ELO is delighted to announce the addition of three new Board Members: Lyle Skains, Shanmugapriya T, and Zach Whalen.  Each will contribute an extensive set of skills, expertise, and creativity to the all-volunteer board.  At the same time, we say farewell and thanks to outgoing Board Members Anna Nacher and Mark Sample who have contributed so much to our community.  ELO President Caitlin Fisher said to the new members, “We are thrilled to have these new Board Members  join us and look forward to working with them. I want to express gratitude for their willingness to serve and admiration for the talents they bring. ” ELO Board Members serve on three-year renewable terms.

Below are biographies of our newest members! The full Board is here.

Image by Grafic House – www.grafichouse.co.uk – 07903809884

Lyle Skains is an award-winning researcher and creative practitioner in Creative Digital Writing and Science Communication. She conducts practice-based research into writing, reading/playing, publishing digital and transmedia narratives, and how these can be used for health and science communication. Her recent digital fiction includes ‘No World 4 Tomorrow’ for the You & CO2 project, and ‘Only, Always, Never’ for the Infectious Storytelling project; both works were designed to effect social change. She is the founder of Wonderbox Publishing, which publishes speculative digital fiction, aiming to explore innovations in digital and online publishing and creativity. She is also the coordinator of the New Media Writing Prize, and an editor of the Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 4. Her digital fiction can be found at lyleskains.com; articles in Convergence, Digital Creativity, and Computers and Composition; and books with Cambridge UP (Digital Authorship), Emerald (Using Interactive Digital Narrative for Health and Science Communication) and Bloomsbury (Neverending Stories: The Popular Emergence of Digital Fiction). ‘Neverending Stories’ was awarded the N. Katherine Hayles Prize for Criticism in Electronic Literature in 2023 by the Electronic Literature Organization. Currently an Associate Professor in Literary Media and Health & Science Communication at Bournemouth University, she has demonstrated remarkable engagement within the electronic literature community by actively participating in numerous initiatives.

Shanmugapriya T is an Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities and Digital Literature in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT (ISM) Dhanbad. She was a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC) (2022–2024) and an AHRC Postdoctoral Research Associate at Lancaster University, UK (2020–2021). During her postdoctoral work at Lancaster and UTSC,  she applied digital humanities techniques to study environmental degradation, particularly water systems in Coimbatore, South India, from British colonial times to the present. She created an interactive map using Leaflet and ArcGIS to track the transformation of water tanks in British India’s Coimbatore region and developed Lost Water, Remainscape!, a digital poetry that blends 3D environments, maps, and oral testimonies. She curated her students’ digital-born creative works on her website. Shanmu’s research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of digital humanities, digital environmental studies, and digital literature, focusing on South Asia, colonial and postcolonial studies, text mining, mapping, and digital-born creative works. She earned her Ph.D. in Indian English Literature and Digital Humanities at the Indian Institute of Technology Indore, India. She is an interim executive committee and Governing Body member of DHARTI, as well as a Research Fellow and member of the Electronic Literature Organization, and was a SPARC Fellow at Lancaster University (2019). She is one of the Peer Reviews Editors of the journal Digital Humanities Quarterly. Shanmu curated the first Indian Electronic Literature Anthology Volume 1 along with Nirmala Menon, Justy Joesph and Deborah Sutton.

Zach Whalen is an Associate Professor at the University of Mary Washington where he teaches courses on creative coding, game studies, comics, and electronic literature. He is the co-editor (with Chris Foss and Jonathan W. Gray) of Disability in Comic Books and Graphic Narratives and (with Laurie N. Taylor) of Playing the Past: History and Nostalgia in Video Games. He is completing a scholarly monograph on computer-generated literary and artistic books. In addition to research and writing about electronic literature, Zach is a practitioner of computational creativity including tiny digital poems in Taper, several dozen artistic or literary Twitter bots (all now defunct), and the graphic novel An Arthrogram. He is also an annual contributor to NaNoGenMo (National Novel Generation Month) and a member of the Community Advisory Board for If, Then: Technology and Poetics.

(from coordinators Jason Nelson and Alinta Krauth)

We are very excited to say the ELO Awards have just been announced at this year’s conference. We will be posting the judges comments, links and other details on the conference and ELO websites soon. But we wanted to announce the winner’s names now! So here we go: The Marjorie C. Luesebrink Career Achievement Award: Winner: Dene Grigar Videos honouring Dene: https://www.youtube.com/playlist… Luesebrink Judges: Stephanie Strickland, Maria Engberg, Lai-Tze Fan The Robert Coover Award for a work of Electronic Literature: Winner: Halim Madi – Borderline Runner Up: Margot Machado – Seeing Honourable Mentions: Lee Tusman – Exocolony The Marino family – Unboxing: Mrs. Wobbles and the Tangerine House Fernando Montes Vera – VideoDreams Robert Coover Award Judges: Lyle Skains, Florence Walker, Kwabena Opoku-Agyemang The Maverick Award: Winner: Allison Parrish. The Maverick Award Judges: Talan Memmott, Deena Larsen, Chris Funkhouser, Erik Zepka The N Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature: Winner: Hannes Bajohr – Artificial and Post-Artificial Texts: On Machine Learning and the Reading Expectations Towards Literary and Non-Literary Writing Runner-up: Malthe Stavning Erslev – Machine Mimesis: Electronic Literature at the Intersection of Human and Computer Imitation Honorable mentions: Alessandro Ludovico – Tactical Publishing: Using Senses, Software, and Archives in the Twenty-First Century Simone Murray – The Short Story in the Age of the Internet

The Electronic Literature Organization is proud to offer the following four prestigious awards:

• The Robert Coover Award for a Work of Electronic Literature,
• The N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature
• The Marjorie C. Luesebrink Career Achievement Award
• The Maverick Award

2024 nominations are currently open through April 15, 2024 and you are welcome to self-nominate for the Robert Coover and N. Katherine Hayles awards. Submit your nomination here.

Winners will be announced at ELO 2024 during our online conference.

The Robert Coover Award for a Work of Electronic Literature is an award given for the best work of electronic literature of any length or genre. Bestowed by the Electronic Literature Organization and funded through a generous donation from supporters and members of the ELO, this annual prize aims to recognize creative excellence. The Prize for 1st Place comes with a $1000 award, with a plaque showing the name of the winner and an acknowledgement of the achievement, and a one-year membership in the Electronic Literature Organization at the Associate Level. One prize for Honorable Mention is awarded and consists of a plaque showing the name of the winner and an acknowledgement of the achievement, and a one-year membership in the Electronic Literature Organization at the Associate Level.

The N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature is an award given for the best work of criticism, of any length, on the topic of electronic literature. Bestowed by the Electronic Literature Organization and funded through a generous donation from N. Katherine Hayles and others, this annual prize recognizes excellence in the field. The Prize for 1st Place comes with a $1000 award, with a plaque showing the name of the winner and an acknowledgement of the achievement, and a one-year membership in the Electronic Literature Organization at the Associate Level. One prize for Honorable Mention is awarded and consists of a plaque showing the name of the winner and an acknowledgement of the achievement, and a one-year membership in the Electronic Literature Organization at the Associate Level.

The Marjorie C. Luesebrink Career Achievement Award honors a visionary artist and/or scholar who has brought excellence to the field of electronic literature and has inspired others to help create and build the field. Bestowed by the Electronic Literature Organization and funded through a generous donation, it comes with a $1000 award that can go directly to the awardee or to a young scholar who would use the funds in support of developing content for online sources about the awardee’s achievements; a plaque showing the name of the winner and an acknowledgement of the achievement; and a one-year membership in the Electronic Literature Organization at the Associate Level. (No self-nominations for this award.)

The Maverick Award honors an independent spirit: a writer, artist, researcher, programmer, designer, performer, or hybrid creator who does not adhere to a conventional path but creates their own and in so doing makes a singular contribution to the field of electronic literature. (No self-nominations for this award.)

For more information about the Awards, contact Holly Slocum, at holly at eliterature.org.

ELO Conference: Access Works
January 18-19, 2024
online

Please join in on our (Un)conference, Access Works! Two days of informal, interactive discussions and workshops to find ways to extend access to electronic literature for all. We will be global and online—come and join the discussion when you are awake!

Electronic literature uses games, images, videos, sounds, links, navigation, and other digital qualities as an essential part of the reading experience. What can we do to make these experiences more accessible: financially, technologically, physically, internationally?

Registration is free with a current Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) membership.

