Golem and My Other Seven Computer-Generated Books in Print

Dead Alive Press has just published my Golem, much to my delight, and I am launching the book tonight in a few minutes at WordHack, a monthly event run by the NYC community gallery Babycastles.

This seems like a great time to credit the editors and presses I have worked with to publish several of these books, and to let you all know where they can be purchased, should you wish to indulge yourselves:

  • Golem, 2021, Dead Alive’s New Sight series. Thank you, Augusto Corvalan!
  • Hard West Turn, 2018, published by my Bad Quarto thanks to John Jenkins’s work on the Espresso Book Machine at the MIT Press Bookstore.
  • The Truelist, 2017, Counterpath. This book was the first in the Using Electricity series which I edit, and was selected and edited by Tim Roberts—thanks! Both Counterpath publications and my book from Les Figues are distributed by the nonprofit Small Press Distribution.
  • Autopia, 2016, Troll Thread. Thank you, Holly Melgard!
  • 2×6, 2016, Les Figues. This book is a collaboration between me and six others: Serge Bouchardon, Andrew Campana, Natalia Fedorova, Carlos León, Aleksandra Ma?ecka, and Piotr Marecki. Thank you, Teresa Carmody!
  • Megawatt, 2014, published by my Bad Quarto thanks to Jeff Mayersohn’s Espresso Book Machine at the Harvard Book Store.
  • #!, 2014, Counterpath. Thank you, Tim Roberts!
  • World Clock, 2013, published by my Bad Quarto thanks to Jeff Mayersohn’s Espresso Book Machine at the Harvard Book Store.

The code and text to these books are generally free, and can be found on nickm.com, my site. They are presented in print for the enjoyment of those who appreciate book objects, of course!

Taper #2 Is Out

The second issue of Taper, a literary magazine featuring small-scale computational work, is now online.

The second issue was edited by Sebastian Bartlett, Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, Angela Chang, Judy Heflin, and Rachel Paige Thompson, working collectively. Bad Quarto (my micropress) publishes the journal.

The call for issue #3 is posted. The deadline is February 18 (2019).

Taper #2 features 18 works by six a., Sebastian Bartlett, Kyle Booten, Angela Chang, Augusto Corvalan, Kavi Duvvoori, Esen Espinsa, Leonardo Flores, Judy Heflin, Chris Joseph, Vinicius Marquet, Stuart Moulthrop, Everest Pipkin, Mark Sample, and William Wu. Go take a look!

Sentaniz Nimerik, E-Lit in Haitian Creole

A week ago, on October 2, we put Sentaniz Nimerik online. This is an electronic literature work, an example of digital storytelling and digital poetry, that is by Sixto & BIC and was facilitated by Michel DeGraff & Nick Montfort. It is in Haitian Creole — Kreyòl, as the language is called in the language itself. This language has a community of about 12 million speakers worldwide and is the language shared by everyone in Haiti. It is not the same as Haitian French or mutually intelligible with Haitian French (or any other kind of French).

You can read more about Maurice Sixto, a famous Haitian storyteller who died in 1984, on Wikipedia, in English — of course there is an entry in Haitian Creole as well. His story “Sentaniz,” well-known in Haiti, is the storytelling basis for our digital work.

BIC is a singer, songwriter, and poet who is also known as B.I.C. (Brain. Intelligence. Creativity.) He came to MIT to work on this project with us and to do a concert, which was very well-attended. His songs and poems are mostly in Haitian Creole; some in French; not in English — although BIC is fluent in English and has worked as an English teacher.

Professor Michel DeGraff is a linguist and is my colleague at MIT. Among other things, he heads the MIT-Haiti Initiative and works to advance STEM education in the Boston area in schools where education is in Haitian Creole.

We (BIC, Michel DeGraff, and I) sat down together and looked at and discussed several simple JavaScript poems, some historical, some of mine, some done by others recently. We settled on “Through the Park” (a work of mine from 2008) as a starting point for our collaboration. We changed several things about the workings of the page, and the text used in this piece is also a new text related to “Sentaniz,” not any sort of translation of anything I have written.

To make concrete a few of the formal and conceptual differences: The final result has two generated versions presented one after the other. The underlying “story” is not only an story that originated in Haitian Creole, but has been elaborated into its digital version with frame statements and questions that do not correspond to anything in “Through the Park.” The visual design is simple, but also a bit different from the simple earlier version.

