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July 8, 2000: This message was distributed by Papyrus News, a free e-mail distribution list on the global impact of information technology on language, literacy, and education. Feel free to forward this message to others, preferably with this introduction. For information on Papyrus News, including how to (un)subscribe or access archives, see <http://www.lll.hawaii.edu/web/faculty/markw/papyrus-news.html>.
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After a few cold gray days in Nottingham, I'm back in a steaming Cairo. Does anybody know a trick for "averaging" out the weather between different cities? :-)
Below is the first edition of a new monthly newsletter. Subscription information is given, for those who are interested.
mark
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Date: Tue, 04 Jul 2000 12:46:28 -0700
From: Scott Rettberg <rettberg@eliterature.org>
Reply-To: eliterature@egroups.com
To: eliterature@egroups.com, ht_lit@consecol.org
Subject: [eliterature] ELECTRONIC LITERATURE NEWS JULY 2000
ELECTRONIC LITERATURE NEWS *** JULY 4, 2000
THE ELECTRONIC LITERATURE ORGANIZATION
______________________________
CONTENTS
* ELO Announces International Board of Literary Advisors
* ELO Awareness Events in Cincinnati, Seattle, New York
-Event Reports
-Links to Electronic Literature
-July 8th -- Literary Agents
-July 26th -- Using Hypermedia to Foster Community
* ELO Web Site Features
-Stephen King's E-Book
-Time Warner Moves into E-Publishing
-Microsoft's Frankfurt E-Book Awards
-Progressive Dinner Party
-Poems That Go
-Califia
-Wordperhect
-The Ed Report
* Subscribe to the ELO Newsletter
________________________________
I hope you'll enjoy this first edition of ELO News, the monthly newsletter of the Electronic Literature Organization. This newsletter is intended to keep members and advisors of the Electronic Literature Organization, as well as other interested people, apprised of both Electronic Literature Organization activities and action in the field as a whole. If you have received this newsletter via a list, please consider subscribing. Please forward this newsletter to any of your friends and associates you think might be interested in Electronic Literature.
I would also ask that if you find this newsletter and the other activities of the Electronic Literature Organization useful, please consider supporting our activities by becoming a member. Since our launch at the start of the year, the Electronic Literature Organization has done a great deal to advance our mission to promote and facilitate the writing, publishing and reading of electronic literature. We hope that you'll join our grass-roots effort to continue this mission well into the future. Thanks to ELO News Editor William Gillespie for helping to put this first edition of our newsletter together. If you have any electronic literature news or notice of new releases, please contact William at news@eliterature.org -- and you're always free to contact me at rettberg@eliterature.org with any questions or ideas for the Electronic Literature Organization.
All the Best,
Scott Rettberg
ELO Executive Director
***************************************************************
ELO ANNOUNCES INTERNATIONAL BOARD OF LITERARY ADVISORS
July 4, 2000 -- The Electronic Literature Organization today announced the formation of an international board of literary advisors. ELO's Board of Literary Advisors includes leading writers, critics, editors and publishers from the worlds of electronic and print literature. In keeping with the organization's mission to promote and facilitate the writing, publishing, and reading of electronic literature, ELO's Board of Literary Advisors is a "big tent" group of thought leaders who will help to advance the discourse of electronic literature, help plan our 2001 Future of Publishing Conference and, once we have secured funding, will judge the ELO Electronic Literature Prizes. We are very grateful to this esteemed group for choosing to support our endeavor.
ELO BOARD OF LITERARY ADVISORS
------------------------------------------------
Espen Aarseth * Mark Amerika * Robert Arellano
Richard Bangs * John Barth * Jay David Bolter
Michael Berube * T.C. Boyle * Jane Yellowlees Douglas
Moran Entrekin * Edward Falco * Loss Pequeno Glazier
Carolyn Guertin * Carolyn Guyer * Katherine Hayles
Michael Joyce * Rob Kendall * Raine Kosimaa
George Landow * Thomas LeClair * Brian Lennon
Jennifer Ley * Judy Malloy * Harry Mathews
Adrian Miles * Larry McCaffery * Jerome McGann
Heather McHugh * Nancy Lin * George Plimpton
Jim Rosenberg * Barney Rosset * Joanna Scott
Joseph Tabbi * Nan A. Talese * Takayuki Tatsumi
Susana Pajares Tosca * Sue Thomas
Stephanie Strickland * Robert Wittig
Watch the ELO site this July for biographical information on our Literary Advisors.
