden -- as well as the complete Electronic Literature Collections 1 and 2 -- two multilingual collections (edited by the Electronic Literature Organization) with over 100 works by writers such as Peter Cho, Caitlin Fisher, Bjørn Magnhildøen;, Kate Pullinger and Chris Joseph, Scott Rettberg, Eugenio Tisselli, and Noah Wardrip-Fruin.

    "Works on Desktop" will also feature (among other works) MD Coverley's Califia, Nick Montfort's Ad Verbum, Stephanie Strickland's The Ballad of Sand and Harry Soot, Thom Swiss', Shy Boy, and electronic literature on desktop by undergraduates from U.S. Universities.

    Curated by Kathi Inman Berens, the section on "Mobile Works and Geolocative Works" will present Mark Amerika's Immobilité, Aya Karpinska's Shadows Never Sleep, Erik Loyer's Ruben and Lullaby, Teri Rueb's Core Sample, and much more, including mobile works by undergraduates from U.S. Universities.

    Curated by Lori Emerson, an evening of "Readings and Performances", associated with the exhibition will feature Kate Armstrong's Why Some Dolls Are Bad, John Cayley's Terms of Use," "III=II=I=I=II=III", Mark Marino's LA Flood, and much more.

    For more information, visit the Electronic Literature exhibition website at http://dtc-wsuv.org/mla2012/index.html

    For further more coverage of electronic literature at MLA 2012, visit 2012 MLA Convention to Feature Panels on Reading Writing Interfaces: Electronic Literature's Past and Present; Transmedia Stories and Literary Games and more.

    MLA 2012 Convention site: http://www.mla.org/convention
    December 18, 2011

    ELMCIP E-literature in/with Performance Seminar to Convene at Arnolfini in Bristol, UK, May 3-4, 2012: Conference Calls for Proposals

    Under the aegis of the University College Falmouth, the Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity in Practice (ELMCIP) seminar/conference on E-literature in/with Performance will take place May 3-4, 2012 at Arnolfini, a leading center for contemporary art located on the harbor in Bristol, England.

    The event will explore the convergence of performance and new media literature and text, exploring, for instance, the performative use of computer-mediated interactivity, screen-based text, interface, and code -- as well as e-literature as performance and the sites and contexts of e-literature performance.

    Artists already invited include Annie Abrahams, (Netherlands) Donna Leishman, (UK), Cris Cheek, (UK) J.R. Carpenter, (Canada), and Joerg Piringer. (Austria).

    The conference is calling for proposals. The deadline for abstracts for papers and workshops is December 30, 2011. Conference proceedings and artist's pages will be published in a 2013 dedicated issue of Performance Research.

    For more information, visit

    http://elmcip.net/story/e-literature-inwith-performance-elmcip-seminar-cfp-call-paperspresentations

    ELMCIP is a three year collaborative research project, funded by the Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA) Joint Research Programme for Creativity and Innovation. Partners and leaders include:

    • The University of Bergen, Norway (Scott Rettberg, Jill Walker Rettberg)
    • the Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland (Simon Biggs, Penny Travlou)
    • Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden (Maria Engberg, Talan Memmott)
    • The University of Amsterdam, Netherlands (Yra Van Dijk)
    • The University of Ljubljana, Slovenia (Janez Strechovec),
    • The University of Jyväskylä, Finland (Raine Koskimaa)
    • University College Falmouth at Dartington, England (Jerome Fletcher)
    • New Media Scotland (Mark Daniels)

    For more information about ELMCIP, visit: http://elmcip.net
    December 9, 2011

    Hypertext 2012 to be Held in Milwaukee, June 25-28, 2012

    Hypertext 2012, the 23rd ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media will be held in Milwaukee, WI from June 25-28, 2012.

    Organized around four tracks -- Social Media; Semantic Data; Adaptive Hypertext and Hypermedia; and Hypertext and Narrative Connections, HT2012 is concerned with all aspects of modern hypertext research including social media, semantic web, dynamic and computed hypertext and hypermedia as well as narrative systems and applications."

    Workshop/tutorial submissions are due: January 10, 2012.

    Full and short paper Submissions are due February, 6 2012.

    The deadline for the Student Research Competition is February 21, 2012.

    For complete information and updates visit:
    http://www.ht2012.org
    November 27, 2011

    New from the University of Michigan Press:
    American Poetry in Performance From Walt Whitman to Hip Hop

    Although not focused on the performance of new media literature, the publication of Tyler Hoffman's American Poetry in Performance From Walt Whitman to Hip Hop by the University of Michigan Press is of interest to the new media writing and reading community, where, as with other literary genres, the hearing of exploratory poetry in reading and performative situations allows different entry ways to an understanding of the work. Increasingly perfomative readings are a significant part of the work of e-poets. Examples include Chris Funkhouser performing with Eugenio Tisselli's MIDIPoet and Fox Harrell and Joseph Goguen's "The Griot Sings Haibun". And in some cases -- the work of Antoinette LaFarge and the Plaintext Players, for instance -- performative creation is intertwined with the work.

    Tyler Hoffman, the author of American Poetry in Performance From Walt Whitman to Hip Hop is Professor of English and Associate Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University—Camden. The University of Michigan Press notes that "Relating the performance of poetry to shifting political and cultural ideologies in the United States, Hoffman argues that the vocal aspect of public poetry possesses (or has been imagined to possess) the ability to help construct both national and subaltern communities."

    The book covers the work of Vachel Lindsay, Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Nikki Giovanni, Bob Holman, Sonia Sanchez, Anne Waldman, and Lisa Martinovic, among many others.

    For complete details, visit
    http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=3091522
    November 21, 2011

    The Kitchen and the ELO to Present An Evening of Interactive Performative Readings

    In New York City on December 13, 2010, the Kitchen and The Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) will present performative readings of five works of electronic literature that range from kinetic poetry to works of video and text imagery. The writers and the works they will read/perform are:

    Oni Buchanan: The Mandrake Vehicles
    Jhave: Sooth
    Illya Szilak: Reconstructing Mayakovsky
    Sandy Baldwin: The Mandrake Vehicles
    Stephanie Strickland and Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo; Paul Ryan: video: slippingglimpse

    The works to be presented were selected from the Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 2, 2011, a multilingual collection featuring works by new media writers and poets from countries including Austria, Australia, Canada, Colombia, France, Germany, Israel, The Netherlands, Portugal, Peru, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Programming Languages, markup languages, and software applications used to create the work in this collection -- which range from hypertext to interactive fiction to mash-ups to codework -- include Flash, Processing, Java, JavaScript, Inform, HTML, and C++.

    This year celebrating its 40th anniversary, The Kitchen was founded in 1971 by video art pioneers Steina and Woody Vasulka. In the ensuing years, The Kitchen has continued to be an important New York City space for performance, video, film, music, dance and literature.

    For complete information about An Evening of Interactive Performative Readings, visit, http://www.thekitchen.org/event/283/0/1/

    The Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 2 is available online at: http://collection.eliterature.org/2/
    November 14, 2011

    Seattle, January 5-8:
    2012 MLA Convention to Feature Panels on Reading Writing Interfaces: Electronic Literature's Past and Present; Transmedia Stories and Literary Games and more

    To be held in Seattle from January 5-8, the 127th Modern Language Association (MLA) Annual Convention will focus on "Language, Literature, Learning". With topics ranging from Sessions of interest to the new media writing community include:

    Reading Writing Interfaces: Electronic Literature's Past and Present

    Presiding: Marjorie Luesebrink, Irvine Valley College, CA

    • "Early Authors of E-Literature, Platforms of the Past," Dene M. Grigar, Washington State University, Vancouver
    • "Seven Types of Interface in the Electronic Literature Collection Volume Two," Marjorie Luesebrink; Stephanie Strickland, New York, NY
    • "The Digital Poem against the Interface Free," Lori A. Emerson, University of Colorado, Boulder
    • "Strange Rain and the Poetics of Motion and Touch," Mark L. Sample, George Mason University

    An associated exhibition and readings will feature the work of Mark Amerika, Ingrid Ankerson and Megan Sapnar, CFC Media Lab Toronto, John Cayley, Deena Larsen, Michael Joyce, Marjorie Luesebrink, Judy Malloy, Mark Marino, Talan Memmott, Nick Montfort, Stuart Moulthrop, Stephanie Strickland, Brian Kim Stefans, and Thom Swiss among many others.
    Transmedia Stories and Literary Games

    • "Hundred Thousand Billion Fingers: Oulipian Games and Serial Players," Patrick LeMieux, Duke University
    • "Make Love, Not Warcraft: Virtual Worlds and Utopia," Stephanie Boluk, Vassar College
    • "Oscillation: Transmedia Storytelling and Narrative Theory by Design," Patrick Jagoda, University of Chicago
    • Responding: Victoria E. Szabo, Duke University
    New Media Narratives and Old Prose Fiction

    Presiding: Amy J. Elias, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

    • "New Media: Its Use and Abuse for Literature and for Life," Joseph Paul Tabbi, Univ. of Illinois, Chicago
    • "Contrasts and Convergences of Electronic Literature," Dene M. Grigar, Washington State University, Vancouver
    • "Computing Language and Poetry," Nick Montfort, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    Digital Narratives and Gaming for Teaching Language and Literature

    Presiding: Barbara Lafford, Arizona State University

    • "Narrative Expression and Scientific Method in Online Gaming Worlds," Steven Thorne, Portland State University
    • "Designing Narratives: A Framework for Digital Game-Mediated L2 Literacies Development," Jonathon Reinhardt, University of Arizona; Julie Sykes, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque
    • "Close Playing, Paired Playing: A Practicum," Edmond Chang, University of Washington, Seattle; Timothy Welsh, Loyola University, New Orleans
    • Responding: Dave McAlpine, University of Arkansas, Little Rock
    Reconfiguring the Literary: Narratives, Methods, Theories

    Program arranged by the Association for Computers and the Humanities

    Presiding: Susan Schreibman, Trinity College, Dublin

    • Alison Booth, University of Virginia
    • Mark Stephen Byron, University of Sydney
    • Øyvind Eide, University of Oslo
    • Alexander Gil, University of Virginia
    • Rita Raley, University of California, Santa Barbara
    New Media, New Pedagogies

    Presiding: Rebecca L. Walkowitz, Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick

    • "Steampunk Wells: Game Design as Narrative Pedagogy," Jay Clayton, Vanderbilt University
    • "Technologies That Describe: Data Visualization and Contemporary Fiction," Heather Houser, University of Texas, Austin
    • "Better Looking, Close Reading: How Online Fiction Builds Literary-Critical Skills," John David Zuern, University of Hawai'i, Manoa
    Close Playing: Literary Methods and Video Game Studies

    Presiding: Mark L. Sample, George Mason University

    • Edmond Chang, University of Washington, Seattle
    • Steven E. Jones, Loyola University Chicago
    • Jason C. Rhody, National Endowment for the Humanities
    • Anastasia Salter, University of Baltimore
    • Timothy Welsh, Loyola University, New Orleans
    • Zach Whalen, University of Mary Washington
    Self-Narrating Lives: Genre-Bending Autobiographical Works

    Presiding: Johanna Drucker, University of California, Los Angeles

    • Maria Faini, University of California, Berkeley
    • Anna Gibbs, University of Western Sydney
    • William Kuskin, University of Colorado, Boulder
    • Vanessa Place, Les Figues Press
    • Christine Wertheim, California Institute of the Arts
    For complete information visit the Conference site at
    http://www.mla.org/convention
    November 4, 2011

    Boston: November 19-20, 2011: Dangerous Readings Will Explore Frontiers of New Narrative

    To be held in Boston from November 19-20, 2011, Dangerous Readings, an "unconference on strange hypertexts and narrative play" will bring together artists, computer scientists, researchers, and critics to creatively explore new frontiers in narrative. "Following the 'unconference' style of BarCamp, RailsCamps, and E-LitCamp, participants will propose sessions throughout the event and collectively decide the direction in which the conference will go," Eastgate Editor Stacey Mason explains, noting that it is a format that "encourages creative breakout sessions, spirited debate, and smaller, more personal collaborations."

    Discussions are likely to address the relationship between games and eLit, technical constraints in narrative, eLit publishing models, and collaborative authoring. The agenda will be informal and may change as the event develops. Currently scheduled presentations are:

    • Jeremy Ashkenas (Interactive News, The New York Times) - Coffescript/Open source publishing
    • Bill Bly (We Descend) premiering new work - We Descend, Vol 2
    • Angela Chang (MIT)- reading hypertext with children
    • Rob Kendall (A Life Set For Two) - premiering new work: Life Story
    • Paul LaFarge ( Luminous Airplanes) - the process of writing eLit
    • Andrew Plotkin (Hoist Sail for the Heliopause and Home - IF authoring
    • Patrick McSweeney (University of Southampton) - Fractal Narratives
    • Stacey Mason (Editor, Eastgate Systems) - Glitch Art, relationship between eLit and Games
    Other scheduled participants include Mary-kim Arnold, author of Lust; John Cayley, (Brown University) author of riverIsland; Steve Ersinghaus, author of The Life of Geronimo Sandoval; Diane Greco, co-author of The Zodiac Of Paris; and J.Nathan Matias. (MIT)

    At the event closing, Eastgate chief scientist Mark Bernstein will debut a dramatic reading from The Trojan Girls, a hyper-drama, cast with local acting students, which is never improvised but changes in each performance.

    For More information, visit
    http://eastgate.com/DangerousReadings/

    For more information about Eastgate, visit
    http://www.eastgate.com

    October 23, 2011

    The Fourth International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling to be held November 28 to December 1, 2011 in Vancouver, Canada

    Held this year in Vancouver, Canada from November 28-December 1, the Fourth International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling will feature invited speakers Chris Crawford, (Storytron.com) Mary DeMarle, (Eidos Montreal) and Keith Oatley. (University of Toronto)

    The Conference looks at Interactive Digital Storytelling (IDS) as redefining "the experience of narrative by allowing its audience to actively participate in the story. As such, IDS offers interesting new possibilities for games, training, and learning, through the enriching of virtual characters with intelligent behavior, the collaboration of humans and machines in the creative process, and the combination of narrative knowledge and user activity into novel, interactive artefacts."

    This year core issues are addressed in a series of workshops that include, among others:
    Presentations of interests to the new media writing community include, among many others:

    • Research In Interactive Drama Environments, Role-Play and Story-telling
      Ruth Aylett, Sandy Louchart and Allan Weallans

    • "Why Paris Needs Hector and Lancelot Needs Mordred: Using Traditional Narrative Roles and Functions for Dramatic Compression in Interactive Narrative"
      Janet H. Murray

    • "Agent-Oriented Methodology for Interactive Storytelling"
      Yundong Cai, Zhiqi Shen and Chunyan Miao

    • "Being in the Story: Readerly Pleasure, Acting Theory, and Performing a Role"
      Joshua Tanenbaum

    • "Extensible Tools for Practical Experiments in IDN – The Advanced Stories Authoring and Presentation System"
      Hartmut Koenitz

    • "Director Agent Intervention Strategies for Interactive Narrative Environments"
      Seung Y. Lee, Bradford W. Mott, and James C. Lester

    • "I’m sure I made the right choice! –
      Towards an Architecture to Influence Player’s Behaviors in Interactive Stories"
      Rui Figueiredo and Ana Paiva

    • "Framing Storytelling with Games"
      Karl Bergstrom

    • "How Authors Benefit from Linear Logic in the Authoring Process of Interactive Storyworlds"
      Kim Dung Dang, Steve Hoffmann, Ronan Champagnat and Ulrike Spierling

    • "Imagining New Design Spaces for Interactive Digital Storytelling"
      Joshua Tanenbaum

    • "Exploration of User Reactions to Different Dialog-based Interaction Styles"
      Birgit Endrass, Christoph Klimmt, Gregor Mehlmann, Elisabeth André and Christian Roth

    For a complete program, visit
    http://icids2011.wp.rpi.edu/
    October 10, 2011

    From MIT Press: New Books on Digital Games

    This year MIT Press has released a series of new books and new paperback editions of books on computer games and gaming that range from Digital Culture, Play, and Identity to the Handbook of Computer Game Studies.

