Electronic Literature Lab

For Advanced Inquiry into Born Digital Media

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  • 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
ELL icon

About

Founded and directed by Dr. Dene Grigar, ELL contains 61 vintage Macintosh & PC computers, dating back from 1977, vintage software, peripherals, and a library of over 300 works of electronic literature and other media. It is used for the advanced inquiry into the curation, documentation, preservation, conservation, and production of born-digital art, literature, and video games. The lab has created and continues to manage the ELO's The NEXT and supports video game R&D through CMDC Studios.

For more information about the lab or for help with preserving or recovering born-digital work, contact Dr. Dene Grigar at dgrigar[at]wsu[dot]edu.

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CATALOG

Visit the online catalog of computers and media works; designed and coded by the CMDC technical assistant Greg Philbrook. The new version of the catalog with expanded entries is now on preview.

other labs icon

Other Media Archaeology Labs or Working Archives in the U.S.

Obsolete Computing & Media at the University of Victoria, directed by John Durno

Media Archaeology Lab at U of Colorado-Boulder, directed by Dr. Lori Emerson

The Trope Tank at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology, directed by Dr. Nick Montfort

The Deena Larsen Collection at the Maryland Institute in the Humanities at the University of Maryland, directed by Dr. Matthew Kirschenbaum, with Amanda Visconti

The Bill Bly Collection at the Maryland Institute in the Humanities at the University of Maryland, directed by Dr. Matthew Kirschenbaum, with Amanda Visconti, and Porter Olson

  • Updates

    Rebooting Electronic Literature Volume 4 Goes Live!

    August 28, 2021 /

    Announcing the release of Rebooting Electronic Literature Volume 4 ! This fourth volume of Rebooting Electronic Literature (REL) continues with the Electronic Literature Lab’s mission to document born-digital literary works published on floppy disks, CD-ROMs, and other media formats held among the 300 in Dene Grigar’s personal collection in the Electronic Literature Lab at Washington State University Vancouver. Since the publication of the Volume 1 in 2019, this annual publication has provided in-depth scholarly information that includes images of the physical media, videos of performances by and interviews with the authors for and critical essays about hypertext literary works no longer accessible to the public. The methodology used to document this art follows the Pathfinders…

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    Dene Grigar

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    2020-2021 Traversal Schedule

    August 12, 2020

    Hacking Electronic Literature Workshop

    February 24, 2018

    Ruffle Preservation Report #3

    February 20, 2021
  • News

    Remembering Amnesia

    August 12, 2021 /

    The lab will be leading the re-development of Thomas M. Disch’s interactive fiction game, Amnesia, published by Electronic Arts in 1986. The lab became interested in the game in 2017 when artist Sarah Smith sent us a copy of it while we were in the midst of documenting her interactive game, King of Space for Rebooting Electronic Literature, Volume 1 and decided to devote a chapter to Amnesia in the book. Fast forward three and a half years later. We are in the throes of planning a version of it for contemporary computing devices. Originally released for the Apple II computer, it was later released for the Commodore 64 and PC,…

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    Dene Grigar

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    Congrats to Nicholas Schiller

    July 30, 2018

    Inventorying Riding the Meridian

    February 8, 2019

    Rhizome’s Linked Open Data/Wikibase Summit

    September 23, 2018
  • Critical Essay,  Updates

    The new Figurski… – blueprints for media translation

    July 14, 2021 /

    On July 9, the lab celebrated two major events relating to Richard Holeton’s hypertext novel, Figurski at Findhorn on Acid: the 20th anniversary of its publication on the Storyspace platform in 2001 on CD-ROM by Eastgate Systems, Inc. and the launch of the archival version Holeton commissioned the lab to produce. Speaking at the launch was prominent hypertext scholar Mariusz Pisarski. Below is the paper he read at the event. The Archival version of Figurski can be accessed at https://figurskiatfindhornonacid.com. To watch the videoclips recorded via Zoom and edited by Joel Clapp, go here: https://vimeo.com/showcase/8664367. “The new Figurski…– blueprints for media translation” by Mariusz Pisarski, PhD Electronic Literature Lab Research Affiliate There is never…

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    Dene Grigar

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    Finding Stephanie Strickland’s True North

    March 21, 2019

    Literary Mobile Apps as the Next Frontier of Digital Preservation

    November 10, 2019

    Why a Lab Like ELL Is Needed for Digital Preservation and Archival Research

    November 12, 2018
  • News

    Welcome Richard Snyder

    July 1, 2021 /

    Richard Snyder joins the Electronic Literature Lab as its new Assistant Director on July 1, 2021. He began working with us in March 2021 specifically to fine tune the metadata for the 2500+ works held in The NEXT. His duties expanded into writing descriptions for those works missing that information and serving as a liaison between the lab and artists with collections in The NEXT.  He is a PhD Candidate at Washington State University Vancouver’s English Department where his research focuses on intersections of word and images in literary media. As part of his dissertation research, he is currently developing Early Modern Visual Reader (EMVR), a digital platform that remediates…

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    Mellon Report Submitted

    March 28, 2019

    Bill Bly, author of We Descend, Will Visit ELL

    September 3, 2018

    List of Hypertext Literature Published by Eastgate Systems, Inc., 1988-2016

    January 2, 2020
  • Updates

    Launch Party for Richard Holeton’s Figurski at Findhorn on Acid

    June 29, 2021 /

    Join us for a celebration of the release of the archival version of Richard Holeton’s zany hypertext Figurski at Findhorn on Acid taking place on Friday, July 9 via Zoom, from 10-11:30 am PDT. To RSVP, contact Dene Grigar, at dgrigar @ wsu (dot) edu.    

