Electronic Literature Lab

For Advanced Inquiry into Born Digital Media

  • 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
  • Catalog
    • Beta Catalog
    • Expanded Catalog
  • Podcasts
  • 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
  • Catalog
    • Beta Catalog
    • Expanded Catalog
  • Podcasts
  • CMDC Studios
ELL icon

About

Founded and directed by Dr. Dene Grigar, ELL contains 61 vintage Macintosh & PC computers, dating back from 1977, vintage software, peripherals, and a library of over 300 works of electronic literature and other media. It is used for the advanced inquiry into the curation, documentation, preservation, conservation, and production of born-digital art, literature, and video games. The lab has created and continues to manage the ELO's The NEXT and supports video game R&D through CMDC Studios.

For more information about the lab or for help with preserving or recovering born-digital work, contact Dr. Dene Grigar at dgrigar[at]wsu[dot]edu.

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CATALOG

Visit the online catalog of computers and media works; designed and coded by the CMDC technical assistant Greg Philbrook. The new version of the catalog with expanded entries is now on preview.

other labs icon

Other Media Archaeology Labs or Working Archives in the U.S.

Obsolete Computing & Media at the University of Victoria, directed by John Durno

Media Archaeology Lab at U of Colorado-Boulder, directed by Dr. Lori Emerson

The Trope Tank at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology, directed by Dr. Nick Montfort

The Deena Larsen Collection at the Maryland Institute in the Humanities at the University of Maryland, directed by Dr. Matthew Kirschenbaum, with Amanda Visconti

The Bill Bly Collection at the Maryland Institute in the Humanities at the University of Maryland, directed by Dr. Matthew Kirschenbaum, with Amanda Visconti, and Porter Olson

  • News

    2021 Accomplishments & 2022 Plans

    December 31, 2021 /

    The year 2021 was yet another banner year for the Electronic Literature Lab. Working remotely during the pandemic via Slack, Basecamp, and Zoom, the ELL Team undertook and completed many projects. Here is the list: Led the creation of The NEXT, moving from the prototype built on the Samvera platform into Semantic Markup and ARIA, and enhancing the content by adding several new collections, hosting three exhibitions, and adding over 5000 images and 50 videos. Led the reconstruction of Richard Holeton’s hypertext novel Figurski at Findhorn on Acid, published originally in 2001 on the Storyspace platform, into open web languages. Led the reconstruction of Thomas M. Disch’s interactive novel Amnesia,…

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    Dene Grigar

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    Moving Forward in 2020

    January 18, 2020

    Live Stream Traversal of Mary-Kim Arnold’s “Lust”

    May 8, 2018

    ELL’s Undergraduates Win Award

    April 12, 2019
  • History

    From Pathfinders to The NEXT

    November 21, 2021 /

    Dene — I’m writing from Santa Cruz, where I’m at a workshop Noah’s organized for CS and digital humanities types.  Anne Balsamo’s here, and has told me about the project you and she have discussed, to make video records of readings of early e-lit works.  I’ve agreed to help Anne draft an NEH proposal. . . .  —————- Those are the opening lines of the email message Stuart Moulthrop sent on August 27, 2012 inviting me to participate on a potential NEH project to document early electronic literature published on floppy disks and CD-ROMs. We did indeed move forward with a proposal, though Anne had dropped off the project. In…

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    Dene Grigar

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    Love and Loss in Kendall’s A Life Set for Two

    April 5, 2018

    Consider It Down

    September 22, 2019

    Trans[Creation] Video Documentation Is Now Accessible

    June 28, 2021
  • Updates

    Welcome 2022 ELO Fellows!

    November 6, 2021 /

    The Electronic Literature Lab is so happy to welcome the two scholars from the Electronic Literature Organization’s Fellows program. They will be working remotely with the ELL Team on various projects aimed at enhancing ELO’s The NEXT and intersect with their own research agendas.  Alexandra L Martin (she/her) is a researcher and doctoral student specializing in digital literary arts, living and working in the unceded territory of Tiohtià:ke. Since 2019 she has worked at the Laboratoire NT2 at the Université du Québec à Montréal, where she also collaborates as a curator, notably on the exhibition S’éclipser | Phases of Resilience (2020) for the HTMlles Festival as well as Trans[creation] (2021). Her research centers on digital…

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    Dene Grigar

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    Moving Forward in 2020

    January 18, 2020

    Data Collection, Final Results

    June 9, 2019

    Special Live Stream Traversal of Mark Bernstein’s Those Trojan Girls

    March 13, 2019
  • Updates

    Resurrecting Flash Workshop Report

    October 30, 2021 /

      On 27-28 October 2021 thirty-one artists and scholars from around the globe came together to learn about various methods for preserving Flash electronic literature and net art at the Resurrecting Flash Art workshop held by the lab via Zoom. The main methods we discussed were the ones the lab primarily uses for saving the Flash art for The NEXT:  Ruffle and Conifer. We also invited prominent net artist Alan Bigelow to talk about the work he has done to migrate his early Flash art to open web languages and briefly discussed video documentation and Pale Moon browser as alternative methods for making the work available to the public and…

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    Dene Grigar

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    Ruffle Preservation Report #3