******************************************************************
ELO AWARENESS EVENTS IN CINCINNATI, SEATTLE, AND NEW YORK
In recent months, the Electronic Literature Organization has presented its case to audiences in Cincinnati, Seattle, and New York. Our presence is being felt along the perimeters of the academy, the publishing world, and the hypertext community.
CINCINNATI ROPES LECTURES
In February 2000 at the University of Cincinnati as part of the Ropes lecture series, esteemed critic and novelist Tom LeClair hosted two panels on the future of electronic literature. February 2nd-3rd saw MacArthur-winning novelist Richard Powers join critic Sven Birkerts for individual talks and a panel discussion where the two writers weighed the relative merits and detriments of the new ways of reading. Powers won, slicing and dicing Birkerts' unsophisticated straw man arguments against literature in the electronic media. Powers' lecture "Being and Seeming: The Technology of Representation" was an intellectual tour-de-force in which Powers made the risky assertion that, as architecture has been the most significant art form of history, so will the data structure be the art form of the future. After concluding, Powers, ready to take questions, grinned and said "so, is he for it or against it?"
Read Richard Powers' Talk:
<http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/context/no3/powers.html>
On February 28, Robert Coover took the stage with a lecture and demonstration of hypertext. He showcased Shelley Jackson's "Patchwork Girl," Bobby Rabyd's "Sunshine 69," and works done by students at Brown university using the pioneering hypertext authoring application Storyspace. This talk followed closely his recent controversial article in Feed magazine.
Read Coover's Controversial Article:
<http://www.feedmag.com/document/do291_master.html?alert>
Coover also spoke of the Electronic Literature Organization, which he hopes will usher us through the Silver Age of hypertext. The following day saw a panel discussion by Coover, Scott Rettberg, and Katherine Hayles, and a talk by Hayles entitled "The Materiality of the Signifier: Hypertext Literature in Print and New Media."
The following day, to conclude the series, was the Ropes Hypertext Demonstration. Scott Rettberg spoke about the upcoming projects of the Electronic Literature Organization, and there were performances and demonstrations by Rob Wittig, William Gillespie, and The Unknown.
Tank 20
Newspoetry
http://www.newspoetry.com/1999/990713.html
The Unknown
<http://www.unknownhypertext.com>
ELO AWARENESS EVENT -- SEATTLE
In late May, at the mountainside home of Pamela and Richard Bangs in Redmond, Washington, we had a lovely evening of interactive readings and earnest discussion about the future of literature, including a historic performance including the surviving members of Invisible Seattle, M.D. Coverly, Shelley Jackson, Cathy Marshall, Rob Swigart, and the entire cast of the Unknown. It was a splendid show, and a lot of people went home scratching their heads and thinking about reading their computers.
M.D. Coverley
Cathy Marshall
<http://www.csdl.tamu.edu/~marshall/>
Shelley Jackson
<http://www.ineradicablestain.com>
Rob Swigart
ELO AWARENESS EVENT AT GEORGE PLIMPTON'S PARIS REVIEW
It is hard to capture the magic of our evening at the home of Sarah and George Plimpton in Manhattan June 15th. Many wonderful people from the New York literary and publishing communities were in attendance, and we had a chance to shake their hands and reassure them that we are in no way trying to replace the book, merely to preserve and embellish our literary heritage in the new media. ELO Board Member and spiritual advisor Robert Coover presented a survey of the field (with the able assistance of Robert Arellano on mouse), then, in Barney Rossett's honor, Scott Rettberg read a Henry Miller parody from the Unknown that would have been banned fifty years ago. One sign that electronic literature is nearly ready for prime time -- the event was not only covered by the New York Times, but also jealously ridiculed in the New York Observer -- New York's high-society gossip rag and local National Enquirer equivalent.
ELO READING AT NYU MEDIA RESEARCH LAB/CENTER FOR ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY
June 16th at NYU's Media Research Lab/Center for Advanced Technology ELO held an evening of interactive readings by Bill Bly, William Gillespie, Andruid Kerne, Jennifer Ley, Nick Montfort, Scott Rettberg, Stephanie Strickland, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Adrianne Wortzel and Rob Wittig.
