Electronic Literature Lab

For Advanced Inquiry into Born Digital Media

  • Home
  • People
  • History
  • Research Output
  • Projects
    • Rebooting Electronic Literature 1
    • Rebooting Electronic Literature 2
    • Rebooting Electronic Literature 3
    • Live Stream Traversals
    • Afterflash
    • Reconstructing Kanji Kus
  • Catalog
    • Beta Catalog
    • Expanded Catalog
  • Podcasts
  • Exhibitions
  • Home
  • People
  • History
  • Research Output
  • Projects
    • Rebooting Electronic Literature 1
    • Rebooting Electronic Literature 2
    • Rebooting Electronic Literature 3
    • Live Stream Traversals
    • Afterflash
    • Reconstructing Kanji Kus
  • Catalog
    • Beta Catalog
    • Expanded Catalog
  • Podcasts
  • Exhibitions
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. One of a handful of media archaeology labs in the U.S., it is used for the advanced inquiry into the curation, documentation, preservation, and production of born digital literary works and other media.

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.

catalog icon

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

    ELL Is Participating This Week in 2 Virtual Conferences

    July 13, 2020 /

      The ELL Team is involved in two virtual conferences this week: ACM Hypertext ’20 and ELO 2020. Both were meant to be co-located in Orlando, FL and hosted by the University of Central Florida. The coronavirus, however, moved them both to Zoom, Discord, and other platforms.  On July 15, we are hosting the virtual event, “An Afternoon with afternoon,” an event that takes place on Zoom during the last day of Hypertext ’20 and the 1st day of ELO 2020. Dene is moderating; Greg, Holly, and Kathleen are trouble-shooting and managing the Chat. Dene is also on an asynchronous panel, entitled “1990s Literary Hypertext in the 21st Century,” with…

    Read More
    Dene Grigar

    You May Also Like

    Data Collection, Final Results

    June 9, 2019

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

    January 2, 2020

    Planet Electronic Literature

    November 29, 2020
  • History,  News,  Updates

    11 FAQs about Michael Joyce’s afternoon, a story

    June 29, 2020 /

      For the past month I have been preparing for the live group reading of Michael Joyce’s hypertext novel, afternoon, a story and the paper Richard Snyder and I are giving about hypertext at the ELO 2020 conference. My research led to: identifying every available manifestation of the work renumbering past editions and organizing them with the, heretofore, unidentified editions so that there is consistency throughout all of the manifestations of the novel versioning the novel according to changes to software so that it is easier for scholars to know what tech to use when accessing it tracking down more precise publication dates through email interviews, databases, and the Internet Archive…

    Read More
    Dene Grigar

    You May Also Like

    Curatorial Statement for “Tear Down the Wall” Exhibition at ACM Hypertext ’19

    August 11, 2019

    2018-19 Live Stream Traversal Schedule

    October 12, 2018

    Traversal of Rob Kendall’s A Life Set for Two

    March 18, 2018
  • Updates

    Celebrating Our Literary Heritage

    June 17, 2020 /

      This year, 2020, marks the 30th anniversary of the commercial publication of Michael Joyce’s hypertext novel, afternoon, a story. While editions of it were given out at conferences and to friends in 1987 and 1989, it is 1990 that figures as the date it was sold through the publisher, Eastgate Systems, Inc. As media theorist Terry Harpold and I both agreed when we discussed the event this week, honoring this work is not a nostalgic act but rather one that allows scholars to revisit Joyce’s contributions to literary history and situate it in contemporary culture, one markedly different than the one the novel both emerged from and reflects. Those…

    Read More
    Dene Grigar

    You May Also Like

    ELL’s Undergraduates Win Award

    April 12, 2019

    Chapter 1 of Rebooting Electronic Literature is Released

    January 28, 2018

    Why I Care about Early Interactive Media

    February 22, 2020
  • News,  Updates

    Launch of The Digital Review

    June 9, 2020 /

    Launch of The Digital Review Thursday, June 11, 2020 10:30 a.m.-1:30 a.m. At TDR’s Twitter site: https://twitter.com/tdrbark We are very excited to announce the launch of the new journal, The Digital Review (TDR), a sibling online publication of the electronic book review, founded and edited by CMDC faculty member, Will Luers, and supported by a research grant from Washington State University. TDR is an annual journal dedicated to the preservation and publication of innovative, born-digital essays. Each theme-based issue will offer a curated combination of commissioned work, submitted work and “rediscovered” work. It draws inspiration from journals, like Vectors (2005-2007), which commissioned  individual artist to create collaborative code, craft, and critical writing; Kairos, a long-established…