    They include:

    For more information on MIT Press,
    visit: http://mitpress.mit.edu/main/home/default.asp
    September 19, 2011

    New from O'Reilly Media: Resources on HTML5

    HTML5 is still under development, which should be taken under consideration by creators of literature for whom continuing stability is important. However, HTML5's potential for working with multimedia and animation on many platforms and without the need for plugins makes it of growing interest in new media literature authoring systems, and it is important to follow the development and/or experiment with such a potentially important authoring tool. This year O'Reilly Media is releasing and/or distributing a substantial collection of print and Ebook resources on HTML5 that include, among others:
    For more information about O'Reilly Media, visit http://oreilly.com
    Books on HTML5 from other publishers include:

    Bruce Lawson and Remy Sharp
    Introducing HTML5. 2nd Edition
    Peachpit/New Riders, October, 2011

    Continuing information on the development of HTML5 is available on the website of The World Wide Web Consortium at http://www.w3.org
    September 12, 2011

    Foundations of Digital Games 2012 to be held in Raleigh, North Carolina, Calls for Papers; Conference will include a Research and Experimental Game Festival

    FDG 2012, the International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, will be held in Raleigh, North Carolina from May 30 to June 1, 2012, with workshops taking place on May 29. A concurrent Research and Experimental Game Festival will showcase innovative and experimental game design and technologies.

    With a goal of the advancement of the study of digital games, the conference is calling for academic papers on research and education in/with games, including new game technologies, capabilities, designs, applications, educational uses, and modes of play. They invite paper, poster, panel, doctoral consortium, demo, and workshop submissions.

    The Conference Chair is Magy Seif El-Nasr, Simon Fraser University, and the Program Committee Co-Chairs are Mia Consalvo, Concordia University, and Steven Feiner, Columbia University.

    Game tracks include:

    • Game Studies
    • Game design
    • Serious games
    • Games education
    • Artificial Intelligence
    • Game development
    • Graphics and Interaction

    Full paper and panel submissions are due December 19, 2011; Research and Experimental Game Festival Submissions: are due January 19, 2012.

    For complete details on submitting papers, visit
    http://fdg2012.org/drupal/Papers

    More information about the Conference is available at http://fdg2012.org/drupal/

    Society for the Advancement of the Science of Digital Games
    http://www.sasdg.org
    September 1, 2011

    Elit to be Well Represented at ISEA2011, the 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art, Istanbul, September 14-21; Artists and Speakers include Mark Amerika, Roy Ascott, Maurice Benayoun, Jay Bolter, Dene Grigar, Davin Heckman, Kristy Kang, Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo, Donna Leishman, Rita Raley, Jill Walker Rettberg and Scott Rettberg

    Hosted by Sabanci University in Istanbul, Turkey, ISEA2011, the 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art will take place from September 14-21. In addition to the inclusion of new media literature designer and theorist, Jay Bolter, as one of the keynote speakers, electronic literature is well represented in this International Gathering with sessions including:

    • Zones of Contact and Fields of Consistency in Electronic Literature
      Chairs: Davin Heckman and Dene Grigar
      __Davin Heckman, "Tagging Practices and the Disturbed Dialectic of Literary Criticism"
      __Dene Grigar, "Narrative in Social Media"
      __Anna Gibbs and Maria Angel, "At the Time of Writing: Digital Media, Gesture and Handwriting"
      __Scott Rettberg, "Making Connections Visible: Building a Knowledge Base for Electronic Literature"

    • Creativity as a Social Ontology
      Chairs: Scott Rettberg and Simon Biggs
      __Simon Biggs, "The Creative Imperative"
      __Ruth Catlow, "We are the Medium - the Context - the Source of Networked Creativity"
      __James Leach, "Can We Help Being Creative?"
      __Talan Memmott, "Creative Communities: Nooks, Niches, and Networks"
      __Scott Rettberg, "Electronic Authorship, Collaboration, Community, and Practice"
      __Jill Walker Rettberg, "The Geneology of a Creative Community: Why is afternoon the 'granddaddy' of hypertext fiction?"

    Exhibitions which feature new media narrative include UNCONTAINABLE: Hyperstrata at the Kasa Gallery with work by Mark Amerika, Roy Ascott, (whose seminal La Plissure du Texte will be the subject of a Symposium panel) Sean Montgomery, Elif Ayiter, Max Moswitzer, and Selavy Oh.

    Other sessions of interest to the electronic literature community include:

    • Theories of Social Media, chaired by Therese Tierney

    • Voicing Electronic Arts, chaired by sound/media artist Norie Neumark,

    • Transmedia Narrative: Modes of Digital Scholarship and Design Across Public Space, Chaired by Kristy Kang

    • Without Sin: Taboo and Freedom within Digital Media, chaired by Donna Leishman

    • If You See Something Say Something: Art, War, Surveillance and the Sustainability of Urgency in the Post 9/11 Era, chaired by Joseph DeLappe. Panel participants include Bernadette Buckley, Wafaa Bilal, and Hasan Elahi. New media and new media literature critic Rita Raley is the discussant.

    In addition to new media designer and theorist Jay Bolter -- who will be speaking on the status of art and culture in an era of digital media, the subject of his forthcoming MIT Press book on "The Digital Plenitude" -- keynotes will be presented by Sean Cubitt, Semir Zeki, Oliver Grau, William Uricchio, Sara Diamond, Christiane Paul, and Terrence Masson.

    Among many other writers and artists featured in the ISEA2011 program are: Stefan Müller Arisona, Maurice Benayoun, Zach Blas, Charles Csuri, Ayoka Chenzira, Renate Ferro, Baruch Gotlieb, Diane Gromala, Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo, John Kim, Timothy Murray, Helen Varley Jamieson, Andrea Polli, and Cynthia Beth Rubin.

    ISEA2011 will also host "Bosphorus Networking Cruises" as part of this year's Symposium. A boat provided by Istanbul Sehir Hatlari "will travel at dusk one day while on the other it will float across the reflections of the city lights for an evening cruise. A fantastic opportunity to network, show your portfolio, find out 'who is doing what' or just have a great time out cruising between two continents."

    For complete information on ISEA2011, visit http://isea2011.sabanciuniv.edu

    Founded in the Netherlands in 1990, the Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts (ISEA) is currently headquartered at the University of Brighton in the U.K.

    ISEA 2012, will take place in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico, with major events held on and near the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. A call for entries is on the website.

    ISEA Symposiums are archived at http://www.isea-webarchive.org
    August 23, 2011

    Adobe Previews Adobe Edge, an HTML5 Web Animation and Interaction Design Tool; Invites Community Input

    Adobe Systems, which has recently announced plans to focus on content authoring and digital marketing, has released a public preview of Adobe Edge, a HTML5 animation and interaction design tool that allows web designers to create websites using animation, similar to that created in Flash Professional, using authoring tools such as HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. Utilizing an open development methodology while it is in this public preview stage, Adobe Edge is free as an online download, and the company is asking for user input to help shape the final product.

    "Now, with Adobe Edge, we're taking our HTML5 tooling to a whole new level and look forward to getting some really useful feedback from the community over the next few months, as we refine the product," explains Paul Gubbay, Vice President of Adobe Design and Web Engineering.

    Content created with Edge is designed to work on modern browsers including those on Android, BlackBerry Playbook, iOS, HP webOS, and other smartphone mobile devices, as well as on Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, and Internet Explorer 9.

    Complimenting Adobe's existing Web tools, such as Dreamweaver and Flash, "The Adobe Edge preview works natively with HTML," Adobe notes. "It enables users to add motion to existing HTML documents without hampering design integrity of CSS-based layouts, and it also enables users to easily create visually rich content from scratch, using familiar drawing tools that produce HTML elements styled with CSS3. Users can import standard Web graphics assets such as SVG, PNG, JPG and GIF files and style them using CSS3."

    To download the software, visit
    http://www.labs.adobe.com

    To find out more about Adobe Edge Preview visit
    http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/edge/
    August 16, 2011

    ELO 2012: Electrifying Literature, Affordances and Constraints to be held in Morgantown, West Virginia, June 20-23, 2012: Conference Calls for Papers and Works

    The international Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) Conference, last held at Brown University, will be held in Morgantown, West Virginia from June 20-23, 2012, at the site of West Virginia University. In addition to presentations and panels, the Conference will feature an exhibition at the Monongalia Arts Center in Morgantown, from June 18-30, and an accompanying online exhibition will bring works from the Conference to a wider audience.

    The Electronic Literature Organization and West Virginia University's Center for Literary Computing invite titles and proposals to the ELO 2012 Conference by the deadline of November 30, 2011. Selected conference presentations will be published within a few months of the conference in the electronic book review. For complete details, visit http://el.eliterature.org/cfp.html

    The Conference Planning Committee is Sandy Baldwin, West Virginia University; (Chair) Philippe Bootz, University of Paris 8; Dene Grigar, Washington State University Vancouver; Margie Luesebrink, Irvine Valley College; Mark Marino, University of Southern California; Stuart Moulthrop, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee; and Joseph Tabbi, University of Illinois, Chicago.

    Recently relocated to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Electronic Literature Organization is a non-profit international organization and community that includes writers, artists, teachers, scholars, and developers. Since its founding in 1999, the ELO has worked "to foster and promote the reading, writing, teaching, and understanding of literature as it develops and persists in a changing digital environment." In addition to the international conference, projects include the Electronic Literature Directory; and the Electronic Literature Collection.

    Further details on the Conference will be available on an ongoing basis at http://el.eliterature.org

    and

    http://conference.eliterature.org

    For more information about the ELO, visit http://www.eliterature.org
    August 5, 2011

    New Book from the University of Minnesota Press: Digital Art and Meaning by Roberto Simanowski

    Available from the University of Minnesota Press, Roberto Simanowski's Digital Art and Meaning, Reading Kinetic Poetry, Text Machines, Mapping Art, and Interactive Installations covers a wide range of topics relevant to new media writing and reading -- from a introduction: "Close Reading" to an Epilogue on "Code, Interpretation, Avant-Garde".

    Observing that in our contemporary, digital-dominated world, there is a need for "clear, deeply informed, and highly elucidating demonstration of how such new media critical work can be done", Simanowski, a Professor at the Institut for Media Studies, University of Basel, Switzerland and Founding Editor of the online journal on digital literature and arts, dichtung-digital, notes that "Digital Art and Meaning offers a series of close readings of varied examples from different genres of digital art such as kinetic concrete poetry, computer generated text, interactive installation, mapping art, and the viewer's behavior."

    And in a description of the book, sent via email to Authoring Software, he speaks of "images that are progressively destroyed by the human gaze; of a curtain of little screens compiling chunks of text from online conversations; of text-machines generating nonsense sentences out of a Kafka story; of a light show above Mexico City's historic square, created by Internet users all over the world."

    Emphasizing a rich, integrative approach to close reading, Roberto Simanowski explains that the book combines close readings "with a theoretical discussion that employs art philosophy and history a crucial step toward bringing the digital arts into the traditions of art history and criticism as well as expanding those traditions to embrace the digital. The aim of this book is to start close to the actual work before reading it in light of its broader context. The legacy that this book hopes to convey to digital media studies is the skill and acumen of close (that is, semiotic) reading."

    For more information about Roberto Simanowski's Digital Art and Meaning, Reading Kinetic Poetry, Text Machines, Mapping Art, and Interactive Installations, visit
    http://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/digital-art-and-meaning
    In addition to Mark Amerika's remixthebook, due in September, Digital Art and Meaning joins a series of critical writings about new media from the University of Minnesota Press that also include Victoria Vesna, editor, Database Aesthetics, Art in the Age of Information Overflow, Rita Raley, Tactical Media, and Jaishree K. Odin, Hypertext and the Female Imaginary.
    July 26, 2011

    University of Michigan to Host 2011 HASTAC Conference; Topics Include "Expanding the Digital Arts to Include the Humanities and Vice Versa"

    The University of Michigan will host the annual HASTAC Conference on December 2-3, 2011 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. This year's theme is "Digital Scholarly Communication".

    Topics will include, among many others, "Expanding the digital arts to include the humanities and vice versa"; "Web design and digitization of archives for multiple and different constituencies"; and "New forms of research, digitally based, in the humanities". The deadline for submitting proposals for presentations has been rescheduled to September 15, 2011.

    HASTAC is a multi-disciplinary consortium of scholars and artists, organizations and individuals that in their words on their website is "inspired by the possibilities that new technologies offer us for shaping how we learn, teach, communicate, create, and organize our local and global communities." Pronounced "haystack", the name is an acronym for Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory.

    For more information about HASTAC, visit their new (or soon to be new) website at
    http://www.hastac.org

    For more information about the 2011 HASTAC Conference, visit
    http://www.hastac.org/blogs/admin/2011-hastac-v-conference-digital-scholarly-communication

    Proposals for presentations (deadline September 15, 2011) can be submitted at:
    http://tinyurl.com/HASTAC2011-Proposal
    July 16, 2011

    First Convention of Chinese/American Association for Poetry and Poetics to Include "Poetry and New Media" - Wuhan, China, September 29-30, 2011

    The Chinese/American Association for Poetry and Poetics will hold its first Convention in Wuhan, China from September 29-30, 2011. With a focus on "Dialog on Poetry and Poetics", topics will include "Sound, Performance, Text: the Boundaries of Poetry"; "Poetry and New Media"; and "Issues of Identity in 21st C Poetry".

    Headquartered at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, the Chinese/American Association for Poetry and Poetics focuses, "in their words, "on the scholarship and translation of the international poetry, with special emphasis on the study and translation of North American poetry in China and Chinese poetry in North America, but also with a commitment to see North American poetry and Chinese poetry in a global context." The Convention will honor contemporary poetry critic Marjorie Perloff and will include topics on "Critical Writings of Marjorie Perloff: Retrospective Readings of the Works".

    The deadline for submitting abstracts is August 20, 2011

    For more information, visit
    http://writing.upenn.edu/news/CAAP-2011-conference-cfp.html
    July 8, 2011

    Forthcoming from the University of Minnesota Press: Mark Amerika's remixthebook

    In his forthcoming remixthebook, new media writer and critic Mark Amerika approaches the mashup in historical and contemporary contexts. "In remixthebook, Mark Amerika explores the mashup as a defining cultural activity in the digital age," The University of Minnesota Press (UMP) notes on its webpage that documents the book.

    UMP will publish Amerika's remixthebook in September of 2011, and the print book will be accompanied by an extensive website with collaborative components.

    "remixthebook is a hybrid publication and performance project that has both print and digital features," says Amerika, whose work includes the seminal new media trilogy GRAMMATRON, PHON:E:ME, and FILMTEXT. "The print book is a series of remixed texts that mash-up contemporary art theory with personal narrative, poetry, comedy and the history of remix practices. It reads like a kind of performance art manifesto that attempts to challenge traditional scholarly discourse while maintaining an allegiance to intellectual writing."

    With contributions from over 25 artists and theorists -- including Kate Armstrong, Giselle Beiguelman, Curt Cloniger, David Gunkel, Gary Hall, Will Luers, mez, Out-of-Sync, Rick Silva, Darren Tofts, and Gregory Ulmer -- the remixthebook.com website is a central component of the project.