"Gray Matters" by Noah Wardrip-Fruin
<http://cat.nyu.edu/greymatters>
"We Descend" by Bill Bly
<http://www.eastgate.com/catalog/WeDescend.html>
"The Ballad of Sand and Harry Soot" by Stephanie Strickland
http://www.wordcircuits.com/gallery/sandsoot/index.html
"The Electronic Chronicles" by Adrianne Wortzel
<http://artnetweb.com/projects/ahneed/casatoc.html>
"Daddy Liked His With Heart" by Jennifer Ley
http://www.heelstone.com/heart/
"CollageMachine", by Andruid Kerne
<http://mrl.nyu.edu/collageMachine>
FORTHCOMING -- ELECTRONIC LITERATURE FESTIVAL -- CHICAGO SEPT 12
Watch the ELO site this month for news about our upcoming Electronic Literature Festival, to be held September 12th at Chicago's Cultural Center. If you'll be in the area, you won't want to miss this celebration of electronic literature in performance.
*******************************************************************
UPCOMING CHATS FOR JULY
Saturday July 8 20:00 GMT, 21:00 London, 16:00 New York, 13:00 L.A., 06:00 Sydney (July 9)
Please join us for a chat on literary agents and their roles in electronic literature with Christian Crumlish. Go to http://lingua.utdallas.edu:7000 Log in and type @go eliterature
Wednesday July 26, 2000 at 21:00 Eastern, 19:00 Mountain, 11:00 Sydney (Thursday July 26)
Intimacies, information, and politics--how hypermedia can foster a community with Melinda Rackham. Go to http://lingua.utdallas.edu:7000 Log in and type @go eliterature
CHAT ARCHIVES
Be sure to visit the annotated chat archives @ eliterature.org -- ELO Chat Host Deena Larsen has moderated 12 chats since January on a variety of important electronic literature topics including Performing Art on the Web, Teaching Cybermedia, Interactivity and Artificial Intelligence in Narration, and E-Zines, to name a few. All of our chats feature an expert guest, and all chats are archived on the site, with links to all the Web sites discussed during the chats. Please take advantage of this valuable resource.
*************************************************************
notes by ELO News Editor, William Gillespie
RIDING THE BULLET
Stephen King has tested the waters of electronic literature by releasing a novella available only in electronic form. Our inside word is that Simon & Schuster were skeptical that the book would sell, but when it sold amazingly well, far outpacing the theoretical limits of how quickly a paper book could sell, the publishing giant pretended it knew it had an ace all along. King's subsequent decision to sell to readers directly from his own Website on (get this) the honor system must have certainly made upholders of traditional publishing models uncomfortable. King was last seen bowing his head in shame in Newsweek, upholding that books would prevail in the long run. While it's true that old books have a more distinctive aroma than computers, I am always baffled when people offer up this fact as proof of the book's superiority over its electronic doppelganger.
TIME WARNER MOVES INTO ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING
Time Warner Trade Publishing recently announced that it will launch iPublish.com at Time Warner Books, an unprecedented online publishing venture, in the first quarter of next year. An ambitious online community that will unite readers, authors, and editors, iPublish.com at Time Warner Books will also explore new avenues for the production, distribution, and sales of new forms of fiction and non-fiction material created specifically for the Internet.
http://www.twbookmark.com/features/ipublish.com/
MICROSOFT'S FRANKFURT E-BOOK AWARDS
In partnership with several eBook companies, Microsoft is funding a series of prizes for eBooks. Microsoft set up a foundation, led by publishing industry veteran Alberto Vitale, to administer the prizes. Judges include Walter Anderson, Daniel J. Boorstin, Stewart Brand, Maria B. Campbell, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., James Gleick, Cheryl Hurley, Roger G. Kennedy, Walter Mosley, and Paul Saffo. The top award, the Author's Grand Prize of $100,000, will go to the author of the best original eBook. All submissions for the prize must be submitted by eBook publishers.
http://frankfurt-ebook-awards.org/
******************************************************
This spring saw the release of the Progressive Dinner Party, a wonderful tribute and guide to women in electronic literature.
http://califia.hispeed.com/RM/dinner1.htm
Poems That Go also launched this spring. The innovative electronic literature site has several works that use Flash to illustrate the promise of the budding new genre of kinetic poetry.
A new electronic literary journal, Drunken Boat, has arrived on the Web with a promising first issue.
M.D. Coverly's new hypertext Califia is now available through Eastgate Systems.
http://www.eastgate.com/catalog/Califia.html
With the utterly silly Wordperhect, a demo of a new word-processing tool, a new era of human-to-machine interfaces has begun.
http://www.chisenhale.org.uk/ch2/
The Web-based serial fiction about an extremely unusual covert operation, The Ed Report, is now available online in its entirety.