To be more specific about our roles in the project, for the most part I dealt with the JavaScript code, Michel typed in what was to be written in Haitian Creole (using my different keyboard layout), and BIC said what lines we should use. But Michel and BIC consulted about particular phrasings, as you might expect, and all of us talked a bit about the types of sentences that could be used, the linguistic constraint (no reference between sentences), and the design and functioning of the page.

We spent a while in discussion beforehand, and did some work to polish the project after the three of us met, but BIC was only at MIT for one full day. It took us about an hour to actually do the core creative and development work on Sentaniz Nimerik. The project was thanks to many people and offices at MIT, with the main support for BIC’s trip coming from CAMIT, the Council for the Arts at MIT.

I recorded a video of Michel DeGraff explaining the piece (in Haitian Creole) and have posted that on YouTube with a CC license. He explains how to “view souce” and that the piece can be studied and modified. The piece itself, although very short, is released under an explicit all-permissive license to make it clear that it is available to everyone for any purpose. I hope people in Haiti and speakers of Haitian Creole elsewhere will enjoy it and develop many new ideas, stories, and poems.

Digital Lengua, the launch of 2×6 and Autopia, Nov 20 in NYC

Clouds of Digital Lengua palabras

Digital Lengua – Babycastles, 137 West 14th St, Manhattan –
5:30pm Sunday November 20

This reading of computer-generated literature in English and Spanish
serves as the global book launch for two titles:

2×6
Nick Montfort, Serge Bouchardon, Andrew Campana, Natalia Fedorova,
Carlos León, Aleksandra Ma?ecka, Piotr Marecki
Les Figues, Los Angeles: Global Poetics Series
http://lesfigues.com/book/2×6/
256 pp.

Autopia
Nick Montfort
Troll Thread, New York
http://trollthread.tumblr.com/post/152339108524/nick-montfort-autopia-troll-thread-2016-purchase
256 pp.

Montfort will read from these two books, reading English and Spanish
texts from 2×6. Paperback copies will be available for purchase. The
short programs that generated these books are printed in the books and also
available as free software online.

Läufer will read from his projects Bigrammatology and WriterTools™, in
both cases, in Spanish and English.

Montfort and Läufer will read from work done as part of the Renderings
project and as part of another project, Heftings.

The Renderings project, organized by Montfort and based at his
lab, The Trope Tank, involves locating computational literature (such as
poetry generating computer programs) from around the globe and translating
these works into English. Läufer and Montfort will read from two
Spanish-language poetry generators, from Argentina and Spain, and from
translations of them.

The Heftings project, also organized by Montfort through The
Trope Tank, involves making attempts, often many, at translating conceptual,
constrained, concrete & visual, and other types of literary art that are
generally considered to be impossible to translate. Montfort and Läufer will
read from some short works that are originally in Spanish or English and
works that have Spanish or English translations.

Nick Montfort develops computational art and poetry, often
collaboratively. His poetry books are #!, Riddle & Bind, and
Autopia;
he co-wrote 2002: A Palindrome Story and 2×6. His
more than fifty digital projects, at http://nickm.com, include the
collaborations The Deletionist, Sea and Spar Between, and the
Renderings
project. His collaborative and individual books from the MIT
Press are: The New Media Reader, Twisty Little Passages, Racing the Beam,
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10,
and most recently Exploratory
Programming for the Arts and Humanities.
He lives in New York and
Boston, offers naming services as Nomnym, and is a professor at MIT.

Milton Läufer is an Argentinian writer, journalist and teacher.
Currently he is doing a PhD at New York University focused on digital
literature in Latin America. He is the 2016-2017 writer-in-residence of
The Trope Tank
, MIT. In 2015 he published Lagunas, a partially
algorithmic-generated novel, which —as most of his work— is available online
at http://www.miltonlaufer.com.ar. He has participated in art exhibitions in
Latin America, the US and Europe. He lives in Brooklyn.

Digital Lengua – Babycastles, 137 West 14th St, Manhattan – 5:30pm Domingo, Noviembre 20

Esta lectura de literatura generada por computadora en español e inglés
oficiará, a la vez, de lanzamiento para los siguientes dos títulos:

2×6
Nick Montfort, Serge Bouchardon, Andrew Campana, Natalia Fedorova,
Carlos León, Aleksandra Ma?ecka, Piotr Marecki
Les Figues, Los Angeles: Global Poetics Series
http://lesfigues.com/book/2×6/
256 págs.

