Electronic Literature Lab

For Advanced Inquiry into Born Digital Media

  • Home
  • People
  • History
  • Research Output
  • Projects
    • ELO’s The NEXT
    • Restorations & Reconstructions
    • Rebooting Electronic Literature 1
    • Rebooting Electronic Literature 2
    • Rebooting Electronic Literature 3
    • Rebooting Electronic Literature 4
    • Live Stream Traversals
  • Catalog
    • Beta Catalog
    • Expanded Catalog
  • Podcasts
  • CMDC Studios
  • Home
  • People
  • History
  • Research Output
  • Projects
    • ELO’s The NEXT
    • Restorations & Reconstructions
    • Rebooting Electronic Literature 1
    • Rebooting Electronic Literature 2
    • Rebooting Electronic Literature 3
    • Rebooting Electronic Literature 4
    • Live Stream Traversals
  • Catalog
    • Beta Catalog
    • Expanded Catalog
  • Podcasts
  • CMDC Studios
  • Updates

    Restorations & Reconstructions

    June 4, 2022 /

    For the last seven years the lab has rebooted numerous work of born-digital media by documenting them via Grigar and Moulthrop’s Pathfinders methodology, which has culminated in a series of electronic open-source books entitled Rebooting Electronic Literature, and by conserving them through various restoration and reconstruction initiatives. The former, documentation, involves no direct intervention into a work, but the latter, restoration and reconstruction, requires interventions to the code and other aspects of the work that may involve emulation, migration, and/or collection in varying degrees and, so, always results in new versions and, thus, editions of a work. We call the intervention into portions of the code (including changing linking structure) and/or aspects of…

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    Dene Grigar

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    Coping with Bits Kick Off

    June 21, 2018

    Deena Larsen’s Donation to ELO

    December 1, 2018

    Researching E-Lit and Its Printed Materials

    March 14, 2018
  • News,  Updates

    Reconstruction of Sarah Smith’s “King of Space”

    May 21, 2022 /

    The Electronic Literature Lab and the Creative Media & Digital Culture Program are proud to announce the launch of the reconstruction of Sarah Smith’s King of Space. In production since January 12, 2022, the work is now widely accessible via the Web at https://kingofspace.org/. Reconstruction was undertaken by 23 spring graduates of the program who were guided by staff from the lab and the author herself.  King of Space (KOS) Version 1.0 was begun in 1987 and published in 1991 by Eastgate Systems, Inc. on two 3.5-inch floppy disks for Macintosh computers. Rapid technological developments relating to hardware and software caused it to be inaccessible to the public by the late…

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    Dene Grigar

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    Linking Literature & Games

    August 21, 2019

    Why I Care about Early Interactive Media

    February 22, 2020

    Article about ELL in Library of Congress Publication, The Signal

    November 13, 2013
  • News,  Updates

    Collection Selected for the Recovery Hub of American Women Writers

    May 11, 2022 /

    The Marjorie C. Luesebrink Collection that the lab developed and curated for ELO’s The NEXT was selected for inclusion in the July 2022 showcase of the “Recovery Hub of American Women Writers.” The Collection––consisting of 66 works the artists donated to The NEXT, 32 of which were created by the artist and preserved in various methods by the lab––was peer-reviewed in a process that involved “private, actionable feedback, and a public-facing showcase” (“Email,” 2 May 2022). It is an honor for Margie’s collection to be showcased by The Hub, an organization that “supports projects recovering the work of women writers by providing digital access to forgotten or neglected texts and/or extending them with…

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    Dene Grigar

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    Working on The Alan Sondheim Collection

    October 4, 2020

    Welcome to ELL’s 2018-19 Undergraduate Researchers for the COPE Project

    June 7, 2018

    Article about ELL in Library of Congress Publication, The Signal

    November 13, 2013
  • Updates

    Welcome Erika Fulop to ELL!