    "The remixthebook.com website is not a supplement to the book," Amerika explains. "It's a central part of the overall project and includes contributions from over 25 contemporary artists and media theorists. I remixed various samples from the book into stand-alone text pieces, audio tracks, and even video footage of me performing the work, and this source material was then sent to the various participants who could do whatever they wanted with it -- or not use it all, as in some cases."

    The website also includes a pedagogical component. "There's a section of the site labeled 'The Course' that also experiments with enabling anyone who wants to teach the project to do so," Mark Amerika told Authoring Software. "The idea is to encourage innovative forms of remix writing that expand the possibilities of composing contemporary theory on media/art/culture."

    A Professor of Media Arts in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Mark Amerika has created new media literature, cult novels, video and films, and experimental artists books. His work has been published, screened, and exhibited widely including the Whitney Biennial of American Art; the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; the American Museum of the Moving Image, New York; Black Ice Books; the Walker Art Center; the FILMWINTER Festival, Stuttgart; transmediale, Berlin; the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens; and the 2011 Biennale de Montréal.

    Orders are being accepted, and more information about the book is available on the University of Minnesota Press website at
    http://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/remixthebook

    For more information about Mark Amerika, visit http://markamerika.com
    July 3, 2011

    New Books from O'Reilly on Dreamweaver, Flash, Perl, and iPhone and iPad Development

    This summer O'Reilly Media has released a series of new and new editions of guides and manuals for programming languages, software applications, and new platforms. New releases from O'Reilly of particular interest to the new media writing community include:

    Also available from O'Reilly is
    For continuing information about O'Reilly Media publications, visit
    http://oreilly.com/store/index.html
    June 20, 2011

    The Electronic Literature Organization Moves to MIT

    On July 1, 2011, the Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) will move to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, from its current headquarters at the University of Maryland's Institute of Technology in the Humanities.

    "ELO and MIT have already been successful in advancing the state of the art in electronic literature," said ELO President Nick Montfort, who is an Associate Professor of Digital Media in the Writing and Humanistic Studies Department at MIT. "Now, by working together, we have a chance to sustain ELO's core operations and projects and to further MIT's existing commitment to electronic literature. ELO's coming to MIT will be a chance to find new opportunities for collaboration, here in Cambridge and beyond."

    The Electronic Literature Organization is a non-profit international organization and community that includes writers, artists, teachers, scholars, and developers. Since its founding in 1999, the ELO has worked "to foster and promote the reading, writing, teaching, and understanding of literature as it develops and persists in a changing digital environment." Projects include an International biannual conference; the Electronic Literature Directory; the Electronic Literature Collection; (which recently released a second volume) and the eliterature.org website.

    ELO is coming to MIT with the support of MIT's world-renowned Comparative Media Studies (CMS) program, which has an undergraduate major, a graduate program, as well as several large-scale research projects. The ELO press release notes that the program is "committed to the art of thinking across media forms, theoretical domains, cultural contexts, and historical periods. The program considers media change and the rise of new forms of writing in different eras, including our current one." ELO's supporting and collaborating organizations at MIT include the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences; the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies; the Council for the Arts at MIT; Hyperstudio; the Literature Section; and the Singapore/MIT GAMBIT Game Lab. There is already a substantial amount of work in electronic literature ongoing at MIT, including, in addition to the work of ELO President Nick Montfort, the work of new media writer Fox Harrell, who is an ELO Board member.

    With organizations such as the Institute for Contemporary Art, (ICA) the Media Lab, Eastgate Systems, the Boston Cyberarts Festival, Turbulence.org, Do While Studio, AXIOM, the Upgrade! Boston series, and the People's Republic of Interactive Fiction, the Boston area has long been central in the creation and exhibition of new media literature and art.

    The ELO was founded in 1999 by writer Robert Coover, new media writer Scott Rettberg, and Internet business leader Jeff Ballowe. Initially it was operated from Chicago, In 2001, it moved to UCLA, and since 2006, it has been headquartered at the University of Maryland's Institute of Technology in the Humanities. (MITH)

    "ELO's relationships with its academic hosts have been extremely productive for the organization," said Montfort. "We're very grateful for the ways that UCLA and MITH have helped us to accomplish our mission, sustain and add projects, and develop as an organization. With work from ELO's directors, members, and collaborators, we're now going to try to establish a long-term home for ELO at MIT that will allow the organization and the campus to continue to benefit from their collaboration for many years."

    For more information, visit the ELO website at http://www.eliterature.org

    or contact ELO Secretary and Director of Communications Mark Marino at
    markcmarino @ gmail.com

    The Electronic Literature Collection is available at http://collection.eliterature.org
    June 12, 2011

    New from MIT Press: Performing Mixed Reality

    Performing Mixed Reality, edited by Steve Benford and Gabriella Giannachi, will be available from MIT Press in September 2011.

    The book concentrates on performances developed at the University of Nottingham’s Mixed Reality Laboratory, specifically on performance works using digital technologies, including computer-mediated interaction, and it documents collaborations with artists, including the group Blast Theory.

    Steve Benford is Professor of Collaborative Computing in the School of Computer Science at the University of Nottingham. Gabriella Giannachi is Professor in Performance and New Media and Director of the Centre for Intermedia in the Department of English at Exeter University.

    For more information, visit:
    http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12718
    June 5, 2011

    New Media Consortium Will Hold 2011 Summer Conference in Madison, Wisconsin, from June 15-18

    Hosted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the annual New Media Consortium (NMC) Summer Conference will take place in Madison from June 15-18, 2011. With a wide range of speakers, panels, and workshops devoted to each, in 2011, the conference will feature four main themes:

    • Emerging Technologies
    • New Media and Learning
    • New Media and Leadership
    • Tools and Techniques

    Special Recognition will be given to Internet pioneer Vinton Cerf, recipient of the 2011 NMC Fellows Award, who will speak about "The Internet of Things".

    The NMC is an international consortium of organizations dedicated to the exploration and use of new media and new technologies. NMC member organizations are institutions of higher learning, including among many others Arizona State University, Auburn University, Boston College, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, (Vancouver, Canada) Harvard University, Iowa State University, Johns Hopkins University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, National University of Ireland, New York University, National University of Ireland, Galway, Princeton University, Stanford University, University of British Columbia, University of California, Davis, and the University of Melbourne. (Melbourne, Australia)

    Members also include cultural institutions, such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and software and hardware creators, such as Adobe Systems and Apple.

    For more information, visit http://www.nmc.org/cal
    May 23, 2011

    Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Enables Content Production on Mobile Platforms; Includes Advances in HTML5 and Flash Authoring

    Adobe Systems, an industry leader in software for creative applications, has announced a new Creative Suite product lineup, headed by the Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Master Collection, which features Adobe's creative tools in a one package, including Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat, Flash Builder Premium, Flash Catalyst, Flash Professional, Dreamweaver, Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effect.

    Given the difficulties in designing for both large screens and mobile platforms, Adobe's emphasis on the ability to create and scale content for multiple platforms, operating systems, Web browsers, smartphones and tablets -- such as Android, BlackBerry Tablet OS, and Apple iOS devices -- is of particular interest.

    "The explosion of smartphones and tablets is drastically changing how content is distributed and consumed, and Web Premium CS5.5 ensures that designers and developers can target mobile platforms first, helping them secure the widest possible reach of their interactive content and applications on devices," said Lea Hickman, Adobe's Vice President of Creative Suite Design and Web product management. "Thanks to advances in HTML5 and Flash tooling, the delivery of browser content and new rich interactive apps has never been easier across Android, BlackBerry Tablet OS and iOS."

    Although Adobe's introduction of subscription pricing may be helpful for some, Creative Suite 5.5 packages are expensive for individual users, who may not need all the applications. However, education pricing for students, faculty and staff in K-12 and higher education is available from Adobe Authorized Education Resellers and the Adobe Education Store at http://www.adobe.com/education/purchasing/education_pricing.html More information regarding education volume licensing for higher education and K-12 institutions is available at http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/volumelicensing/education

    For more information about Adobe Creative Suite including available packages and subscription pricing, visit
    http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite.html
    May 15, 2011

    ISEA2011, the 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art, to be held in Istanbul, September 14-21

    Hosted by Sabanci University, ISEA2011, the 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art will take place in Istanbul, Turkey, from September 14-21. Keynote speakers are Oliver Grau, Jay Bolter, Sara Diamond, Christiane Paul, and Terrence Masson.

    Panels of interest to the electronic literature community include:

    • "If You See Something Say Something: Art, War, Surveillance and the Sustainability of Urgency in the Post 9/11 Era", chaired by new media artist Joseph DeLappe, whose works have included social media interventions on Twitter and Second Life. Panel participants include Bernadette Buckley, Wafaa Bilal, and Hasan Elahi. New media and new media literature critic Rita Raley is the discussant.

    • "Voicing Electronic Arts", chaired by sound/media artist Norie Neumark, with participants including Nermin Saybasili, Igor Stromajer, and Isabelle Arvers.

    Also of interest, among many others, is a panel on "Hybrid Cultures", chaired by Kerstin Mey and Yvonne Spielmann.

    For complete information on ISEA2011, visit http://isea2011.sabanciuniv.edu

    Founded in the Netherlands in 1990, the Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts (ISEA) is currently headquartered at the University of Brighton in the U.K.

    ISEA 2012, will take place in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico, with major events held on and near the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

    ISEA Symposiums are archived at http://www.isea-webarchive.org
    May 9, 2011

    Texas Institute for Literary and Textual Studies Symposium to Focus on the Digital Humanities

    From May 26-28 , 2011 at the University of Texas at Austin, the Texas Institute for Literary and Textual Studies (TILTS) will host a symposium on "The Digital and the Human(ities)". TILTS notes that "In this symposium, scholars will be encouraged to investigate digital humanities from a critical standpoint as it impacts both the disciplines within the humanities and the people who practice them."

    The Keynote lecture, "Humanist Computing at the End of the Individual Voice", will be given by book artist and critic Johanna Drucker. Participants include Nick Montfort, N. Katherine Hayles, and Josh Iorio. Panels of particular interest to the electronic literature community include:

    • Automation and the Digital Vernacular
      Chair: Robert K. Nelson
      Speakers: Patricia Yeager, "Luminous Trash: Throwaway Robots in Blade Runner, The Terminators, A. I. and WALL-E"
      Lauren Squires, "Automatic Genres: Views of Language from the Digital Armchair"
      Jason Baldridge, "Computational Grounding of Texts in Real World Proxies"

    • The Structure of Being on the Internet
      Chair: Douglas Bigham
      Speakers: Chris Ortiz y Prentice, "Writing Mass Effect Online: Reading User-Generated Content"
      Joseph Thompson, "Magical Machines and Affective Actants: What Can Vital Materialism Mean for Video Game theory?"
      Josh Iorio, "The Social Meaning of Linguistic Structure on the Internet"
      José Enrique Navarro, "Liquid Authorship"

    • The Situations of Digital Humanities
      Chair: Andrew J. Torget
      Speakers: Matthew Kirschenbaum, "Digital Humanities as/is a Tactical Term"
      Kim Christen, "Digital Humanities Centers and Margins: Creating a Dialog"
      Nick Montfort, "The Digital Rear-View Mirror"
      Comment: N. Katherine Hayles

    "The Digital and the Human(ities)" is the third symposium of a 2011 series that also featured symposiums on "Access, Authority, & Identity" and "Digital Humanities: Teaching & Learning". For more information, visit http://tilts.dwrl.utexas.edu/symposia/third
    April 27, 2011

    New Books from O'Reilly on HTML5, Processing, Audacity, JavaScript, and Python

    O'Reilly Media continues its central to the field work in providing guides and manuals to programming languages and software applications with new editions of classics and new and forthcoming books. Titles of particular interest to new media creators include:

    For more information on O'Reilly Media and continuing updates on new publications, visit their website at http://oreilly.com
    April 18, 2011

    The Proceedings of Critical Code Studies @ USC Available Online with Text and Video; Keynote by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun addresses "Codes, Crises and Critical Pleasure"

    New media writer and University of Southern California (USC) Associate Professor of Writing, Mark Marino, has announced the online publication of the proceedings of Critical Code Studies @ USC, a conference held at USC on July 23, 2010.

    "You'll notice that the proceedings were published on a unique platform called Thoughtmesh, which was developed by USC's Vectors journal and presenter Craig Dietrich in particular," Marino writes on Critical Code Studies. "Thoughtmesh was chosen for its ability to present and connect publications in much the same way that you'd expect from a live conference. I'm particularly excited about the Peer Review feature, which allows users to create conversation in and around the papers on the site."

    Available at http://vectorsjournal.org/thoughtmesh/critcode, the proceedings feature text and video from conference presentations and panel, including a video of "Codes, Crises and Critical Pleasure", the keynote by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University, and author of the new MIT book, Programmed Visions: Software and Memory. Wendy Chun's background includes both systems design engineering and English literature; her creative ideas are of interest to humanists who are reading code as well as to programmers who are interested in discourse on the state of programming in today's automated programming environments.

    Critical Code Studies @ USC Conference papers address advanced uses of authoring software in terms of writer/code relationships; "literate" programming that focuses on documentation and human language; recreational code; and other approaches to code use and understanding. Among many presentations of interest are:

    • Jeremy Douglass, Casey Reas, Nick Montfort, Studying Software by Porting and Reimplementation A BASIC Case"
      The authors present the work of a larger group (including also, Patsy Baudoin, John Bell, Ian Bogost, Mary Flanagan, Mark Marino, Michael Mateas, Warren Sack, Mark Sample, and Noah Vawter) that focuses on a maze-generating one-line BASIC program:

      10 PRINT CHR$(205.5 + RND(1)); : GOTO 10

      Their presentation encompasses BASIC, recreational computing, how programs are transmitted, mazes, creative variations to the program, and randomness. "This program is a gateway to explaining important concepts in computation, creative and recreational computing, programming languages in general and BASIC particularly, home computing, and the relationship of computing to text, typography, and visual art," they explain. "It uses randomness and creates a two-dimensional pattern from a repeating, one-dimensional process. It employs character graphics, elements meant to be fitted together like a mosaic which were implemented on top of an essentially typographical system. While the program is compelling, it does not easily fit into any standard category ("video game," "productivity software," "educational exercise") that we know of today."

    • Marisa Plumb, {untitled on "Domain-Specific Languages"}
      The author looks at code and information as narrative, focusing on her own work in a discussion that encompasses the idea of give and take between narrative and programming; ways to access data as a component of narrative plot and character development; and the benefits of using Domain-specific languages. (an approach to software solutions for very specific uses)

    • Aaron Reed, "Knock's Memories: Creating an Emotional Story Space with Inform 7"
      Reed discusses the creation of his 2010 Interactive fiction Sand-dancer, using the literate Interactive fiction application, Inform 7.

    • Jeremy Douglass, "Comments on Comments in Code"
      "Like footnotes or endnotes, code comments are paratexts -- continuous with and yet set apart from the source. Where they serve as actual *commentaries*, these paratexts enabling programmers to signal intentions, record histories, and render aesthetic judgements: comments enable the vital processes of software development culture," he notes.

    • Plus Elizabeth Losh, "Academic Discourse and Text Generators," John Williams, "Techne-Zen and the Codes of Interface Design", and much more.

