ELL’s Online Catalog
For the past year members of ELL’s staff have been working to catalog all of the works of e-lit and computers available in the lab. Last summer Setareh Alizadeh meticulously organized the stacks and stacks of CDs, hypertext folios, floppies, and diskettes into a discernible collection of works dating back over two decades. Amalia Vacca […]
“The Art of Moving Words”
This post constitutes the curatorial statement for the exhibit built in ELL for the National University of Ireland Maynooth entitled Moving Words: Kinetic Poetry and Prose, 1984-2014. The exhibit opened on Thursday, March 14 at 5:30 at Illuminations Gallery. I was invited by electronic literature scholar and Director of Illuminations Jeneen Naji, PhD to create this […]
Cracked Macs, or a Cautionary Tale about Digital Preservation
Four of the vintage Macs from ELL were destroyed in shipment to the Pathfinders exhibit at the Modern Language Association convention in Chicago last week. The boxes were delivered in perfect shape; however, when I opened up the first one, the LC 575, I noticed a piece of the top was cracked. As I pulled […]
Adding to the Mac Family
I added five more computers to the lab today: Two G3 iMacs (Graphite), one Performa, one PowerPC, and another SE. Here are the specs for the first four: iMac #1 Mac OS X 10.4 640 MB RAM 400 MHz G3 13GB HDD DVD-ROM (slot load, works) iMac #2 Mac OS 9.1 128MB RAM 400MHz G3 […]
Article about ELL in Library of Congress Publication, The Signal
Preserving Vintage Electronic Literature November 13, 2013 by Mike Ashenfelder Dene (pronounced “Deenie”) Grigar’s mother was an artist who painted mainly with oils on canvas. But occasionally she painted on a different medium, such as wood or pottery. Once she experimented with painting on bamboo, a medium she was unfamiliar with. Read the rest of the article […]
Getting Ready for the Next Pathfinders Traversal
The Electronic Literature Lab is the site where the research for Pathfinders: Documenting the Experience of Early Digital Literature is taking place. The project extends the notion of digital preservation by developing a method that captures not just the content of a work of electronic literature but also attempts to recreate the experience readers had […]
Upcoming Visitors to ELL
We are hosting two tours of ELL during the month of August. The first is scheduled for the 30+ members of the Seattle Metro Chamber Leadership Trip to SWWA on Thursday, August 1, from 4:00-5:00 p.m. This event is sponsored by the Columbia River Economic Development Council. The second is a tour of various members of the […]
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 […]
The New Addition to ELL
My friend Jeff brought a very nice treat to the lab today: a Kodak DataShow Projection Pad, replete with a cooling fan and the original case. It works with my Apple II GS just fine, and there is some speculation that it is the very first projector a PC. A good find there! The bad […]
All the Macs Are Back Home
I got my Mac Plus back yesterday from repairs, thanks to my Mac Guru, Jeff, who has been overseeing the health of my Macs for several years. Our love (okay, obsession) for Macs continues to bind us even after he has moved on from being a student to a full-fledged, well-paid programmer. He is my […]