    April 30, 2022 /

    Erika Fulop, a Senior Lecturer in French at Lancaster University (UK), is a Hungarian scholar whose research focuses on “the impact of digitization and the internet on culture . . . and the modern and contemporary novel, especially metafiction and self-reflexive phenomena.” She is also a specialist in French e-lit and is working in the lab for three weeks to develop a range of projects, including a potential “The Alire Collection” at The NEXT. This journal, whose subtitle is A Relentless Literary Investigation, was begun in 1989 by Philippe Bootz, Frédéric Develay, Jean-Marie Dutey, Claude Maillard, and Tibor Papp of the Parisian group, L.A.I.R.E. (Lecture, Art, Innovation, Recherche, Écriture). As Bootz reminds…

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    Dene Grigar

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    ELL Undergraduate Researchers Reconstitute Deena Larsen’s Kanji-Kus

    April 6, 2019

    Trans[Creation] Video Documentation Is Now Accessible

    June 28, 2021

    Mellon Report Submitted

    March 28, 2019
  • Electronic Literature,  Updates

    Victory Garden, Version 5.0

    April 2, 2022 /

    “Experiencing the Garden, Again” By Dene Grigar     Since January 2022 the Electronic Literature Lab (ELL) has been busy doing many reconstruction projects aimed at preserving early interactive media. One of them is Stuart Moulthrop’s hypertext novel Victory Garden, published by Eastgate Systems, Inc. in 1991. Over its 30 year history the work has gone through numerous updates of its software and packaging, the last one in 2002––what I call “Version 4.0 CD-ROM for Macintosh and Windows Computers.” Unfortunately, that version was rendered inaccessible to Macintosh computers in 2007 when Apple upgraded to MacOS x 10.5 (Leopard). And of course, today a CD-ROM drive is no longer a common…

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    Dene Grigar

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    Live Playthrough/Traversal/Performance of Robert DiChiara’s “A Sucker in Spades”

    September 3, 2020

    Visitors to ELL

    June 17, 2013

    For the Love of the (Video) Game

    October 16, 2018
  • News

    Congratulations, Dr. Snyder!

    March 11, 2022 /

    We are very excited to announce that Richard Snyder, our Assistant Director and Metadata Specialist, successfully defended his dissertation yesterday (March 10) and so completed his PhD at Washington State University. His dissertation, “Word and Image in Early Modern Literature: A Digital Approach to Reading in Context,” is a hybrid one where he built a tool called the Early Modern Visual Reader (EMVR) that allows readers of Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Marlowe’s Hero and Leander to visualize concepts found in each work. Ultimately EMVR will be enhanced so that it can be used for a variety of texts and aid in the ability to produce scholarly digital editions of works…

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    Dene Grigar

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    Live Stream Traversal of Kathryn Cramer’s In Small & Large Pieces

    October 23, 2018

    Organizing a Collection of Electronic Literature

    December 25, 2019

    Victory Garden 2022 in The Digital Review

    September 16, 2022
  • Updates

    Guiding Principles for The NEXT

    February 10, 2022 /

    The Guiding Principles for The NEXT by Dene Grigar One of the lab’s main activities has been creating and managing the Electronic Literature Organization’s The NEXT. Two of the The NEXT’s founders are ELL staff members, and all of the production has been done by the lab’s  faculty, staff, and students.  The evolution of The NEXT from a simple repository for born-digital literature to what is now a very complex virtual museum/library/preservation space for born-digital art and expressive writing occurred over a four-year period, 2018-2022. Most of the “Aha moments” took place during many sleepless nights of the pandemic when I found myself locked down and unable to travel (and…

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    Dene Grigar

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    Special Live Stream Traversal of Mark Bernstein’s Those Trojan Girls