    Mark Marino invites readers to read and contribute to the proceedings: "I encourage you to explore the proceedings and continue the CCS conversation in the Peer Review area on Thoughtmesh. Happy meshing! "

    The Proceedings of Critical Code Studies @ USC are available at http://vectorsjournal.org/thoughtmesh/critcode
    April 7, 2011

    Hypertext 2011 to be Held in Eindhoven from June 6-9, 2011

    Hypertext 2011, the 22nd Annual ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia, will be held this year in Eindhoven, the Netherlands from June 6-9. Keynote speakers are Marti Hearst, School of Information, University of California Berkeley; Wendy Hall, Dean of the Faculty of Physical and Applied Sciences, Southampton, UK; and Noshir Contractor, Director of the Science of Networks in Communities (SONIC) Research Group at Northwestern University.

    Sessions of particular interest to the new media literature community include a track on "Interaction, Narrative, and Storytelling", chaired by Mark Bernstein, Eastgate Systems, and Frank Nack, University of Amsterdam. Additionally, a workshop on "Narrative and Hypertext", chaired by Charlie Hargood and David Millard, University of Southampton, will "bring together individuals from the humanities and science communities to share research and discuss state-of-the-art research on narrative from both a technical and aesthetic perspective".

    More program information will be available soon on the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) Hypertext 2011 website at
    http://www.ht2011.org/index.html
    March 18, 2011

    ELMCIP Knowledge Base Goes Live; Features Access to Works of E-Literature, Criticism, Events, and Teaching Resources

    Produced at the University of Bergen in Norway as part of ELMCIP: the Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice project, Knowledge Base is an e-literature community-created database of information about critical writing, authors, publishers, organizations, teaching resources, events in the field, and works of electronic literature, including, among many other recent bibliographic entries, Rob Wittig's Friday's Big Meeting, Alexandra Saemmer's Etang, and the collaboratively created Noon Quilt. The resource -- http://elmcip.net/knowledgebase -- has been opened to readers and contributors while the development process continues.

    Describing the resource's breadth, the project notes that:

    "The Knowledge Base will be as comprehensive as possible, including presentation materials from all of the seminars conducted under the ELMCIP project, downloadable versions of articles produced as a result of the research, downloadable versions of the reports, exhibition catalogue, and ethnographic study, online versions of the works or documentation included in the exhibition DVD and the anthology, information about active and historical network-based creative communities, information about individual works of electronic literature, information about scholarship about electronic literature and resources specific to the ELMCIP project itself."

    Other Knowledge Base goals are bibliographic usefulness, including the creation of structured, searchable data; open access; sustainability, including long-term hosting and archiving by established archives, such as the Internet Archive and the Norwegian National Library; and extensive cross-referencing.

    ELMCIP is a three year collaborative research project running from 2010-2013, funded by the Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA) Joint Research Programme for Creativity and Innovation. Partners include:

    • The University of Bergen, Norway (PL Scott Rettberg, Co-I Jill Walker Rettberg)
    • the Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland (PI Simon Biggs, Co-I Penny Travlou)
    • Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden (PI Maria Engberg, Co-I Talan Memmott)
    • The University of Amsterdam, Netherlands (PI Yra Van Dijk)
    • The University of Ljubljana, Slovenia (PI Janez Strechovec),
    • The University of Jyv,skyl,, Finland (PI Raine Koskimaa)
    • University College Falmouth at Dartington, England (PI Jerome Fletcher)
    • New Media Scotland.

    "Focusing on a particular creative community, of electronic literature practitioners, the central research question of the ELMCIP collaborative research project is how creative communities of practitioners form within transnational and transcultural contexts, within a globalised and distributed communications environment," ELMCIP Project Leader Scott Rettberg, Associate Professor of Digital Culture at the University of Bergen, writes in his paper The ELMCIP Knowledge Base and the Formation of an International Field of Literary Scholarship and Practice. "We seek to gain insight into and understanding of the social effects and manifestations of creativity."

    They are planning to collaborate and share information with other databases in the field, such as the Electronic Literature Organization's Electronic Literature Directory, NT2's French-language electronic literature database, and Hermeneia's online catalogue of electronic literature.

    Sources/Resources:

    ELMCIP

    ELMCIP Knowledge Base

    Knowledge Base screencast

    Scott Rettberg, "The ELMCIP Knowledge Base and the Formation of an International Field of Literary Scholarship and Practice"

    The Electronic Literature Organization's Electronic Literature Directory
    March 15, 2011

    E-Poetry Ten Year Anniversary Festival to be held May 18-21, 2011 at the University at Buffalo; Registration Now Open

    After Festivals in West Virginia, London, Paris, and Barcelona, E-Poetry -- a biennial International event and dialog which focuses on emerging issues in digital, visual, sound, and language-based artistic/literary practice -- returns to Buffalo, New York. This year celebrating the tenth year since it began at Buffalo in 2001, E-poetry 2011 will be held from May 18-21 at the State University of Buffalo, with programming including readings, events, and performances by Joan La Barbara, Squeaky Wheel, Reina María Rodríguez, Lucio Agra, Wilton Azevedo, and Upton/Drever; a RiTa E-Poetry Workshop; and much more to be announced soon.

    Co-directed by new media poets Loss Pequeño Glazier, Department of Media Study, SUNY Buffalo, and Sandy Baldwin, Center for Literary Computing, West Virginia University, the Festival encompasses a broad range of new media approaches that, in addition to computer-mediated screen-based works include, among other forms, performance, visual, sound-based, conceptual, and book art. "Its emphasis is on literary practice in an encompassing sense, i.e., the practice of thinking through engagement with the material aspects of inscribed media forms, the building of community, and the exchange of ideas across languages, borders, and ideologies. Rather than considering 'new form' a qualifying criterion, it seeks to locate innovative artistic practice in its cultural, conceptual, and media milieu," the Festival notes.

    The 2011 E-Poetry website is at http://epc.buffalo.edu/e-poetry/2011

    Registration for the conference is now open at http://epc.buffalo.edu/e-poetry/2011/register.html

    An archive-in-progress of past E-Poetry Festivals can be found on the Electronic Poetry Center website at http://epc.buffalo.edu/e-poetry/archive/
    March 12, 2011

    New and Forthcoming Books: Wendy Hui Kyong Chun: Programmed Visions; Marina Grishakova and Marie-Laure Ryan: Intermediality and Storytelling; and Kevin Jackson-Mead and J. Robinson Wheeler, IF Theory Reader
    Encompassing philosophical investigations of contemporary code; new uses of narrative in digital media; and the history, craft and theory of interactive fiction; (IF) new books of interest to the electronic literature community include:

    Also of interest is:

    Becky Herr-Stephenson, Diana Rhoten, Dan Perkel, and Christo Sims
    Digital Media and Technology in Afterschool Programs, Libraries, and Museums
    Cambridge, MA; MIT Press, 2010
    http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12574
    March 4, 2011

    Interactive Fiction at PAX East: People's Republic of Interactive Fiction to Hold Mini-Convention;
    IF Demo Fair to Showcase 23 works

    Held this year in Boston from March 11-13, PAX East is a three day content-rich game festival which includes concerts, panel discussions, an exhibition hall of new works from game publishers and developers, a tournament area, and the opportunity to meet fellow creators in the field. The 2011 Keynote will be delivered by game designer, and games researcher and philosopher Jane McGonigal, Director of Game Research & Development at the Institute of the Future in Palo Alto.

    In conjunction with PAX East, the Boston-based People's Republic of Interactive Fiction will present an Interactive Fiction Mini-Convention with presentations and gatherings that include a panel discussion on design challenges for "Non-gamers gaming"; a panel discussion on "Setting as character in narrative games"; an opportunity to meet IF community members; and a "Collaborative IF play event". ("We put an IF game up on the projector screen; someone reads; someone collects suggestions from the audience and types commands", they explain.)

    Highlights of the Interactive Fiction Mini-Convention at PAX East also include Nick Montfort's presentation of Curveship, his newly released IF development system, and an IF Demo Fair hosted by interactive fiction writer, designer, programmer and consultant, Emily Short.

    "We have 23 pieces, including interactive poetry, journalism, and documentary; experiments with styles of interaction that go beyond the puzzle, and modes of input other than the standard parser form; new prototype authoring tools; and new interpreters, both serious and whimsical," Emily Short notes to describe the event. "Recent years have seen a great diversification for interactive fiction. It is appearing on new platforms phones, mobile devices, and browsers and in new contexts -- classrooms, independent game shows, science fiction magazines. These changes are exciting, but they put pressure on authors to make their works more accessible and more attractive to novice players than ever before, and to investigate new aspects of IF craft."

    "As the audience for interactive fiction grows more diverse," she observes. "there may be a need to re-evaluate traditional ways of creating and presenting IF. The IF Demo Fair provides an opportunity for authors and tool designers to share their visions for the future of interactive fiction. We hope that it will be a source of useful feedback and support for those who take part, and give the community a hint of things to come."

    Juhana Leinonen: Vorple
    Among the works to be showcased at the IF Demo Fair are Jonathan M. Guberman and Jim Munroe's Automatypewriter, Aaron Reed's what if im the bad guy?, Juhana Leinonen's Vorple user interface library, and procedurally generated narrative puzzles by Clara Fernandez Vara, Michaela Lavan, and Alec Thomson, Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab.

    Other works likely to be demoed are:

    Talkpack - by Bob Clark
    "Jean-Luc Godard said that the best form of film-criticism was filmmaking itself. Why can't the same be true of game-criticism and game-design? In this one-button platformer, players navigate through randomly-generated spike-filled caverns in order to reach and interview sprites from the indie-hits 'Canabalt' and 'Kill Jet', in conversations that are structured as RPG-style turn based battles. Defend against your enemy by guessing the correct response from the choices of Yes, No& Answer, or fight back by asking a Question of your own."

    Life Flashes By - by Deirdra Kiai
    "Charlotte Barclay, a novelist of moderate success, one day finds herself in a car accident while on her way to the next leg of her book tour. She then wakes up in the hazy world of her own memories and, accompanied by an impish pixie-like creature called Trevin, finds herself whisked away on a whirlwind journey to relive various vignettes of her life so far. In doing so, Charlotte attempts to make sense of who she is and who she's become, as well as who she could have been had she done things differently..."

    Jason and Medea - by Victor Gijsbers
    "...we look at the possibility of modeling conversation as combat. For that purpose we turn Inform ATTACK into a conversation system where all attacks are verbal, arguments function as weapons, and the price of failure is not measured in blood."

    Frotzophone - by Adam Parrish
    "The Frotzophone is an interface for making music with interactive fiction. The topography simulated in the game is used to generate sound, as is the player's path through the game. A Frotzophone 'performance' looks just like playing a text adventure; but in addition to playing a game, you're also playing music."

    To find out more about the IF Demo Fair, including descriptions of Automatypewriter, what if im the bad guy?, Vorple and procedurally generated narrative puzzles, visit the IF Demo Fair page on Emily Short's Blog at http://emshort.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/preview-of-the-if-demo-fair/

    For more information about all of the People's Republic's events, visit http://pr-if.org/event/pax-2011/
    Among mainstage PAX East events of interest from an authoring software point of view are:

    • Interactive Drama: Dialogue as Gameplay
      Jonathon Myers, Co-Founder, Writer, Reactive Games
      Stephen Dinehart, Chief Wizard, NarrWare
      Dan Tanguay, Design Specialist, Vicarious Visions
      Emily Short, Interactive Fiction Author, Independent
      Jeff Orkin, PhD Candidate, AI Researcher, MIT Media Lab
      Martin VanVelsen, Senior Research Engineer, Carnegie Mellon University

    • From Background To Center Stage: Building Game Worlds As Main Characters
      Julian Murdoch Ken Levine, Creative Director, Irrational Games
      Shawn Robertson, Lead artist, Irrational Games
      Nate Wells, Art Director, Irrational
      Stephen Alexander, Senior Effects Artist, Irrational Games

    • Females on Female Characters
      Moderated by Elizabeth Grunewald, Not Games Editor of The Escapist
      Susan Arendt, Senior Editor of The Escapist
      Kathleen de Vere, star of LoadingReadyRun
      Lisa Foiles, Actor, The Escapist
      AJ Glasser, News Editor, GamePro

    • Game Art & Design Roundtable
      John Comes, Creative Director, Uber Entertainment
      Terrence Masson, Director of Creative Industries, Northeastern University
      Mark Soderwall, Art Director & Visual Game Design Consultant
      Bert Snow, VP of Design & Content, Muzzy Lane
      Anne Toole, Writer & Narrative Designer

    A complete list of PAX East 2011 panels and presentations is available at http://east.paxsite.com/schedule.php

    PAX East main page: http://east.paxsite.com
    February 22, 2011
    CHI 2011 to Focus on Diversity and on Connecting People, Cultures, Technologies, Experiences, and Ideas;
    Featured Communities Include Games and Entertainment

    CHI 2011, the conference of the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction has been held annually since 1982 and is a core International gathering of people who work in the field. Held in Vancouver BC, from May 7-12, 2011, this year CHI 2011 will focus on diversity and connecting people, cultures, technologies, experiences, and ideas. This year's featured communities include Games and Entertainment.

    Papers and Sessions of interest to the Authoring Software community include:

    • Eden: A Professional Multitouch Tool for Constructing Virtual Organic Environments
      Kenrick Kin Pixar, Animation Studios/University of California, Berkeley
      Tom Miller, Pixar Animation Studios
      Björn Bollensdorff, Technische, Universit,t Berlin
      Tony DeRose, Pixar Animation Studios
      Björn Hartmann, University of California, Berkeley
      Maneesh Agrawala, University of California, Berkeley

    • Placing a Value on Aesthetics in Online Casual Games
      Erik Andersen, University of Washington
      Yun-En Liu, University of Washington
      Rich Snider, University of Washington
      Roy Szeto, University of Washington
      Zoran Popović, University of Washington

    • Kineticons: Using Iconographic Motion in Graphical User Interface Design
      Chris Harrison, Carnegie Mellon University
      Gary Hsieh, Michigan State University
      Karl D. D. Willis, Carnegie Mellon University
      Jodi Forlizzi, Carnegie Mellon University
      Scott E Hudson, Carnegie Mellon University

    • Panel: World of Warcraft as a Global Artifact
      Jeffrey Bardzell, Indiana University
      Shaowen Bardzell, Indiana University
      Bonnie Nardi, University of California--Irvine

    • Workshop: Feminism and Interaction Design
      Shaowen Bardzell, Indiana University
      Elizabeth Churchill, Yahoo! Research
      Jeffrey Bardzell, Indiana University
      Jodi Forlizzi, Carnegie Mellon University
      Rebecca Grinter, Georgia Institute of Technology
      Deborah, Tartar Virginia Tech

    For more information on ChI2011 visit http://chi2011.org/index.html

    For more information about ACM, (Association for Computing Machinery) visit http://www.acm.org
    February 15, 2011
    Electronic Literature Organization Announces the Official Launch of the Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 2

    Edited by Laura Borràs, Talan Memmott, Rita Raley, and Brian Kim Stefans, the Second Volume of the Electronic Literature Collection is now officially available from the Electronic Literature Organization. (ELO) With a goal of making the collection widely accessible to readers and available for classroom and reference use, both on and off the net, the collection has been published on the World Wide Web, as well as on DVD-ROM.

    The Electronic Literature Collection Volume 2 (College Park, Maryland: Electronic Literature Organization, 2011) features about 60 works by new media writers and poets from countries including Austria, Australia, Canada, Colombia, France, Germany, Israel, The Netherlands, Portugal, Peru, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and in addition to English, this multilingual collection includes works written in Catalan, Dutch, English, French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish. Among the many writers whose works are published in the Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 2 are Annie Abrahams; Sandy Baldwin; J. R. Carpenter; Peter Cho; Roderick Coover; Caitlin Fisher; Bjørn Magnhildøen; Chico Marinho; Mark C. Marino; Nick Montfort; Judd Morrissey; Stuart Moulthrop; Jason Nelson; Kate Pullinger and Chris Joseph; Scott Rettberg, William Gillespie, Dirk Stratton, and Frank Marquardt; Stephanie Strickland, Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo. and Paul Ryan; Eugenio Tisselli; Noah Wardrip-Fruin; Sarah Waterson, Elena Knox, and Christyn Davies; and Christine Wilks. Programming Languages, markup languages, and software applications used to create their works -- which range from hypertext to interactive fiction to mash-ups to codework -- include Flash, Processing, Java, JavaScript, Inform, HTML, and C++.

