ELL congratulates two of its UG Researchers, both of whom are graduating next week from WSUV. After serving as the Project Manager of the lab this fall, Katie Bowen is graduating. Joining her is Austin Fields, who like Katie, comprised two of the four UG Researchers hired to work on the COPE project funded by the Mellon Foundation. Katie was first hired as the lab’s Document Specialist for the Electronic Literature Lab and later as one of the four UG Researchers on the COPE project. She will earn a B.A. in Digital Technology and Culture with a minor in Psychology and graduate magna cum laude. During her time at ELL,…

  I found more archived papers and software  in a leftover old tub of stuff from my 2006 move, and I gave them to [ELO] so we can have more places to study these ephemera. –Deena Larsen, 30 November 2018 I love leftover stuff in tubs. They can––like this “stuff” that Deena gave us––be treasures for future generations to enjoy. 607 items of treasures to enjoy, to be exact. And they are all here in the Electronic Literature Lab inventoried, organized, and housed in archival folders and boxes just waiting for us to digitize them in the spring. The Deena Larsen Collection consists of three boxes, categorized into 12 series: Published…

by Dene Grigar Director, Electronic Literature Lab One of the early online communities I became a part of was the trAce Online Writing Centre, founded in 1995 by Sue Thomas, a professor at Nottingham Trent University in Nottingham, UK. My participation in trAce was an oddity in that I am not British (I’m of Czech heritage on both parents’ sides) nor a citizen of the United Kingdom (I’m an American citizen, 2nd generation). At the time (circa 2002-4), however, I had residency in England due to my post-doctoral study at the University of Plymouth. In 2003, when the announcement was made to participate in trAce’s TextLab fellowship, I applied and…

This photo, taken on Friday, November 9, 2018 in the Electronic Literature Lab (ELL) after Deena Larsen’s Traversal of her fiction anthology Samplers: Nine Vicious Little Hypertexts, exemplifies why a media archaeology lab like ELL is needed for digital preservation and archival research. What had become clear during the event was that the CD-ROM version of the work, marked as compatible for both Apple and PC computers, differed from the original Mac version Larsen personally produced beginning 1994. In fact, as we moved through this version of Samplers on both platforms––working side by side, lexia by lexia, link by link––Larsen and I came to realize just how different the work is…

Deena Larsen, the pioneering electronic literature artist who created such important works as Marble Springs (1993) and “Disappearing Rain” (2000),  among others, is coming to ELL to give a Traversal of her work “Samplers” (2001), her collection of “Nine Vicious Little Hypertexts.” In preparation, she sent us four boxes of her papers, media, and ephemera to be added to ELO’s collection of artists works and papers––including her planning materials for “Samplers.” We gave the audience at the last Traversal a peek at the contents of the posters, so if you were there, you got to see a teaser of the materials going into the ELO Repository. One of my favorite…

Friday, 10/26, 2018 12 Noon-1 p.m. PDT Live on YouTube and F2F in Electronic Literature Lab, WSUV Campus, VMMC 211A YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzeZQ05p_1Tli0lDBeWMxOA/live Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=elitpathfinders Twitter: #elitpathfinders Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/electronicliteraturelab/ Experience early born digital literature performed live via YouTube. Drawn from Stuart Moulthrop and Dene Grigar’s concept of the “Traversal,” these performances take place on the original hardware and software for which the work was produced. By broadcasting the Traversals live, audiences across the internet can access important works of electronic literature endangered by time and outmoded hardware, software, and media formats. The YouTube Chat function allows them to interact with the reader and members of the audience. Traversal Highlights This Traversal of Kathryn…

We’re been posting a lot lately about the preservation work we’ve been doing in the Electronic Literature Lab. Now it’s time to talk about the exhibit curation we also do here. This month Mariah Gwin, the Undergraduate Researcher who specializes in video game studies and handles the games collected in the ELL Collection, has mounted an exhibit called, For the Love of the Game,” that focuses on narrative role-playing games, interactive fiction, and media. As she write in her curatorial statement: The exhibit features works and their intended hardware dating back to the 1980s and into the late 2000s. It focuses on Western-made and Japanese works, as well as individual…

For the second year, the Electronic Literature Lab (ELL) at Washington State University Vancouver is hosting live stream Traversals of pioneering born digital literature. These events feature authors or readers performing the work on computers on which the works were originally experienced at the time of the works’ release. We are pleased to announce that four of the seven authors will be on hand at ELL for the Traversal: Deena Larsen will perform her work, Samplers; Richard Holeton, Figurski at Findhorn on Acid; Stephanie Strickland, True North; and George Landow, The Dickens Web. Live streaming means that the online audience can view the performance via YouTube and participate by interacting…

As they walk by, students stare curiously into the window, taken in by the scene of people hunkered down around a long table surrounded by three banks of vintage computers. The boldest and most inquisitive among the onlookers often poke their heads into the door and ask, “What is this place?” Welcome to the Electronic Literature Lab, where seven intrepid Undergraduate (UG) Researchers work with faculty and staff to preserve, document, promote, and build resources for born digital literature. We are busy this fall with many different activities: A Comprehensive Online Portal for Electronic Literature Works (COPE) Four UG Researchers––Katie Bowen, Austin Fields, Mariah Gwin, and Holly Slocum––are working with the…