Ruffle Preservation Report #3
This third report continues with our updates about the lab’s efforts to save Flash e-lit. What Has Been Preserved Thus Far We finished preserving the Flash works published in the Electronic Literature Collections (ELC) 1, 2 & 3, Cauldron & Net, Word Circuits, and frAme. Yesterday Andrew Thompson and Arlo Ptolemy (the Ruff Rangers, as we now call them) began implementing Ruffle to the 37 works published in the 14 volumes of Poems That Go from 2001 to 2003. Ruffle Success Rate Here is the number of Flash works we have been able to save from each of the six publications: ELC 1: 12 of 26 ELC 2: 1 of…
The Challenges of Born-Digital Fiction: Editions, Translations, and Emulations
Mariusz Pisarski and I signed a contract with Cambridge University Press this week for a book entitled, The Challenges of Born-Digital Fiction: Editions, Translations, and Emulations, for its Digital Literary Studies Element Series, edited by Gabriel Hankins, Adam Hammond, and Katherine Bode. It will be delivered in June 2022. The book will address the growing concern about how best to maintain and extend the accessibility of early interactive novels and hypertext fiction or narratives. These forms of born-digital literature were produced before or shortly after the mainstreaming of the World Wide Web with proprietary software and on formats now obsolete. Preserving and extending them for a broad study by scholars of…
Ruffle Preservation Report #2
This is second report about the work the lab is doing to preserve born-digital literature created with Adobe Flash. Today the team (CMDC juniors Andrew Thompson and Arlo Ptolemy) finished implementing Ruffle on the works published in the Electronic Literature Collections, Volumes 1, 2 and 3. This week we will begin adding scholarly commentary to their intro pages to alert visitors about their accessibility. Sadly, of the 235 works published in the three anthologies, only 16 could be preserved with Ruffle. Some others appear to function, but when compared to their original files (using the Pale Moon browser on a Windows computer) actually showed problems. The sound files in Maria Mencia’s “Birds…
Saving Flash Works: Report #1
This is the first of several reports from the lab about its efforts to preserve born-digital literary works produced with Adobe Flash software. Where We Are and How We Got Here If you have been following us over the last two years, you may remember that we submitted a proposal, entitled “afterflash,” to the National Endowment for the Humanities in July 2019 to use Rhizome’s Conifer to preserve the 447 works published in the 12 publications hosted on the Electronic Literature Organization’s Repository. That proposal was rejected, but it received an evaluation of three “excellent” and two “very good.” We resubmitted that proposal in July 2020 with revisions that addressed…
Michael Joyce’s Traversal of Twilight, a Symphony
Introduction to Electronic Literature as Digital Humanities & Forthcoming Book Launch
The “Introduction” to James O’Sullivan’s and my collection of essays, Electronic Literature as Digital Humanities, has been reprinted by the Electronic Book Review. The essay lays out the argument that: . . . electronic literature is the logical object of study for digital humanities scholars who have, by the second decade of the twenty-first century, cut their teeth on video games, interactive media, mobile technology, and social media networks; are shaped by politics of identity and culture; and able to recognize the value of storytelling and poetics in any medium. The book, published by Bloomsbury Press, will be released on January 21, 2021. James and I thank the ELO’s Editorial Board…
Welcome 2021 ELO Fellow Sean Braune
ELL is very pleased to welcome its 2021 ELO Fellow, Sean Braune. Sean, who will be working directly under Professor Will Luers on the publication, The Digital Review, is a scholar, writer, and filmmaker. He has authored the full-length poetry collection, Dendrite Balconies (University of Calgary Press, 2019) and the philosophy book Language Parasites: Of Phorontology (Punctum Books, 2017). He has recently completed post-production on his first feature-length film, Nuptials, which has been submitted to several international film festivals. After completing a PhD at York University, he held a Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Postdoctoral Fellowship at Brock University. He has had theoretical work published in Postmodern Culture, Western American Literature, Journal…
Tribute to the Flash Generation
A Toast to the Flash Generation Thursday, December 31, 2020 10 a.m.-5 p.m. PST Zoom: bit.ly/ToastToFlash Hosted by Dene Grigar, Director, Electronic Literature Lab; Digital Preservationist, Electronic Literature Organization Join us on New Year’s Eve Day to celebrate the genius of the Flash Generation when over 20 artists of Flash narratives, poetry, and essays will read and perform their works throughout the day. You are invited to drop in anytime via Zoom, experience the works, and participate in the chat and the Q&A. The term, “Flash Generation,” coined by theorist Lev Manovich in 2005, captured the zeitgeist of a new era of cultural production when artists and writers discovered they could express their…
The Electronic Literature Repository
Last Tuesday Holly and I gave a presentation at the ELO Salon hosted by Deena Larsen about the Electronic Literature Repository. The lab has been managing the site since its creation and is now in the process of moving into phase 3 of its development. The Repository is envisioned as the next generation exhibition and preservation space that will function as an open-access, online library/museum/archival site. Created in 2018-2019 with seed funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Repository currently holds 26 collections of 2207 pieces of born-digital literary art. The works held in the Repository include a wide variety of genres, such as hypertext novels, poetry, and essays;…
Planet Electronic Literature
Since attending the first official Electronic Literature Organization conference held at UCLA in April 2002, called “Electronic Literature State of the Arts,” I have watched the field grow, not just in number but in reach. Founded in 1999 in the U.S. (during the rise of the World Wide Web) by Scott Rettberg, Jeff Ballowe, and Robert Coover and incorporated in the city of Chicago as a 501 (c) 3, ELO was, at the time, a decidedly American non-profit literary arts organization. Though it aligned with international organizations and research groups with a similar mission to promote and nurture born-digital writing like the trAce Online Writing Center (UK), Hermeneia (Spain), NT2…