Register for the UnConference

Program

This will be a 24-hour (un)conference with world-wide moderators. See the full schedule: tinyurl.com/ELoJan18-192024. Below are some highlights of what there is to look forward to.

Keynote Interactive Discussions Access to and from Commercialized Platforms

Lai-Tze Fan will explore the asymmetry of access and accessibility in commercialized computational platforms, including those used to create and support electronic literature. As more and more platforms are restricting users’ and third-party developers’ access to code, databases, and application programming interfaces, Fan discusses social implications that may include misinformation, copyright restrictions, and biases in communication and technological literacy. What kinds of information and knowledge may still be accessed?

Barriers to Electronic Literature Works in India

Shanmugapriya T will address barriers in electronic works within the South Asian realm, with a focus on India. Shanmugapriya T is a Digital Humanities Postdoctoral Scholar at the Department of Historical and Cultural Studies (HCS) at University of Toronto. implications that may include misinformation, copyright restrictions, and biases in communication and technological literacy. What kinds of information and knowledge may still be accessed?

 

Virtual Tours Microsoft’s Inclusive Tech Lab

microsoft.com/en-us/inclusive-tech-lab

During the tour we will share the history of the lab, explore how we intentionally designed the space to be accessible, discuss our inclusive design process, and showcase a selection of Microsoft’s accessibility hardware and software products.

Electronic Literature Lab’s The NEXT

the-next.eliterature.org

During the tour we will explore the accessible features and works of The NEXT and discuss best practices for accessibility in sharing, archiving, and preserving electronic literature.

Demonstrations Internet in a box

An innovative hard drive to share knowledge and works in places without the internet.

Inky

inky.com

A free open-source authoring platform for writing branching narratives and dynamic text. The talk will be informed by the research and writing that went into Creating Playable Stories with Ink and Inky, an online open-education resource.

The Worlding Difference Knowledge Platform

revisioncentre.ca

Re•Vision: The Centre for Art and Social Justice will showcase the Worlding Difference Knowledge Platform, a cutting-edge, web-based platform featuring art and scholarship from the Bodies in Translation (BIT) research grant. This lively, digital born, multimedia teaching and learning platform will test the boundaries of multimedia scholarship and academic publishing.

Workshops and Roundtables Tangled Arts

tangledarts.org

Tangled Arts will lead a workshop on Social Media Accessibility noting the various areas that need attention when creating accessible digital platforms (screen reader compatibility, alt text, image descriptions, audio descriptions, etc.)

Innovative Teaching Techniques for Electronic Literature

By sharing ways in which Electronic Literature lends itself to pedagogical experimentation, this roundtable will allow instructors to learn from one another.

Co-authoring Accessible Bits

ELO’s guide to Accessibility and Spreading the Word with Astrid Ensslin. Accessible Bits is a draft proposal for ensuring electronic literature works are accessible. Electronic literature writers love to play around the edges and push the boundaries of software. How can we engage in innovative practices while ensuring access? How can we spread the word about access and electronic literature? How can we increase visibility through documentation, analysis, and scholarship? Who can we partner with and reach out to?

But wait, there’s more!

We’ll also engage in discussions around low-vision designs (Patrick Lichty), AI issues (Vinicius Marquet), linguistic experiments (David Van Duzer) and so much more! Look forward to the full schedule releasing on December 18, 2023.

Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) Conference and Media Festival

2024 – Virtual – Call for Proposals – #ELOnline

SUBMIT NOW!

We invite submissions for presentations, performances, and exhibition pieces at the annual Electronic Literature Organization Conference and Media Arts Festival (ELO), to be hosted fully online July 18-21, 2024 by a team based at the University of Central Florida with collaborators around the world.

ELOnline 2024’s theme is (Un)linked. We particularly encourage submissions that center on the web as a contested platform of community and computational creativity, with attention to both dystopian shifts (such as the slow demise of the platform formerly known as Twitter) and hopeful futures. As part of this theme, we invite submissions across all formats considering the 15th-ish anniversary of Twine and more broadly exploring the trajectories of hypertext and the web as a site of electronic literature making, community, and futures. Topics of particular interest include:

• Utopian and Dystopian Imaginaries
• Platform Deaths and Migrations
• Sustainable Electronic Literature
• Queer, Feminist, and Anti-Racist Pedagogies and Practices
• Computational Creativity and Generative AI
• Twine and Hypertext Fictions
• Critical Making and E-Lit in Digital Humanities
• Literary Games and Interactive Fiction Futures
• Mixed, Alternate, Augmented, and Virtual Realities

Submissions are welcome in the following categories:

• Panels. Panels or roundtables of 3 to 6 participants are welcome. We encourage groups proposing panels to prioritize engaging formats, rather than simply organizing a series of long talks. Panels will be scheduled live on Zoom in 75 minute blocks. For panel submissions, please provide a 350 – 500-word abstract of the session, anonymized for peer review.
• Individual Talks. Individual talks (10 to 12 minutes) will be organized into sessions based on common themes. For an individual talk, please provide a 250-300 word individual abstract, anonymized for peer review.
• Workshops. Workshops focused on specific skills, technologies, platforms, and techniques of interest to practitioners and/or scholars of electronic literature are welcome. For a workshop, please provide a 250-300 word individual abstract, anonymized for peer review, and any details about needs or timeslot requirements.
• Performances. Due to the online-only format of the conference, all performances should be suitable for Zoom, and participants are particularly encouraged to make use of the distant modality and interface as part of their performance. For performance submissions, please provide a 350 – 500-word artist statement detailing the aesthetic intentions and structure of the piece. Statements should be anonymized for peer review. Performers should keep in mind the constraints of a 10 to 15-minute time slot.
• Online Exhibition. Due to the online-only format of the conference, all exhibition pieces must be designed for web deployment using web standard technologies and hosted on UCF’s server space. We particularly encourage work engaging thoughtfully with the constraints and affordances of the web, and pointing towards the past, present, and imagined futures of hypertext literature. For exhibition submissions, please provide a 350 – 500-word artist statement detailing the aesthetic intentions and structure of the piece. If available, please provide a URL of the work or a demonstration of the concept in-progress.
• Experimental Track. The experimental track invites participants to propose alternative platforms and modalities for sessions, ranging from text chat to in-game meetings. Hosts of experimental track sessions are responsible for access and moderation to their proposed platform for the duration of their sessions, and are asked to consider the environmental impact and accessibility of their approach as a means for exploring future conference modalities and opportunities. For experimental track proposals, please provide a 350 – 500-word abstract of the session, anonymized for peer review.

Our submission portal at https://stars.library.ucf.edu/elo2024/ are open January 1st, 2024 through February 15th, 2024. Notice of acceptances will be distributed by March 15h.

SUBMIT NOW!

All participants will be invited to submit a longer proceedings paper for publication in the UCF STARS repository (indexed via Google Scholar); however, this type of submission is not required. All conference sessions will be recorded and made available open access in the UCF STARS Repository.

 

Cost and Impact

This fully online iteration of ELO is developed in response to concerns raised both within the community and more broadly regarding the environmental impact, accessibility, and affordability of academic conferences. Our approach is intended to reflect an intentional, impact-conscious, approach using established platforms (Zoom, Discord, and the STARS Repository) and minimizing cost both to the organizers and participants.

Membership is not required to submit to the conference. However, all conference participants will be required to join the ELO, with membership fees payable directly to the organization. There is no additional conference registration fee beyond dues: however, those able to do so are encouraged to donate to ELO in lieu of registration.

Questions?

Please direct all queries to the conference co-chairs: Anastasia Salter (anastasia@ucf.edu) and John Murray (jtm@ucf.edu) or exhibition and performance questions to Lyle Skains (lskains@bournemouth.ac.uk)

We’re excited to announce that this year’s Electronic Literature Organization Conference will be fully online July 18-21 2024, hosted by UCF and colleagues from around the world. Our team is committed to crafting an intentional, impact-conscious, conference using established platforms and minimizing cost both to the organizers and participants. We hope this will provide an opportunity to come together (virtually) and reflect on paths forward during difficult times.

Please keep an eye out for our CFP, coming December 1st!

2023 ELO AWARDS The Robert Coover Award for a Work of Electronic Literature

Winner: “Anonymous Animal ” by Everest Pipkin

From the jury statement: “This intricately crafted artwork offers a distinctive 15-minute durational browser poem that operates on an hourly cycle … This artwork attests to the power of electronic literature to provoke thought, evoke emotions, and offer unique insights into the human condition and our shifting relationships with technology.