Autopia
Nick Montfort
Troll Thread, New York
http://trollthread.tumblr.com/post/152339108524/nick-montfort-autopia-troll-thread-2016-purchase
256 págs.

Montfort leerá de ambos libros, en español e inglés para el caso de
2×6
. Habrá copias impresas disponibles para su compra. Los breves
programas que generan el código se encuentran en dichos libros y también en
línea como software libre (y gratuito).

Läufer leerá de sus proyectos Bigrammatology y WriterTools™, en español e inglés en ambos casos.

Los autores leerán también de los trabajos realizados en el marco de los
proyecto Renderings y Heftings.

El proyecto Renderings, organizado por Montfort con base en su
laboratorio, The Trope Tank, involucra la búsqueda de literatura
computacional (tal como poesía generada por programas de computadora) a lo
largo del globo y la traducción de estos proyectos al inglés. Läufer y
Montfort leerán de dos generadores de poesía en español, uno de Argentina y
otro de España, así como sus traducciones.

El proyecto Heftings, también organizado por Montfort a través de
The Trope Tank, consiste en la producción de intentos, a menudo
muchos, de traducir obras literarias conceptuales, formalistas, concretas o
visuales tales que son generalmente consideradas imposibles de traducir.
Montfort y Läufer leerán algunos trabajos breves originalmente en español o
inglés y trabajos que poseen traducciones españolas o inglesas.

Nick Montfort desarrolla arte y poesía computacional,
frecuentemente en colaboración. Entre sus libros se destacan #!,
Riddle & Bind
y Autopia; y, en colaboración, 2002: A
Palindrome Story
y 2×6. Entre sus más de cincuenta proyectos
digitales, en http://nickm.com, se encuentran las colaboraciones The
Deletionist
, Sea and Spar Between y Renderings, un
proyecto centrado en la traducción. Sus libros de MIT Press son The New
Media Reader
, Twisty Little Passages, Racing the Beam,
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
y, recientemente, Exploratory
Programming for the Arts and Humanities
. Vive en New York y Boston,
ofrece servicios de nombres como Nomnym, y es un profesor en MIT.

Milton Läufer es un escritor, periodista y docente argentino.
Actualmente se encuentra realizando un PhD en la New York University acerca
de literatura digital in América Latina. Es el escritor en residencia de
The Trope Tank
para el período 2016-2017, en MIT. En 2015 publicó la
novela generada parcialmente por algoritmos Lagunas, la cual —como el
resto de su obra el literatura digital— es accesible desde su sitio,
http://www.miltonlaufer.com.ar. Ha participado de exposiciones en América
Latina, Estados Unidos y Europa. Vive en Brooklyn.

 

Explorers of Bottomless Pit Return with Treasure

They found the key.
They found the key.

Far from plunging us into darkness, Reading Project: A Collaborative Analysis of William Poundstone’s Project for Tachistoscope {Bottomless Pit} provides brilliant and multifaceted reflections on a rapid, serial electronic literature work. (You can read Bottomless Pit for free online, by the way, in ELCv1 and on Poundstone’s site.)

The party that sets out on the adventure of this reading is Paladin Jessica Pressman, who seeks truly through media archeology and quests into thorny literary theories; Thief Mark C. Marino, who slyly reverse-engineers the program and acquires the source code, stealing sequences of words and images along with how they are produced; and Illusionist Jeremy Douglass, who summons visualizations of the piece that dazzle but also unfold new understandings. They ascend from the endless passage of Project, and from the dungeon of collaboration, with numerous new insights, showing how different reading strategies – ranging from rather conventional to quite novel – can inform one another. There’s so much background offered (etymological, historical, bibliographical) that one imagines it being drawn out of a bag of holding. The view of the project that emerges seems beyond what a Beholder would be able to comprehend.

These three cover the fundamental workings of Project well, showing the role of randomness (a saving throw of sequential words does not abolish chance) and how individual pixels shine during a loop of the main story text. What this text means and alludes to, and the presence of a second sequence of less coherent words, is also discussed, and connections are made between such meanings and references and the piece’s material and technical aspects. From the media technology of various historical tachistoscopes to the nature of the pit in Freudian psychoanalysis, there is a great deal about Project that is – let’s not say excavated, but illuminated – in this book.