    "As a complement to our Electronic Literature Directory, and a continuation from Volume 1, this collection offers an anthology of works that pushes through the boundaries of literary forms, creating new kinds of experiences for interacting readers," the ELO notes on their website at http://www.eliterature.org

    Since its founding in 1999, the Electronic Literature Organization has worked "to foster and promote the reading, writing, teaching, and understanding of literature as it develops and persists in a changing digital environment." The Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 2 is available as a free DVD-ROM from the ELO at:

    Electronic Literature Organization
    Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH)
    B0131 McKeldin Library
    University of Maryland
    College Park, MD 20742

    The collection is also available online at: http://collection.eliterature.org/2/

    The first volume of the series is available at http://collection.eliterature.org and it was included in Electronic Literature New Horizons for the Literary by N. Katherine Hayles. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008)
    February 6, 2011

    2011 International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games to be held in Bordeaux, France; Workshops on Procedural Content Generation and on Games and Video Game Accessibility Call for Papers

    The International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG 2011) will take place in Bordeaux, France from June 28-July 1, 2011 with papers and presentations on game technologies, game play, and game design.

    "The goal of the conference is the advancement of the study of digital games, including new game technologies, capabilities, designs, applications, educational uses, and modes of play," they state.

    The Second International Workshop on Procedural Content Generation in Games, (PCGames 2011) which will take place concurrently in Bordeaux on June 28, is calling for papers. The workshop will bring researchers together to advance the state of the art of procedural content generation in games -- with discussions of innovative research and issues on algorithmically generating computer game content. The deadline for submission of papers is March 11, 2011. For complete details visit http://pcgames.fdg2011.org

    Other workshops calling for papers include a workshop on Video Game Accessibility: Extreme Interaction Design which seeks to build a community of researchers interested in making video games that are accessible for players with disabilities. Noting the increasing number of people interested in playing video games "and with video games increasingly being used for other purposes than entertainment, such as education, rehabilitation or health", they emphasize that "it is important we research how video games can be made accessible, especially when players with disabilities could benefit from the social, educational and health opportunities that games offer the most." The deadline for submissions is March 24, 2011. The organizers are Eelke Folmer, University of Nevada; Sri Kurniawan, UC Santa Cruz; and Lennart Nacke, University of Saskatchewan. For more information, visit http://ga.fdg2011.org

    For updated information on the International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, visit http://www.fdg2011.org
    January 28, 2011

    New from West Virginia University Press: Regards Croisés: Perspectives on Digital Literature

    West Virginia University Press has announced the publication of Regards Croisés: Perspectives on Digital Literature, a collection of essays on digital literature co-edited by new media writer and West Virginia University Associate Professor of English Sandy Baldwin, who is the Director of the University's Center for Literary Computing and University of Paris 8 Assistant Professor of Hypermedia, new media writer Philippe Bootz, who is the co-founder of L.A.I.R.E, a French collective in digital literature and Transitoire Observable, an international collective in programmed poetry.

    With a diverse global perspective, the book features contributions by authors from eight countries and three continents, including in addition to the editors, Shuen-Shing Lee, Alckmar Luiz dos Santos, Camille Paloque-Bergès, Eugenio Tisselli, Janez Strehovec, and Alexandra Saemmer.

    West Virginia University Press notes that "the collection presents points of view on a transcontinental practice of digital literature. It also opens dialogues with expanded critical paradigms of digital literature, beyond earlier critical concern with the aesthetics of the screen as a space of hypertext links. Many of the essays recognize a rich history and ongoing literary practice engaged with the basic fact of the computer as a programmable device. Other essays explore the latest developments in social media and Web 2.0 as venues for digital literature."

    More information about Regards Croisés: Perspectives on Digital Literature, is available on the West Virginia University Press website at http://wvupressonline.com/bootz_baldwin_regards_croises_9781933202471
    January 20, 2011

    College Art Association Conference to Feature Sessions on "Data as Medium" and E-Publication

    In New York City from February 9-12. 2011, The College Art Association (CAA) will celebrate its one-hundredth anniversary, since its founding in 1911 with its 99th Annual Conference and Centennial.

    Sessions of particular interest to the new media writing community will include:

    • ARTspace: Data as Medium
      Chair: Jeff Thompson, University of Nebraska, Lincoln
      "Data and Its Expression," George Legrady, University of California, Santa Barbara
      "From Kandinsky to the Database, (Point, Line, Plane: Variable, Array, Table)" Brian Evans, University of Alabama
      "Web as Index and Archive," Penelope Umbrico, Bard College and School of Visual Arts
      "Art that Decodes: Making Sense of Data Process," Heidi May, Emily Carr University of Art and Design and University of British Columbia

    • Art Historians of Southern California: Shockwrite: Changing the Game
      Chairs: Jeanne S. M. Willette, Otis College of Art and Design; Deana Hight, Mount San Antonio College
      "Publishing the Future: Shockwrite", Jeanne S. M. Willette, Otis College of Art and Design
      "The Future of the Book", Wendy Slatkin, California Polytechnic State University at Pomona
      "New Opportunities for Scholarship", Deana Hight, Mount San Antonio College
      "Expanding the Field." Michele McFaull, Otis College of Art and Design
      "From Papyrus to Pixel: Innovation and Continuity in Disseminating Art Texts", Irina Costache, California State University, Channel Islands

    Among other sessions of potential interest are:

    • Cel-Culture: The Hybrid Intersections of Art, Video Games, and Manga
      Chairs: Kirstin Ringelberg, Elon University; Michael R. Salmond, Northumbria University

    • Digital Craftsmanship: How Artists Are Making Physical Objects from Virtual Data
      Chairs: Jeremy Gardiner, Ravensbourne; Bruce Wands, School of Visual Arts

    • Leonardo/International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology
      New Media, Art-Science, and Mainstream Contemporary Art: Toward a Hybrid Discourse?
      Chair: Edward Shanken, University of Amsterdam

    • Art/Technology Global Sample
      Chairs: Mark Tribe, Brown University; Chris Csikszentmihalyi, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

    • New Media Caucus: Fight the Power: Open Source, Free Software, and Critical Digital Practice
      Chair: Ben Chang, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

    • Technology and Collaboration in the Art History Classroom
      Chair: Marjorie Och, University of Mary Washington

    • Beyond the Slideshow: Teaching the History of Art and Material Culture in the Age of New Media
      Chair: Johanna Bauman, ARTstor

    For complete information, visit the CAA Conference website at
    http://conference.collegeart.org/2011/
    January 11, 2011

    Remediating the Social:
    Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice Conference
    Invites Creative Works

    The Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice (ELMCIP) research project invites submissions for an electronic literature and digital arts commissioning program. Selected works will be presented in an exhibition and performance event as part of the ELMCIP project conference, Remediating the Social, to be held in Edinburgh, November 1-3, 2012, hosted by Edinburgh College of Art in collaboration with New Media Scotland and University College Falmouth within the framework of the ELMCIP research project.

    They welcome proposals for installations, artworks and performances that address how network-based creative practice can effect and reflect upon community formation and the role of creativity in social ontologies. Submitted works should engage "born digital" literary and artistic practices -- including works that employ generative, interactive, networked and/or hypermedia techniques. Works which could exist without the computer being involved in their production and diffusion will not be considered. Projects that engage "liveness" and the performative in media are especially welcome.

    Remediating the Social will be held at Inspace, a University of Edinburgh research and exhibition facility that facilitates engagement with developments in new technologies, scientific research and creative practice. The exhibition will continue during November, and in keeping with the theme, the conference will be e-cast to remote participants.

    The deadline for creative works is March 31, 2011.
    There will be a separate call for conference papers and presentations later in 2011.

    More information about the conference and details of how to submit work are available on the Conference website at http://www.elmcip.net/conference
    The ELMCIP Project

    Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice (ELMCIP) is a 3-year collaborative research project running from 2010-2013, funded by the Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA) JRP for Creativity and Innovation.

    "The project involves seven European academic research partners and one non-academic partner who will investigate how creative communities of practitioners form within a transnational and transcultural context in a globalized and distributed communication environment. Focusing on the electronic literature community in Europe as a model of networked creativity and innovation in practice, ELMCIP is intended both to study the formation and interactions of that community and also to further electronic literature research and practice in Europe."

    Partners include:

    The University of Bergen, Norway (PL Scott Rettberg, Co-I Jill Walker Rettberg)
    the Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland (PI Simon Biggs, Co-I Penny Travlou)
    Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden (PI Maria Engberg, Co-I Talan Memmott)
    The University of Amsterdam, Netherlands (PI Yra Van Dijk)
    The University of Ljubljana, Slovenia (PI Janez Strechovec),
    The University of Jyv,skyl,, Finland (PI Raine Koskimaa)
    and University College Falmouth at Dartington, England (PI Jerome Fletcher)
    and New Media Scotland.

    For more information, visit the project website at http://www.elmcip.net
    January 7, 2011

    New MIT Press Books: MediaArtHistories, Vocal Aesthetics in Digital Arts and Media, Persuasive Games and more

    Recent books from MIT Press cover a wide range of issues of interest to new media writers and artists.

    They include:

    • The Audio Programming Book
      edited by:
      Richard Boulanger, Professor of Electronic Production and Design at the Berklee College of Music
      and Victor Lazzarini, Senior Lecturer in the Music Department and Director of the Music Technology Laboratory, National University of Ireland, Maynooth
      Foreword by Max Mathews

    • Designing Media
      by Bill Moggridge, Director of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York City

    • Designing Sound
      by Andy Farnell, a computer scientist who specializes in digital audio signal processing and has worked as a sound effects programmer for BBC radio

    • Digital Media and Democracy
      Tactics in Hard Times
      edited by Megan Boler, Professor in Theory and Policy Studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

    • MediaArtHistories
      edited by Oliver Grau, Professor for Image Science and Dean of the Department for Cultural Studies, Danube University Krems
      with contributions by Rudolf Arnheim, Andreas Broeckmann, Ron Burnett, Edmond Couchot, Sean Cubitt, Dieter Daniels, Felice Frankel, Oliver Grau, Erkki Huhtamo, Douglas Kahn, Ryszard W. Kluszczynski, Machiko Kusahara, Timothy Lenoir, Lev Manovich, W. J. T. Mitchell, Gunalan Nadarajan, Christiane Paul, Louise Poissant, Edward A. Shanken, Barbara Maria Stafford and Peter Weibel

    • Persuasive Games
      The Expressive Power of Videogames
      by Ian Bogost, Associate Professor in the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture, at Georgia Institute of Technology and Founding Partner, Persuasive Games LLC

    • Video
      The Reflexive Medium
      by Yvonne Spielmann, Chair of New Media in the School of Media, Language and Music at the University of Paisley, Scotland

    • VOICE
      Vocal Aesthetics in Digital Arts and Media
      edited by:
      Norie Neumark, Professor of Media Studies, La Trobe University, Melbourne
      Ross Gibson, Professor of Contemporary Art, Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney
      Theo van Leeuwen, Professor of Media and Communication at University of Technology, Sydney
      Contributors: Mark Amerika, Isabelle Arvers, Giselle Beiguelman, Philip Brophy, Ross Gibson, Brandon LaBelle, Thomas Levin, Helen Macallan, Virginia Madsen, Meredith Morse, Norie Neumark, Andrew Plain, John Potts, Theresa M. Senft, Nermin Saybasili, Amanda Stewart, Axel Stockburger, Michael Taussig, Martin Thomas, Theo Van Leeuwen, Mark Ward 
    


December 22, 2010
    

    
2011 MLA Convention in Los Angeles to Feature 60 Panels on the Narration of Lives

    

The narration of lives is the Presidential Forum theme of the Modern Language Association
 Convention to be held  this year in Los Angeles from January 6-9, 2011. Among many panels of
 interest to the new media writing community in this comprehensive and remarkably interesting series 
of sessions are:

    

      

    • Literature and/as New Media
      
Presiding: Jon McKenzie, University of Wisconsin, Madison
      

Speakers: 
      
Sarah Allison, Stanford University;
      
N. Katherine Hayles, Duke University.;
      
 Richard E. Miller, Rutgers University, New Brunswick;
      
 Todd Samuel Presner,  University of California, Los Angeles;
      
 Craig J. Saper, University of Central Florida;
      
 Holly Willis, University. of Southern California; 
      
Michael L. Witmore, 
University of Wisconsin, Madison
      
      

"This session engages the nexus of literature and new media from several perspectives, ranging from emerging forms 
of electronic literature to computer-enabled modes of literary analysis to the broader implications of IT and new media 
for literary and cultural study..." 

      

    • Textual Scholarship and New Media
      
Presiding: Michael Eberle-Sinatra, Université de Montréal
      

"Comic Book Markup Language: An Introduction and Rationale" - John A. Walsh, Indiana University, Bloomington
      
"Crowdspeak: Mobile Telephony and TXTual Practice" -  Rita Raley, University of California, Santa Barbara
      
"Alternate Reality Games and Transmedia Textuality: Interpretive Play and the Immaterial Archive" -  Zach Whalen, University of Mary Washington
      

      

    • Electronic Literature: Off the Screen
      
Presiding: Jessica Pressman, Yale University
      



"A Pixel or a Grain of Sand: Jenny Holzer's Projections" - Leisha J. Jones, Penn State University
      
"Locative Narrative: Reorganizing Space in Mobile E-Literature" - Mark Marino, University of Southern California
      
"E-Literature as Event: Seeing Space and Time in Kinetic Typography" -  Jeremy Douglass, University of California, San Diego
      

      

    • Close Reading the Digital
      
Presiding: Jeremy Douglass, University of California, San Diego
      



"The Code of Hacktavism: A Critical Code Study Case Study" - Mark Marino, University of Southern California
      
"Close Reading Campaign Rhetorics: Procedurality and MyBarackObama.com - James J. Brown, Wayne State University
      
"Criminal Code: The Procedural Logic of Crime in Video Games" - Mark L. Sample, George Mason University
      
Respondent: Matthew Gary Kirschenbaum, University of Maryland, 
College Park
      

      

    • Sound Reproduction and the Literary
      
Presiding: Jentery Sayers, Univ. of Washington, Seattle
      

"Sound as Sensory Modality in Electronic Literature" - Dene M. Grigar, Washington State University, Vancouver
      
 "'Cause That's the Way the World Turns': John Edgar Wideman's Sent for You Yesterday and the Mnemonic Jukebox" - Jürgen  E. Grandt, Gainesville State College, GA
      
"Analog History: Kevin Young's To Repel Ghosts and the Textuality of the Turntable" - Paul Benzon, Temple University
      

      

    • Narrative Studies Today: Three Perspectives
      
Presiding: Susan S. Lanser, Brandeis University
      

"Are We There Yet? The Intersectional Future of (Feminist) Narratology" -  Susan S. Lanser
      
"Narrative and Authenticity"  - Elinor Ochs, University of California, Los Angeles
      
"Narrative Arc and Reader Choice" -  N. Katherine Hayles, Duke University
      

    

    

Other sessions of interest include:


      

    • Lives and Archives in Graphic and Digital Modes
      
Presiding: Julia Watson, Ohio State University, Columbus

      

