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
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

  • 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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    Mellon Report Submitted

    March 28, 2019

    Rhizome’s Linked Open Data/Wikibase Summit

    September 23, 2018

    The Impact of Undergraduate Research on a Field

    December 31, 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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    Coping with Bits Kick Off

    June 21, 2018

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

    February 16, 2019

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

    February 23, 2019
  • 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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    Prof. Élika Ortega Speaks in ELL on March 9

    March 4, 2018

    Conserving Community: The trAce Online Writing Centre

    April 6, 2020

    Michael Joyce’s Traversal of Twilight, a Symphony

    January 20, 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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    Happy Hour Featuring Alan Bigelow

    May 17, 2020

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

    March 25, 2018

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

    November 12, 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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    Curatorial Statement for “Tear Down the Wall” Exhibition at ACM Hypertext ’19

    August 11, 2019

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

    April 22, 2018

    Richard Holeton’s Writings & Art about the 1970s Counterculture, Drugs, and Pigs

    January 11, 2019
  • 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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    The Art and Science of Hypertext

    August 8, 2018

    For the Love of the (Video) Game

    October 16, 2018

    Deena Larsen Is Coming!

    October 28, 2018
  • 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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    Getting Ready for Pathfinders

    June 16, 2013

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

    March 25, 2018

    The Impact of Undergraduate Research on a Field

    December 31, 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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    Live Stream Traversal of Mary-Kim Arnold’s “Lust”

    May 8, 2018

    Why Collecting Is Important

    November 23, 2018

    Live Stream Traversal of Bernstein and Sweeney’s Historical Hypertext, “The Election of 1912”

    October 13, 2020
  • Updates

    Curatorial Statement for The NEXT

    May 2, 2021 /

    We are presenting The NEXT to the Electronic Literature Organization’s Board of Directors on Wednesday, May 8, 2021. The space goes live nine days later on Monday, May 17. Below is the curatorial statement I created for it that explains the vision underlying The NEXT as well as the process it took to build it. As I prepared it for inclusion at the space, I thought of all of the people and organizations that supported us over the three years of The NEXT’s development: the three other Co-PIs involved in Phase 1; Washington State University Vancouver; Electronic Literature Organization and its Board of Directors; my lab (Electronic Literature Lab) and…

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    Congrats to Nicholas Schiller

    July 30, 2018

    Celebrating Richard Holeton’s Figurski

    May 16, 2021

    2018-19 Live Stream Traversal Schedule

    October 12, 2018
  • Updates

    Congrats to The NEXT Production Team

    April 25, 2021 /

    The 39 students from the spring 2021 graduating class working on Phase 3 of The NEXT were represented by three members of their team at Washington State University Vancouver’s Research Showcase. Competing in the Podium division, Kathleen Zoller, the Project Manager; Barysh Agaliyev, Social Media Specialist; and Megan Bina, Videographer, won 2nd Place at the event.  Judges remarked that the team was team “very well prepared” and their presentation, “clear.” Their “[e]nthusiasm really helped to engage the audience.” The project itself was  “well thought out” and that the students answers questions “thoroughly.” It was particularly heartening to hear that the judges thought that  “the group presentation style worked well (given a…

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    Deena Larsen Is Coming!

    October 28, 2018

    Congrats to Nicholas Schiller

    July 30, 2018

    Working on The Alan Sondheim Collection

    October 4, 2020
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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 & Senior Designer: 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, Stratton Slater, Danny Blanchard

PhD & 2022 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