In its engagement with computation, the relationship of recent computational work to historical and literary concepts, and in the way it helps to develop productive collaborative approaches in the humanities, this is a landmark investigation – almost surely deeper than you imagine. It’s essential reading for those interested in digital literature, but also also for anyone (concerned with e-lit or not) who wonders how humanistic thinking can continue to develop and how thinkers can work together in new ways.

My Five-Part Interruption

My both systematic and breezy presentation at Interrupt 3, phrased in the form of an interruption, began with a consideration of electronic literature’s “ends” and digital poetry’s “feet.” During the beginning of my presentation I played “Hexes,” a digital poem I wrote a few minutes before the session began. I went on to read every permuation of the phrase “SERVICE MY INTERRUPT FUCKFLOWERS,” using a technique famously employed by Brion Gysin on a text that includes a memorable compound word by Caroline Bergvall. I continued to read some hypothetical captions from “Feminist Ryan Gosling” image macros about Donna Haraway. I then read from “Use of Dust,” a new work that is an erasure of Alison Knowles and Janes Tenney’s “A House of Dust.” I concluded with this text:

Organize a fake interruption. Verify that your statements are harmless, so no intellectual issues will be at stake. Make it so that the operation creates as much commotion as possible — in short, remain close to the “truth,” in order to test the reaction of the apparatus to a perfect simulacrum. You won’t be able to do it: the network of artificial signs will become inextricably mixed up with real elements (a cell phone will really ring; a fire alarm will malfunction and sound; a person in the audience will actually take you seriously), in short, you will immediately find yourself once again, without wishing it, in the real, one of whose functions is precisely to devour any attempt at simulation.

Translating E-Literature = Traduire la littérature numérique

The proceedings of the June 12-14, 2012 Paris conference on the translation of electronic literature are now online. These include a paper by Natalia Fedorova and myself, “Carrying across Language and Code.” The conference took place at Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis and Université Paris Diderot, and encouraged me and collaborators to undertake the Renderings project, the first phase of which is now onlne.

“Textual Demoscene” by Piotr Marecki

A Trope Tank Technical Report (“Trope Report”) on the “Texual Demoscene” has just been posted. Here’s the abstract:

The demoscene is a mainly European subculture of computer
programmers, whose programs generate computer art in real time. The
aim of this report is to attempt a description of the textual
dimension of the demoscene. The report is the effect of efforts to
perform an ethnographic exploration of the Polish computer scene; it
quotes interviews with participants of demo parties, where text
plays a significant role: in demos, real-time texts, IF, mags or
digital adaptations. Media archeology focusing on the textual aspect
of the demoscene is important to understanding the beginnings of
digital literature and genres of digital-born texts.

Piotr Marecki really goes to the “ends of the earth” to investigate this, even reporting on a Polish demoscene production that is a text game and is called The Road to Assland. Here’s the full report.

ELO 2015 in Bergen: Call for Participation

Call for Participation

THE END(S) OF ELECTRONIC LITERATURE

The 2015 Electronic Literature Organization conference and festival will take place August 5-7th 2015. The conference will be hosted by the Bergen Electronic Literature research group at the University of Bergen, Norway with sessions at venues including the University of Bergen, Det Akademiske Kvarteret, the Bergen Public Library, the University of Bergen Arts library, and local arts venues. Bergen is Norway’s second-largest city, known as the gateway to the fjords, a festival city and cultural center with a lively and innovative arts scene.

DEADLINES

The deadline for submissions of research, workshop, and arts proposals is December 15, 2014.

CONFERENCE THEME

The theme of the 2015 Electronic Literature Organization conference and festival is “The End(s) of Electronic Literature.” This theme plays on several different meanings of “ends.” Topics the conference papers and works will explore include:

Is “electronic literature” a transitional term that will become obsolete as literary uses of computational media and devices become ubiquitous? If so, what comes after electronic literature?

We can also question in what sense electronic literature and digital writing practices are a means to an end. If so, what are the ends of electronic literature? What political, ideological, aesthetic, and commercial ends or purposes do works of electronic literature serve?

In recent years, projects such as the ELMCIP Electronic Literature Knowledge Base have sought to highlight the work of scholars and artists who have worked outside of the mainstream of electronic literature as it has developed as a field, for instance developing research collections based on Russian and Brazilian electronic literature. This conference will seek to shed further light on international communities and practices in electronic literature that have not been widely addressed in the critical literature of the field, those that are located at the “ends” or margins of critical discourse in the field.