    • In and out of the Archive: Biography, Autobiography, and Constructing the " Self"
      
Presiding: June Howard, University of Michigan,  Ann Arbor

      

    • Biographical Truth: Literary Biography and Experiments with Form
      
  Katharine Streip, Concordia University

      

    • The Lives That Digital Archives Write
      
Presiding: Ruth E. Mack, Univ. at Buffalo, State University of New York

      

    • Transmedial and Interdisciplinary Narrative Theory
      
Presideing: David Herman, Ohio State University, Columbus

      

    • Analog and Digital: Texts, Contexts, and Networks
      
Presiding: Victoria E. Szabo, Duke University

      

    • The Epistolary Poem in a Twentieth-Century Context
      
Presiding: Heather Treseler, American Academy of Arts and Sciences

      

    • The Grand Piano, An Experiment in Collective Autobiography: A Reading and Discussion
      
Presiding: Hélène Aji, Université Paris-Nanterre

      

    • Serial Narrative: Theory and Practice
      
Presiding: Steven J. Venturino, Loyola University, Chicago

      

    • New Thresholds of Interpretation? Paratexts in the Digital Age
      
Presiding: Dorothee Birke, Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies

      

    • Electronic Lives
      
Presiding: Alison Booth, University of Virginia

      

    • Literary Research in/and Digital Humanities
      
Presiding: James Raymond Kelly, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

      

    • Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE) and the Scholarly Edition
      
Presiding: Paul Werstine, University of Western Ontario

      

    • Old Media
      
Presiding: Kate Flint, Rutgers University, New Brunswick

      

    • The History and Future of the Digital Humanities
      
Presiding: Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Pomona College

    

    

    
The diversity of narrated lives is also primary at this year's MLA Convention with many interesting approaches -- 
from Silent Night: The Archives of the Deaf and Blind to Transmedial and Interdisciplinary Narrative Theory -- and including
among many others:

    

      


    • African Women Writers: Living New Lives, Telling New Stories


    • Autobiographies from the Arab World in European Languages

    • Crossing Genres, Connecting Centuries: Life Stories in the Celtic World

    • Feminist Transnational Spaces: Narrating Lives of Asian Women

    • Narrated Lives, Mediated Histories in the Oeuvre of Claude Lanzmann


    • Narrating Lives: An Indigenous Perspective

    • Personal Narratives of Home and Displacement: Mexico and the USA

    • Retheorizing Modernism in Yiddish Poetry

    • Still Connecting: A Queer Celebration of the Howards End Centennial


    • Toward a Pan-American Literature

    • Women Narrating Their Lives: The Feminine
as Agent and Icon of Textual Production





      

    
For complete information on the 2011 MLA Convention, visit


http://www.mla.org/convention

    
Digital Humanties sessions are listed on the 
Association for Computers and the Humanities website at


http://www.ach.org/mla/mla11/guide.html


    


    



December 9, 2010
    

    


SITE 2011 - Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education Conference to be Held in Nashville,
    
Calls for Presentations    
    

    


The 22nd Annual Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education Conference, SITE 2011, will be held from March 7 - 11 in Nashville, Tennessee.
With a focus on instructional technologies in teacher education programs, SITE promotes knowledge, research, and practice with conferences, books, projects, 
and the Journal of Technology and Teacher Education. SITE is a society of the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education. (AACE)

    
The Conference invites proposals on Information Technology and Teacher Education from all levels of education on topics related to:

    

      
   
    1. the use of information technology in teacher education, and
   
    2. instruction about information technology in

        
          
      •  Preservice
        
          
      • Inservice
        
          
      • Graduate Teacher Education
        
          
      • Faculty & Staff Development

      

    

Accepted papers will be published by AACE in the Conference Proceedings and internationally distributed via their online 


EdITLib - Education & Information Technology Digital Library. 

    
The deadline is January 3, 2011.

    
For complete information on the conference, visit


http://site.aace.org/conf/

    
The complete call for presentations is at


http://site.aace.org/conf/call.htm


    


    




November 29, 2010
    

    

Electronic Visualization and the Arts London 2011 Calls for Proposals


    

With a theme of new and emerging technologies and applications in visualization for the arts and culture, 
the Electronic Visualization and the Arts (EVA) London Conference 
-- to be held July 6-8, 2011 --
is calling for proposals on topics including visualizing ideas and concepts;
imaging and images in museums and galleries; digital performance;  music, sound, 
film and animation; digital and computational art and photography; and immersive environments,
as well as technologies of digitization; virtual and augmented worlds; technologies in art and
culture; and digital visualization of performance and music. The Conference is co-sponsored by the Computer Arts Society, 
a Special Interest Group of the British Computer Society,(BCS) and by the BCS. 

    
Proposals of papers, demonstrations or short performances, and workshops or panel discussions are invited.

    
The deadline for submitting proposals is January 15, 2011. 
    
For complete details, visit 


http://www.eva-conferences.com/eva_london/2011/call_for_proposals


    

    


    



November 23, 2010

    


Center for Digital Discourse and Culture 10th Anniversary E-book on the Digital Humanities
Available Online


    

Edited by Timothy W. Luke and Jeremy Hunsinger,
Putting Knowledge to Work and Letting Information Play: The Center for Digital Discourse and Culture
commemorates the 10th anniversary  of 

The Center for Digital Discourse and Culture -- located at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg --
with a series of papers by scholars, editors, and writers.

    
Available as free pdf download, 


the anniversary edition addresses issues and creativity in the digital humanities. 
Articles of particular interest to the new media writing community include 
"The New River: Collected Editors' Notes", by writer and editor Ed Falco et. al.,
that reviews the history of The New River, a seminal venue in the online literary publishing 
environment. (which in the early days of the World Wide Web also included the Eastgate Web Workshop and the 
literary journal The Blue Moon Review, among others)

    
Noting that since 1996 when, with the technical support of Len Hatfield, Falco posted the first issue of 
The New River, there has been a radical transformation in the widespread use of digital technology 
and emphasizing the influence/potential influence of artists and writers who have created work on computer screens
in contemporary literature and art, the article gives an overview of the new media literature
the journal has published, including the work of M.D.Coverley, Gita Hashemi, Rob Kendall, Deena Larsen, Stuart Moulthrop, Nick Montfort, 
and Stephanie Strickland, among many others.

    
Other articles with a new media writing and/or reading focus include: 

    
"The Pleasures of Collaboration"  by poet Thom Swiss, who describes his collaborative
web-based work, such as Hey Now which was created using Flash in collaboration with 
programmer/artist Motomichi Nakamura,  and talks about how collaborative processes 
allow readers and writers to look at their work in different, surprising, and pleasurable ways .

    
Jean-Claude Guédon
    
"What Can Technology Teach Us about Texts? (and Texts about Technology?)",
    
which includes an in depth discussion of e-book readers

    						
and

    
Brian Opie
     
Textscapes and Landscapes: A Settler Poet Goes On-Line
    
-- about putting online the New Zealand-based work of British poet William Golder

    
Putting Knowledge to Work and Letting Information Play: The Center for Digital Discourse and Culture
is available with a complete Table of Contents at 


http://www.cddc.vt.edu/10th-book/


    

    


November 10, 2010


    

    


Chicago Colloquium on Digital Humanities and Computer Science
    
Will Explore Current and Future Digital Humanities Research and Scholarship    

    

    

The Annual Chicago Colloquium on Digital Humanities and Computer Science -- 
which brings together researchers and scholars to look at current and future directions in
the digital humanities -- will be hosted by Northwestern University
from November 21-22 in Evanston, Illinois. In general, Chicago Colloquium papers focus on history and 
cultural histories, but many of the tools and approaches to be presented are of interest 
to writers and students in the new media literary arts.

    
In addition to papers on indexing and annotating texts, on digital preservation, and on 
virtual image repositories, papers of particular interest include: 

    

    

    
Doug Reside, Associate director of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities 
at the University of Maryland, who has worked on projects that include the Shakespeare Quartos Archive, 
the Ajax XML Encoder, (AXE) and Music Theatre Online will present a paper on "Linking Images of Text to Transcriptions"

    
and 
    
Brian Pytlik Zillig, (University of Nebraska Library) the creator of
the text analysis and visualization TokenX, will present a paper on
textual encoding and the textual pattern analysis environment MONK:
"TEI Texts that Play Nicely: Lessons of the MONK Project"
    

    
Featured speakers include Jon Orwant, (Google) who will speak on "Stuff and more things to do with it".
Respondents will include Neil Fraistat, Sarah Pritchard, and Jeremy York.

    
Information about the Chicago Colloquium is available at


http://chicagocolloquium.org

    
The program is available at


http://chicagocolloquium.org/dhcs-program-2010/




    


    


October 26, 2010


    

E-Poetry 2011 Announces Details; Calls for Proposals

    

"E-poetry is an artist-oriented gathering, in the tradition of the historic poetry festivals 
of the 20th century that influenced and advanced literary and arts communities in the past. 
Its community encompasses to countries across three continents, and it seeks to advance such 
a spirit of poetics, literary, and media arts practice into the digital present."

    
After Festivals in West Virginia, London, Paris, and Barcelona, the biennial E-Poetry 
-- an International event and dialog which focuses on emerging issues in digital, 
visual, sound, and language-based artistic/literary practice  --
will return to Buffalo, New York.  
Co-directed by new media poets Loss Pequeño Glazier, Department of Media Study, SUNY Buffalo,
and Sandy Baldwin, Center for Literary Computing, West Virginia University,


E-poetry 2011 will be held from May 18-21, 2011 at the State University of Buffalo.
The Festival will have a special focus on innovative/multicultural
 poetries, emerging younger artists, and 
artists from 
developing countries. 

    
E-Poetry 2011 has issued 

a Call for Papers with a "Take 1" deadline of November 1, 2010.

     
"In a traditional sense, there is no formal CFP for E-Poetry 2011," they note. "What we seek to achieve is a flexible and 
multi-formatted event e-poetry festival, celebrating the state of our art in its present moment. To this end, 
we seek proposals that directly reflect what you would like to express, in its most inventive sense. Thus, we encourage you 
to let your imagination be free." 

    
Due to the need for advance planning, they are asking that 
proposals be sent as soon as possible. Early submissions will receive preference.

    
For complete details on the Call for Papers, visit 


http://epc.buffalo.edu/e-poetry/2011/cfp.html

    
For more information about the Festival, visit 

http://epc.buffalo.edu/e-poetry/2011/about.html



    


    
 


October 22, 2010


    


Third International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling to Present
     
Papers on "Characters and Decision-making", "Story Generation", and Much More    
    

    


To be Held in Edinburgh, Scotland, from November 1-3, 2010,
the Third International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling
will be introduced on October 31 by an evening of language in digital performance at 

Inspace in Edinburgh -- with works
by Martin John Callanan, JR Carpenter, Jerome Fletcher, Donna Leishman, Mez, 
Stanza, and Christine Wilks.

    
Michael Mateas, Associate Professor, Computer Science Department at UC Santa Cruz, and co-creator of 
the interactive drama Façade, will lead off the Conference
with a talk that he describes in this way:

    
"Artificial Intelligence methods open up new possibilities in interactive storytelling, 
enabling the creation of believable characters with rich personalities and emotions, interactive
 story systems that incorporate player interaction into the construction of dynamic plots, and story 
generation systems that capture large and well-formed collections of potential stories. The goal of 
these approaches is not to replace human authorship, but rather to move human authorship to a meta-level, 
and thus to support a richness and depth of player interaction that is not otherwise possible. However,
 there are significant authoring challenges in creating AI-based 
interactive stories. This talk will describe current research efforts to support authors 
in telling stories in this new medium."

    
Other invited speakers are Alex Whittaker, We R Interactive, and 
Carl Heath, GR Experimental Learning, Sweden.

    
Beginning with a session on "Characters and Decision-making" that includes the following papers:

    
Richard Paul, Darryl Charles, Michael McNeill and David McSherry
    
" MIST: An Interactive Storytelling System with Variable Character Behavior"

    
Mei Si, Stacy Marsella and David Pynadath
    
"Importance of Well-motivated Characters in Interactive Narratives: An Empirical Evaluation"

    
Rui Figueiredo and Ana Paiva
    
"'I want to slay that Dragon!' - Influencing Choice in Interactive Storytelling",

    
the conference will also feature:

    

      

    • a session on "Story Evaluation and Analysis"
      
including, among others, Ulrike Spierling and Steve Hoffmann's paper on "Exploring Narrative Interpretation and Adaptation for Interactive 
Story Creation"

      

    • two sessions on "Story Generation", including, among others: 

      
Yoshiyuki Nakamura, Maiko Kobayakawa, Chisato Takami, Yuta Tsuruga, Hidekazu Kubota, Masahiro Hamasaki, Takuichi Nishimura and Takeshi Sunaga,
"Zuzie: Collaborative Storytelling Based on Multiple Compositions"
      
and
      
Wolfgang Mueller, Ido Aharon Iurgel, Nuno Otero and Ute Massler,
"Teaching English as a Second Language Utilizing Authoring Tools for Interactive Digital Storytelling "


      

    • sessions on "Arts and Humanities", "Narrative Theories and Modelling Systems", and "Systems",
and a concluding session on "Applications".

    

    
The complete program is available at 


http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/icids2010/Conference_Progamme.html


    
Registration is still open at:


http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/icids2010/Registration.html



    


    



October 16, 2010


    

New Books: Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7
    
and A Networked Self    
    

    

New books of interest to creators and teachers of new media literature include
Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7 by Aaron Reed and 
A Networked Self, Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites,
edited by Zizi Papacharissi.


    
Written by Aaron Reed, author of Sand-dancer and Blue Lacuna, an extensive interactive story, 
which Reed recently 
read/performed in prose and source code at the 2010 Electronic Literature Organization Conference
 at Brown University,

Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7
 (Course Technology PTR, 2010) includes a foreward by seminal adventure story programmer and creator Don Woods 
and closing thoughts by MUD pioneer Richard Bartle, the author of 


Designing Virtual Worlds. 


    
Originally created by British mathematician and poet Graham Nelson, 
Inform 7 is a natural language-based programming language and design system 
for the "Interactive Fiction" (IF) genre.  In addition to Aaron Reed's works, contemporary works authored in Inform 7 
include Emily Short's Galatea and Varicella by Adam Cadre.

    
Using Reed's work Sand-dancer as an example, Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7
looks at IF creation, including elements of design, construction, and testing. 

    
Visit 

http://inform7.textories.com for more information about the book.

    

    

In A Networked Self, Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites,
(Routledge, 2010) Zizi Papacharissi, Professor and Head of the Department of Communication
at the University of Illinois at Chicago, brings together scholars in different fields who 
look at issues of identity and community in online social networking communities.


    
Among many other papers, the book includes

    
"A Research Agenda for Technology Convergence"
    
by Joseph B. Walther, Professor, Department of Communication and
Department of Telecommunication,Information Studies & Media, Michigan State University,
    
Caleb Carr, Scott Seung W. Choi, David DeAndrea, Jinsuk Kim, Stephanie Tom Tong, and Brandon Van Der Heide

    
"Social Network Sites as Networked Publics: Affordances, Dynamics, and Implication"
    
by danah boyd, Social Media Researcher at Microsoft Research New England

    
"Social Network Sites as Virtual Communities"
    
by Malcolm R Parks,  University of Washington

    
"From Dabblers to Omnivores: A Typology of Social Network Site Usage"
    
by Eszter Hargittai and Yu-li Patrick Hsieh, Communication Studies Department Media, Technology & Society Program,
Northwestern University

    
"Working the Twittersphere: Microblogging as professional identity construction"
    
by Dawn Gilpin, Assistant Professor, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, Arizona State University

    
"Copyright, Fair Use and Social Networks"
    
by Patricia Aufderheide, Professor of Film and Media Arts, 
School of Communication, American University,
Washington, DC, and Director of the Center for Social Media

    
"Conclusion: A Networked Self"
    
by Zizi Papacharissi

    
For more information, visit 


http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415801812/





    

    




October 8, 2010


    

"Notes on the IF Community" from Post Position
    
"Interactive Poetry Generation Systems" on netpoetic.com
    
    

    


Blog resources continue to be important sources of information on 

electronic literature -- past and present. Two recent articles of interest 

are Nick Montfort's "Notes on the IF Community", posted on his blog,
 
Post Position, and Edde Addad's "Interactive Poetry Generation
 Systems: an Illustrated Overview", available on netpoetic.com.