    Read More
    Dene Grigar

    You May Also Like

    Week 3 Data Collection: The 1st Trial Run

    May 24, 2019

    Literary Mobile Apps as the Next Frontier of Digital Preservation

    November 10, 2019

    Live Stream Traversal of Richard Holeton’s Figurski at Findhorn on Acid

    February 16, 2019
  • Updates

    Audio Files of Rob Swigart’s Downtime

    June 5, 2020 /

    Back in early February I began a study of Rob Swigart’s hypertext narrative Downtime, produced with Director and published by Eastgate Systems, Inc. in 2000. Rob had begun the work in the 80s when he was “doing tech writing for Apple” (5 Feb. 2020). I own three copies of the work: The 1st is dated June 15, 1999, was created with Director 6.5, and requires QT 3. It has a hand-produced label. The 2nd is dated May 11, 2000. It is also created with Director 6.5 but requires QT 4.0.3. Someone used a marker to label the CD-ROM.  Finally, the 3rd is the version published by Eastgate Systems, Inc. and dated June…

    Read More
    Dene Grigar

    You May Also Like

    Curatorial Statement for “Tear Down the Wall” Exhibition at ACM Hypertext ’19

    August 11, 2019

    Visit with Claus Atzenbeck

    July 18, 2018

    The Art and Science of Hypertext

    August 8, 2018
  • Updates

    Happy Hour Featuring Alan Bigelow

    May 17, 2020 /

    Join us at a virtual Happy Hour featuring noted e-lit artist Alan Bigelow and the cast from his ensemble web comedy, The Forever Club, on Friday, June 5, 2020 at 5 P.M. EDT/2 P.M. PDT via Zoom. The Forever Club is a 6-episode series created as mash-up of videos, texts, interactive elements, and visual remnants of social media about the antics of four very close friends Jordan, CJ, Karen, and Gabe. At the Happy Hour we will screen Episode 3, “Let’s Get Drunk,” where the friends challenge each other to a drinking contest. Bigelow and members of the cast will be on hand to talk about the work and its production.  No…

    Read More
    Dene Grigar

    You May Also Like

    2018-19 Live Stream Traversals Schedule

    August 28, 2018

    Rhizome’s Linked Open Data/Wikibase Summit

    September 23, 2018

    Organizing a Collection of Electronic Literature

    December 25, 2019
  • Updates

    Congrats to Holly, Kathleen, Mariah, and Moneca

    April 26, 2020 /

    Last week WSUV held its annual Research Showcase. All other WSU campuses had cancelled theirs since COVID-19 forced us all to hunker down in our homes beginning March 18. But my campus found a digital solution to the very human problem of disease by hosting the event as an online exhibition. Kathleen, who had been awarded a 2019 Summer Mini-Grant for a preservation project relating to Jennifer Ley, Carolyn Guertin, and Margie Luesebrink’s The Progressive Dinner Party (1999), created and submitted a poster, entitled “The Progressive Dinner Party Restored.” She also joined Mariah and Moneca on a poster presentation, entitled “Preserving Electronic Literature,” that focused on numerous projects we’ve been…

    Read More
    Dene Grigar

    You May Also Like

    For the Love of the (Video) Game

    October 16, 2018

    Conserving Community: The trAce Online Writing Centre

    April 6, 2020

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

    January 2, 2020
  • Updates

    TWINDY 2.0 Is Online

    April 19, 2020 /

    The recoded version of Annie Grosshans’ nonfiction hypertext essay, The World Is Not Done Yet, or what we in the lab have lovingly been referring to as TWINDY 2.0, is now online.   TWINDY 1.0 was originally created with Adobe Muse, which since March 26, 2020 is no longer supported by the company. [1] For fear that over time the work would deprecate, Annie reached out to several folks, including Amaranth Borsuk, who recommended to Annie that she get in touch with me to see if my lab could do something to preserve it. The ELL Team considered capturing a copy of it via the Webrecorder but decided against this…