Electronic literature is situated as an intermedial field of practice, between literature, computation, visual and performance art. The conference will seek to develop a better understanding of electronic literature’s boundaries and relations with other academic disciplines and artistic practices.

As a laboratory for future literary forms, the field of electronic literature must count the youngest readers among its most significant group of end-users. One strand of this conference will focus specifically on digital reading experiences made for children.

RESEARCH PROGRAM

For the conference research program we welcome contributions that address the conference themes. Most proposals will likely describe a scholarly presentation suitable for delivery in about 20 minutes, with time for questions. However we also welcome propsals for other forms of talks. At the time of proposal submission, authors will asked identify one of following presentation formats:

Paper (20 minute presentation): a presentation of a single by one or more paper by one or more authors (500 word abstract)

Panel (75 minutes): a proposal for a complete panel including separate papers on the same general topic (250 word overview plus 3-4 500 word abstracts).

Roundtable (1 hour): a group presentation of a particular topic emphasizing free-flowing discussion and audience interaction (500 word abstract).

Lightning talk (5 minutes): a short paper for a session focused on the question “What comes after electronic literature?” (250 word abstract).

Proposers must attend the conference. Speakers may not present in more than two sessions.

Presentations may include elements of demonstration or performance, as part of a discussion that goes beyond the work itself. With this stipulation, proposers are welcome to address their own work.

Submissions for the research program will be accepted from September 15th-December 15th, 2014 on Easychair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=elo2015

Proposals will be peer-reviewed by the Research Program Committee. Papers will be accepted on the basis of abstracts. Although we will not require, we will encourage authors of papers accepted for the conference to make full-text versions of their papers available on the conference site prior to the conference. Authors of selected full paper submissions may be invited to contribute to a book or special issue of a journal to be published shortly after the conference. This publication opportunity will not be available to authors who do not upload their full-text papers.

WORKSHOP PROGRAM

We welcome proposals for pre-conference workshops to take place on Tuesday, August 4th at the University of Bergen.

Workshop sessions are focused on hands-on group work on a given project. For instance, working with a particular platform to learn how to use it to create works of e-lit, documenting work in a given database, sharing pedagogical models, curating electronic literature, etc. Workshops sessions are generally half-day (3 hour) or full-day (6 hour) sessions.
Proposals will be reviewed by the Workshop Program Committee and selected on the basis of their value to the e-lit community and available facilities to accommodate them.

Submissions for the workshop program will be accepted from September 15th-December 15th, 2014 on Easychair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=elo2015

ARTS PROGRAM

The Arts Program provides an occasion for juried review, and extended display, performance, and presentation, of original works.

The Committee especially welcomes submissions from artists who are new to electronic literature or who are in the beginning stages of their e-literary artistic production.

The Arts program will feature several exhibitions and a performance program that coheres with the conference themes. Submissions are being accepted for the following parts of the exhibition and performance program:

Hybridity and Synesthesia: Beyond Peripheries of Form and Consciousness
This aspect of the program will emphasize works, particularly installations, that push at the edges of literature and other forms, and that appeal to other aspects of the sensorium than those we typically associate with reading. Works for example that involve haptic sensation, touch-based interactivity, innovative audio elements, interactive images, or locative technologies.

Interventions: Engaging the Body Politic
This exhibition will feature works that engage with contemporary cultural discourse and political reality, challenging audiences to consider digital artifacts and practices that reflect and intervene in matters of the environment, social justice, and our relation to the habitus.

Decentering: Global Electronic Literature
While there are strong centers of activity in electronic literature in North America and Western Europe, innovations in digital textuality are also taking place in Eastern Europe and in the Southern hemisphere. This exhibition will focus on these lesser-known phenomena.

Kid-E-Lit: Digital Narratives for the Young
The first generation of digital natives is finding a plethora of apps and interactive digital narratives made for their iPads and computers, perhaps learning how to think in a new digital vernacular. This exhibition will focus on innovations in digital reading experiences for children.

Screening Room: E-Lit Film Festival
The first ELO film festival will feature films that have been produced recently about electronic literature and related practices, and will also include screenings of types of digital literature that benefit from sustained watching, such as poetry generators and kinetic poetry.

End(s) of Electronic Literature Performances and Readings
This aspect of the program will feature live readings and performances of works of electronic literature. Authors are encouraged to think broadly about modes of performance, ranging from traditional readings to more theatrical styles of presentation, and to consider opportunities for site-specific interventions in public space.