______________________

Runner-up: “The (m)Otherhood of Meep (the bat translator)” by Alinta Krauth

From the jury statement: “This work sits at a perfect nexus of co-creation, algorithm-driven literature, and emergent text. That it is co-created not only with other humans, but primarily with another species altogether—bats—is truly remarkable … “The (m)Otherhood of Meep (the bat translator)” is a beautiful and meaningful convergence of science, literature, and human-computer interaction. It serves as an example of what amazing good we can do with our work.

­­_________________

Honorable Mention: “The Decameron 2.0” by The Decameron Collective:

Jolene Armstrong, Kelly Egan, Lai-Tze Fan, Caitlin Fisher, Angela Joose, Kari Maaren, Shi-vawn Of-len, Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof, and Monique Tschofen

From the jury statement: “The Decameron 2.0” is a product of plague. Like Giovanni Boccaccio’s bebonic-plague narrative that inspired it, it is a work that arises from and conveys the experiences of the Covid-19 pandemic. The “collective” creators co-created a storyworld that can be explored through 100 works of experimental multimedia poetry… “The Decameron 2.0” not only stands out as an artistic, fun, compelling, and highly affective world of electronic literature, but also as a historical record (an archive indeed) of women during the Covid-19 pandemic.

_______________________

The N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature

Winner: “Neverending Stories: The Popular Emergence of Digital Fiction” by Lyle Skains

From the jury statement: “The book is a granular exploration of both the evolution of digital fiction and its impact on (and positioning in) popular culture. The author’s focus on marginalized authors/creators, as well as reframing accepted aspects of digital fiction, sets their work apart. Skains does more than justice to a complex topic with her ambitious work spanning over half a century of digital literature development.”

____________________

Runner up: “Opera aperta: Italian Electronic Literature from the 1960s to the Present” by Emanuela Patti

From the jury statement: “The author methodically develops a theoretical framework based on Umberto Eco’s ‘open work’ concept and applies this framework to analyze a diverse range of literary and artistic forms. The book’s argument is deeply rooted in a thoughtful examination of the digital revolution in Italy and its transformative impact on avant-garde literary production.”

_________________

Honorable mention: “Girl Online” by Joanna Walsh

From the jury statement: “a profound exploration of the intricate dynamics of online identity with a direct focus on the experiences of women. The book delves into the challenges and opportunities that arise from the process of self-creation in the digital realm … The book’s strength lies in its ability to resonate on a deeply personal level while maintaining scholarly rigor.”

_____________________

The Marjorie C. Luesebrink Career Achievement Award.

Stephanie Strickland

The jury statement reads: “Stephanie Strickland is a renowned poet whose influence in the field of electronic literature cannot be overstated. Her for-midable critical and creative practices span decades, with pioneering work in hypertext, generative and multimodal digital formats … Strickland has cultivated and shaped the field of electronic literature as we know it today, growing a broader community of creative and critical practice, and inspiring others to appreciate, and often follow, these resonant lines of poetic inquiry and insight.”

Maverick Award

Deena Larsen

Deena Larsen has been a pioneer in electronic literature for over three decades.  From her first work Marble Springs to her most recent collaborations, she has been sculpting new forms of digital art.  Spanning genres from hypertext to interactive bots to e-poetry, Larsen’s extensive collection of works includes Andromeda and Eliza, Playing with Rose, Modern Moral Fairytales, and Firefly.  Dedicated to community building, since 2020, Larsen has been hosting Second Tuesday Salons and other events for ELO,  welcoming new members and creating new venues to explore and celebrate to creative projects and scholarship.  She has also co-hosted the first ever ELO Unconference and plans to host the second under the theme Access Works in January 2024, continuing her advocacy for a more inclusive and accessible e-lit world.  Larsen’s archive is at University of Maryland, where among other wonders, scholars can find a shower curtain on which she composed a hypertext. Larsen continues to find new ground, welcoming newcomers even as she discovers it.

The Electronic Literature Organization is proud to offer the following three prestigious awards:

• The Robert Coover Award for a Work of Electronic Literature,
• The N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature, and
• The Marjorie C. Luesebrink Career Achievement Award.
• The Maverick Award

2023 nominations are currently open through May 1, 2023.  You may self-nominate for the Robert Coover and N. Katherine Hayles awards but not for the Marjorie Luesebrink or Maverick awards. Submit your nomination here.

Winners will be announced online and in-person at ELO 2023 in Coimbra, Portugal!

The Robert Coover Award for a Work of Electronic Literature is an award given for the best work of electronic literature of any length or genre. Bestowed by the Electronic Literature Organization and funded through a generous donation from supporters and members of the ELO, this annual prize aims to recognize creative excellence. The Prize for 1st Place comes with a $1000 award, with a plaque showing the name of the winner and an acknowledgement of the achievement, and a one-year membership in the Electronic Literature Organization at the Associate Level. One prize for Honorable Mention is awarded and consists of a plaque showing the name of the winner and an acknowledgement of the achievement, and a one-year membership in the Electronic Literature Organization at the Associate Level.

The N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature is an award given for the best work of criticism, of any length, on the topic of electronic literature. Bestowed by the Electronic Literature Organization and funded through a generous donation from N. Katherine Hayles and others, this annual prize recognizes excellence in the field. The Prize for 1st Place comes with a $1000 award, with a plaque showing the name of the winner and an acknowledgement of the achievement, and a one-year membership in the Electronic Literature Organization at the Associate Level. One prize for Honorable Mention is awarded and consists of a plaque showing the name of the winner and an acknowledgement of the achievement, and a one-year membership in the Electronic Literature Organization at the Associate Level.

The Marjorie C. Luesebrink Career Achievement Award honors a visionary artist and/or scholar who has brought excellence to the field of electronic literature and has inspired others to help create and build the field. Bestowed by the Electronic Literature Organization and funded through a generous donation, it comes with a $1000 award that can go directly to the awardee or to a young scholar who would use the funds in support of developing content for online sources about the awardee’s achievements; a plaque showing the name of the winner and an acknowledgement of the achievement; and a one-year membership in the Electronic Literature Organization at the Associate Level.

The Maverick Award is awarded  to an independent spirit: a writer, artist, researcher, programmer, designer, performer, or hybrid creator who does not adhere to a conventional path but creates their own and in so doing makes a singular contribution to the field of electronic literature.

For more information about the Awards, contact Holly Slocum, at holly at eliterature.org.

 

ELO FELLOWSHIP CALL FOR APPLICATIONS
DEADLINE 15 MARCH

The ELO is continuing its expansion of scholarly activity, creative, and curatorial practices with the appointment of four graduate and early career Research & Creative Fellows for 2023, each of whom will be awarded a $500 stipend along with a one-year ELO membership. The awards will be announced at the ELO2023 Conference in Coimbra. In the coming month, we’ll be welcoming applicants who will be working with established ELO scholars and practitioners on a variety of ELO projects, such as the Electronic Literature Directory (http://directory.eliterature.org), CELL (www.cellproject.net), The Digital Review (http://www.thedigitalreview.com), the electronic book review (https://electronicbookreview.com ), and The NEXT (https://the-next.eliterature.org/). Each of the Fellows will be expected to complete a minimum of two encyclopedic ELD entries during the term of their appointment. Fellows can also work with their supervisors to develop metadata for works in collections, creating content for the works’ exhibition spaces, writing descriptions of works in the collections or the collections themselves. 

The ELO celebrates diversity and is committed to creating an inclusive environment for the benefit of our whole community. Therefore, we actively encourage applications from individuals who are BIPOC, LGBTQ+, people with disabilities, and come from broad geographic, ethnic, and language backgrounds. We ask all applicants to consult our ELO Code of Conduct: https://eliterature.org/about/code-of-conduct/. Linguistic diversity will be particularly useful as our Fellows translate works in many languages from our growing consortium of e-lit databases. 

Applications should include a cv and one-page description of the candidate’s qualifications and approach to e-Lit scholarship. These can be sent to joseph.tabbi@uib.no.

As part of the annual New Media Writing Prize, for the first time, we are hosting a fully online 2-day “unconference” symposium, 17-18 Jan 2023, hosted by BU in partnership with with the Prize and the British Library. The Unconference will culminate in the awards evening for the New Media Writing Prize on 18 January 2023.

NMWP Unconference Theme: Social Good

How can we change our world with our digital art and literature?

Our unconference call for proposals sought creative approaches to conference activities: events, works, and activities that aim to serve a social purpose (such as projects aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals): “Digital Literature for Social Good”. Activist projects, works for education and sustainability, events to brainstorm new digital lit approaches to improving society and culture—it’s all fair game. How can we change our world with our art and literature?

