ELO 2014 Pre-Conference Events

“Hold the Light” features a variety of pre-convention workshops offering unique opportunities for in-depth, practical involvement with concepts, approaches, and tools. Attendance at any of the workshops requires purchase of the Workshop Pass, either as part of your registration process or on site. All workshops are located on the UWM campus and will take place in advance of the main conference. The special INT workshop, held in collaboration with the Narrative Intelligence research group, will take place Tuesday and Wednesday, June 17-18. The other three workshops will run on Wednesday, June 18.

Here are brief descriptions of the workshops. E-mail addresses are given for the workshop organizers, if you wish to contact them for further information.

READING, WRITING, AND PROGRAMMING ELIT

Wednesday, June 18: Reading and Writing (morning); Programming (afternoon)

Workshop Leaders: Deena Larsen (deenalarsen[at]yahoo.com) and Joshua Fisher (admin[at]appoet.org)

This is an all-day event in three parts, consisting of presentations and hands-on activities. The first two parts are intended especially for beginners: anyone who does not have deep familiarity with electronic writing, or wishes to extend or deepen an initial encounter. The third part is meant for both beginners and more experienced members of the community. Participants in workshops taking place earlier in the day may join the afternoon session (Part Three) at no additional charge. Registration is limited to 20 for Parts One and Two, 25 for Part Three; participants are encouraged to bring laptops.

Part One: Reading (one hour)

In this activity, we will be presenting four relatively simple works of electronic writing. We will discuss the use and meaning of sound, motion, imagery, and games --and how the works would not be the same without these essential elements. We will first present the works and then allow folks to play with them.

Part Two: Writing (two hours)

In this activity, we'll ask participants to quickly write about two images (these will be the same images for each group or team of writers--about 2 -4 people per team). We will discuss imagery, placement, montage, sound, and navigation. Then we will "present" each of these planned works as a group to discuss how the same images

Part Three: Programming (three hours, with break)

In this workshop we'll be going through the initial steps of setting up a mobile application for iOS and Android devices. Each attendee will leave with a simple poetry chapbook application they will be able to publish to the Apple App Store. Over the two hours we'll be using Photoshop, Corona SDK, and XCode to turn your poetry or stories into an engaging piece of interactive art. No programming experience is necessary however you should have moderate experience using Photoshop. Attendees should bring a thumb drive with their stories and any art they would like to use.

About the Workshop Leaders: DEENA LARSEN is a founding member of the Electronic Literature Organization, author of the hypertext fiction Marble Springs, as well as many other works of experimental poetry and fiction. Larsen has taught introductory courses and workshops on electronic writing throughout the U.S., as well as in Europe, Australia, and South Africa. She is the author of Fun Da Mentals, an online textbook for learning and teaching electronic literature (http://www.deenalarsen.net/fundamentals/). JOSHUA FISHER is the author of several works of digital poetry and storytelling currently available as mobile apps, and is the founder of Appoet, a location-based venue for urban poetry based in Chicago (www.appoet.org). Fisher has also given many presentations and workshops on electronic publishing and application development.

INTRODUCTION TO ANIMATION USING THE PROCESSING PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE

Wednesday, June 18 (Morning)

Workshop Leader: Frances Van Scoy, West Virginia University (fvanscoy[at]gmail.com)

This tutorial on animation using the Processing programming language is primarily intended for creators of electronic literature who have little or no programming experience. The only technology requirements for using what is taught are a somewhat recent computer (running Linux, Mac OS X, or Windows), Internet access for downloading an implementation of the Processing language, and authorization to install this software on the computer.

The tutorial is divided into two 2-hour sections. By the end of the first section, participants should be able to construct 2-d scenes from simple geometric shapes, animate scenes, and export a collection of scenes as a video. By the end of the second section, participants should be able to display and animate text.

Frances Van Scoy is a computer science faculty member at West Virginia University and the coordinator for the masters certificate program in Interactive Technologies and Serious Gaming. Her current game-related research is in gameplay-based narrative generation and in development of games that use neuroheadsets as controllers.

THE INS AND OUTS OF CURATING ELECTRONIC LITERATURE

Wednesday, June 18 (Afternoon)

Workshop Leader: Dene Grigar, Washington State University – Vancouver (dgrigar[at]vancouver.wsu.edu)

This 2-hour workshop aims to provide participants with an understanding of how to curate exhibits of electronic literature. It will cover the following topics:

• Developing a concept

• Producing a Call for Works

• Establishing evaluation processes

• Creating a curatorial plan

• Mounting the show

• Working with electronic literature as objects of exhibition

• Documenting work for tenure and promotion and grants

Participants are encouraged to bring their laptops and/or tablets for accessing samples of electronic literature and instructional materials as well as for use in developing plans.

At the end of the workshop, participants will have information needed for undertaking their own curated exhibits, both invited and juried.

About the Workshop Leader: Dene Grigar has been a leading maker and scholar in the field of electronic literature since its beginning. As a curator, she has mounted influential exhibits at the Modern Language Association annual conferences, the Library of Congress, and other distinguished venues. In addition to her groundbreaking work on preservation of early software art, Grigar currently serves as President of the Electronic Literature Organization.

SPECIAL EVENT: INT WORKSHOP

Tuesday, June 17 and Wednesday, June 18 (all day)

This is a two-day workshop (June 17-18) hosted by the Narrative Intelligence working group, a community of researchers primarily based in computing and cognitive science. ELO members are welcome.

Workshop Leaders: Jichen Zhu, Drexel University; Ian Horswill, Northwestern University (ian[at]northwestern.edu)

The Intelligent Narrative Technologies (INT) workshop series aims to advance research in artificial intelligence for the computational understanding, expression, and creation of narrative. Previous installments of this workshop have brought together a multidisciplinary group of researchers such as computer scientists, psychologists, narrative theorists, media theorists, artists, and members of the interactive entertainment industry. From this broad expertise, the INT series focuses on computational systems to represent, reason about, adapt, author, and perform interactive and non-interactive narrative experiences.

(Source: ELO 2014 Conference homepage)