Submissions for above parts of the Arts program will be accepted from September 15th-December 15th on Easychair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=elo2015

ELC3 Preview Exhibition

Volume 1 (2006) and Volume 2 (2011) of the Electronic Literature Collection have been influential anthologies that helped shape the field. Volume 3 (2016) is now open for submissions. This exhibition will feature selected works from the latest instantiation of this important publication. The editors of ELC3 will curate this selection. To submit work for the ELC3, see: http://eliterature.org/2014/08/announcing-the-elc3 (ELC3 submission deadline Nov. 5, 2014)

Selections will be made via a two-step jury review process. Members of the arts program committee will first review submissions, and then curators for each track of the program will select works from among those ranked most positively by the committee. Final selections will depend on available resources and constraints of individual venues.

See Submission Guidelines for further details.

ORGANIZATION

Conference Chair: Scott Rettberg
Research Program Chair: Jill Walker Rettberg
Arts Program Chair: Roderick Coover
Research Program Committee: Espen Aarseth, Daniel Apollon, Sandy Baldwin, Laura Borras Castanyer, Yra van Dijk, Maria Engberg, Nina Goga, Dene Grigar, Davin Heckman, Raine Koskimaa, Nick Montfort, Søren Pold, Øyvind Prytz, Hans Kristian Rustad, Jessica Pressman, Eric Dean Rasmussen, Scott Rettberg, Alexandra Saemmer, and Joseph Tabbi.
Workshop Program Committee: Deena Larsen, Marjorie C. Luesebrink, and Patricia Tomaszek.
Arts Program Committee: Simon Biggs, Philippe Bootz, Serge Bouchardon, Kathi Inman Berens, JR Carpenter, Mark Daniels, Anne Marthe Dyvi, Natalia Fedorova, Leonardo Flores, Chris Funkhouser, Dene Grigar, Claudia Kozak, Talan Memmott, Maria Mencia, Judd Morrissey, Scott Rettberg, Stephanie Strickland, Rui Torres, Michelle Teran, and Jeremy Welsh.

PLEASE CIRCULATE

If you know of friends, colleagues, or organizations not aware of ELO or this conference, please feel free to circulate this Call. A PDF version is available.

Updated 10:01 — Time Still Ticks

Lance Olsen and Tim Guthrie have updated their classic and palindromically-titled electronic literature work, 10:01.

This piece was included in the first Electronic Literature Collection and the first edition can still be seen there. Since it offers links out to the Web, and some of these became stale since the piece was first published in 2005, the prolific and edgy experimental writer Olsen and developer Guthrie have revised the piece for the Web for 2014, also reworking a few other elements. One is still able to select among movie patrons to read their perspectives. The piece is a companion to the print-novel version of 10:01, published by Chiasmus in 2005.

I cannot explain how apropos it is that I blog about this after returning from an AMC theater.

The audience is listening! Check it out.

More Human to Open September 12

An upcoming exhibit, a group show here in town, features a work of mine…


Collision21: More Human

The exhibition Collision21: More Human will be at the Boston Cyberarts
Gallery September 13-October 26, 2014, with an opening on Friday, September
12th from 6 to 9pm. This is a group show dealing with two closely-related
concepts: human self-modification and the human modification of our
environment. Formed by artists and technologists, the COLLISIONcollective is
premised on the sometimes abrupt intersection between art and technology.   

Art Technology New England (ATNE) will be hosting a salon which will feature
COLLISIONcollective artists from this exhibition discussing their works and
the show. The salon will be held on Wednesday, September 24th at 7:30pm at
the Boston Cyberarts Gallery. The gallery is located at 141 Green Street in
Jamaica Plain (inside the Green St T Station on the Orange Line). The salon
is free, but please register for it by emailing info@atne.org.

Artists Include

Matt Brand, Ben Bray, Alicia Eggert, Joseph Farbrook, Antony Flackett, Rob
Gonsalves, Hwayong Jung, Gloria King Merritt, Georgina Lewis, Robin
Lohrey, Mark Millstein, Nick Montfort, Andrew Neumann, Sarah Rushford, Fito
Segrera, John Slepian, Sophia Sobers


My piece in the show is “From the Tables of My Memorie,”
documented at nickm.com.
It’s an interactive video installation.

