A workshop on smart searching on the internet, for students preparing to write undergraduate theses and papers. We provide strategies for research, making the best use of the internet. Leave the workshop with concrete directions for your project. Check out the resource page here.

The 2012 Electronic Literature Organization Conference will be held June 20-23, 2012 in Morgantown, WV, the site of West Virginia University. In conjunction with the three-day conference, there will be a juried Media Arts Show open to the public at the Monongalia Arts Center in Morgantown and running from June 18-30, 2012. An accompanying online exhibit will bring works from the ELO Conference to a wider audience.

Even if nobody could define print literature, everyone knew where to look for it – in libraries and bookshops, at readings, in class, or on the Masterpiece channel. We have not yet created, however, a consensus about where to find electronic literature, or (for that matter) the location of the literary in an emerging digital aesthetic.

Though we do have, in digital media, works that identify themselves as “locative,” we don’t really know where to look for e-lit, how it should be tagged and distributed, and whether or how it should be taught. Is born digital writing likely to reside, for example, in conventional literature programs? in Rhetoric? Comp? Creative Writing? Can new media literature be remediated? How should its conditions of creation be described? Do those descriptions become our primary texts when the works themselves become unavailable through technological obsolescence?

To forward our thinking about the institutional and technological location of current literary writing, The Electronic Literature Organization and West Virginia University’s Center for Literary Computing invite submissions to the ELO 2012 Conference to be held from June 20-23, 2012, in Morgantown, West Virginia.

Bearing in mind the changing locations of new media literature and literary cultures, the conference organizers welcome unconventional presentations, whether in print or digital media. The point is not to reject the conventional conference ‘paper’ or bullet point presentation but to encourage thoughtful exploration and justification of any format employed. All elements of literary description and presentation are up for reconsideration. The modest mechanisms of course descriptions, syllabus construction, genre identification, and the composition of author bios, could well offer maps toward the location of the literary in digital media. So can an annotated bibliography of works falling under a given genre or within a certain technological context. We welcome surveys of the use of tags and keywords, and how these can be recognized (or not) by readers, libraries, or other necessary nodes in an emerging literary network Also of interest is the current proliferation of directories of electronic literature in multiple media, languages, and geographical locations.

The cost of the conference is $150; graduate students and non-affiliated artists pay only $100. The cost covers receptions, meals, and other conference events. All participants must be members of the Electronic Literature Organization. All events are within walking distance of the conference hotels. Morgantown is a classic college town, located in the scenic hills of north central West Virginia, about 70 miles south of Pittsburgh, PA. Local hotel and travel information will be available on the conference website starting October 1, 2011.

Check http://el.eliterature.org and http://conference.eliterature.org for updates. For more information, email elit2012 [at] gmail.com.

A night of literature, new media, and performance at the intersection of art and awareness. As Marshall McLuhan put it: we “live habitually in a state of information overload. There’s always more than you can cope with.” Power Up is about coping with information overload and fueling it. Power Up begins with short readings by students of the Spring graduate workshop in Fiction: Connie Pan, Rebecca Thomas, Shane Stricker, Andi Stout, Justin Anderson, Justin Crawford, Micah Holmes, and Aaron Hoover. The lineup continues with political theater / media intervention in massive multiplayer online roleplaying games by the Center for Literary Computing “Coaldust” collective, focused on the problematic space between virtuality, on the one hand, and laboring bodies and resource consumption, on the other. The evening concludes with new video from Intermedia students at WVU’s College of Creative Arts, with selections from the 2nd annual WV Mountaineer Short Film Festival.

For questions, contact us at clc@mail.wvu.edu

You are invited to an open conversation on computer games and virtual
technologies, April 19, 7pm in 130 Colson Hall.

Let’s face it, we all play! Maybe you play WoW, or Angry Birds, or
Minesweeper, or maybe something else. Let’s get together, talk about
computer gaming and virtual technologies, and plan the future.

We hope to hear student voices about what we play, about what games and
virtual technologies matter to us, and about what they tell us about
ourselves. And, we want to explore the interest and possibilities for
research, teaching, and careers with computer games and virtual
technologies.

This event is part of a cross-university, interdisciplinary series of
brainstorming sessions establishing the future scope of computer games
and virtual technologies at WVU.

You can contact us at clc@mail.wvu.edu. We can put you on the agenda:
if you are part of a student group involved with gaming, or if you make
games, or are engaged in research in gaming, or if you just have
something to say.

There’s no need to respond. You are welcome to attend, to listen, to
talk, to brainstorm, and to plan the future! Everyone is welcome.

Email if you want to be on the program, but show up on the night:
April 19, 7pm in 130 Colson Hall.

Game on.

Alan Sondheim – writer, philosopher, artist, musician, critic – will give a lecture on The Future of Writing at 130 Colson Hall in the WVU English Department, on April 18 at 7pm. The event is open to the public.

More information is here.