    Read More
    Dene Grigar

    You May Also Like

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

    March 25, 2018

    Rhizome’s Linked Open Data/Wikibase Summit

    September 23, 2018

    Live Stream Traversal of Judy Malloy’s its name was Penelope

    April 22, 2018
  • Updates

    Conserving Community: The trAce Online Writing Centre

    April 6, 2020 /

    by Dene Grigar and Nicholas Schiller Welcome to the files from the trAce Online Writing Centre website, 1995-2005. Found here, currently, are four “pulls” of the trAce website from the Internet Archives’ Wayback Machine. Planned also is the complete website, from 2005, reconstructed from the original files provided us from the trAce server. Rationale Anyone associated with the trAce Online Writing Community would quickly recognize the rationale for reconstructing its website: trAce was the premier online community for new media writing in the UK and beyond, offering conferences, online courses, workshops, readings, and many other activities. Numerous pioneers of electronic literature/digital writing were nurtured by and/or participated in trAce––Alan Sondheim,…

    Read More
    Dene Grigar

    You May Also Like

    Planet Electronic Literature

    November 29, 2020

    Project Update

    June 15, 2019

    Article about ELL in Library of Congress Publication, The Signal

    November 13, 2013
  • History

    “Let Her Name Be Remembered: A Final Post about the #womenofelit Project”

    March 29, 2020 /

    By Dene Grigar, Professor & Director, Electronic Literature Lab 280 women e-lit pioneers and visionaries hailing from 30 countries, 162 of which were featured on Twitter shout outs: This was the final tally for the celebration of women e-lit pioneers and visionaries the Electronic Literature Lab held during Women’s History Month. (See Appendice) The event generated from the simple desire to honor women, tell their stories, amplify their deeds, and encourage others to know about them. For the Electronic Literature Lab, such an event exemplifies one aspect of the mission of a feminist lab. That said, the impetus for this particular approach to the event––that is, honoring women e-lit pioneers…

    Read More
    Dene Grigar

    You May Also Like

    Visitors to ELL

    June 17, 2013

    Researching E-Lit and Its Printed Materials

    March 14, 2018

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

    November 12, 2018
12345

Current Exhibit
An Afternoon with afternoon: 30th Anniversary Celebration of Michael Joyce's afternoon, a story, Launch: Wednesday, July 15, 2020.

Podcasts
Listen to Traversals by and Interviews of prominent e-lit artists and scholars on our Soundcloud playlist

2020-21 Traversal Schedule
Friday, September 11, 10-11:30 am PDT: Robert DiChiara, A Sucker in Spades (1988)

Thursday, October 15, 10-11:30: Bernstein and Sweeney, The Election of 1912 (1988)

Thursday, November 12, 10-11:30: Carolyn Guyer, Quibbling (1992)

Thursday, December 3, 10-11:30: Deena Larsen, Marble Springs (1993)

Thursday, January 21, 10-11:30: Michael Joyce, Twilight: A Symphony (1996)

Thursday, February 18, 10-11:30: TBA

Thursday, March 25, 10-11:30: Kathryn Cramer, In Small & Large Pieces (1994)

Thursday, April 22, 10-11:30: Richard Smyth, Genetis: A Rhizography (1996)

Thursday, May 13, 10-11:30: Rob Swigart, Down Time (2000)

2021 DHSI Course for E-Lit Scholars “Retro Media & Machines.” Co-taught by Dene Grigar & John Durno. Digital Humanities Summer Institute 2020.  University of Victoria. 7-11 June 2021.

calendar-icon

People

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

Associate Director: Nicholas Schiller, MLIS, Associate Professor, Creative Media & Digital Culture Program

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

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

Videographer: David Alonzo, MFA, Creative Media & Digital Culture Program

Undergraduate Researchers: Kathleen Zoller, Betsy Hanrahan, Andrew Thompson, Arlo Ptolemy, and Katya Farinsky ELO Fellow: Sean Braune (Canada) Research Affiliates: Mariusz Pisarski (Poland) and Astrid Ensslin (Norway)

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. Header graphic design by Katya Farinsky.

Copyright © 2018