Call for “Textual Machines” Papers

Here’s a conference coming up in April, with a January 1 deadline:


International Symposium

“Textual Machines”

April 18, 2015

The University of Georgia

Athens, GA

Keynote speakers

– Janet MURRAY, Professor at the School of Literature, Media and Communication
at the Georgia Institute of Technology and interaction designer.

– Serge BOUCHARDON, Professor at the University of Technology of Compiegne and
author of interactive fictions.

Themes and topics

“Textual Machines” is an international symposium exploring literary objects that
produce texts through the material interaction with mechanical devices or
procedures. We define “textual machines” as a perspective on literature and book
objects where text is “a mechanical device for the production and consumption of
verbal signs” (Espen J. Aarseth). From the symposium’s perspective, textual
machines are not limited to a specific media or epoch, and include literary
objects ranging from early modern movable books, to modern pop-up books,
artist’s books, game books, concrete poetry, combinatory literature, electronic
literature and interactive fictions. A distinctive feature of textual machines
is that they invite readers to traverse text through the non-trivial
manipulation of mechanistic devices or procedures: by navigating through
hyperlinks, footnotes, marginalia or other semiotic cues, or by answering to
configurational, exploratory or writing prompts.

Possible areas of inquiry include, but are not limited to:  

*

Reading textual machines. What common reading functions are shared by
textual machines? How do readers navigate, maneuver, explore, configure,
probe, play or collate textual machines and their outcomes? What theoretical
concepts and analytical tools are best suited to describe the textuality of
such objects? How can readings of such objects be recorded, shared,
visualized and taught?

*

Situating textual machines. Beyond the cultural split between analog and
digital media, how do the mechanics and affordances of textual machines
relate to one another? What communities of readers and authors produce and
perform textual machines?

*

Preserving textual machines. What can media archaeology labs, museums and
rare book collections learn from one another in the process of preserving,
curating and making textual machines accessible?

The Symposium “Textual Machines” will take place on April 18, 2015 at the
Hargrett Rare Book & Manuscript Library at the University of Georgia, Athens,
Ga. In parallel to the symposium, the Main Library of the University of Georgia
will be hosting the “Textual Machines” exhibit, featuring works of electronic
literature from the Digital Arts Library and rare books from the Hargrett
Hargrett Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

Selection Process

Proposals are expected by January 1, 2015. They must be sent as an abstract of
800 – 1,000 words (excluding bibliography). Each proposal must indicate the
author’s full name, status and institutional affiliation. Proposals should be
sent to baille@uga.edu.

Texto Digital Seeks Papers (in Many Languages)

A correspondent in Brazil sends news of a new call for papers in the journal Texto Digital. The recent issues have been almost entirely in Portuguese, but the journal is reaching out and seeking submissions in several languages. I think you can tell from the title (even if your Portuguese is a bit rusty) that this publication focuses on some very Post Position (and Grand Texto Auto) sorts of topics. Here’s the call:


Texto Digital is a peer-reviewed electronic academic journal, published twice annually in June and December by the Center for Research in Informatics, Literature and Linguistics – NuPILL (http://www.nupill.org/), linked to the Postgraduate Program in Literature, the Department of Vernacular Language and Literatures and the Center of Communication and Expression at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), Brazil.

Texto Digital publishes original articles in Portuguese, English, Spanish, French, Italian and Catalan which discuss several theoretical implications related to the texts created/inserted in electronic and digital media.

Interdisciplinary by nature and range, as implied in its title with the words “text” and “digital”, the journal embraces the fields of Literature, Linguistics, Education, Arts, Computing and others, in their relation to the digital medium, yet without privileging any specific critical approach or methodology.

In addition to the Articles Section, Texto Digital presents specific sections destined on publishing digital works of art, as well as interviews with recognized researchers and / or digital artists.

Once submitted, all articles that meet the general scope of the journal and its guidelines will be considered for peer-review publication, even in case of issues that may favor some particular subject-matter.

CALL FOR PAPERS – TEXTO DIGITAL

Texto Digital, the electronic journal published by the Center for Research in Informatics, Literature and Linguistics (NuPILL) at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), Brazil, informs that submissions for articles are open until October 15th, 2014.

We accept papers that analyse the relationships of digital media with one or more of the following subjects: Literature, teaching processes (reading and writing in particular, but not restricted to), language studies and arts in general. Accepted papers will be published in our
our December issue (n.2/2014).