Over the past couple of months, we’ve put together a fantastic two days of discussions, workshops, artists’ talks, and brainstorming sessions. (See the schedule here.)

Join us!

Registration is open to those who would like to attend and participate in these creative sessions.

Please also join us for the ultimate event in our NMWP Unconference, the New Media Writing Prize Awards Evening, which is free and open to the public. Our keynote is Deena Larsen, creator of Marble Springs, Modern Moral Fairy Tale, and other frequently studied and taught works of electronic literature. The 2021 NMWP winner, Joannes Truyens for Neurocracy, will give a featured talk, and awards will be given for the Chris Meade Memorial Main Prize, the Journalism Prize, Student Prize, and the Opening Up Prize (which is still open for voting here!).

We hope to see you there!

ELECTRONIC LITERATURE ORGANIZATION 2023 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE AND MEDIA ARTS SHOW OVERCOMING DIVIDES: ELECTRONIC LITERATURE AND SOCIAL CHANGE JULY 12-15, 2023 – COIMBRA, PORTUGAL

Join us this summer for four days of digital art and scholarship at the ELO 2023 Conference and Media Arts Show in beautiful Coimbra, Portugal, the 12th to the 15th of July.

The 2023 conference, “Overcoming Divides: Electronic Literature and Social Change,” advocates the dismantlement of economic, political, linguistic, and cultural barriers, focusing on the relation between art and society, as well as on the subversive potential of electronic literature.

Art and literature compulsively respond to undergoing socio-political transformations. Whether overtly committed to social causes or inevitably engulfed by waves of change, writers and artists are influenced by dramatic shifts motivated by local or global issues such as climate change, economic crisis, military conflicts, and repressive or coercive government policies. The field of electronic literature, whose continuous reconfiguration is deeply intertwined with technological advancements, is no exception to this pattern. Equipped with the pervasiveness of network technology, as well as with software that can analyze and portray reality with the utmost detail, electronic literature is harnessed with adequate tools to voice environmental and social concerns and to expose oppressive and corrupt regimes. Highly experimental and focused on an introspective journey that aims to explore the creative amplitude of emerging technologies, electronic literature’s self-reflexive nature is also frequently mobilized to defy normative perspectives over literature and art, as well as to challenge deep-rooted cultural misconceptions.

During this conference, we aim to explore how electronic literature uses its critical media approach, as well as its close affinity with computation, to assume a socially engaged stance. In a time when walls are being raised once again, this conference examines electronic literature’s role in the dismantlement of new and old barriers between people.

ELO23 will be held in a national monument (Convento São Francisco), overlooking the University of Coimbra as well as Coimbra’s Uptown and Downtown areas, both designated World Heritage by UNESCO in 2013. Challenging the social asymmetry represented by the uptown/downtown divide, ELO23 will be extended from the university to the entire city center. Performances will be opened to the public, and exhibitions will take place at different locations in the city, thus integrating ELO Conference into Coimbra’s rich cultural life. Remote (online) participation will be limited to the scholarly dimension of the conference.

We welcome scholarly and artistic proposals that explore a connection between electronic literature and the following themes, among others:

• the role of literature in social change;
• collaborative platforms and activist software;
• digital humanities and memory preservation (archive);
• environmental damage caused by digital technologies;
• the impact of climate change;
• language barriers, translation and linguistic diversity;
• disabilities and accessibility;
• mental health, trauma and cognitive diversity;
• social and economic inequality;
• digital literacy and societal transformation;
• gender divide and identity diversity;
• migrations and border enforcement;
• hybridity, recombination and multilinearity as aesthetics of subversion;
• documentary forms and nonfiction narrative.

Organizers
Electronic Literature Organization (ELO)
Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Coimbra (FLUC)

Partners and Sponsors
Center for Portuguese Literature (CLP)
Instituto de Comunicação da NOVA (ICNOVA), Universidade Nova de Lisboa
Programa de Doutoramento em Materialidades da Literatura, Universidade de Coimbra
Universidade Fernando Pessoa (UFP)
Câmara Municipal de Coimbra
Exploratório – Centro Ciência Viva de Coimbra
Museu da Ciência da Universidade de Coimbra

How to submit your proposals

ACADEMIC PRESENTATIONS: PANELS AND PAPERS

We welcome submissions for stand-alone papers as well as organized panels. Individual submissions for stand-alone papers should include an abstract (250-350 words), as well as a short list of references (4-6 main works). Individual papers will be presented as part of conference organized panels. Each presentation will be 15 minutes long, followed by a 20-minute Q&A. Please specify in your submission if this presentation will be in person or online.

Three or four-person panels should include a brief overview of the panel’s rationale (100-150 words), as well as individual abstracts of each presentation: abstracts (250-350 words), including a short list of references (4-6 main works). Panels will have a total presentation time of one hour, and should allow for a 20 minute Q&A section. Please specify in your submission whether this panel will be in person or fully online. Hybrid panels will not be supported.

Please submit via Easy Chair <https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=elo2023> by January 20, 2023, 11:59pm EST. While proposals should be in English, panels can be presented in other languages. Note that no translation services will be offered. In case of acceptance, abstracts will be included in the program and proceedings.

Participants will be notified of acceptance by February 20, 2023.

ARTWORK: EXHIBITION OF DIGITAL WORK
We welcome submissions for two different public exhibitions addressing (1) environmental issues and (2) social issues, i.e., repression, inequality, and segregation.

Please send proposals including an artist statement (250-350 words) detailing the aesthetic intentions, the structure of the piece, and its relationship to the conference and chosen exhibition theme (Exhibition 1 or Exhibition 2). In addition, provide documentation of the work (URLs), author name(s), biographical note(s), and specific technical requirements for display at the exhibition venue.

Please submit via Easy Chair <https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=elo2023> by January 20, 2023, 11:59pm EST. Proposals should be in English, but displayed work can be in other languages. In case of acceptance, artist statements will be included in the program and proceedings.

Artists will be notified of acceptance by February 20, 2023.

PERFORMANCES

ELO23 will host two nights of performances open to conference participants and the general public. We welcome performance proposals addressing the conference’s main theme of electronic literature and social change.

Please submit proposals including an artist statement (250-350 words) detailing the aesthetic intentions, the structure of the piece, and its relationship to the conference theme. In addition, provide the author name(s), biographical note(s), and a description (250 words max.) of the nature of the performance, as well as any technical requirements.

Please submit via Easy Chair <https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=elo2023> by January 20, 2023, 11:59pm EST. Proposals should be in English, but performances can be in other languages. In case of acceptance, artist statements will be included in the program and proceedings.

Performers will be notified of acceptance by February 20, 2023.

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As with any ELO event, ELO23 will follow the organization’s code of conduct. We are committed to providing an inclusive, equitable, and harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, age, race, class, religion, or linguistic and cultural background. For more information, please refer to https://eliterature.org/about/code–of–conduct/

Chairs

Daniela Côrtes Maduro (Universidade de Coimbra)
Manuel Portela (Universidade de Coimbra)
Alex Saum-Pascual (University of California, Berkeley)
Rui Torres (Universidade Fernando Pessoa)

Feel free to contact us: eloconference2023@gmail.com.

At the annual conference of the Electronic Literature Organization (ELO), hosted by the Collegio Gallio of Como, ELO Board Member Erik Loyer announced the 2022 ELO Prize winners.

The Robert Coover Award for a Work of Electronic Literature

Winner: “ReRites” by David Jhave Johnston

Runner Up: “Travesty Generator” by Lillian-Yvonne Bertram

Honorable Mention: “Al-Barrah (البرَّاح)” by Reham Hosny and Mohamed A. Nasef 

Committee: Deena Larsen, Madison McCartha, Illya Szilak

 

The Robert Coover Award for a Work of Electronic Literature honors the year’s best work of electronic literature, of any form or genre. It comes with a $1000 stipend. The Winner of the 2022 Award is “ReRites” by David Jhave Johnston.

According to the judges: “In this pandemic time, new forms of ritual have developed — people had zoom drinks and parties, and funerals were held via livestream. ReRites speaks to this.

In essence, the work is a documentation of the performance of the private ritual of writing and the obsessive-compulsive need for writers to communicate — even when no one else is reading. The work is generated through this neurotic compulsive repetition, linking it to both the pleasure principle and the death drive. It is not in an attempt to make perfect sense but to try and fail to make what is hidden, manifest. It is this, compulsive repetition above all that gives this work literal weight. 12 volumes worth. Profoundly, the author ends up communicating most poignantly not through words, but through a physical embodiment of those words. We feel the weight of his labor. It is a muscle memory. 120 hours of neural net text generation video!  It is, let us be honest, mostly nonsense, punctuated occasionally by serendipitous wonder, when, impossible to predict! machine logic meets the ineffable logic of the reader as when ‘thunderous bismol’ trips deliciously off the tongue.

