Treasures from the Rubenstein
by Dene Grigar After Triangle SCI 2022 ended on Thursday, I stay an additional day in Durham so that I could visit the Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University again. This was my third visit to the library to do archival research into the Stephanie Strickland, Rob Kendall, and Judy Malloy Papers that the library holds. No matter how many times, though, I visit, I discover new treasures that I somehow overlooked before. Yesterday was no different. After researching information about Kendall’s hypertext poem, “Penetration,” which along with “Dispossession” is part of his The Seasons collection (and that we are adding to the Rob Kendall Collection at The…
Victory Garden, Version 5.0
“Experiencing the Garden, Again” By Dene Grigar Since January 2022 the Electronic Literature Lab (ELL) has been busy doing many reconstruction projects aimed at preserving early interactive media. One of them is Stuart Moulthrop’s hypertext novel Victory Garden, published by Eastgate Systems, Inc. in 1991. Over its 30 year history the work has gone through numerous updates of its software and packaging, the last one in 2002––what I call “Version 4.0 CD-ROM for Macintosh and Windows Computers.” Unfortunately, that version was rendered inaccessible to Macintosh computers in 2007 when Apple upgraded to MacOS x 10.5 (Leopard). And of course, today a CD-ROM drive is no longer a common…
Woman E-Lit Event & Initiatives
Welcome to Woman E-Lit, a very special symposium that took place on March 30, 2021 during Women’s History Month celebrating women who have contributed to the field of electronic literature. It also celebrated the 10th anniversary of the founding of the Electronic Literature Lab (ELL). The two events intersect in that it was important to the ELL Team to celebrate the lab’s anniversary in a way that speaks to it mission––that is, to curate, document, preserve, and produce born digital literary works and other media. Hosting a symposium where women could come together to amplify achievements, provide a space of free and welcomed expression, and celebrate you, us, all of…
Traversal of Carolyn Guyer’s Quibbling
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…
Megan Heyward’s Traversal of “of day of night”
Friday, 11/8/19 12 p.m.-1:00 p.m. PDT Live on YouTube and F2F in the MOVE Lab, VCLS 3 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzeZQ05p_1Tli0lDBeWMxOA/live Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=elitpathfinders Twitter: #ELitLab Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/electronicliteraturelab/ Join us for artist Megan Heyward’s Live Stream Traversal of her interactive, multimedia work, of day of night. Produced with Macromedia Director in 2001 and exhibited widely until its publication on CD-ROM by Eastgate Systems, Inc. in 2004, the work remains the last work the company published during the 1988-2004 period. Heyward will be performing her work on an Apple G4 iMac (2002-2004), known affectionately as the “Lampshade Mac,” using the Mac OS X version.
Expanding the David Kolb Collection
On Friday, August 23, David Kolb, philosopher and author of the hypertext essay, Socrates in the Labyrinth (1994) spent the day with Astrid Ensslin and me in the lab. In the early afternoon, we held a formal event entitled, “For What Is Thinking, If Not Linear?’ – A Conversation with David Kolb, Astrid Ensslin, and Dene Grigar about Socrates in the Labyrinth, Hypertext, and the Lore of Electronic Literature,” that was videotaped by Undergraduate Researcher Moneca Roath and will be made available on Vimeo in early September. Later that afternoon, though, the three of us got together and went through the digital materials––lectures, published and unpublished hypertexts, printed essays, etc.––that David had brought…
Linking Literature & Games
“Linking Literature & Games: Exploring Hypertext, Digital Fiction, & the Language of Gaming” is an exhibit curated by Mariah Gwin, an Undergraduate Researcher in the Electronic Literature Lab. Below is her curatorial statement and the list of items included in the exhibit. The URL to the archival site is http://dtc-wsuv.org/mgwin17/ensslin-exhibit. “Linking Literature and Games: Exploring Hypertext, Digital Fiction, and the Language of Gaming” presents literary games, hypertext, and digital fiction focusing on the scholarship of Astrid Ensslin, a professor from the University of Alberta specializing in Electronic Literature and Games. This exhibit features literary works, games, and hardware that date back to the mid-1980s and into the late 2000s. With…
Resetting the Table
This essay is a reprint of the Introduction to the forthcoming multimedia book, The Progressive Dinner Party Restored. The author Kathleen Zoller is an Undergraduate Researcher in ELL who received a WSU Undergraduate Summer Mini-Grant to restore “The Progressive Dinner Party,” a special collection created by Jennifer Ley, Marjorie Luesebrink, and Carolyn Guertin and published in 1999 by Riding the Meridian. In the essay Zoller explains the project and the method by which she restored the collection. The book will be released on September 1, 2019. “The Progressive Dinner Party Restored” by Kathleen Zoller The Progressive Dinner Party is a collection of 39 works selected from Carolyn Guertin’s Assemblage, a showcase of new…
Electronic Literature Preservation
I began collecting Apple computers when it occurred to me that some of the electronic literary work that I liked so much would not be accessible one day without vintage computers. This idea came to me, unfortunately, after I had given away my own LC II and Performa and did not make an attempt to ask for the CI a family member no longer wanted. But once the awareness set in, I collected with a vengeance: I now own 24 vintage Macs dating back to 1983. Yes, I have to admit I am a fan of the design, particularly of the computers that Steve Jobs had a hand in developing…
