The new Figurski… – blueprints for media translation
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…
The Future is Yesterday
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…
ELL Undergraduate Researchers Reconstitute Deena Larsen’s Kanji-Kus
“All of my kanji-kus are dead, and you can see their husks if you follow these links.”–Deena Larsen So writes Deena Larsen on her website in 2014. But this is not true anymore: Undergraduate Researchers in my lab––Kathleen Zoller, Moneca Roath, Mariah Gwin, and Andrew Nevue––led by project manager Holly Slocum, have reconstituted this intellectually complex and visually stunning work so that it can be accessible to the public for years to come. Kanji-kus are, according to Larsen, “short poems based on the Japanese kanji or ideogram for the word itself” that figure largely in her web-based work from 1999-2002. Larsen’s hypertext novel, Disappearing Rain (2000), for example, is described as…
