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

    Introduction to Electronic Literature as Digital Humanities & Forthcoming Book Launch

    January 12, 2021 /

    The “Introduction” to James O’Sullivan’s and my collection of essays, Electronic Literature as Digital Humanities, has been reprinted by the Electronic Book Review. The essay lays out the argument that:  . . . electronic literature is the logical object of study for digital humanities scholars who have, by the second decade of the twenty-first century, cut their teeth on video games, interactive media, mobile technology, and social media networks; are shaped by politics of identity and culture; and able to recognize the value of storytelling and poetics in any medium. The book, published by Bloomsbury Press, will be released on January 21, 2021. James and I thank the ELO’s Editorial Board…

    Read More
    Dene Grigar

    You May Also Like

    Finding Stephanie Strickland’s True North

    March 21, 2019

    The Impact of Undergraduate Research on a Field

    December 31, 2018

    Conserving Community: The trAce Online Writing Centre

    April 6, 2020
  • Updates

    Welcome 2021 ELO Fellow Sean Braune

    January 2, 2021 /

    ELL is very pleased to welcome its 2021 ELO Fellow, Sean Braune. Sean, who will be working directly under Professor Will Luers on the publication, The Digital Review, is a scholar, writer, and filmmaker. He has authored the full-length poetry collection, Dendrite Balconies (University of Calgary Press, 2019) and the philosophy book Language Parasites: Of Phorontology (Punctum Books, 2017). He has recently completed post-production on his first feature-length film, Nuptials, which has been submitted to several international film festivals. After completing a PhD at York University, he held a Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Postdoctoral Fellowship at Brock University. He has had theoretical work published in Postmodern Culture, Western American Literature,  Journal…

    Read More
    Dene Grigar

    You May Also Like

    A Successful Presentation at the MLA 2020

    January 12, 2020

    Coping with Bits Project Meeting

    December 20, 2018

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

    January 11, 2019
  • Updates

    Tribute to the Flash Generation

    December 23, 2020 /

    A Toast to the Flash Generation Thursday, December 31, 2020 10 a.m.-5 p.m. PST Zoom: bit.ly/ToastToFlash Hosted by Dene Grigar, Director, Electronic Literature Lab; Digital Preservationist, Electronic Literature Organization Join us on New Year’s Eve Day to celebrate the genius of the Flash Generation when over 20 artists of Flash narratives, poetry, and essays will read and perform their works throughout the day. You are invited to drop in anytime via Zoom, experience the works, and participate in the chat and the Q&A.  The term, “Flash Generation,” coined by theorist Lev Manovich in 2005, captured the zeitgeist of a new era of cultural production when artists and writers discovered they could express their…

    Read More
    Dene Grigar

    You May Also Like

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

    February 23, 2019

    2018-19 Live Stream Traversal Schedule

    October 12, 2018

    Congrats to Holly, Kathleen, Mariah, and Moneca

    April 26, 2020
  • News,  Updates

    The Electronic Literature Repository

    December 11, 2020 /

    Last Tuesday Holly and I gave a presentation at the ELO Salon hosted by Deena Larsen about the Electronic Literature Repository. The lab has been managing the site since its creation and is now in the process of moving into phase 3 of its development.  The Repository is envisioned as the next generation exhibition and preservation space that will function as an open-access, online library/museum/archival site. Created in 2018-2019 with seed funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Repository currently holds 26 collections of 2207 pieces of born-digital literary art. The works held in the Repository include a wide variety of genres, such as hypertext novels, poetry, and essays;…

    Read More
    Dene Grigar

    You May Also Like

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

    August 11, 2019

    Celebrating Women in E-Lit

    February 29, 2020

    Launch of The Digital Review

    June 9, 2020
  • Updates

    Planet Electronic Literature

    November 29, 2020 /

    Since attending the first official Electronic Literature Organization conference held at UCLA in April 2002, called “Electronic Literature State of the Arts,” I have watched the field grow, not just in number but in reach. Founded in 1999 in the U.S. (during the rise of the World Wide Web) by Scott Rettberg, Jeff Ballowe, and Robert Coover and incorporated in the city of Chicago as a 501 (c) 3, ELO was, at the time, a decidedly American non-profit literary arts organization. Though it aligned with international organizations and research groups with a similar mission to promote and nurture born-digital writing like the trAce Online Writing Center (UK), Hermeneia (Spain), NT2…

    Read More
    Dene Grigar

    You May Also Like

    Coping with Bits Kick Off

    June 21, 2018

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

    January 2, 2020

    2020-2021 Traversal Schedule

    August 12, 2020
  • Critical Essay,  History

    The Future is Yesterday

    November 22, 2020 /

    On the side of a lonely stretch of highway in a bleak part of Kansas, a man is pasting a sign on a billboard. The activity frames this episode of Season 4 of Fargo, with the phrase, “THE FUTURE is,” lingering through the storyline until it is finally punctuated at the end of the episode with the word, “NOW!” The message’s optimism and urgency screams at the viewer and belies the unseemly demise of many character’s lives (a few by tornado) during the course of the hour. The future is Now! Hurry! I pondered that message on Friday during the launch of the book, The Future of Text, and excellent symposium of…