CLC Director Sandy Baldwin and a team of graduate interns co-edited Regards Croisés: Perspectives on Digital Literature with Professor Philippe Bootz of the University of Paris 8. The essay collection was just released by the WVU Press. Information is available here.

Internet Research and Resources
At the CLC, September 16 and 21, 1:00-2:15

The Electronic Literature Organization’s Fourth International Conference & Program of Digitally Mediated Literary Art

June 3-6, 2010
Brown University
Providence, Rhode Island, USA
Organized by the ELO and Writing Digital Media
at the Brown University Literary Arts Program
dedicated to Robert Coover

The Electronic Literature Organization and Brown University’s Literary Arts Program invite submissions to the Electronic Literature Organization 2010 Conference to be held from June 3-6 in Providence, Rhode Island, USA.

electronic literature . writing digital media .
language-driven digital poesis . literal art . literary hypermedia .

We welcome papers and presentations on a broad range of topics. The conference will focus on the theory, criticism, close-reading, practice and archiving of language-driven digital art and poetics. Our gathering will also embrace all the related cultural practices that continue to be addressed by scholars and artists in our growing field:

expressive processing, computational art, artificial cognition and intelligence, aesthetic gaming, information art, codework, digitally mediated performance, network & media art & activism.

In addition we will give a special welcome to papers that engage with the contribution that Robert Coover has made to our field. A festschrift comprised of papers from the conference is proposed and Professor Coover will be our chief featured (e)Writer. (Other featured speakers to be announced shortly.)

In conjunction with the three-day conference, there will be a juried Program of Language-Driven Digital Art, concentrating on but not confined to installation works. We plan to show the selected work in gallery spaces close to the conference venue in downtown Providence over a two week period. Subject to funding restrictions, selected artists will be awarded bursaries to assist with attending the conference.

If you want to give a paper, or form a panel, at this point, please submit a maximum 500-word abstract, with title and brief bio (indicating affiliation, if any). If you are proposing an installation, or an artistic presentation, or an alternative (innovative) proposal please also describe this in 500 words or less, with title, and bio(s). If you send illustrative, digitized AV materials, either keep these (byte-wise) small and short, or send us links.

Deadline for Submissions: December 15, 2009

– Send to: elo.ai@eliterature.org.
Notification of Acceptance: January 25, 2010
PLEASE NOTE: Deadline for full papers will be May 1, 2010 to allow for reflection and exchange on the papers prior to the conference and to get a head-start in the publication process.

The basic cost of the conference is $150; graduate students and non-affiliated artists pay only $100. Conference registration covers access to all events, the reception, some meals, and shuttle transportation. All conference attendees are also expected to join the ELO before the conference and this can be done at registration.

We are planning to implement online submission and registration. Before submitting, please consult the conference website at http://ai.eliterature.org where these facilities will be available and where you will find much more information about both the content and the form of the conference and arts program.

After consulting the website, for further queries and all email correspondence contact: elo.ai@eliterature.org

The above address should be used for all conference business. It will checked by myself and also those colleagues and students who will be assisting me with the conference organization. But I appreciate that you may sometimes also want to get in touch with the conference organizer: John Cayley Literary Arts Program – Box 1923, Brown University, 68 1/2 Brown Street, Providence, RI 02912, USA. office: +1 401 863 3966, John_Cayley@brown.edu

FURTHER SUPPORT AND SPONSORSHIP SOLICITED
The Conference is currently sponsored and supported by The Electronic Literature Organization, Brown University Literary Arts Program, Brown University Creative Arts Council, Brown University Library, and the RISD D+M Program. Any organization or individual in receipt of this call who would like to sponsor and
support this major international conference, please get in touch. External sponsors are being sought and will be appropriately acknowledged.

A class in Multimedia Writing, offered by CLC Director Sandy Baldwin

The class blog and syllabus are here: http://engl303f09.blogspot.com/

Course Description: Study of communication and design issues in multimedia composition. Focuses on communication, creative expression, persuasion, interactivity, and rhetorical principles. Practice in composing multimedia documents such as online publications, interactive literary works and tutorials. ENGL 303 is part of the English Department’s Technical Writing and Editing sequence. Multimedia is broadly defined, including but not limited to text, image, audio, and animation. The course will focus on web-based multimedia.

Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to: author and design web sites; write for the web with awareness of genres and audiences;
understand the complexity of representation and expression using multimedia; analyze the social and material transformation of writing in multimedia environments.

Multimedia Writing English 303

A class in Multimedia Writing, offered by CLC Director Sandy Baldwin

Course Description: Study of communication and design issues in multimedia composition. Focuses on communication, creative expression, persuasion, interactivity, and rhetorical principles. Practice in composing multimedia documents such as online publications, interactive literary works and tutorials. ENGL 303 is part of the English Department’s Technical Writing and Editing sequence.
Multimedia is broadly defined, including but not limited to text, image, audio, and animation. The course will focus on web-based multimedia.

Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to:
author and design web sites;
write for the web with awareness of genres and audiences;
understand the complexity of representation and expression using multimedia;
analyze the social and material transformation of writing in multimedia environments.