    
"Notes on the IF Community"

    
Summarizing some thoughts he presented at the recent ELMCIP (Electronic Literature
as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice) Seminar, 
Nick Montfort presents an informed/informal look at what constitutes the classic definition of 
 "interactive fiction". (IF) Noting that in his dissertation he defined interactive
 fiction as: "A form of text-accepting, 
text-generating computer program that narrates what is happening in a simulated world in reply
to input from a user, or interactor...," he points out the differences between IF and other kinds
of electronic literature and looks at the history and resources of the IF community, including 
the 

IF Archive and  
The People's Republic of Interactive Fiction.

    
Nick Montfort is an Associate Professor of Digital Media in the Program in 
Writing and Humanistic Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 
Visit  

Post Position to read his recent thoughts on IF Fiction and more.

    

    

____________

    

    



The 

Bergen Seminar on Electronic Literature Communities, September 20-21, 2010 

    
Nick Montfort, 

Generating Narrative Variation in Interactive Fiction, Dissertation, 
University of Pennsylvania, 2007

    

Post Position home


    

    
"Interactive Poetry Generation Systems"

    
Netpoetic.com features a good addition to the literature of poetry and narrative generators:


"Interactive Poetry Generation Systems: an Illustrated Overview".

    
Written by computer scientist and writer Edde Addad, the article describes and provides graphic figures for 
selected contemporary poetry generators, including Gnoetry, ePoGeeS, JanusNode, and Mchain.
Addad also cites historical examples such as 


Christopher Stratchey's Love Letter Generator
and the Kurtzweil Cybernetic Poet. 

    
Visit 
"Interactive Poetry Generation Systems"
to read the article.

    

    
_____________

    

    


    


netpoetic.com is hosted by Jason Nelson and Davin Heckman.
More information about poetry generators is also available at 

Gnoetry Daily, which continues to document interactive 
poetry generation programs.

    
Historic poetry generators, including the Kurtzweil Cybernetic Poet, are documented by Cliff Pickover 
in Computers and the Imagination, NY: St Martin's Press, 1991. (The preprint that Pickover provided 
the Authoring Software editor in 1991 gives the title of the article as "Computer-Generated Poetry" and 
the pages as 317-322.)
A classic text on seminal computer-generated art and literature, which includes early computer-mediated 
text, as well as music and art, is Jasia Reichardt, Cybernetic Serendipity, NY, Praeger, 1969.



    

    


October 3, 2010
    

    

International Conference on Computational Creativity - Call for Papers


    

" Although it seems clear that creativity plays an important
role in developing intelligent computational systems, it is less 
clear how to model, simulate, or evaluate creativity in such 
systems," note the organizers of the 2nd International Conference on 
Computational Creativity. "In other words, it is often easier to recognize 
the presence and effect of creativity than to describe or prescribe it."

    
To be held in Mexico City from April 27-29, 2011, the 2nd International Conference on 
Computational Creativity will explore creativity in computational systems.
Of particular interest to the electronic literature community will be a look at software-mediated
creativity support that will include the creation of user interfaces, interaction design, 
decision support, and data modeling techniques that lead to the development of 
intelligent assistants. They are also calling for papers on authoring software for music, language, 
narrative, poetry, the arts, architecture and entertainment, among other applications. 


    
Original contributions are solicited in all areas related to 
computational creativity, including but not limited to:

    

      


    1. computational paradigms for understanding creativity, including heuristic search, 
analogical and meta-level reasoning, and re-representation;

    2. metrics, frameworks and formalizations for the evaluation of creativity in 
computational systems, note: quasi-formal approaches that, for example, argue for 
recognition without definition or that define the absence of creativity may 
have interesting implications for computational creativity);

    3. perspectives on computational creativity, including philosophy, models of cognition 
and human behavior, and intelligent systems;

    4. development and assessment of computational creativity-support tools;

    5. creativity-oriented computing in learning, teaching, and other 
aspects of education;

    6. innovation, improvisation and related pursuits investigating the production 
of novel experiences and artifacts within a computational framework;

    7. computational accounts of factors that enhance creativity, including emotion, 
surprise, unexpectedness), conflict, diversity, motivation, knowledge, intuition, 
reward structures, and technologies, e.g. modeling, simulation, human-in-the-loop, 
human/machine collaboration, etc.);

    8. computational treatment of social aspects of creativity, including the relationship between 
individual and social creativity, diffusion of ideas, collaboration and creativity, 
formation of creative teams, and creativity in social settings, e.g. modeling, simulation, 
human-in-the-loop, human/machine collaboration, etc.);

    9. specific applications, with a computational component) to music, language, narrative, poetry, 
the arts, architecture, entertainment, mathematical and scientific discovery, programming and/or design;

    10. detailed system descriptions of creative systems, including engineering difficulties 
faced, example sessions and artifacts produced, and applications of the system;

    11. domain-specific vs. generalized creativity -- does the domain of study affect, 
the perception of) creativity? Are there general, computational) creative principles that 
can be applied across domains?

    

    
The submission deadline is 2010. Complete details are available at


http://iccc11.cua.uam.mx

    



    




    




September 30, 2010


    

2011 ACM Hypertext Conference to Be Held in Eindhoven


    

The 22nd ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia will be held on June 6-9, 2011 
in Eindhoven, The Netherlands.

    
For over twenty years, the Association for Computing Machinery's ACM Hypertext Conference 
has presented core research and creative endeavor on hypermedia theory, hypermedia systems and practices, 
the development and sematics of the World Wide Web, Social Networking, hypernarrative, 
and collaborative hypermedia environments. For hypertext literature, the annual HT 
Conference has been a forum for authoring tools, interface, link strategies, 
navigation strategies, and the role of hypermedia in society, among many other topics.

    

HT 2011 Tracks will include: 


      

    • Dynamic and Computed Hypermedia, 

    • Emerging Structures and Ubiquitous Hypermedia

    • Social Media (Linking People and Things)

    • Interaction, Narrative, and Storytelling

    


    
Deadlines for submission of workshops and papers are:

    
December 29, 2010: Workshop/Tutorial submissions
    
January 29, 2011: Full and Short paper submissions
    
May 1, 2011: Poster/Demo submissions

    
For more information about the ACM Hypertext Conference, visit 


http://www.ht2011.org/index.html

    

    
For more information about ACM publications, news, and the important role of ACM in 
educational and scientific computing,
visit their website at 

http://www.acm.org

    


    

    




September 22, 2010


    

International Conference at the University of Liverpool to Focus
    
on Latin American New Media Poetry, Fiction, and Literary Blogs    
     

    

On May 19-20, 2011, the School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies at the University of Liverpool will 
host an International Conference on Latin American Cybercultural Studies:
Exploring New Paradigms and Analytical Approaches. The conference will focus on literary blogs, 
digital storytelling, digital poetry, hypertext novels, hypermedia fiction, net.art, 
and online performance art and will explore Latin American new media literature in a series 
of presentations as well as in workshops on hypermedia narrative and digital poetry,

    
Confirmed Speakers Include: Diego Bonilla, (California State University) Andrew Brown, 
(Washington University in St Louis) Debra Castillo, (Cornell University) 
Margaret Clarke, (University of Portsmouth) Luis Correa-Díaz,
(University of Georgia at Athens) Héctor Perea, (UNAM) Thea Pitman, 
(University of Leeds) and Scott Weintraub. (University of Georgia at Athens)

    
Papers are especially invited on, but are not restricted to:

       

    • Locality and Embeddedness in Hispanic Cyberliteratures 

    • Latin American Digital Poetry and Hypermedia Narratives 

    • Remixing and Mash-Ups in Latin American net.art 

    • Latin American Literature in the Age of Re-mediation and Inter-mediation 

    • Countering the Importation of Cybercultural Paradigms 

    • Research-Led Teaching in the Digital World

    

    
The instructions for submissions are listed as follows:

    
The organizers welcome proposals both for panels and for individual 20-minute papers, 
which may be given in English, Spanish or Portuguese. Alternative formats - round tables, 
discussion papers, work-in-progress, multimedia presentations - are positively encouraged, as are postgraduate submissions. 
Abstracts for individual papers should be between 300-350 words; proposals for panels should include panel title, 
names of panel members and abstracts. 

    
Abstracts and panel proposals should be sent by December 1, 2010 to the conference organizer, Dr Claire Taylor. (c.l.taylor@liv.ac.uk)

    
The complete call is available at:
     


http://www.dur.ac.uk/hispanists/lat-am-cybercultural.pdf
    

    

    



September 14, 2010


    

Authoring Software Begins a Continuing Look at Interface Design


    

This month, in the 
Tools and Applications section, Authoring Software
begins a continuing look at interface -- the way the reader (the "user" in computer technology) 
communicates with the work -- with a review of a classic text: The Art of Human-Computer 
Interface Design, edited by Brenda Laurel. The book is of interest both 
for the history of interface design and for an exploration of interface design, including 
conversational interfaces, animated interfaces, lessons from computer game design, color, audio,
personified agents, narrative guides, and much more. 

    
"If it is to be like magical paper, then it is the magical part that is all important 
and that must be most strongly attended to in the user interface design," 
Alan Kay writes about the computer screen in his chapter "User Interface: A Personal View". 

    
Visit 
Authoring Software's Tools and Applications page 
to find out more.


    

    


September 7, 2010


    


New Publications on the Digital Humanities, the Aesthetics
    
of Computer Art and Computer Games, and the Future of Electronic Books    
    

    

Recent Books look at issues of aesthetics in computer art and computer games;
at building an infrastructure for digital scholarly research; and at the role of 
electronic books in the digital humanities. They include:

    
Christine L. Borgman
    


Scholarship in the Digital Age Information, Infrastructure, and the Internet
    
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010

    

Christine Borgman is a Professor in Information Studies at the University of 
California, Los Angeles and the author of From Gutenberg to the Global Information Infrastructure: 
Access to Information in the Networked World. (also from MIT Press)

    

    
Dominic Lopes
    


A Philosophy of Computer Art
    
UK: Routledge, 2009

    

Dominic Lopes is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of
British Columbia and the editor (with Berys Gaut) of The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics.


    

    
David Myers
    


Play Redux: The Form of Computer Games
    
Ann Arbor, MI: digitalculturebooks, (a joint imprint of the University of Michigan Press and the 
Scholarly Publishing Office of the University of Michigan Library) 2010.

    

David Myers is a Professor at the School of Mass Communication, Loyola University New Orleans.
His books also include The Nature of Computer Games : Play as Semiosis. (P. Lang)

    

    
Catherine C. Marshall
    


Reading and Writing the Electronic Book
    
San Rafael, CA: Morgan & Claypool, 2009
    

    

Cathy Marshall is a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research Silicon Valley
and the author (with Judy Malloy) of Forward Anywhere. (Eastgate)



    

    


August 28, 2010


    

Critical Code Studies @ USC Explores Code and Writing


    

The Critical Code Studies 
project looks at code from a digital humanities point of view, applying literary methodologies to 
explore aspects of code that are symbolic, narrative focused, 
and/or extra-functional. 

    
Held at the University of Southern California (USC) on July 23, 2010,
Critical Code Studies @ USC was organized by new media writer Mark Marino, who teaches
writing at USC.
The Conference featured a Keynote by 


Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University.
and author of Programmed Visions: Software and Memory. 
(forthcoming from MIT Press in 2010)  Wendy Chun's background includes both systems design engineering 
and English literature, and in her work she explores issues of technology and culture, 
including the relationships between code, pop culture, race, new media, and the Internet. 

    
Conference papers will be available with conference videos.
In the meantime abstracts are available on the website at


http://criticalcodestudies.com/wordpress/abstracts

    
Several conference papers address advanced uses of authoring software in terms of writer/code
relationships or "literate" programming that focuses on documentation, human language, hypertextual 
structure and other approaches to code understanding. For instance, in Aaron Reed's abstract for
his paper "Knock's Memories: Creating an Emotional Story Space with Inform 7",
he discusses the creation of his 2010 Interactive fiction "Sand-dancer," 
using the literate Interactive fiction program, 
Inform 7.
"In the abstract, he notes, "I create this system 
in Inform 7 code and commentary which reveals the uniquely expressive power of the language for 
simultaneously building constructs in both story and code." 

    
In her abstract for an untitled paper on Domain-Specific Languages 
(an approach to software solutions for very specific uses) writer and programmer 

Marisa Plumb comments that 
"the expressive power of a programming language is directly  related to its utility 
and its creative role in molding narrative landscapes." In her paper, she looks at available authoring software
and suggests the benefits of using Domain-specific languages for optimizing a writer's relationship 
with her code-base, stating in the abstract that "On the whole, a desire to represent narrative spaces with code 
has driven my interest in programmatic approaches to narrative design, with a bias towards non-linear, 
imaginary narratives."

    
In the abstract for "When Relational Isn't Enough: Software Architectures for Scholarly 
Production", USC Institute for Multimedia Literacy faculty member, Craig Dietrich, observes 
that relational database structures developed for industrial applications aren't always 
completely applicable in humanities situations, and he approaches the challenges of software 
in the digital humanities with interesting examples of systems in development, such as 
a content manager based on Aboriginal cultural protocols; an art archive registry produced 
by the University of Maine's 

Still Water lab; Scalar, a media studies publishing platform 
by USC's Vectors Journal; and 


Magic, a system that annotates code with cultural material 
and cultural material with code.

    
Other abstracts of particular interest in the Authoring Software field are 

      

    • Elizabeth Losh
      
"Academic Discourse and Text Generators: Manifestos, Servers, Languages, and Code"

      

    • Nick Montfort, Patsy Baudoin, John Bell, Ian Bogost, Jeremy Douglass, 
Mary Flanagan, Mark Marino, Michael Mateas, Casey Reas, Warren Sack, Mark Sample, 
and Noah Vawter
      
"Studying Software by Porting and Reimplementation: A BASIC Case"

    

    
Critical Code Studies @ USC 
was hosted by The Center for Transformative Scholarship and The 
Institute for Multimedia Literacy.
For more information, visit Critical Code Studies at 


http://criticalcodestudies.com/wordpress


    

    



August 15, 2010

    

2011 Independent Games Festival to Include Mobile, Handheld, and 
Experimental Games 


    

Encouraging game development innovation and promoting independent game developers,
the 2011 Independent Games Festival will be held in San Francisco from February 28-March 4.

    
This year submission categories have been broadened to include mobile and handheld game developers, 
as well as an expanded focus on alternative and experimental game design.  