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    Data Collection, Final Results

    June 9, 2019

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

    February 23, 2019

    Trans[Creation] Video Documentation Is Now Accessible

    June 28, 2021
  • Updates

    Trans[Creation] Video Documentation Is Now Accessible

    June 28, 2021 /

    The video recordings from the colloquium, Trans[Creation], are now ready for viewing in Vimeo. These video clips, edited by ELL’s Joel Clapp, captures the two days of presentations and events that honored the Brazilian artist Augusto de Campos. Hosted by McGill University’s Digital Humanities program, University of Quebec à Montréal, NT2, AAREA.CO, ELL, and others, the colloquium took place from Thursday, June 10-Friday, June 11, 2021. Besides presentations by Nancy Perloff, Curator, Modern & Contemporary Collections at the Getty Research Institute (GRI); Marcela Vieira, French translator, researcher, and cofounder of the art website aarea.co; Eduardo Ledesma, Associate Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Illinois at…

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    Dene Grigar

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    Working on The Alan Sondheim Collection

    October 4, 2020

    Organizing a Collection of Electronic Literature

    December 25, 2019

    Coping with Bits Kick Off

    June 21, 2018
  • Updates

    Two E-Lit Works Accepted for the ELC4

    June 13, 2021 /

    Dene Grigar’s “The 24-Hr. Micro-Elit Project” (2009) and Annie Grosshan’s The World Is Not Done Yet V2.0 (2020) were both accepted for the Electronic Literature Organization’s Electronic Literature Collection (ELC) Volume 4, forthcoming in December 2021. The ELC is an anthology of works published every five years by the organization. As such, it provides “a mirror of a specific moment in time occurring across continents, languages, and platforms during the second decade of the twenty-first century” (“About,” ELC 3). The former was authored by the Director of the lab, while the latter is one recently preserved by members of the ELL Team. Grigar’s work is a collection of 24 works of micro-fiction she…

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    Dene Grigar

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    List of Hypertext Literature Published by Eastgate Systems, Inc., 1988-2016

    January 2, 2020

    Rhizome’s Linked Open Data/Wikibase Summit

    September 23, 2018

    Completed the Development of the Metadata for Turbulence.org

    July 4, 2018
  • Updates

    DHSI 2021 Starts

    June 7, 2021 /

    Today John Durno’s and my DHSI 2021 course, “Retro Machines and Media,” began with a Flash preservation workshop, led by Arlo Ptolemy, Andrew Thompson, and me. We used Alan Bigelow’s “This Is Not a Poem,” which the lab has not yet preserved for The NEXT, for a live demo of implementing Ruffle and Conifer to preserve it. Interestingly Ruffle did not resurrect it because, I surmise, the sound, video, and effects are just too complex for a simple solution. Conifer, however, did work. So, we were able to aptly show our process of moving from one method to another until something worked.  Tomorrow Greg Philbrook and I will take the…

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    Dene Grigar

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    Article about ELL in Library of Congress Publication, The Signal

    November 13, 2013

    Traversal of Rob Kendall’s A Life Set for Two

    March 18, 2018

    Getting Ready for the Next Pathfinders Traversal

    July 27, 2013
  • Updates

    Welcome Dan Walker to ELL

    May 30, 2021 /

    We are pleased to introduce Dan Walker, a recent graduate of Reed College in Portland, OR, who is joining us in the lab this summer as a Post Baccalaureate Fellow to work on our annual publication, Rebooting Electronic Literature Volume 4. Dan is funded by two grants from Reed, Summer Opportunity Fellowship Award, geared to students looking for mentors to work with at other institutions; and the  Eddings Opportunity Grant, offered to English majors at the college. He will spend his time learning how to create content and code in the Scalar platform, writing descriptions of the videos and images from our various Traversals, and working with with lab members to…

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    ELL’s Undergraduates Win Award

    April 12, 2019

    Finding Stephanie Strickland’s True North

    March 21, 2019

    Deena Larsen’s Donation to ELO

    December 1, 2018
  • Updates

    Celebrating Richard Holeton’s Figurski

    May 16, 2021 /

    Since January 2021, the Electronic Literature Lab has been working on migrating Richard Holeton’s comedic hypertext novel, Figurski at Findhorn on Acid, published by Eastgate Systems, Inc. in 2001 to an open-access, archival version created in HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. The project has been completed and is being tested for final release at https://figurskiatfindhornonacid.com. A formal celebration will take place on Friday, July 9, from 10-11 a.m. PDT via Zoom. I want to acknowledge the team involved in bringing Figurski back to the public: Betsy Hanrahan, Kathleen Zoller, and Holly Slocum were the prime movers; Sarah West and Dave Sabrowski assisted; and as always Greg Philbrook, the lab’s tech guru,…

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    Moving Forward in 2020

    January 18, 2020

    Coping with Bits Kick Off

    June 21, 2018

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

    March 25, 2018
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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

ELO Fellow: Alexandra Martin, QUAM (Canada)

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

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