    February 20, 2021

    Visit with Claus Atzenbeck

    July 18, 2018

    Completed the Development of the Metadata for Turbulence.org

    July 4, 2018
  • Updates

    Horizon Insight: A Retrospective of the Art of M. D. Coverley

    October 21, 2021 /

    On Friday, November 5, 2021 we are launching the exhibition, Horizon Insight: A Retrospective of the Art of M. D. Coverley. Below is the schedule of the event and the curatorial statement that explains the works selected for the exhibition. To register, contact dgrigar@wsu.edu. Schedule 8:00-8:10 a.m. PST: Welcome, by Dene Grigar, Exhibition Curator 8:10-8:15 a.m. PST: Remarks of Appreciation, by N. Katherine Hayles 8:15-9:00 PST: Reading of Egypt: The Book of Going Forth by Day, by M. D. Coverley 9:00-9:15 PST: Curating this Retrospective: Comments about Design, Layout, and Restoration, by The Electronic Literature Lab Team 9:15-9:30 PST: Collection Highlights, by M. D. Coverley, Dene Grigar, & Richard Snyder…

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    Dene Grigar

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    Visit with Claus Atzenbeck

    July 18, 2018

    Organizing a Collection of Electronic Literature

    December 25, 2019

    Bill Bly, author of We Descend, Will Visit ELL

    September 3, 2018
  • News,  Updates

    Resurrecting Flash: Hands-On Workshop

    September 23, 2021 /

    Resurrecting Flash Art Hands-on workshop hosted via Zoom by the Electronic Literature Lab with guest speaker: Alan Bigelow 28-29 October 2021; 8:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m. PST For more information, contact Dene Grigar dgrigar[at]wsu[dot]edu This 2-day, hands-on, workshop provides participants with experience for preserving Flash art using a variety of tools and methods. Participants are encouraged to bring in works of their own to save or choose from among those provided by the workshop organizers. Instruction will be provided over Zoom and Slack, with Basecamp serving as the archival space for docs and files. No previous experience with preservation is needed. At the end of the workshop, participants will have worked alone or in…

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    Dene Grigar

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    Reconstruction of Sarah Smith’s “King of Space”

    May 21, 2022

    Hacking Electronic Literature Workshop

    February 24, 2018

    Why Collecting Is Important

    November 23, 2018
  • Updates

    The Ethics of Digital Preservation: Obligation to Future Generations

    September 6, 2021 /

    This essay below is an expanded version of the one currently running in The Digital Review, Issue 2: “Critical Making, Critical Design,” a journal edited by Will Luers. Grigar’s essay lays out the ethics underlying the work we do in the Electronic Literature Lab. ———— The Ethics of Digital Preservation: Obligation to Future Generations By Dene Grigar In When We Are No More, Abby Smith Rumsey argues that culture is a “a collective form of memory” and that memory impacts not only the survival of a species but of that species’ culture (my emphasis, 13). Preserving the memory of digital culture, particularly the artistic output of that culture, involves a…

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    Dene Grigar

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    2018-19 Live Stream Traversals Schedule

    August 28, 2018

    Introduction to Electronic Literature as Digital Humanities & Forthcoming Book Launch

    January 12, 2021

    Data Collection, Final Results

    June 9, 2019
  • Updates

    Rebooting Electronic Literature Volume 4 Goes Live!

    August 28, 2021 /

    Announcing the release of Rebooting Electronic Literature Volume 4 ! This fourth volume of Rebooting Electronic Literature (REL) continues with the Electronic Literature Lab’s mission to document born-digital literary works published on floppy disks, CD-ROMs, and other media formats held among the 300 in Dene Grigar’s personal collection in the Electronic Literature Lab at Washington State University Vancouver. Since the publication of the Volume 1 in 2019, this annual publication has provided in-depth scholarly information that includes images of the physical media, videos of performances by and interviews with the authors for and critical essays about hypertext literary works no longer accessible to the public. The methodology used to document this art follows the Pathfinders…

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    Dene Grigar

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    Mellon Report Submitted

    March 28, 2019

    Live Playthrough/Traversal/Performance of Robert DiChiara’s “A Sucker in Spades”

    September 3, 2020

    Working on The Alan Sondheim Collection

    October 4, 2020
  • News

    Remembering Amnesia

    August 12, 2021 /

    The lab will be leading the re-development of Thomas M. Disch’s interactive fiction game, Amnesia, published by Electronic Arts in 1986. The lab became interested in the game in 2017 when artist Sarah Smith sent us a copy of it while we were in the midst of documenting her interactive game, King of Space for Rebooting Electronic Literature, Volume 1 and decided to devote a chapter to Amnesia in the book. Fast forward three and a half years later. We are in the throes of planning a version of it for contemporary computing devices. Originally released for the Apple II computer, it was later released for the Commodore 64 and PC,…

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    Dene Grigar

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    Special Live Stream Traversal of Mark Bernstein’s Those Trojan Girls

    March 13, 2019

    2018-19 Live Stream Traversals Schedule

    August 28, 2018

    Welcome to ELL’s 2018-19 Undergraduate Researchers for the COPE Project

    June 7, 2018
  • Critical Essay,  Updates

    The new Figurski… – blueprints for media translation

    July 14, 2021 /

    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…

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    Dene Grigar

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    Working on The Alan Sondheim Collection

    October 4, 2020

    ELL’s Undergraduates Win Award

    April 12, 2019

    Chapter 1 of Rebooting Electronic Literature is Released

    January 28, 2018
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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: 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

PhD & PostDoc Fellow: Madison McCartha, UC Santa Cruz

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