Electronic Literature Lab

For Advanced Inquiry into Born Digital Media

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  • 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
    • Podcasts
    • Published Games
  • Catalog
    • Beta Catalog
    • Expanded Catalog
  • 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
    • Podcasts
    • Published Games
  • Catalog
    • Beta Catalog
    • Expanded Catalog
  • CMDC Studios
  • Ruminations

    Why I Care about Early Interactive Media

    February 22, 2020 /

    The question I get asked a lot is, Why do I care so much about early interactive media, particularly since they are generally relegated to the black and white (or green on green) environment of a computer monitor (and a small one, at that), are text-heavy, and whose images–-if they exist at all––are comprised of ASCII art, and mood, augmented by 8-bit sound (if there is any sound at all)? This is a valid question in light of contemporary interactive storytelling techniques that involve robustly immersive environments created with Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and 3D technologies. It boils down to this: I am fascinated with the way ideas develop over time…

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    Dene Grigar

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    Congratulating Our Graduating UG Researchers

    December 8, 2018

    Getting Ready for the Next Pathfinders Traversal

    July 27, 2013

    Project Update

    June 15, 2019
  • Ruminations

    Versioning Rob Swigart’s Down Time

    February 13, 2020 /

    As Holly was updating the metadata for the ELO Repository, she realized that there were different CD-ROMs called Down Time held in the various collections. Upon closer inspection, she guessed that they were not copies but rather potential versions of Rob Swigart’s interactive narrative and asked me to look over them. And, of course, she was right. Versioning born digital literature is something I love to do and have been doing officially since  working on the chapter about Judy Malloy’s Uncle Roger (1986-2014) for Pathfinders. Curious about a work that has endured close to 30 years of technological upgrades to hardware and software, I set off on a journey to determine…

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    Dene Grigar

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    A Successful Presentation at the MLA 2020

    January 12, 2020

    Data Collection, Final Results

    June 9, 2019

    Space Poetry: Screening Eduardo Kac’s Inner Telescope

    September 16, 2018
  • Ruminations

    The World Is Not Done Yet, and Nor Are We

    December 13, 2019 /

    Yesterday Seattle artist Annie Grosshans visited the lab to talk to us about her “weblication,” The World Is Not Done Yet, a non-fiction work that ruminates about the shift from the world of print to the world of digital media. Created in 2013 with Adobe Muse, this insightful and moving work of electronic literature may eventually become inaccessible to the public because on March 26, 2020 Adobe will no longer support Muse. [1]   For those of you who are not familiar with Muse, it is a drag and drop system for building websites for desktop, tablet and mobile devices. It reminds me of the old iWeb software program offered…

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    Dene Grigar

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    Project Update

    June 15, 2019

    Traversal of Rob Kendall’s A Life Set for Two

    March 18, 2018

    Michael Joyce’s Traversal of Twilight, a Symphony

    January 20, 2021
  • Pathfinders,  Ruminations,  Updates

    How to Write about Inaccessible Born-Digital Literature

    October 20, 2019 /

    Having authored critical writing about born-digital literature with Stuart Moulthrop for both the multimedia book, Pathfinders (2015) and print-based book, Traversals (2017) and, then, publishing Rebooting Electronic Literature, Volume 1 (2018) with the ELL Team, I’ve had much time and practice writing about born-digital literature that is inaccessible to the public. With few exceptions, the focus has been on works to which few, if any, scholars have access. Think electronic literature and literary games published on 5.25-inch and 3.5-inch floppy disks and CD-ROMS with software no longer supported by contemporary computers. But writing for that kind of media is vastly different than writing about literature still in circulation and found on…

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    Dene Grigar

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    Celebrating Women in E-Lit

    February 29, 2020

    ELL Is Referenced in Holeton’s Article

    February 25, 2023

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

    January 2, 2020
  • Ruminations

    The Origins of a Passion

    February 2, 2019 /

    At first it was the little sugar flowers that adorned family members’ birthday, wedding, and anniversary cakes. You know what I am talking about––the pink roses or yellow generic flowers one could buy at the grocery store and affix to a freshly made frosted cake. Yes, I collected those and kept them in a large, round lidded glass jar until a decade later when ants found them. My eidetic memory afforded me the ability to recall the event where each flower had come, who had attended the event, and other details that stick with me today even without the mnemonic power of the artifacts. But in those days, I would…

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    Dene Grigar

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

    October 13, 2020

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

    October 23, 2018

    Rhizome’s Linked Open Data/Wikibase Summit

    September 23, 2018

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

2022 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