Jhave leans into the pleasure of performance by having poets read at superhuman speeds and by having human hands manipulate lines of poetry through gesture. Body and machine are linked, but this is not about being slave to that machine, but rather in re-discovering the peculiar pleasures of being embodied. Or, as Turing put it, in his seminal paper on artificial intelligence ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence,’ we get to enjoy ‘strawberries and creme.’”

 

The Runner Up for the 2022 Coover Award is “Travesty Generator” by Lillian-Yvonne Bertram.

According to the judges, “Travesty Generator uses computational logic to create gut-punch poetry that speaks poignantly to the recent highly publicized racist killings at the hands of US law enforcement. Although the book’s method is not novel, the content – racial injustice in the US – applies pressure to the ways racism might function as an algorithm, and creates in the process a new precedent in computational poetry which has typically been a-political. Here, the relentless ill-logic of the machine replays the violence against black bodies in all the variety one would expect from a generative system.

The lack of personalized authorship is critical to the working of the poetry. We, the reader, are the bearers of meaning-making, memory, and feeling. We are the ones who bear witness. If we do not change the algorithm, the machine will spit out more. It is inevitable. It is programmed that way. The work itself reveals that the ‘print(list(permutations)))’ of ‘I can’t breathe’ are endless.”

 

Honorable Mention for the 2022 Coover Award is “Al-Barrah (البرَّاح)” by Reham Hosny and Mohamed A. Nasef.

According to the judges, “‘Al-Barrah (البرَّاح)’ by Reham Hosny and Mohamed A. Nasef (2021) deftly intertwines game, story, augmented reality, and social media for tales that also overlay a poetic commentary on oppression and voicelessness. Al-Barrah is the first paper novel to combine augmented reality and hologram technologies with Arabic language text inside the borders of a paper page to provide the reader with a unique experience, and immerse her in the narrative. The project is an amazing example of dedicated work over five years without institutional support. The work invites the reader in to answer questions such as memories of lecture halls, what autumn looks like, and what it is to leave your homeland far behind. The graphics invite readers into the story as a helmeted figure gazes and we move along her gaze into a story about the past and one about the present that converge in the middle. This unique and immersive experience has real-world implications, from AI to AR, from voiceless to voiced, from holograms to hidden depths.

The reviewers admit that we are necessarily viewing this work through a lens of cultural myopia. Though we appreciate the authors’ claim that this is a work of ‘activist e-lit (that) speak(s) up against injustice and give voice to those who have been deprived from their freedom just for practicing their right of freedom of speech,’ we do not know the tradition of protest through literature or poetry in the Arabic speaking world, nor do we claim to understand the political and cultural constraints the authors are operating under in creating this work, or the political and cultural ramifications this work might have. However, by asking readers to assist in the construction of the story, specifically through the creation of a DIY plastic viewing pyramid for holograms, the authors offer readers an opportunity to consider their responsibility and complicity in consuming other, more conventional, government-sanctioned, and societal narratives.”

 

The N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature

Winner: “Critical Making, Critical Design,” Issue 01 of The Digital Review, edited by Lai-Tze Fan

Runner Up: Twining: Critical and Creative Approaches to Hypertext Narratives by Anastasia Salter and Stuart Moulthrop (Amherst College Press)

Honorable Mention: Bitstreams: The Future of Digital Literary Heritage by Matthew Kirschenbaum (University of Pennsylvania Press)

Committee: Sarah Laiola, Viola Lasmana, Marisa Parham

 

The N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature honors the best work of criticism of electronic literature of any length. Endowed through a generous donation from N. Katherine Hayles and others, this annual prize recognizes excellence in the field. The Prize for 1st Place comes with a $1000 award.  The 2022 N. Katherine Hayles award goes to “Critical Making, Critical Design,” Issue 01 of The Digital Review, edited by Lai-Tze Fan.

According to the judges, “‘Critical Making, Critical Design,’ edited by Lai-Tze Fan, is an exciting collaborative effort that reimagines and brilliantly presents the inseparability of theory and practice that is essential to the work and ethos of electronic literature. In judging, we were particularly struck by the ways these edited co-issues carve out critical space to think about processes of creative-critical work — necessary components to all critical work that, in the institutionally disciplined spaces of arts and humanities, are too often left in the ‘drafts’ folders. Finally, we are excited by the opportunity to offer the Hayles award to a work of e-literary scholarship that, as we have regularly argued about e-literary practice, resists traditions of thought that would set born-digital work as subordinate to print.”

 

Runner Up: Twining: Critical and Creative Approaches to Hypertext Narratives by Anastasia Salter and Stuart Moulthrop.

According to the judges: “Anastasia Salter and Stuart Moulthrop’s Twining foregrounds the multiple pathways writers, artists, critics, and students take into and out of Twine, the eminently flexible interactive text creation platform. Highlighting codework, implementation strategies, critical perspective, and pedagogical example, Twining takes the software seriously, and in so doing is able to highlight its deep importance to a broadly diverse and deep user community. In reviewing Twining, the committee was also struck by how the very form(s) of Salter and Moulthrop’s text, which includes a print edition, a digital open access edition, and a GitHub repository, reflects the ethos of access that defines Twine itself. Twining both describes and celebrates how e-lit lives in classrooms and pet-projects, in the work of developers and hobbyists, and for scholars and artists alike.”

Honorable Mention: Bitstreams: The Future of Digital Literary Heritage by Matthew Kirschenbaum.

According to the judges: “A critical and timely intervention in the intersections of e-lit, media archaeology, bibliography, and software and platform studies, Matthew Kirschenbaum’s Bitstreams thoughtfully and beautifully captures the techno-social aspects and material history of literary production, while always foregrounding the importance of history and memory. Highlighting various significant literary legacies through a forensic approach of their writing and textual production processes, Bitstreams is a necessary text and delightful read in electronic literature, material book studies, and literary history.”

The Marjorie C. Luesebrink Career Achievement Award

Winner: Alan Sondheim

Committee: Angélica Huízar, Jessica Pressman, Jody Zellen

The Marjorie C. Luesebrink Career Achievement Award honors a visionary artist and/or scholar who has brought excellence to the field of electronic literature and has inspired others to help create and build the field. Bestowed by the Electronic Literature Organization and funded through a generous donation, it comes with the following: a $1000 award that can go directly to the awardee or to a young scholar who would use the funds in support of developing content for online resources about the awardee’s achievements; a plaque showing the name of the winner and an acknowledgement of the achievement; and a one-year membership in the Electronic Literature Organization at the Associate Level.

The Artist or Scholar selected for this award should demonstrate excellence in four or more of the following categories:

• Creation of opportunities for younger scholars
• Publication of influential academic studies of electronic literature
• Practice-based artistic research in the field, with significant presentations and exhibitions of creative work
• Curatorial activities, particularly including editing and the organization of exhibitions, conferences, workshops, roundtables and research groups
• Preservationist work, whether individual or institutional
• Active participation in conferences and exhibitions, both national and international
• Contribution to ELO as an organization, whether as a member of the Board of Directors or Literary Art Board or as informal advisor

We are delighted to announce this year’s winner of the Marjorie C. Luesebrink Career Achievement Award, Alan Sondheim.

The judges offered the following celebration of Alan Sondheim:

“Alan Sondheim has had immense impact in broad and diverse ways, across aesthetics and disciplines, to produce what we now call “the field of electronic literature.” He helped to pioneer digital artistic practice for decades and continues to innovate, merging theory and praxis in creative-critical ways. He has dedicated his life to creating an established field through artistic creations, critical publications, and mentoring of junior makers/scholars. It should be recognized that he did this field-creating work from the position of independent artist, without institutional support. Sondheim is a steadfast presence at ELO, and his work and his commitment to the field– the people and organization in it– make him deserving of this field-building award.”

ELO awards these prizes at its annual conference. The call for next year’s awards will be issued months before via ELO’s website.

At the ELO 2022 Conference, we announced the leadership transition from Leonardo Flores to Caitlin Fisher, as Flores completed his three-year term. Fisher who had previously served as Treasurer and Vice President, assumed office on July 1. Along with that change, Rui Torres took on the role of Treasurer, and Mark Sample, the role of Secretary. Anastasia Salter continues in her role as Vice President.

