Posts tagged digital literature

CFP: Conference on Electronic Literature and New Media Art - A Humanist Inquiry into the Digital Age (due May 30)

This conference welcomes abstracts on Electronic Literature in the U.S., Latin America and Europe, teaching Electronic Literature and Gender and Identity in Cyberspace.

Proposals due May 30, 2012.

Instituto Franklin - UAH, Alcalá de Henares, Spain, October 4th-6th, 2012.

Instituto Franklin–UAH organizes the First International Conference devoted to Electronic Literature and New Media Art. It welcomes abstracts of up to 300 words for papers, presentations of creative works and group panel sessions related (but not limited) to the three main areas of the conference:

  • Electronic Literature in the U.S., Latin America and Europe
  • Teaching Electronic Literature
  • Gender and Identity in Cyberspace

The languages of the Conference will be English and Spanish, although English will be the main language of communication.

Important dates:

Submission deadline for proposals: May 30th, 2012
Notification of acceptance: June 15th, 2012

The complete Call for Papers can be found on and downloaded from the Instituto Franklin website: http://www.institutofranklin.net/en/conferences/conferences/next-conferences/first-international-conference-electronic-literature-and

For further information, contact Esther Claudio Moreno at esther.claudio(at)institutofranklin.net

Aca-article: Blind and Fake - Exploring the Geography of the Expanded Book

It seems like we are now rapidly leaving the galaxy of printed matter. As screen-based media is making its entry into our everyday lives, it is pushing aside an object – the book - that has structured our forms of being together for almost six hundred years. This paper approaches the idea of the book as an expanded and inter-medial “boundary object”.

Authors: Maria Hellström Reimer, Malmö University, School of Arts and Communication; Milica Lapcevic, Belgrade, Serbia; Luca Simeone, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy.

ABSTRACT
It seems like we are now rapidly leaving the galaxy of printed matter. As screen-based media is making its entry into our everyday lives, it is pushing aside an object – the book - that has structured our forms of being together for almost six hundred years. This shift is not absolute but successive, and it raises a lot of questions. What kind of mediating practices are developing beyond printed media? And how do these practices structure and organize common spaces and publicities? Even though today, we are far into the electronic age, in a way we are still suspended in between modern individualized life and new, more floating societal formations. Therefore, rather than presupposing the disappearance of the book, this paper approaches the idea of the book as an expanded and inter-medial “boundary object” (Star and Griesemer 1989).

In this respect, the point of departure is the expanded book project Roma Europa Fake Factory (REFF) (Henderson et. al. 2010) – a platform for global discussion and exchange concerning the management and governance of new public spheres in the electronic age. Playing out the visual authority of the printed text against the flickering of the net through the use of inter-mediating QR codes (Quick Response Codes) and fiducial markers, the project constituted a critical and artefactual intervention, remixing and mashing up the forcible means of the printed word with the intermediary potentials of electronic circuits. In the paper, we discuss the project through one of  the contributions – Blind Points of Transition – a combined text- and videobased dialogue; on the one hand an exploration of the book and the net as different locations, and on the other hand a tentative mapping of the intermediary territory between two geographically separate places. Focusing on the transition of text through different media, the paper critically examines the spatial expansion and modifications of the book as it enters electronic circuits, thus proposing a ‘blind and fake’, or in other words a questioning form of boundary modification; dislocating the critical focus from visuality to agency and from permanent property to intermediary production.

Paper presented at the Nordic Design Research Conference 2011, Helsinki

Access full paper here, open access: http://dspace.mah.se:8080/dspace/bitstream/handle/2043/12921/237.pdf?sequence=2

Aca-article: Ecology of Embodied Narratives in the Age of Locative Media and Social Networks - a Design Experiment

The present account of storytelling in the age of locative media would radically reject the traditional assumption that new technology challenges old narrative forms per se. Still, the very probable rise of personal devices based on the Global Positioning System (GPS), Geographic Information System (GIS) or similar geocoding standards and platforms will likely provide storytellers with a very interesting ground for the development of specific and very new literary applications.

Authors: Kai Pata, Tallinn University, Center for Educational Technology; Anatole Pierre Fuksas, Università degli Studi di Cassino, Dipartimento di Linguistica e Letterature Comparate.

Published in Cognitive Philology. Access article: http://annalidibotanica.uniroma1.it/index.php/cogphil/article/view/9602

ABSTRACT
A Design-based research tested a Hybrid Ecosystem emerging from collaborative storytelling supported by geo-locative technologies and Social Networking Services. We assumed that such Hybrid Ecosystem emerges when people experience a given environment through their own sensory-motor system while processing related locative media. We found that individual and collaborative activity in a hybrid ecosystem could be described on the basis of the swarming concept from biology.

