Celebrating Endangered Data Week with Tim McLaughlin’s Notes Toward Absolute Zero
Having spent the last month immersed in the mechanical pigs, Spam, utopian communes, the Star Trek Holodeck and––yes––acid from Richard Holeton’s Figurski at Findhorn on Acid, I’m now turning my attention to the special Traversal taking place in celebration of Endangered Data Week: A Traversal of Tim McLaughlin’s Notes Toward Absolute Zero, published by Eastgate Systems, Inc. in 1992/3. The event, hosted by Digital Scholarship Commons at the University of Victoria’s Libraries and organized by John Durno, Head of Library Systems, takes place on Friday, March 1 from 2:00-3:30 p.m. It features the BC artist performing his work in front of both an online and onsite audience on floppy disk on the…
Richard Holeton’s Writings & Art about the 1970s Counterculture, Drugs, and Pigs
“Well, pigs, I guess.” –Richard Holeton This is the first line of Richard Holeton’s list of 11 “things I want to write about,” found among his papers, dated from 1993-1998, for his Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing degree at San Francisco State University. The list is a collection of topics that includes the counterculture of the early 1970s; relationships between brothers as well as between fathers and sons; Star Trek (“both original and Next Generation plots”); and the murder by Theodore Streleski of his dissertation director––all of which end up in Holeton’s epic hypertext novel, Figurski at Findhorn on Acid, published in 2001 by Eastgate Systems, Inc. The work…
Welcoming New Post-Doc to ELL
We are very excited to announce that Monika Górska-Olesińska from the University of Opole will be coming to ELL, September 14-30, 2016, to work on her project, “The Poetry@Science in the Works of Stephanie Strickland.” Dr. Górska-Olesińska holds a PhD (2006) in Art and Humanities from Jagiellonian University in Krakow and serves as Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre, Film and New Media at the Institute of Polish Language and Culture Studies. Her research interests include cyberculture, new media art, media theory, digital textuality, electronic literature, history of technology, the intersection of art and science. She is the author of three books and over 15 peer reviewed articles and book chapters.
An Afternoon with afternoon
ELL hosted noted e-lit authors and theorists Michael Joyce and Carolyn Guyer yesterday. Joyce read from his 1987 hypertext novel afternoon: a story, and both he and Carolyn talked about their involvement in the early development of the field. The papers, CDs, diskettes you see on the table come from my own archive as well as the one sent to me by Marjorie Luesebrink in preparation for the exhibit of e-lit history at the University of Victoria. Joyce and Guyer walked the audience through each item and provided background and context on the works and events they represent. We documented over two hours of conversation and plan to include it in the…
Dr. Daniela Côrtes Maduro Coming to ELL
Portuguese scholar, Dr. Daniela Côrtes Maduro, will be conducting research in ELL from May 9-June 5. Maduro earned a PhD in 2014 in Materialities of Literature from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the University of Coimbra. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher from the University of Bremen in Germany and a Marie Curie COFUND Fellow working on the project, “Shapeshifting texts: keeping track of electronic literature.” She comes to ELL to study in our archives. She will be with us until June 5 and travel then to the Electronic Literature Organization’s 2016 conference.
Preparing for Visitors of the 25th Anniversary Celebration
ELL was one of a handful of labs open on Saturday, September 6, for WSUV’s 25th Anniversary Celebration. We showed many of the works of electronic literature featured in Pathfinders, like Victory Garden and Uncle Roger, as well as other others we thought the public would enjoy. Among the favorites were Talan Memmott’s Lexia to Perplexia on my G3 iMac running Netscape. With the event behind us, we will our attention back to finishing the multimedia book for Pathfinders.
My Macs are Back in Time for WSUV’s 25th Anniversary Celebration
You may remember that Bill Bly, electronic literature artist and author of We Descend, gave me a car full of Macs last summer when he visited me on the way to Milwaukee, MI to the ELO 2014 conference. I asked Jeff, my former student and resident Mac hardware guru who fixes the Macs in my lab, to clean them and service those that needed motherboards, switches, etc. He arrived today with all but two ready for the lab. Not a minute too soon. Next Saturday WSUV is celebrating its 25th Anniversary with a celebration for about 3000 people. I am opening both ELL and the MOVE Lab for tours. I…
Fulbright Scholar from Poland Researching in ELL
Urszula Pawlicka, a doctoral candidate from the University of Warmia and Mazury, located in Olsztyn, Poland, has come to the CMDC program as a Fulbright scholar to study electronic literature and cyberculture with Dr. Dene Grigar, becoming the first ELL Visiting Scholar. “Ula,” as she is called, comes with extensive training. After completing the first stage of Polish Philology, she spent a year at the University of Warsaw. Her masters degree was in Journalism and Social Communication, also at the University of Warmia and Mazury, Olsztyn. Her master’s thesis was entitled “Category of communication in Polish cyberpoetry.” She has published one book, Cyberpoetry. Contexts and Characterization, Korporacja Ha!art, Kraków 2012. Her most important…
Invited back to DHSI for 2015
I was very happy to receive the invitation, today, from Ray Siemens to return to the Digital Humanities Summer Institute next summer at the University of Victoria, to teach the course in electronic literature again. This will make the 4th year in a row that I have taught at the institute. This year I brought my ELO colleagues Sandy Baldwin, Davin Heckman, and Margie Luesebrink with me. We had 25 faculty members and graduate students in our course from universities in Canada, the US, UK, Ireland, and Poland. Along with the course we all read at an event organized by James O’Sullivan with whom I am collaborating on a book…
More New Vintage Computers for ELL
The trunk to the black PF Cruiser popped open to reveal a pile of vintage computers, keyboards, boxes of software and other tech goodies destined for ELL. In the car’s backseat was another mound of vintage tech. The man who provided this “Christmas in June” experience was none other than Bill Bly, pioneering electronic literature artist and author of We Descend––one of the five works that Stuart Moulthrop and I worked to preserve in the Pathfinders project. Bill, who drove to WSUV from Pennsylvania by way of Seattle, was on his way to Denver to visit with Deena Larsen, another pioneering electronic artist. Both will end up in Milwaukee…
