Introduction to Electronic Literature

Understanding Born Digital Literature

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E-Lit Tools

Here are some free tools for making works of electronic literature
1. Twine, twinery.org
2. Meme Generator: https://imgflip.com/memegenerator
3. Tracery, http://www.brightspiral.com/tracery/; for a good tutorial go here

Dene Grigar is a digital artist, curator, and scholar at Washington State University, where she is Professor and Director of the Creative Media and Digital Culture program. She is President of the Electronic Literature Organization (ELO), and has curated exhibits of electronic literature and media art at several venues, including the Library of Congress and the British Computer Society.

Reham Hosny is a creative writer and critic. She recently completed her joint PhD in Digital criticism between RIT, New York and Minia University, Egypt. She was formerly a Research Scholar at West Virginia University and RIT New York. She is the director of AEL, the first network of Arabic e-lit in English. She is now based in Leeds, UK, and studies digital humanities, digital criticism, and genre theory.

John Barber teaches in The Creative Media & Digital Culture program at Washington State University Vancouver. His research and practice combines media art, digital humanities, and sound. He developed and maintains Radio Nouspace (www.radionouspace.net), a curated listening gallery/virtual museum for sound . His radio+sound art work has been broadcast internationally, and featured in juried exhibitions in America, Brazil, Canada, England, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Macedonia, Northern Ireland, Portugal, and Spain.

 

What Is E-Lit?

From the ELO Website:

"Electronic literature, or e-lit, refers to works with important literary aspects that take advantage of the capabilities and contexts provided by the stand-alone or networked computer. Within the broad category of electronic literature are several forms and threads of practice, some of which are:
  • Hypertext fiction and poetry, on and off the Web
  • Kinetic poetry presented in Flash and using other platforms
  • Computer art installations which ask viewers to read them or otherwise have literary aspects
  • Conversational characters, also known as chatterbots
  • Interactive fiction
  • Novels that take the form of emails, SMS messages, or blogs
  • Poems and stories that are generated by computers, either interactively or based on parameters given at the beginning
  • Collaborative writing projects that allow readers to contribute to the text of a work
  • Literary performances online that develop new ways of writing
The field of electronic literature is an evolving one. Literature today not only migrates from print to electronic media; increasingly, “born digital” works are created explicitly for the networked computer. The ELO seeks to bring the literary workings of this network and the process-intensive aspects of literature into visibility.

The confrontation with technology at the level of creation is what distinguishes electronic literature from, for example, e-books, digitized versions of print works, and other products of print authors “going digital.”

Electronic literature often intersects with conceptual and sound arts, but reading and writing remain central to the literary arts. These activities, unbound by pages and the printed book, now move freely through galleries, performance spaces, and museums. Electronic literature does not reside in any single medium or institution."
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