    March 13, 2019

    Provenance & Collecting E-Lit: A Case for Human-Centered Archiving

    March 25, 2018

    Space Poetry: Screening Eduardo Kac’s Inner Telescope

    September 16, 2018
  • Updates

    ELL Wins the 2022 Open Scholarship Award

    January 26, 2022 /

    The lab received the 2022 Open Scholarship Award from the Canadian Social Knowledge Institute (C-SKI) for its work on ELO’s The NEXT (See https://the-next.eliterature.org). The award is given to projects that address “open access, open data, open education, and other related movements that have the potential to make scholarly work more efficient, more accessible, and more usable by those within and beyond the academy.” In doing so, it “acknowledge and celebrate exemplary open scholarship, nominated via an open process.” Those projects given the award “demonstrate exemplary open scholarship via research, projects, or initiatives.”   Here are the list of 2022 winners: Open Scholarship Awards (2022), for open scholarship carried out by…

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    Dene Grigar

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    Congrats to Holly, Kathleen, Mariah, and Moneca

    April 26, 2020

    Celebrating Endangered Data Week with Tim McLaughlin’s Notes Toward Absolute Zero

    February 23, 2019

    Organizing a Collection of Electronic Literature

    December 25, 2019
  • Updates

    Follow the Pathfinders

    January 18, 2022 /

    We were excited to see Hannah Ackermans’s essay published in Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures  (Volume 24, 2021, doi:10.20415/hyp/024.e01). Below is the abstract of her essay. One of the most fascinating aspects about it is that she uses the Pathfinders methodology in its presentation, down to the exact publishing platform, Scalar, that Dene Grigar and Stuart Moulthrop used for their project, Pathfinders: Documenting the Experience of Early Digital Literature (2015). Pathfinders has shaped the way the lab has been documenting works, including the production of the video playthroughs of Flash works we cannot preserve with Ruffle or Conifer and other forms of interactive media that involve functionality no longer accessible today, like…

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    Dene Grigar

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    Mellon Report Submitted

    March 28, 2019

    Rhizome’s Linked Open Data/Wikibase Summit

    September 23, 2018

    CMDC Studios: Video Games R&D

    June 9, 2022
  • News

    2021 Accomplishments & 2022 Plans

    December 31, 2021 /

    The year 2021 was yet another banner year for the Electronic Literature Lab. Working remotely during the pandemic via Slack, Basecamp, and Zoom, the ELL Team undertook and completed many projects. Here is the list: Led the creation of The NEXT, moving from the prototype built on the Samvera platform into Semantic Markup and ARIA, and enhancing the content by adding several new collections, hosting three exhibitions, and adding over 5000 images and 50 videos. Led the reconstruction of Richard Holeton’s hypertext novel Figurski at Findhorn on Acid, published originally in 2001 on the Storyspace platform, into open web languages. Led the reconstruction of Thomas M. Disch’s interactive novel Amnesia,…

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    Dene Grigar

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    Getting Ready for Pathfinders

    June 16, 2013

    Love and Loss in Kendall’s A Life Set for Two

    April 5, 2018

    Resurrecting Flash: Hands-On Workshop

    September 23, 2021
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People

Director: Dr. Dene Grigar, Professor, The Creative Media & Digital Culture Program

Associate Director: Dr. Richard Snyder, Blackburn Fellow, The Creative Media & Digital Culture Program

Technical and Instructional Assistant: Greg Philbrook, B.A., The Creative Media & Digital Culture Program

Project Manager: Holly Slocum, B.A., The Creative Media & Digital Culture Program

Post-Bacc Researchers: Kathleen Zoller, Joel Clapp, Ruth Woodcock, Andrew Thompson, Arlo Ptolemy, Ariel Wallace, Sierra O'Neal, Ahria Nicholas

PhD & PostDoc Fellow: Madison McCartha, UC Santa Cruz

ELO Fellow: Alexandra Martin, QUAM (Canada)

Research Affiliates: Mariusz Pisarski, PhD (Poland); Erika Fulop, Phd, Lancaster University (UK; Agnieszka Przybyszewska, PhD, University of Łódź (Poland)

This website was created by Katie Bowen, Mariah Gwin, Holly Slocum and Austin Fields. Madeleine Brookman produced the ELL logo. All custom icons were designed by Holly Slocum. It is managed by Dene Grigar

Copyright © 2018