The first seminar of the ELMCIP project will be held September 20-21, 2010 in Bergen at Landmark Café at the Kunsthall and at the University of Bergen. The seminar will be focused on how different forms of community, based on local, national, language group, shared cultural practices and interest in particular literary and artistic genres, form and are sustained, particularly electronic literature communities. The program will include a day-long public seminar on September 20th at the Landmark Kunsthall, where we will examine specific cultural traditions in electronic literature, include examples from France, the Netherlands, the Scandinavian countries, the USA, the community of interactive fiction, the Poetry beyond Text project in the UK, and others. We will also hear from organizers of electronic arts and literary communities in Bergen. That evening we will also see some episodes of a new documentary on interactive fiction "Get Lamp", and have the opportunity to discuss the film with the director, Jason Scott.

The first publication related to the ELMCIP project, the attached paper was presented by Simon Biggs and Penny Travlou at the 2010 SLSA Europe Conference in Riga in June 2010. The paper provides a good introduction to some of the aims of the ELMCIP project, in particular the intent and initial planning of the ethnographic study which will be conducted by Dr. Travlou. The full paper is attached

Distributed authorship and creative communities

by Professor Simon Biggs and Dr. Penny Travlou
Edinburgh College of Art

abstract:

In its requirement for both an author and reader art can be considered a participatory activity. Expanded concepts of agency, such as in actor-network-theory (Latour 2005), question what or who can be an active participant, allowing us to revisit the debate on authorship from a new perspective. We can ask whether creativity might be regarded as a form of social interaction rather than an outcome. How might we understand creativity as interaction between people and things, as sets of discursive relations rather than outcomes?

The ELMCIP Project officially launches June 22-23 with a meeting in Vienna. Negotiations with HERA and the ESF have successfully concluded and the research project begins now. During the first day of our Vienna meeting, ELMCIP project members will meet to plan the projects seminars, implementation of technologies, staffing, and other logistics in advance of the first project seminar on Electronic Literature Communities which will take place in Bergen, Norway this September. The second day includes a meeting with all of the other project leaders and principal investigators who are producing a HERA Creativity and Innovation joint research project. The meeting is intended to officially launch the HERA JRPs, encourage collaboration between the projects, and help to facilitate and extend knowledge transfer.

Keep an eye on this site during the summer months. As we ramp up and fully staff the project, finalize plans for project activities, develop international partnerships, and begin to share project research, you will find it all here.

Attached is a brief powerpoint presentation providing some information about ELMCIP and our planned research activities over the next three years.

“Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice” has been recommended for funding, pending final contract negotiations with the European Science Foundation to be completed in January 2010. Scott Rettberg, of the University of Bergen Linguistic, Literary, and Aesthetic department’s Digital Culture Group, will be the Project Leader. The total budget for the project as a whole will be just under 1.000.000 Euros.

“Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice” (ELMCIP) is a 3-year collaborative research project which will run from 2010-2013. The project will be funded under HERA joint research project theme: ’Humanities as a Source of Creativity and Innovation’.