Indeed, topics and themes seem to emerge, to be narrated and spread on the basis of unplanned, not concerted, polygenetic activity. Interaction basically leads to the emergence of behavioral patterns which immediately develop into mutated forms. As soon as a topic or a theme spread among the community, individual participants start differentiating their unique point of view on it, eventually comparing it with the one of some peers, so as to team up on the basis of affinity.

Literal references emerging from storytelling in hybrid ecosystems outscore metaphorical by far. Rather, comparison is definitely very active as a processing strategy whereas proper metaphors and generalizations emerge on a very limited basis. It looks like individual participants evaluate the collaborative streaming of narrative references as a series of individual, standalone events which are meaningful in themselves, not because the combination of them make it possible to grasp a general meaning.
A more careful assessment of data is very likely needed, but we can already conclude that narratives which emerge in hybrid ecosystems supported by locative technologies and Social Networking Services define the borders of participatory and collaborative story formats which reshape human presence in the environment while redefining the very concept of storytelling.

Access article: http://annalidibotanica.uniroma1.it/index.php/cogphil/article/view/9602

Call for Papers: Book Live! The book as a space-time continuum (Jan 15, ‘12)

The “Book Live!” conference will bring together theorists, researchers and practitioners to stimulate a dialogue across disciplines on the ability of the book to keep up with digital culture and the emergence of new modes of writing, of photographing, of reading, or archiving and of disseminating ‘on the page’ work. The purpose of the conference is to examine the current ‘transforming’ and ‘expanding’ of the book rather than its virtual disintegration.

Abstracts due January 15, 2012.

Call for Papers: BOOK LIVE! 8-9 June 2012. International symposium and related live events at London South Bank University.

Since the 1960s the book has been reclaimed by photographers, writers, musicians and thinkers as a space for both experimentation and dissemination of their ideas; a familiar space with its own structure, boundaries, history and economy which is there to be explored or transgressed. A worldwide interest in the artist’s book, as a creative practice and field of study, has grown significantly in recent years, partly reflecting a return to, and recognition of, the aesthetic of materiality in an increasingly digital culture. With this an interesting dialogue between electronic and print culture has started to take place. Could cyberspace become a new dimension in Ulysses Carrion’s 1960s definition of a book (as more than just an assemblage of pages but a ‘space-time continuum’ for the unravelling of verbal, visual, or sonic narratives)? Beyond the conference we will be bringing together papers and other contributions as a publication in its own right; an interesting survey of current thinking and innovative practice informed by both the themes and the findings of the conference, edited and designed by bookRoom press, and published by RGAP.

Book Live! is a collaboration between the Centre for Media and Cultural Research (CMCR) at LSBU and bookRoom Research Cluster at UCA Farnham, organised by Emmanuelle Waeckerle (Reader in Photography and Relational Practices at University for the Creative Arts and BookRoom lead academic) and Professor Richard Sawdon-Smith (Head of Arts & Media at London South Bank University).

The event will bring together theorists, researchers and practitioners to stimulate a dialogue across disciplines on the ability of the book to keep up with digital culture and the emergence of new modes of writing, of photographing, of reading, or archiving and of disseminating ‘on the page’ work. The purpose of this conference is to examine the current ‘transforming’ and ‘expanding’ of the book rather than its virtual disintegration.

In addition to this call for papers and presentations the conference will include international guest speakers from the broader world of publishing, photography and experimental writing as well as short presentations of book works and a series of live experimental and durational ‘readings’.

This will include keynote speakers Sharon Helgason Gallagher (founder and director of D.A.P and ARTBOOK in New York) and Joan Fontcuberta (photographer, artist and all-round critic of contemporary culture from Barcelona) as well as a performance of the full twelve hours of John Cage’s Empty Words (first published in1979 by Wesleyan University Press) by Sylvia Alexandra Schimag (Germany), coinciding with the release of the complete recording by Editions Wandelweiser.

CALL FOR PAPERS AND PRESENTATIONS max 25 minutes

We welcome proposals for presentations, panels and ‘readings’ dealing with (but not limited to) the following themes and research questions:

  • How has digital technology allowed the book to expand its boundaries, both in space and time?
  • Innovative convergence of traditional craft skills and advanced technologies in the making, reading, archiving or disseminating of books.
  • Interdisciplinary experiments that addresses the cultural translations between traditional skills and advanced technologies.
  • Explorations that reconsider the contemporary or future role of the book socially, culturally, politically.
  • Innovative or disastrous explorations and transgressions of ebook readers.
  • What do we gain and lose with on screen ‘reading’?
  • How is conventional publishing adapting to fast changing digital economy?
  • What has become of collecting in our digital culture?
  • What is knowledge now that computers can provide and keep everything?
  • High culture versus digital culture.

DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACTS: 15th January 2012 - Decision sent by 15th February. Please send abstracts to Emmanuelle Waeckerle (ewaeckerle(at)ucreative.ac.uk). Submissions from doctoral students and early-career postdoctoral researchers are encouraged, as well as submissions from non-academic publishers, collectors, artists, writers and thinkers.