    
The deadlines for submissions are:

    
October 18, 2010 - for the Main Competition
    
November 1, 2010 - for the Student Competition

     
For more information, visit 

http://www.igf.com


    

    



August 2, 2010

    

Amy E. Earhart and Andrew Jewell, eds:
     
The American Literature Scholar in the Digital Age    
    

    


The American Literature Scholar in the Digital Age,
a forthcoming book from the University of Michigan Press, brings together experts in
American literary studies and digital technologies. Edited by Amy E. Earhart, Assistant Professor in the 
Department of English at Texas A&M University, and Andrew Jewell, Associate Professor of Digital Projects, 
University Libraries, at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the book includes articles on the development of tools, 
usability, editing and textual scholarship, digital librarianship and issues of race and ethnicity in 
digital humanities, among other issues. 

    
The American Literature Scholar in the Digital Age  will be available in November 2010.

    

    
Among many other titles of interest in this field from the University of Michigan Press are:

    
Joseph Turow and Lokman Tsui, eds.
    


The Hyperlinked Society: Questioning Connections in the Digital Age, 2008
    
and
    
Robert E. Cummings and Matt Barton, eds.
    


Wiki Writing: Collaborative Learning in the College Classroom, 2009

    
Both of which are published by 

digitalculturebooks -- an imprint of the University of Michigan Press and 
the Scholarly Publishing Office of the University of Michigan Library, which is working 
to publish work in the field of new media studies and the digital humanities. 


    

    


July 19, 2010

    

2010 International Digital Media Arts Association Conference to Focus on The Digital Narrative


    

Held from November 4-6, 2010 at Emily Carr University in Vancouver B.C.,
the 
International Digital Media Arts Association Conference 2010
will address "The Digital Narrative". 

    
The conference will feature keynote speakers, panels, papers, workshops, networking and social events, 
as well as a chance to explore innovative new media research and art in Vancouver's increasingly 
influential digital media industry and Emily Carr's state of the art
digital studios. 

    
Speakers will include Adrian Allene, Chief Technology Officer, United Media Partners; 
Fiona Bowie, Assistant Professor, Integrated Media, Emily Carr University; Gordon Durity, 
Studio Audio Director, Electronic Arts Canada; Carol Gigliotti, Associate Professor, 
Interactive Media and Critical and Cultural Studies, Emily Carr University; 
Amielle Lake, Founder/CEO, Tagga Media; Kenneth Newby, Media 
Artist and Researcher; Colleen Nystedt, Founder/President/CEO, MovieSet; Lisa Osborne
Founder, Jigsaw Global; and Ian Verchere, 
Artist/Designer in Residence, Design + Dynamic Media, Emily Carr University.

    
Information about the program, including a call for papers and artworks 
is available on the 

 website. The deadline for abstracts for papers is August 
30, 2010.


    

    


July 7, 2010

    
New Books on Flash and Dreamweaver Available in O'Reilly's Missing Manual Series

    

O'Reilly has released new Missing Manuals on Flash and Dreamweaver. 
They are:

    
Chris Grover
     

Flash CS5: The Missing Manual,
     
O'Reilly Media / Pogue Press, May 2010
    

    
Chris Grover is an experienced technical writer, who has also authored O'Reilly Missing Manuals on 
Word 2007 and Premiere Elements.

    
 A table of contents for Flash CS5: The Missing Manual 
is available at

http://oreilly.com/catalog/9781449380250/

    
and 

    
David Sawyer McFarland
    

Dreamweaver CS5: The Missing Manual,
    
O'Reilly Media, June 2010

    

    
A web developer since 1995, David Sawyer McFarland is president of the 
Portland-based web development company Sawyer McFarland Media. His experience 
also includes webmaster at the University of California at Berkeley,
the Berkeley Multimedia Research Center, and the CSS-driven redesign of 
Macworld.com. He teaches in the Portland State University multimedia program 
and is the author of Missing Manual titles on JavaScript. 

    
The table of contents for Dreamweaver CS5: The Missing Manual
is available at

http://oreilly.com/catalog/9781449381813/

    
According to O'Reilly, the books in the Missing Manual series are written with 
"enough clarity for the novice, and enough depth and detail for the power user."
Missing Manuals present an overview of the application, point
out bugs, and offer detailed professional coverage of each feature, including 
a comprehensive guide to commands and dialog boxes.


    

    


July, 2010

    
Featured Work: Intimate Alice by Kate Pullinger and Chris Joseph

    

Statements by writers and artists about how their work was created are
an important component of Authoring Software.  Not only do they 
inform writers about the work of their colleagues, but also they provide 
teachers, scholars, students, and readers with a way of looking at how new 
media literature is being created.

    
For instance, how new media writers use 

Adobe Flash in a variety of ways is illustrated in statements by writers
who use Flash as an integral part of the process: 

    
Mark Amerika
    
Alan Bigelow
     
Chris Joseph
    
Rob Kendall
    
Stuart Moulthrop
    
Alexander Mouton
    
Regina Pinto
    
Stephanie Strickland,
    
Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo
    
Nanette Wylde

    
July's featured work on Authoring Software is 


Inanimate Alice, created by Kate Pullinger and Chris Joseph, 
using Photoshop, Premiere, Sound Forge, Acid, and Flash. 

    
Kate Pullinger, who writes for print, digital media, radio, 
and film, is Reader in Creative Writing and New Media at De Montfort University.
Her 2009 novel The Mistress of Nothing received the Canadian Governor General's 
Literary Award for Fiction.

    
Digital writer Chris Joseph is the Editor of post-dada magazine and the 
network 391.org. In his contribution to Authoring Software, he explains 
how Flash was used to combine authoring elements and create and distribute 
the final work. He also addresses the reasons Flash was chosen, including a large user base;
"the relatively simple creation of randomized, non-linear and
interactive elements"; and access to a large variety of animation styles. Visit 


Chris Joseph's statement about Intimate Alice to find out more.

    


    
Writers work in many different ways. Thus, it is important to consider 
individual vision in designing a work of new media literature. 
Among the many alternatives to the use of Flash are those utilized by J.R. Carpenter 
in 
her statement about 
Entre Ville. Steve Ersinghaus writes about his use of Eastgate's Storyspace 
in
his statement on The Life of Geronimo Sandoval.
Mark Marino's use of the adaptive hypertext system Literatronica, 
created by Juan B. Guiterrez, is presented in 
his statement on a show of hands, 
and Joel Weishaus explains how he used Dreamweaver and Photoshop in 


his words about The Way North.


    

    


June 27-29, 2010


    
New and Forthcoming Publications Include Books by Mark Amerika;
    
Mark Bernstein and Diane Greco; Ruth Catlow, Marc Garrett,
    
and Corrado Morgana; Jörgen Schäfer and Peter Gendolla;
    
Adalaide Morris and Thomas Swiss; Jaishree Odin; and Noah Wardrip-Fruin    

    

Heralding a renewed interest in the creation, study, and criticism of computer-mediated narrative, poetry, and 
text, recent and forthcoming books have focused/will focus on new media poetics, hypertext, female imagery 
in creative hypertext, beyond the screen interfaces, computer gaming, and software studies.

      
They include:

    
Mark Amerika
    


META/DATA - A Digital Poetics, MIT Press, 2009

    
Mark Bernstein and Diane Greco, eds.
    


Reading Hypertext, Eastgate Systems, 2009

    
Ruth Catlow, Marc Garrett, Corrado Morgana
    


Artists Re: Thinking Games, Liverpool University Press, 2010
    
More information is on the 

Furtherfield.org website.


    

Adalaide Morris and Thomas Swiss, eds.
    


New Media Poetics - Contexts, Technotexts, and Theories
    
MIT Press, 2009    

    
Jaishree K. Odin
    


Hypertext and the Female Imaginary, University of Minnesota Press,
    
available October 2010    

    
Jörgen Schäfer and Peter Gendolla, eds,
    


Beyond the Screen  - Transformations of Literary Structures, 
    
Interfaces and Genres    , transcript, 2010    

    
Noah Wardrip-Fruin
    


Expressive Processing - Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and 
Software Studies, MIT Press 2009
    

    

    


June 17, 2010


    
Recent Articles on HTML5

    

Web-based works of art do not always conform to what web developers would 
consider useability issues, and the importance of the tools used by artists 
and writers to create their work and of continued support for existing web-based
literature and art may not be taken into consideration by the developers of HTML5. 
For instance, HTML5 could simplify the use of video on websites, but artists and writers 
should be aware of the potential impact on the support of Flash. Additionally, 
bookmarking issues may not be of primary interest to an artist who is using frames 
because frames allow flexible, specifiable display of different web content on one page, 
yet partially because of bookmarking issues, the support of frames may be minimal in 
HTML5. 

    
It will probably be quite a few years before HTML5 becomes the standard, but 
Authoring Software will begin looking at the issues for artists and writers,
probably setting up a section to keep readers current on the issues.

    
Meanwhile, here are links to some recent articles and resources.

    



"Microsoft Announces Hardware-Accelerated HTML5, Pushes Boundaries on Web and Cloud Development",
    
Microsoft News Center, March 16, 2010 

    
Apple
    

HTML5 Showcase

    
Matthew David
    


"Inside HTML5: The Browser becomes a first class RIA citizen",
    
O'Reilly InsideRIA, January 5, 2010

    
Kevin Lynch
    


Open Access to Content and Applications
    
Adobe Featured Blogs, February 2, 2010

    
Erick Schonfeld
    


Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch Defends Flash, Warns HTML5 Will Throw The Web "Back To The Dark Ages Of Video",
    
TechCrunch, February 2, 2010

    
Rich Tretola
    


"Adobe Adds HTML5 Support for Dreamweaver CS5",
    
O'Reilly InsideRIA, May 19, 2010
    

    


    


June 10, 2010


    

E-Poetry 2011 to be held in Buffalo

    

Returning to America, after Festivals in Barcelona, 
Paris, and London, E-Poetry 2011 will be held
in Buffalo where the historic


E-Poetry 2001 was held ten years ago.

     
E-Poetry is hosted by the 


Electronic Poetry Center, which is sponsored 
by the Department of Media Study in collaboration with the Department of English 
Poetics Program at the University at Buffalo, in collaboration with the 
Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing and the Department of English at 
the University of Pennsylvania. 

    
Details are forthcoming.


    

    


June 3-6, 2010


    

Archive and Innovate


    

The biennial conference of The Electronic Literature Organization takes 
place June 3-6, 2010 at Brown University.

     
This year's 

4th International Conference & Festival of the Electronic
Literature Organization honors 

Robert Coover, as well as addressing
the issues of archiving and innovation. "Seeded speakers" are Adalaide Morris,
Alan Sondheim, Bill Seaman, Francisco Ricardo, Friedrich Block,
George Landow, Jessica Pressman, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Penny Florence,
Rita Raley, Scott Rettberg, Talan Memmott, and Wendy Chun.

    
It is a good time to be thinking about the future of computer-mediated
literature while at the same time, we celebrate the continuing work
of pioneers.



    

    


May 30, 2010


    

International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling
    
Invites Submissions for Digital Text Performances at the
    
 University of Edinburgh    
    

    

For Language in Digital Performance. the 


Third International Conference on Interactive
Digital Storytelling, in conjunction with New Media Scotland,
is inviting proposals for performance and short duration installation art works 
in which digital text and interactivity are the primary artistic components, 
including computer-mediated works that utilize generative, interactive, 
networked and/or hypermedia techniques. 

    
Submission Deadline: July 31, 2010. Details are available 

here

    
Performances: October, 31, 2010, Inspace, University of Edinburgh, UK
    
Conference: November 1-3, 2010, The Hub, Edinburgh, UK
    

    
"The performance event will be held on Halloween.
     
The proposals may wish to engage the spirit of this festival," they note.
    


    

    



May 24, 2010

    


Stanford Selected to host Digital Humanities 2011

    

    


SDH-SEMI in Montreal to Feature Hypertext Performance
    
and Papers on Computer-Mediated Narrative    

    




SDH-semi, the annual conference of the Canadian-based Society for 
    
Digital Humanities / Société pour l'étude des médias interactifs
    
will be held in Montreal from May 31 - June 2, 2010.

    
Among the papers of particular interest to the Authoring Software constituency are: 

      

    • Ray Siemens: "Research Foundations for Understanding Books and Reading in the Digital Age"

    • Susan Brown: "Digging the Poetess: Exploring Social Networks in Orlando"

    • Richard Cunningham, Paul Caton, Alan Galey, Brent Nelson, Ray Siemens, and Paul Werstine:
"The Architecture of the Book for a Digital Age" 

    • Sandra Gabriele, Stéfan Sinclair, Jennifer Roberts-Smith, Stan Ruecker, Omar Rodriguez,
Marcelo Hong, "From Surface to Space: Adding a Dimension to a Theatrical Visualization Interface"

    • Carolyn Guertin: _iStoreys_ c: Creating an augmented, psychogeographic narrative app

    • Jon Saklofske, "Corrected Misunderstandings: Fortifying connections between Game Studies, 
Literary Studies and the Digital Humanities"

    • Marc Plamondon: Echoes of the Elizabethan Poetic Past: Computational Phonostylistics using Bigrams, Trigrams, and Syllabic Components

    

    
The Conference will also include A Hypertext Performance of Joanna Baillie's 
Witchcraft (Joint Session with Canadian Association for Theatre Research)
followed by commentaries by Patrick Leroux and Michael Eberle-Sinatra



    

    


May 21, 2010


    


New Electronic  Journal from EPC to Include Digital Poetry,
Media Theory, Textual Experimentation, and Creative Gaming


    


In Buffalo, NY, The Electronic Poetry Center in Buffalo announces 

Emerging Language Practices, (ELP)
a new electronic journal, produced in collaboration with SUNY Buffalo's
series of International E-Poetry Festivals. ELP will include digital poetry,
media theory, textual experimentation, and creative gaming. 

    
The Executive Editor is Loss Pequeño Glazier and the Editor-in-Chief
is Sarah JM Kolberg. Submissions for the Fall, 2010 issue are due
September 1, 2010.


    

    


Critical Code Studies to Host One Day Conference at USC in July


    


On 

Critical Code Studies, Mark Marino announces a one day conference
at the University of Southern California on July 23, 2010. Hosted by The Center
for Transformative Scholarship & The Institute for Multimedia Literacy, the
conference will feature Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Brown University, as Keynote Speaker. 




    

    
 

    


Authoring Software News Archive



    

    
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Index



    




Writers and Artists
    
Talk about Their Work
     
and the Software They
    
use to Create Their Work    
    
    

    

    



Mark Amerika
    

Stefan Muller Arisona
    
Mark Bernstein:

__Interview wirh Mark Bernstein
    

Alan Bigelow
     

Jay Bushman
    

J. R. Carpenter
    

M.D. Coverley
     

Steve Ersinghaus
    

Caitlin Fisher
    

Chris Funkhouser
    

Susan M. Gibb
    

Dene Grigar
     

Fox Harrell
    

Dylan Harris
    

William Harris
    

Ian Hatcher
    

Adriene Jenik
    

Chris Joseph
    
Rob Kendall
    
Antoinette LaFarge
    
Deena Larsen
    

Donna Leishman
    

Judy Malloy
    
Mark C. Marino
    
Mez
    
Ethan Miller
    
Nick Montfort
    
__and Stephanie Strickland
     
Judd Morrissey
    

Stuart Moulthrop
    
__
Interview with
     Stuart Moulthrop
    
    Alexander Mouton
    
Karen O'Rourke
      

Regina Pinto
    

Andrew Plotkin
    
Kate Pullinger
     
Sonya Rapoport:
     

__Interview with
     Sonya Rapoport
    
Aaron Reed
     
Scott Rettberg
     
Jim Rosenberg
      

Stephanie Strickland
    
and Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo
    
__Nick Montfort and Stephanie Strickland
     

Sue Thomas
    
Eugenio Tisselli 
    
Noah Wardrip-Fruin
    

Joel Weishaus
    

Nanette Wylde