The ELL Team spent some time during our weekly team meeting yesterday reflecting about the projects we took up and/or completed over the 14 weeks of the summer. As the time passed, the list grew. A frequent, “Oh, we forgot this one!” and “Oh, remember we did that, too?” produced a litany of work recounted with no little bit of reverence by the five of us. So, in the spirit of documentation, here is the list that shows that we spent our summer vacation very fruitfully. . .
Presented a paper the DHSI Project Management conference
We kicked off our summer break with Holly, Kathleen and I preparing for the Project Management conference hosted by the University of Victoria on June 6. COVID-19 turned the event into a virtual one. So, we wrote a paper, produced a video, and presented our formal presentation via the conference’s Twitter site. We learned after the event that we can submit our paper for publication, which we plan to do.
Restored Annie Grosshans’ The World Is Not Done Yet
We began this project to reconstitute Grosshan’s hypertext essay in January, thinking it would take us but a few months to make it accessible to the public. Seven months later and with much wrangling of the inelegant Muse coding, the work––now coded in HTML, CSS, and Javascript and fully ADA compliant and mobile ready––was completed in July. You can see it here.
Submitted the Afterflash grant
On July 15, we resubmitted the NEH’s HRCC grant to preserve 447 works of Flash and Shockwave published in online journals, anthologies, and showcases and held in the ELO’s repository. Last year we got very very close to being funded, with three “excellent” and two “very good” reviews from the evaluators. This year we addressed the one major concern that we needed to beef up our dissemination plan by, well, beefing up our dissemination plan. Fingers crossed.
Put on the incredible “Afternoon with afternoon” event
IMHO, incredible is an understatement. “An Afternoon with afternoon“ was a stunner with 10 of the top scholars and artists from around the world who have been involved with Michael Joyce’s afternoon, a story in some meaningful way, reading and interacting with the 12th edition from my laptop via Zoom. The event took place on Wednesday, July 15 (the same day as our HRCC grant was due, yes). Accompanying it is the exhibition of the 13 editions of the work curated by Dene. Dene used the research she did for the exhibition for the paper she gave at ELO 2020 that took place that week.
Recorded and saved the Flash works in bleuOrange
NT2, the international renown lab located in Montreal, Canada and directed by Bertrand Gervais, asked us to record Flash and Shockwave works published in their journal BleuOrange. Kathleen, our Conifer expert, completed this work in July.
Finished REL3
Yes, we completed the 3rd volume of Ell’s annual publication, Rebooting Electronic Literature, featuring the Traversals we did during the 2019-2020 year of Michael Joyce’s afternoon, a story; M. D. Coverley’s Califia; Stuart Moulthrop’s Victory Garden; Megan Heyward’s of day, of night; and Mark Bernstein’s Those Trojan Girls. We plan to distribute it on Monday, August 31, but you can get a sneak preview of it here.
Built out the ELL catalog dashboard
Actually, Greg did all of the coding on this project with the rest of us helping with usability testing and giving him feedback. What this project means for us is that we can work in the catalog’s database without interacting with the backend, making the entering of the works faster and less prone to error.
Migrated Turbulence to ELO server and ensured all but 1 successfully migrated
Over 350 works of net art with dependencies that would make your hair stand on end. But we did it. We moved all of them to the ELO server where they will now be hosted for perpetuity. Greg had to get Blue Host to agree to adding an old version of PHP on the server so that the older works would function. We also inventoried the collection to determine the ones that need conservation work done on them––with the idea that we would write a grant that would fund us to do this work in the future.
Planned 2020-21 Traversal schedule and made formed new relationships with Astrid Ensslin and Mariusz Pisarski
We invited two noted scholars Astrid Ensslin from the U of Alberta (Canada) and Mariusz Pisarski from the Department of Media Communication and Journalism, University of Information Technology and Management in Rzeszów (Poland) will join ELL in 2020-21 to collaborate on the Traversals and REL4 & 5. The letters of invitation to Astrid and Mariusz (a very formal process at WSU) went out this morning.
Inventoried all files on ELL hard drives
I had over 50 flash drives in my possession with works collected on them over the years that needed to be moved onto a permanent site. This process resulted in the need for me to purchase a 5 TB hard drive to hold all of the works that comprise the Grigar Collection of Electronic Literature. Named Dr. Chandra, the hard drive expands the holdings held on HAL and Dave. (Note the naming convention?)
Prepared for a socially distanced experience in ELL
This was definitely not my favorite project. To get permission to access ELL and its accompanying MOVE Lab I had to jump through numerous hoops, fill out lands of paperwork, and create maps and plans that guarantee that we will safely utilize our spaces this year. But the labor is done and we are now planning for the first Traversal on September 11, Robert DiChiara’s A Sucker in Spades.