The Director of both the Immersive Storytelling Lab and the Augmented Reality Lab at York University in Toronto, where she is also Professor and Chair of the Department of Cinema and Media Arts, Fisher has long been a member of the ELO Board and an active member of our the digital literary community. She most recently assisted as International Coordinator for the ELO 2021 conference. A foundational member of ELO, her work was first celebrated in 2001, when she won the Electronic Literature Organization’s Award for Fiction for ‘These Waves of Girls.’

Fisher’s Presidency marks the first time the institutional home of the Electronic Literature Organization will move outside of the United States: “bringing the ELO to York University – a large, urban, innovative and incredibly diverse university – represents an exciting opportunity for both organizations” she said. During her talk at the Como conference, Fisher expressed her optimism for ELO as she takes us into this next era. She also thanked Flores and the rest of the Board for their service to the community.

ELO has an all-volunteer board with members serving renewable 3-year terms. See a complete list of the current Board of Directors here.

Caitlin Fisher Bio:
Caitlin Fisher directs both the Immersive Storytelling Lab and the Augmented Reality Lab at York University in Toronto where she held the Canada Research Chair in Digital Culture for over a decade. A co-founder of York’s Future Cinema Lab and a former Fulbright Research Chair, Fisher is the recipient of many international awards for digital storytelling including the Electronic Literature Award for Fiction and the Vinaròs Prize for her AR poetry. She also serves on the international Board of Directors for HASTAC – the Humanities Arts Science Technology Alliance and Collaboratory. She is currently working on an AI Storytelling project funded through the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and recently completed a SSHRC project exploring souveillance, Humanistic Intelligence and phenomenological AR for next-generation headsets. She is also co-PI on a New Frontiers grant investigating “Immersive digital environments and indigenous knowledges: co-creation in virtual reality environments to advance artmaking, digital poetics and reconciliation.” She recently directed Fiery Sparks of Light, a volumetric AR project featuring iconic Canadian women poets (Atwood, Brossard, Tolmie, Lubrin). Produced with the participation of Telefilm Canada, ‘Fiery Sparks of Light’ is a CFC Media Lab and York University Immersive Storytelling Lab Co-Production in Partnership with Griffin Trust For Excellence In Poetry.

About York University: “York is a leading international teaching and research university and a driving force for positive change, empowered by a welcoming and diverse community with a uniquely global perspective.”

Attention, all ELO 2022 participants with accepted papers:

The full paper submission deadline has been extended to May 2, 2022.

The ELO 2022 Conference accepts both abstracts and full papers. If you input just an abstract in the online form, you will be able to present your work at the Conference, and we will include the abstract in the Conference Guide.

If you also  upload the full paper, we will be glad to include it in the Conference Proceedings.

Use this form: https://forms.gle/tzDDMtiFZaWEWeq99

The Electronic Literature Organization is proud to offer the following three prestigious awards:

• The Robert Coover Award for a Work of Electronic Literature,
• The N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature, and
• The Marjorie C. Luesebrink Career Achievement Award.

2022 nominations are currently open through 3/21/2022, and you are welcome to self-nominate for the Robert Coover and N. Katherine Hayles awards. Submit your nomination here.

Winners will be announced online and in-person at ELO 2022 in Como, Italy!

The Robert Coover Award for a Work of Electronic Literature is an award given for the best work of electronic literature of any length or genre. Bestowed by the Electronic Literature Organization and funded through a generous donation from supporters and members of the ELO, this annual prize aims to recognize creative excellence. The Prize for 1st Place comes with a $1000 award, with a plaque showing the name of the winner and an acknowledgement of the achievement, and a one-year membership in the Electronic Literature Organization at the Associate Level. One prize for Honorable Mention is awarded and consists of a plaque showing the name of the winner and an acknowledgement of the achievement, and a one-year membership in the Electronic Literature Organization at the Associate Level.

The N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature is an award given for the best work of criticism, of any length, on the topic of electronic literature. Bestowed by the Electronic Literature Organization and funded through a generous donation from N. Katherine Hayles and others, this annual prize recognizes excellence in the field. The Prize for 1st Place comes with a $1000 award, with a plaque showing the name of the winner and an acknowledgement of the achievement, and a one-year membership in the Electronic Literature Organization at the Associate Level. One prize for Honorable Mention is awarded and consists of a plaque showing the name of the winner and an acknowledgement of the achievement, and a one-year membership in the Electronic Literature Organization at the Associate Level.

The Marjorie C. Luesebrink Career Achievement Award honors a visionary artist and/or scholar who has brought excellence to the field of electronic literature and has inspired others to help create and build the field. Bestowed by the Electronic Literature Organization and funded through a generous donation, it comes with a $1000 award that can go directly to the awardee or to a young scholar who would use the funds in support of developing content for online sources about the awardee’s achievements; a plaque showing the name of the winner and an acknowledgement of the achievement; and a one-year membership in the Electronic Literature Organization at the Associate Level.

For more information about the Awards, contact Erik Loyer, ELO Board Member and 2022 Awards Manager, at eloyer at eliterature.org.

“Show me how to do this”
Learning E-lit by Making Together CFP: ELO 2022 Special Call: Mentoring Exhibition
Deadline March 15, 2022
Online Exhibition: June 2022
Curated by María Goicoechea and Mark Marino
Submission form:

Call for Works

The making of electronic literature is an artisanal practice, born of community practices of sharing. While some artists find their own way into the rabbit holes of e-lit, most follow a guide or teacher, learning as a sorcerer’s apprentice.  Whether this happens in a formal setting, like a classroom, or in an informal context, like a rainy day passtime for a family, the time spent sharing the forms and tools of electronic literature as well as techniques for making e-lit is crucial to bring new artists into the field and new works into being. In that way, the process is very much like teaching other forms of craft, like sewing, or even cooking, which has in turn inspired e-lit, such as the field of gastropoetics.  

For this exhibition, we seek works that have emerged out of such tutelage and collaboration, where a mentor, teacher, or parent has introduced one or more new artists to the field by making a work of electronic literature with them.  

Works will be exhibited in an online exhibition as part of the ELO 2022 hybrid conference.  We will also plan an online launch either during or before the conference.  

Given the pedagogical emphasis of #ELOitalia and the setting of the in-person conference in a K-12 school, any  works aimed at or appropriate for younger audiences are especially welcomed. This exhibit will have a special section for works aimed at middle grade and young adult audiences. 

We are calling for all genre of works, including:

interactive fiction, poetry generators, hypertext, Third Generation E-Lit (including works on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok), VR/AR/XR, et cetera.

Note: Works already submitted to ELO 2022 that fit the exhibition criteria will be considered. If you submit a work that you have already submitted to the conference, just indicate that in your application. 

Various details: 

At least the submitting author (or mentor) will be required to have a current ELO Membership (minimal unaffiliated member $25) to have their work exhibited. That membership fee does not include ELO 2022 registration.  

By March 15, use this form to send us:

Form:
Title
Author (submitting)
Author email addresses.
Additional authors:
Additional email addresses
Credits/Roles.
Video: (short demo video, under 1 minute) (opt)
Link:
1-sentence description
Age of audience
email
Description of the work
Description of the context of the collaboration (200-400 words)
Type of work: Twitterbot, Twine Fiction, VR. etc.
Has this work already been Submitted to ELO 2022: Y/N
(You may submit the same work. This question is just to guide our tracking with EasyChair)
Bio-of-contributors
Language
Platform
Web-ready Images of the work
Link to the work
Any video documentation of the work.

The Deadline for the 2022 ELO Conference in Como, Italy and online has been extended until January 21.  The conference will be in-person (pandemic permitting) and online.  Submit!

Here’s the link to the full call:

ELO 2022

ELO is pleased to announce the addition of three new members to its Board of Directors: Lai-Tze Fan, Erika Fülöp, and Reham Hosny.  These top scholars and artists extend ELO’s global representation as they reside in Canada, England, and Egypt, respectively.

ELO President Leonardo Flores welcomed the new members, saying, “We had a great community response to our first-ever open Call for Nominations resulting in a wonderful lineup of dedicated scholars and artists in the field. After much deliberation and keeping in mind our goal of continuing to diversify the Board of Directors, we chose three great scholars who will bring new energy and perspectives to our governing body. I am looking forward to collaborating with our new Directors! And huge thanks to all who put their names forth or accepted nominations. We will seek opportunities to get you involved in our projects!”

