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…

ELO’s Digital Archivist Abby Adams and I attended Rhizome’s Linked Open Data/Wikibase Summit last week with two goals:  1) to learn more about how Rhizome structured information in its Wikibase because ELO is using it––along with the Library of Congress Name Authority File and ELMCIP––for tracking authoritative data for the ELO Repository; and 2) to become better acquainted with how Wikibase functions so that ELO may assist Rhizome with adding metadata about artists and works that cross between media art and born digital literary art. Following three days of sessions about Data Modeling, Tools, and UX/UI, to name a few, Abby and I agreed that we left the workshop having achieved…

Imagine a medium untethered to gravity, where no wind carries the spoken word and where no magnetic field bounds writers to express thought in a particular direction. In such an environment, what would poetry be? This is the question that media artist Eduardo Kac explores in his work, Inner Telescope. This is the first work of space poetry––that is, poetry produced for creation and performance in space. It was was propelled by rocket ship to the International Space Station (ISS) and enacted by French astronaut Thomas Pesquet. The Electronic Literature Lab is screening Kac’s video documentation of the production and performance of Inner Telescope. The video is recorded in French…

Bill Bly, the author of We Descend (1997), will visit the Electronic Literature Lab on Friday, September 14. Bly also authored the online chapbook Wyrmes Mete (2002). His print poems and stories have appears in 5 AM, Amelia, American Poetry Anthology, Antigonish Review, Encore, Explorations ’95, MacGuffin, Runes, Yahoo! Internet Life, and Zone 3, along with articles and reviews in Books & Religion, Didaskalia, The Drama Review, Tekka, and Trinity News. He has taught writing at New York University, Fordham University, and Wagner College, where he ran the Writing Program, and has won the Stanley Drama Award, competitive residencies at Shenandoah Valley Playwrights Retreat, Ploughshares International Fiction Seminar, and Vermont Studio Center, as well as fellowships from the…