*******************************************************
Our Web site is accumulating content and gaining momentum. We hope to soon be the definitive guide to electronic literature on the Web. We've recently added the first edition of a directory of electronic publishers. Next we plan to launch a section on design and authoring tools relevant to electronic writers. This summer, we will move to a new design in which we address browser compatibility issues and allow deep-linking by eliminating the frameset.
The long-awaited ELO Directory is now in development. Programmer Nick Traenkner and Directory Administrator Robert Kendall have completed the first stage back-end programming of the directory, and the database is now being populated with much of the best electronic literature on the Web. The Electronic Literature Directory will launch early in the fall.
Many talented people are contributing to the various sections of the site. Hats off to Kurt Heinz, our site's senior architect, for coordinating their efforts.
****************************************************************
Here is a selection of electronic literature events coming up in the next month:
July 10-12, 2000:
incubation
The Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK
A trAce International Conference
http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/incubation/
July 18-19, 2000:
mal/CONTENT
San Francisco, California, USA
Content conference for rebels, iconoclasts, radical thinkers
http://www.screamingmedia.com/malcontent/
July 22:
Webzine 2000
San Francisco, California, USA
Foremost global event for independent publishing on the internet.
July 21-25, 2000:
ALLC / ACH 2000
University of Glasgow, Scotland
The Joint International Conference of the Association for Literary and
Linguistic Computing and the Association for Computers and the Humanities
http://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/allcach2k/index.html
July 23-28, 2000:
Siggraph 2000
New Orleans, Lousiana, USA
27th International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive
Techniques
http://www.siggraph.org/s2000/
August 2-4, 2000:
DAC 2000
Bergen, Norway
3rd International Digital Arts and Culture Conference
*******************************************************
The ELO Board and Staff would like to thank our most recent members, whose donations support this newsletter and all of our other activities.
VISIONARY MEMBERS
Phil Whitney -- New York, New York
TROUBADOUR MEMBERS
Anne Lundquist -- New York, New York
Martin Niesenholtz -- New York, New York
Michael Peyser -- Chicago, Illinois
Paul Rettberg -- Chicago, Illinois
Robert Scholes -- Providence, Rhode Island
Robert Wittig -- Chicago, Illinois
FRIENDS
Jim Ballowe -- Ottowa, Illinois
Charles Ballowe -- Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Herbert M. Bryant, Jr. -- Tampa, Florida
William Cole -- Columbus, Ohio
John Horlivy -- Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Nick Montfort -- Boston, Massachusetts
Marie O'Connor -- Chicago, Illinois
Chris Willerton -- Abilene, Texas
BECOME A MEMBER TODAY!
Please consider becoming a member today with a tax deductible donation of $50 or more. You'll get an ELO T-Shirt as well as other benefits and most importantly, the satisfaction of knowing that you've helped support literature for future generations.
To become a member, send your donation along with your name, address, and email to: The Electronic Literature Organization, 4401 North Ravenswood, Suite 304E, Chicago, Illinois 60640.
--OR DONATE ONLINE--
http://www.donate.net/ccn/splash.asp?dept_id=478
********************************************************
If you have not already subscribed and would like to receive future editions of this newsletter, please subscribe at:
http://www.egroups.com/subscribe/eliterature
********************************************************
The Electronic Literature Organization
Board of Directors: Jeff Ballowe (President), Mark Bernstein, Peter
Bernstein (Treasurer), Robert Coover, Gene DeRose, Marjorie C. Luesebrink,
Cathy Marshall (Secretary), Stuart Moulthrop, Celia O'Donnell, Anne Schott,
Rob Swigart, Larry Wangberg, William Wadsworth
Internet Industry Advisory Board: Walter Buckley, Chris Kitze, Scott Kurnit, Dan Rosensweig, Robert Ziff
Global Sponsor: Jupiter Communications
Founding Sponsors: ZDNet, NBCi
Executive Director: Scott Rettberg
************************************************************
The Electronic Literature Organization
4401 N. Ravenswood, Suite 304E ** Chicago IL 60640
t: 773.769.3540 ** f: 773.769.3829
contact: rettberg@eliterature.org
TO PROMOTE AND FACILITATE THE WRITING, PUBLISHING AND READING OF
ELECTRONIC LITERATURE
*************************************************************
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