ELO has an all-volunteer board of members who serve renewable three-year terms. These new directors, for the first time, were drawn from a set of nominations from ELO’s members.  The organization continues to work to make this process more inclusive and transparent and is very pleased with the results.

Meet the new Board Members:

Lai-Tze Fan

Dr. Lai-Tze Fan is an Assistant Professor of Technology and Social Change in the Department of Sociology and Legal Studies at the University of Waterloo, Canada. Fan is an interdisciplinary researcher who combines the fields of media studies, science and technology studies, digital storytelling, critical design, and cultural studies. Her research appears in the journals Mosaic, Convergence, Media Theory, and elsewhere.

Fan is also a practitioner of art installations, digital textuality and writing, interactive games, and critical making, with 15 solo and collaborative works of research-creation. With Nick Montfort, she created “Dial” (2020), a generative emoji-embedded poem representing networked, distant communication. With Anne Sullivan and Anastasia Salter, she created Masked Making (2021), a generative work that captures both the imagined making and fragments of text that represent the invisible faces, hands, and labour of women’s mask making during the COVID-19 pandemic. Also of note are video games for children’s health research that Fan helped design with the international Breathing Games Commons, as well as a smart phone application called Global Urban Wilds (2021) that she helped develop for the city of Montréal.

Fan currently serves as an Editor and the Director of Communications for the open-access journal electronic book review and Editor of the multimodal journal the digital review. She edited a special double issue of both journals called “Critical Making, Critical Design” (September 2021), which was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada. She also co-edited a special journal issue of electronic book review on “Canadian Digital Poetics” (February 2021). She is Co-Editor of the collection Post-Digital: Dialogues and Debates from electronic book review (Bloomsbury 2020).

Erika Fülöp

Erika Fülöp is Senior Lecturer in French Studies at Lancaster University. She previously held a Lectureship at New College, Oxford (2012-13) and an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship at the Interdisciplinary Center for Narratology at the University of Hamburg (2013-15). Since her doctoral thesis and first monograph on Proust and philosophy titled Proust, the One, and the Many: Identity and Difference in À la recherche du temps perdu (Oxford: Legenda, 2012), she has been exploring increasingly recent and increasingly diverse modes of writing and authorship that question and expand the concept of writing and literature, including interferences between print books and networked writing, the impact of social networks on authorship, video writing on YouTube, and digital poetry and its translation. She has run several projects and conferences around these subjects, including Screening the Literary (2016-17) and The Creative Web of Languages (2017-19). In 2020 she completed a monograph co-authored with Gilles Bonnet and Gaëlle Théval on French creative literary experimentation on YouTube (‘Qu’est-ce aue la LittéraTube?’), and in 2021, adventured into learning to code & co. thanks to an EPSRC grant in order to carry out truly interdisciplinary research and analyses of electronic literature. You can find her research and learning diary here.

Reham Hosny

Dr. Reham Hosny is an Assistant Professor in English literature at Minia University, Egypt and previously, she was a Lecturer at the University of Leeds, UK. Her research focuses on creating links between the well-established western electronic literature communities and the growing digital culture innovators of other underrepresented communities. She is particularly interested in investigating the cultural, social, and political contexts of Arabic and Anglo-American electronic literature. Additionally, she is a creative writer. She is directing arabicelit, the first initiative focusing on globalizing Arabic electronic literature in the English language. She is an international consultant for the Electronic Literature Organization’s ELC4. She was also a co-organizer of the first international conference on Arabic electronic literature at RIT-Dubai, Feb. 25-27, 2018. She initiated and co-delivered the first electronic literature workshop in the Arab World and co-curated the first electronic literature exhibit in the Arab World at RIT-Dubai in 2018. She initiated the first autobiographical collection of Arab electronic literature authors on the ELMCIP knowledge base in 2015. She spent two years as a visiting scholar at College of Liberal Arts at RIT-New York and West Virginia University. She is an invited speaker in many international conferences, workshops, and symposiums at different places around the world such as the USA, the UAE, the KSA, Canada, Scotland, Norway, Egypt, Jordan, and the UK. She is a member of different international research networks such as the Intersections, Feminism, Technology & Digital Humanities network (IFTe) funded by UKRI-AHRC and the Irish Research Council. She is also a member of the Global AI Narrative (GAIN) network in the MENA region. Besides her scientific achievements, she received the Ihsan Abdel Quddous Literary Prize for short story writing for her short story collection Amma Ba’d (and thereafter) (2012). She also wrote Al-Barrah (The Announcer), the first Arabic artificial intelligence novel, in collaboration with Mohamed A. Nasef (2019, 2021). For more information, you can visit her personal website.

Leaving the Board

After years of service, a few Board members have also stepped down, including Helen Burgess, Serge Bouchardon, Stuart Moulthrop. We thank them for their service and their generous contributions of their time and talent.

ELO is happy to announce the 2021-2022 ELO Fellows.

Hannah Ackermans, University of Bergen, Norway
Laura Sánchez Gómez, Faculty of Philology at the Complutense University of Madrid
Alexandra Martin, Université du Québec à Montréal
Aurelio Meza, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Shanmuga Priya, Department of History, Lancaster University, UK
Zahra Rizvi, Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia

The ELO Fellows program is aimed to expand our scholarly activity, and our curatorial and creative practices with the appointment of six graduate and early career fellows. Extending our community, the fellows are also advancing our Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion efforts. The Fellows program is overseen by Joseph Tabbi, who was assisted by Anna Nacher, Erik Loyer, and María Mencía on the selection committee.

The ELO Fellows are six graduate and early career Research Fellows for the academic year 2021/22, each of whom have been awarded a $500 stipend along with a one year ELO membership. Fellows help contribute to various ELO projects, including the Electronic Literature Directory and its alliances with partner organizations such as ELO.

“We are excited to welcome this excellent group who will support ELO’s efforts to promote scholarly and creative work in electronic literature while working to create an inclusive and welcoming community,” said President Leonardo Flores, announcing the Fellows. “The Fellows enrich our community and help us realize our plans to promote and celebrate electronic literature.”

Presenting the 2021-22 ELO Fellows: Hannah Ackermans

As a PhD candidate in digital culture at the University of Bergen (Norway), Hannah Ackermans researches the digital practices in the (academic) field of electronic literature. In addition to their research and teaching record in electronic literature and digital humanities, Ackermans was co-director of the Digital Humanities Network at the University of Bergen throughout 2019 and is a member of the ELMCIP Knowledge Base editorial board. Their current research interest is the digital accessibility of electronic literature and this will be the focus of their work as an ELO Research Fellow.

Laura Sánchez Gómez

Laura Sánchez Gómez currently teaches Didactics of Literature and Digital Humanities at University Complutense of Madrid and Nebrija University. She has a PhD in Literary Studies at Complutense University of Madrid with a thesis about electronic creation and the relationship between literature and art. She is member of the interdisciplinary Research Group LEETHI (European and Spanish Literatures from Texts to Hypermedia), and co-founder of CIBERIA, a platform about Spanish Language Electronic Literature. She has worked on different interdisciplinary cultural management projects at the Cervantes Institute, such as the exhibitions Return to Max Aub or Quijotes around the world; and she is co-curator of the exhibition Lorem BITsum: Electronic Literature, in Matadero de Madrid (2018). Her research focus is based on an interdisciplinary perspective focus in the changes brought by digital transformation in literature, arts and education.

Alexandra Martin

Alexandra L Martin (she/her) is a researcher and doctoral student specializing in digital literary arts, living and working in the unceded territory of Tiohtià:ke. Since 2019 she has worked at the Laboratoire NT2 at the Université du Québec à Montréal, where she also collaborates as a curator, notably on the exhibition S’éclipser | Phases of Resilience (2020) for the HTMlles Festival as well as Trans[creation] (2021). Her research centers on digital and organic networks of communities and the question of communal memory. Alexandra employs an ecocritical approach to her research and curatorial work, emphasizing the experiential process of reading or consuming digital art and the transformative power of this process over physical and digital spaces.

Aurelio Meza

Aurelio Meza (Mexico City, 1985) is a writer and editor who lives in Montreal, were they graduated from the PhD in Humanities at Concordia University. They are a co-founder of the editorial project Kodama Cartonera in Tijuana, Mexico, and remotely coordinates the PoéticaSonoraMX Digital Audio Repository for Sound Poetics in Mexico, hosted in the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) at Morelia (https://poeticasonora.unam.mx/rda).