Submissions for our journal are open on a continuous flow basis since September 1st, 2014, for academic papers that fit its scope.
Our publication standards and guidelines are available at:. https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/textodigital/about/submissions#authorGuidelines. Only papers in accordance with such criteria will be accepted.

Half of My Two Cents on E-Lit

Long ago (well, at the end of 2012) I was asked by .Cent magazine, a free-to-read, nicely designed online multimedia publication out of London, for a few comments about my work and my approach to electronic literature. Amazingly, having recently unearthed my responses, I find that they are still relevant! You can read my answers and the rest of the issue in its full splendor, but, very belatedly, I’ll offer my response here as well:

I see electronic literature as a something beyond a genre or a literary movement: It’s an argument that literary art and literary experience have a place in our digital environment alongside the many other ways that networked computing is used. Those of us working in electronic literature are demonstrating that we can have poetic, imaginative, narrative, conceptual, and other sorts of work and experiences online, in addition to commercial, communication, and gaming experiences. We don’t have to share an aesthetic or hold similar political ideas in order to make this argument together, because we’re arguing for something fundamental to future work: The chance to develop literature (of any sort) using the capabilities of the computer and the network.

My own focus is on projects that engage collaboration and computation to bring us into a new, disoriented, and potentially productive relationship to the computer and the world. A recent project that is both highly collaborative and highly computational is Sea and Spar Between, a poetry generator Stephanie Strickland and I developed. In it, we bring together words from the vocabulary of Melville and Dickinson, present a sea of textual data that is far beyond the human ability to read but which can be understood in some ways, and suggest a collaborative, computational, and literary-historical perspective on the natural world. In my “solo career” I have written very short programs such as those in the ppg256 series and those in the set Concrete Perl, to investigate, poetically, how computation and a particular programming language hook into the English language. Some of my other collaborative e-lit projects are Implementation with Scott Rettberg and Three Rails Live with Scott and Roderick Coover, both of these dealing with urban and global experiences buy cutting up narrative forms in new ways.

Techsty #9, with Sea and Spar Between in Polish

techstyExciting news for Polish-readers (and, I think, others): The new issue of Techsty, number 9, is out. You might think that a “Techsty” is just a place where infopigs like me live, but it’s actually a long-running site (since 2001) on digital literature, with an esteemed journal that has been published since 2003.

The current issue includes translations of articles by Robert Coover and Brain McHale, an article by Seweryna Wysłouch, and a special section on an audacious project. This is the translation of Sea and Spar Between, by Nick Montfort and Stephanie Strickland, which is a fairly extensive special-purpose poetry generator that is fair entwined with the English language (as well the specific authors from whom it draws: Emily Dickinson and Herman Melville). Not only did the two translators tackle the difficult and in fact unprecedented task of translating the underlying system to Polish, so that the program generates stanzas in that language; they also translated our comments from the “cut to fit the toolspun course” edition of the work. I hope this will invite remixing and code re-use in Polish as well as helping to improve the understanding of our project and our collaboration. Monika Górska-Olesińska also has an article on Stephanie Strickland’s work, with a photo of Stephanie reading just a few days ago at the ELO conference.

Piotr Marecki also translated my short generator Lede for the issue. (Amusingly enough, the translated title is the more conventional and seemingly more properly-spelled English word “Lead.”) It has some aspects of cultural translation – absurd figures from Polish culture are substituted for some of the ones I included from my American perspective.

The only mistake I see in the Sea and Spar Between items is that it’s hard (for me, at least, not being a reader of the language) to determine who did the translation of both the poem generator and the comments: Monika Górska-Olesińska and Mariusz Pisarski, who are attributed atop the commented code but not, for instance, here on the Polish “How to Read” page. In digital literature, there generally is no system for buying rights and recruiting and paying translators for their work – just as there is no system for doing this for authors. So the least we can do is to properly credit those who work to develop new programs and cybertexts, whether they are based on earlier ones in other languages or not.

The final article I’ll note is an interview, I think one that’s very kind to me and my lab, The Trope Tank, by Piotr Marecki, who was a postdoc here this past year. Here’s what the Googly Intelligence translates this interview as.

There’s a great deal more in the issue, and I suggest those interested in digital literature, even if not literate in Polish, take at least a quick look using your favorite “translation goggles.” There are some good English-language journals on electronic literature, but I think English-speakers could learn a good deal from this effort, which publishes critical writing (including some in translation) and creative work and also undertakes extensive translation projects.