    Read More
    Dene Grigar

    You May Also Like

    Traversal of Rob Kendall’s A Life Set for Two

    March 18, 2018

    Live Stream Traversal of Kathryn Cramer’s In Small & Large Pieces

    October 23, 2018

    Donation of Educational Media

    June 28, 2018
  • Electronic Literature,  News,  Updates

    Traversal of Carolyn Guyer’s Quibbling

    November 7, 2020 /

    Thursday, 11/12, 2020 10 a.m.-11:30 a.m. PST Live on YouTube: http://youtube.com/c/electronicliteraturelab #ELitLab Join us for a live YouTube event: A playthrough of Carolyn Guyer’s hypertext narrative Quibbling (1992, 1996). For the playthrough we’ll be using the 3.5-inch floppy disk version on a Macintosh Classic II, running System Software 7.1. Performing the work is the author Carolyn Guyer. Following her performance there will be a Q&A that includes the author, hypertext scholar and ELL Research Affiliate, Mariusz Pisarski, and Dene Grigar. Safety precautions due to COVID-19 means we will be using a combination of Zoom, YouTube, and OBS software to allow Guyer from New York State to remotely guide Grigar in…

    Read More
    Dene Grigar

    You May Also Like

    For the Love of the (Video) Game

    October 16, 2018

    The Impact of Undergraduate Research on a Field

    December 31, 2018

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

    August 11, 2019
  • Updates

    Expanding Metadata for Better Accessibility: Lab Tour for 5th Workshop on Visualization for the Digital Humanities

    October 24, 2020 /

      Electronic Literature Lab Tour at the 5th Workshop on Visualization for the Digital Humanities by Dene Grigar and Holly Slocum, Electronic Literature Lab, Washington State University Vancouver “Humans have contours;  so should their data.”–The ELL Team, October 2020 The Electronic Literature Lab is a media archaeology lab with a mission, since its founding in 2012, focused on human-centered 1) preservation and archiving, 2) curation, 3) documentation, and 4) production. It undertakes a lot of projects relating to those four areas, but the one we are quickly mentioning today is the development and maintenance the Electronic Literature Organization’s Electronic Literature Repository, 25 collections amounting to 2106 works of born-digital literature dating back to the…

    Read More
    Dene Grigar

    You May Also Like

    Project Update

    June 15, 2019

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

    January 2, 2020

    Congrats to Holly, Kathleen, Mariah, and Moneca

    April 26, 2020
  • Updates

    Electronic Literature as Digital Humanities: Forthcoming Book!

    October 16, 2020 /

    The Electronic Literature Lab is happy to announce the forthcoming book in the Electronic Literature Series published by Bloomsbury Press, co-edited by Dene Grigar, ELL Director, and James O’Sullivan, University Cork College.   Electronic Literature as Digital Humanities:  Contexts, Forms & Practices Coming January 21, 2021 from Bloomsbury Press! ISBN-13: 978-1501363504 Electronic Literature as Digital Humanities, co-edited by James O’Sullivan and Dene Grigar and published as part of Bloomsbury Press’ “Electronic Literature” series, is a collection of 32 essays by international scholars and artists that argues electronic literature is central to the humanities, particularly one focusing on questions relating to digital culture and “the symbolic representation of language, the graphical expression of…

    Read More
    Dene Grigar

    You May Also Like

    Live Playthrough/Traversal/Performance of Robert DiChiara’s “A Sucker in Spades”

    September 3, 2020

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

    January 11, 2019

    Space Poetry: Screening Eduardo Kac’s Inner Telescope

    September 16, 2018
  • Updates

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

    October 13, 2020 /

    Thursday, 10/15, 2020 10 a.m.-11:30 a.m. PDT Live on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzeZQ05p_1Tli0lDBeWMxOA/live #ELitLab Join us for a live YouTube event: A playthrough of Mark Bernstein and Erin Sweeney’s historical hypertext, The Election of 1912 (1988). For the playthrough we’ll be using the 3.5-inch floppy disk on which the work was originally published and a Macintosh SE running System Software 6.0.7. Performing the work are the two authors. Following their performance there will be a conversation and Q&A that includes the authors, hypertext scholar and ELL Research Affiliate, Mariusz Pisarski, and Dene Grigar. Safety precautions due to COVID-19 means we will be using a combination of Zoom, YouTube, and OBS software to…

    Read More
    Dene Grigar

    You May Also Like

    Celebrating Women in E-Lit

    February 29, 2020

    Congratulating Our Graduating UG Researchers

    December 8, 2018

    Love and Loss in Kendall’s A Life Set for Two

    April 5, 2018
123

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