A SUBMISSION SHOULD CONSIST OF A ZIPPED FOLDER CONTAINING:

  • Individual paper: up to 500 word abstract with a 50 words summary, up to 200 words artist statement, a curriculum vitae headed with author name(s), organizational affiliation (if any), contact address, telephone, and email address (2 pages maximum). All in pdf format.
  • Panel proposal: up to 500 word abstract with a 50 words summary, of the panel’s theme, details of the panel’s chair (up to 200 word artist statement) and contributors, a curriculum vitae headed with author name(s), organizational affiliation (if any), contact address, telephone, and email address (2 pages maximum). All in pdf format.
  • Project presentation: up to 500 word abstract with a 50 words summary, up to 200 words artist statement, a curriculum vitae headed with author name(s), organizational affiliation (if any), contact address, telephone, and email address (2 pages maximum). All in pdf format. Website link or 2 images (jpg max 2MB each) of documentation and YouTube or Vimeo link for video documentation.
  • Experimental or durational reading or performance: up to 500 word abstract, 200 words resumé, A curriculum vitae headed with author name(s), organizational affiliation (if any), contact address, telephone, and email address (2 pages maximum). All in pdf format. Website link or 2 images (jpg max 2MB each) of documentation and YouTube or Vimeo link for video documentation.

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT Richard Sawdon Smith sawdonsr(at)lsbu.ac.uk or Emmanuelle Waeckerle ewaeckerle(at)ucreative.ac.uk

REGISTRATION
Full Conference
Early Bird Rate: £150/£75 concessions
Standard Rate: £200/£100 concessions

Single Day
Early Bird Rate: £80/£35 concessions
Standard Rate: £120/£55 concessions

Performances only (Saturday 9am to 9pm; ‘Empty words’ and other durational readings)
£15/£10 concessions

The Early Bird Rate will be available from 1 April 2012, when registration opens, until 1 May 2012, after which the standard rates apply.

CFP: Conference on Book Cultures and Book Events (Edinburgh, March ‘12)

A significant development in the environment of literature and the book at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries has been the growth of literary festivals and book towns. Suggested topics for this conference are: literature as live event, the role of live events in the digital age, book events and other media/cultural forms and more.

Abstracts due January 6, 2012.

Book Cultures, Book Events Conference, University of Stirling, Scotland, 23-25 March 2012. Conference Organisers: Professor Claire Squires, Stirling Centre for International Publishing and Communication, University of Stirling and Professor David Finkelstein, Queen Margaret University. Plenary Speakers include: Dr Danielle Fuller, University of Birmingham.

A significant development in the environment of literature and the book at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries has been the growth of literary festivals and book towns. As part of the literary marketing mix, book festivals and towns offer publishers the opportunity to promote their authors and sell their products. Such locations also provide physical and sociological spaces in which readers encounter writers and literature, and become book consumers. Book festivals and towns have clear links to regional economies, and are heavily used in the promotion of tourist destinations, as testified by the strategic partnerships and sponsorship arrangements with a variety of agencies. As part of this process, concepts of cultural identity are forged and commodified, conjoining literature to cultural heritage, the creative industries and political ideology. In the era of new media and digital delivery, the opportunity to meet authors and fellow readers face-to-face, to buy books and other merchandise, and to align a liking for literature with travel and tourism, is being taken up by hundreds of thousands of readers every year. Literary festivals and towns, while heavily promoted by digital marketing activities, afford physical meeting spaces for authors, books, readers and ideas.

To explore these events and environments, the Book Cultures, Book Events conference will bring together academic and student researchers from different disciplines with practitioners and stakeholders, to their contemporary perspectives and historical precedents.

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

  • literature as live event
  • analyses of contemporary or historical book events, festivals, conferences and environments (including bookshop spaces)
  • the role of live events in the digital age
  • author/reader interactions at live events
  • literary travel, tourism and heritage
  • literary commerce and merchandising
  • book events and other media/cultural forms
  • partnerships and sponsorship
  • constructions of cultural identity via literature events
  • literature in the context of cultural heritage, the creative industries, and political ideology

Proposals for papers of 20 minutes are invited. Please send email attachment abstracts of 300-400 words, plus a biography of 100-150 words, by 6 January 2012, to: book.cultures(at)stir.ac.uk.

This conference is supported by the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and as such registration costs for the conference will be minimal.

The conference is part of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Research Workshop Book Events: The Transnational Culture, Commerce and Social Impact of Literary Festivals, organised in association with the Stirling Centre for International Publishing and Communication at the University of Stirling, Queen Margaret University, the University of Dundee, and Bookfestival Scotland.

For any enquiries, please contact: book.cultures(at)stir.ac.uk.