Shanmuga Priya

Shanmuga Priya’s research and teaching interests include an interdisciplinary focus in the areas of digital humanities, digital environmental humanities and digital literature. She is particularly interested in building and applying digital tools and technologies for Humanities research. She completed her Ph.D. at Indian Institute of Technology Indore, India. She was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Lancaster University, UK. She also received Postdoctoral Fellowship at University of Toronto, Canada. She has published papers in national and international journals. She is one of interim executive committee members of DHARTI.

Zahra Rizvi

Zahra Rizvi is Ph.D. scholar at the Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi, India, and founding-member of the Indian chapter of Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA). Her research interests include popular culture and media, young adult participatory spaces, video game studies, and digital humanities. She is currently working on a Media Archaeology project concerning Noha and Majlis E-lit Practices in South Asia. She was recently Ministry of Education-SPARC Fellow in Digital Humanities and Digital Cultures at Michigan State University, where she worked as Project Manager and Research Fellow on the “Digital Apprehensions of Indian Poetics” collaborative project.

 

 

 

ELO22 Call for Proposals

Conference: May 30-June 1, 2022
Deadline: January 7, 2022
#ELOitalia
Submit via EasyChair.

The HStudies Research Group of the University of Jyväskylä (Finland), with the University of Nagoya, Graduate School of Humanities (Japan), the Arab Academic Institute of Education/Arab Union for Internet Writers, the Digital Culture Center of Ciudad de México (Mexico), the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Núcleo de Pesquisas em Informática, Literatura e Linguística and the Federal University of São Carlos, Brazilian Digital Literature Observatory (Brazil), the Pontificio Collegio Gallio (Italy) have collaborated to organize the ELO 2022 International Conference and Media Arts Festival.

The theme for ELO 2022 is E2Lit: Education and Electronic Literature. #ELOitalia

We invite artists, researchers, scholars, PhD candidates, experts and practitioners to submit works, papers, case studies, and media artefacts for presentation at the festival and in the different venues of the in-person conference and online workshops and seminars. 

THEME RATIONALE

Our society lives in a moment of complexity, where the exponential emergence of a web-based culture has triggered a different approach in relation to the spaces of communication, relationship, and learning. During the last years, the advent of new personal and wearable devices has favoured the emergence of a new literacy, based on a convergence culture (Jenkins, 2006).

Forms of fiction and literature underwent a process of disembodiment and cross-fertilization during the revolution from the Gutenberg Galaxy — printed paper, mass distribution — to the McLuhan Galaxy — new media, hypertext, collaborative writing — (Castells, 2003). The dimension of literacy has moved from a semiotically-measured geometry (De Saussure, 1916; Hjelmslev, 1969) to a dislocation and a deconstruction of contents and channels that give expression to new products (Derrida, 1974; Landow, 1994; Bolter & Grusin, 1999). The impact of social media on narratology has redefined the meaning of readership and authorship. The author has not only lost their traditional role, but becomes an icon of themself, a collective-minded producer that is self-perceived through the extra-flexed eye of the amniotic network in which they define their narrative experience (De Kerckhove, 2003). 

Literature takes on different roles within the so-called new media. Particularly, digital literature is central to the humanities and to the culture that emerges from the digital environment (Grigar, 2021) and it may play a central role in education too.

Every generation develops blended competencies under the influence of new tools and communication frameworks (Bardi, Ciastellardi, Di Rosario, 2019). For several years now when it comes to storytelling and literature, we have seen cultural references in a continuous process of transformation and redefinition, both because of digital tools available to the public, and because of different emerging channels of dissemination and distribution that are (self)produced in an increasingly massive way. What appears is a different form of understanding and learning, and a new form of education for people at any level and at all ages (not limited, thus, to a scholarly perspective).

This conference seeks to shed light on digital literature according to the epistemological crisis of authorship and the new dimension of participation and relationship offered by both the Web and new media. The conference will offer keynote speeches and talks to examine specific case studies. Moving from the state of the art, the aim is to investigate the interdisciplinary relations in the field of electronic literature, in order to recognize patterns of theories, technologies, and social dimensions of the phenomena to offer a critical toolkit to understand and map out the emerging knowledge and practices created by this field and the multifaceted dimension of education.

Possible topics include but are not limited to the following conference’s tracks:

• E-lit as Digital Humanities: Digital layers, multifaceted comprehension patterns and critical thought to redefine the e-lit dimension in educative environments.
• Education beyond the (e)book: The possibilities of participatory culture in educational environments. How can e-lit promote values like democracy, pluralism, participation, diversity and sustainability…
• Coding education: the use of e-lit to set up essential skills to adapt to the digital age.
• E-practitioning: Literature and digital practices at crossroads.
• We are platforms: Rethinking e-lit and its educative role and collaborative practices after the emergence of the pandemic.
• AIrchive and UXPoetry: E-lit and its preservation between Artificial Intelligence and the need of a new poetic of user experience (UX). 
• Digital Heterotopies: The possibilities within e-lit to present, criticize and denounce everyday social rhetoric.
• Education on diversity and sustainability: E-lit as cultural practice to educate about integration, gender respectfulness and global sustainability. 
• Politics and Policies: Education on e-lit as a framework for civic engagement and civil society.
• STEAM-punk: The cross-fertilization among STEAM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, the arts, and mathematics) and the different approaches to e-lit culture. 
• Polysemy and synaesthesia: E-lit forms and works to open a different perspective of meaning and knowledge across multisensorial and plural dimensions of understanding. 

• Electronic Opificium: The Aesthetics of Tech. Experiments and handcrafted works to revitalize the idea behind literature and its digital possibilities.

Interdisciplinary contributions are especially welcome.

Accepted abstracts will be presented in the parallel sessions of the Conference and full papers will be published in the proceedings of the Conference. The conference organizing committee will provide a selection of the best papers to be published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Submit via EasyChair.

Conference Talks in COMO (ITALY) & online

Submissions are welcome across the following formats: 

• Paper (15 min – a presentation of a single paper by one or more authors – 500 words abstract). Paper submissions should be at most 3500 words long.
• Poster (1- page poster – format A2). 250-word (max) proposal.
• Panel (90 min – a proposal for a complete panel including 3 or 4 separate papers on the same general topic – 250 word overview plus 250 word individual abstracts).
• Lightning Talks  (90 min – a proposal for a complete set of lightning talks, including 4-6 participants – 250 word overview plus 50-100 word descriptions of individual  5-7 minute talks).

Submissions should include the title of the submission, the name(s) and affiliation(s) of contributor(s), biographical notes for contributors, and a 500-word abstract.

The ELO22 conference will feature different synchronous and asynchronous venues. Online pre- and post-conference workshops and seminars will be organized in Japan, Israel, Finland, and Brazil.

For the in-person conference talks can be given in English, Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese.

The deadline for submissions is January 7, 2022. Submissions will be peer-reviewed by the members of the scientific committee.

Submit via EasyChair.

Festival Exhibition in Como (ITALY) & online

We invite proposals of digital artworks and e-lit pieces to be featured as part of the in-person ELO Conference and Art Festival on E2Lit: Education and Electronic Literature.

All forms of electronic literature, multimodal writing, digital art, playful narrative, literary games, hypertext, and screen fiction will be considered. 

Please, be detailed on any special requirements. Submissions should provide the following information: 

Author name(s) and biographical note(s); 500-word artist statement detailing the aesthetic intentions, the structure of the piece, and its relationship to the conference theme. 

If you would like your work to be considered for a performance, please indicate that on the submission with an additional description (250 words max) of the nature of the performance as well as any technical requirements.

Statements should be anonymized for peer review. Technical specification providing exact details of what will be required to facilitate the work’s inclusion in the exhibition. This should include information on the materials, technologies, and spatial requirements necessary, and what the artist will require the gallery to provide. Please, be as detailed as possible regarding physical components and needs, including wireless internet. 

Pieces accepted to either exhibition will need to be delivered (physically or virtually) prior to the exhibit’s opening, and will remain on display after the conference ends before being returned to the artist.  

The deadline for submissions is January 7, 2022.

Please, note, do to time constraints, participants may only appear in the program twice, including combinations of artworks and talks.

Submit via EasyChair.

For more information, contact Giovanna Di Rosario ELO 2022 Chair, e2lit@hstudies.net or giovanna.dirosario@hstudies.net 

Partnerships

Pontificio Collegio Gallio (Italy)

Politecnico di Milano (Italy)

University of Jyväskylä (Finland)

The Arab Academic Institute of Education/Arab Union for Internet Writers

Nagoya University (Japan)

Federal University of São Carlos (Brazil)

Federal University of Santa Catarina (Brazil)

Digital Culture Center of Ciudad de México (Mexico)