A Toast to the Flash Generation

"A Toast to the Flash Generation" took place on New Year’s Eve Day to celebrate the genius of the Flash Generation. Over 20 artists of Flash narratives, poetry, and essays will read and performed their works throughout the day via Zoom.

The term, “Flash Generation,” coined by theorist Lev Manovich in 2005, captured the zeitgeist of a new era of cultural production when artists and writers discovered they could express their creativity through movement, images, sound, and words through Flash software. Online journals like Poems That Go, Riding the Meridian, The Iowa Review Web, Caudron & Net, BeeHive, and many others, emerged as leading publishing venues for this new form of born digital media. During the heady period of 1999 to 2009, Flash influenced the development of net art, interactive art, Flash games, and literature, not to mention personal and organizational websites. It wasn’t until the rise of the Apple smart phone at the end of the first decade of the 21st century that Flash’s dominance as a viable form of digital production waned. After December 31, 2020 Adobe will discontinue its support for Flash, and all of this output will be threatened with obsolescence.

This event––besides celebrating the end of an important creative period and showcasing the wonderful Flash e-lit collected by the Electronic Literature Organization in its Repository––aimed to document it for posterity. The recordings and chat collected via Zoom will be held in the ELO Repository, has been made available on the Electronic Literature Lab’s Vimeo account, and will be published in Electronic Book Review.

During the event we provided information about the steps the Electronic Literature Lab is taking to preserve Flash works held in the Electronic Literature Repository and its own digital library. 

At the end of the event, Leonardo Flores, Chris Funkhouser and Dene Grigar lead the Toast to the Flash Generation.

Below is the program of readers/performers, featured works, and URLs to the work:

10:00 a.m.-10:15 a.m. PST
Welcome: Dene Grigar, Anastasia Salter, Mariusz Pisarski

10:15 a.m.-10:30 a.m. PST
Annie Abrahams (France) “Séparation,” ELC2
http://collection.eliterature.org/2/works/abrahams_separation/separation/index.htm

10:30 a.m.-10:45 a.m. PST
Dan Waber (US): “Strings,” ELC1
https://collection.eliterature.org/1/works/waber__strings/index.html

10:45 a.m.-11:00 a.m. PST
Tina Escaja (Spain, US): “Pinzas de metal” (Forthcoming to the Repository)
https://www.badosa.com/bin/obra.pl?id=n175

11:00 a.m.-11:15 a.m. PST
Kate Pullinger (CAN, UK): “Inanimate Alice: Episode 1,” ELC1
http://collection.eliterature.org/1/works/pullinger_babel__inanimate_alice_episode_1_china/index.html

11:15 a.m.-11:30 a.m. PST
Donna Leishman (Scotland): “Deviant: The Possession of Christian Shaw,” TIRW
http://www.6amhoover.com/xxx/start.htm

11:30 a.m.-11:45 a.m. PST
Reiner Strasser (Germany) & Marjorie Luesebrink “– in the white darkness,” ELC1
http://collection.eliterature.org/1/works/strasser_coverley__ii_in_the_white_darkness/index.html

11:45 a.m.-12:00 p.m. PST
Maria Mencia, (Spain, UK) “Birds Singing Other Birds’ Songs,” ELC1
http://collection.eliterature.org/1/works/mencia__birds_singing_other_birds_songs.html

12:00 p.m.-12:15 p.m. PST
Christine Wilks (UK): “Fitting the Pattern,” ELC2
http://collection.eliterature.org/2/works/wilks_fittingthepattern.html

12:15 p.m.-12:30 p.m. PST
Claudia Kozak/Leo Flores: Ana Maria Uribe (Argentina): From “Anipoemas,” TIRW
https://www.elo-repository.org/TIRweb/tirweb/feature/uribe/uribe.html

12:30 p.m.-12:45 p.m. PST
Rui Torres (Portugal): “Amor de Clarice,” ELC2
http://collection.eliterature.org/2/works/torres_amordeclarice.html

12:45 p.m.-1:00 p.m. PST
Stephanie Strickland (US): “slippingglimpse,” ELC2
http://collection.eliterature.org/2/works/strickland_slippingglimpse/slippingglimpse/index.html

1:00 p.m.-1:15 p.m. PST Break

1:15 p.m.-1:30 p.m. PST
Claudia Kozak: Walkthrough of Regina Pinto’s “Museum of the Essential and Beyond That” (Brazil)
https://www.elo-repository.org/museum-of-the-essential/

1:30 p.m.-1:45 p.m. PST
Jim Andrews (Canada): “Nio,” Turbulence.org
http://turbulence.org/Works/Nio/

1:45 p.m.-2:00 p.m. PST
Alan Bigelow (US): “This Is Not a Poem,” (Forthcoming to the Repository)
https://webyarns.com/ThisIsNotAPoem.html

2:00 p.m.-2:15 p.m. PST
Serge Bouchardon (France): “Toucher,” ELC2
http://collection.eliterature.org/2/works/bouchardon_toucher/index.html

2:15 p.m.-2:30 p.m. PST Break

2:30 p.m.-2:45 p.m. PST
Rob Kendall (US): “Faith,” Cauldron & Net
https://elo-repository.org/cauldronandnet/volume4/confluence/kendall/title_page.htm

2:45 p.m.-3:00 p.m. PST
Leo Flores reads David Knoebel (US): “Thoughts Go,” ELC3
http://collection.eliterature.org/3/works/thoughts-go/index.html

3:00 p.m.-3:15 p.m. PST
Stuart Moulthrop (US): “Under Language,” TIRW
https://www.elo-repository.org/TIRweb/vol9n2/artworks/underLanguage/index.htm

3:15 p.m.-3:30 p.m. PST
Jody Zellen (US): “Disembodied Voices,” Turbulence.org
http://www.disembodiedvoices.com/

3:30 p.m.-3:45 p.m. PST
Erik Loyer (US) and Sharon Daniel (US): “Public Secrets,” ELC2
http://collection.eliterature.org/2/works/daniel_public_secrets/index.html

3:45 p.m.-4:00 p.m. PST
Jason Nelson (US, AUS): “Game, Game, Game, and Again Game,” ELC2
http://collection.eliterature.org/2/works/nelson_game_game_game/gamegame.html

4:00 p.m.-4:15 p.m. PST
Deena Larsen (US): “Firefly,” Poems That Go
http://elo-repository.org/poemsthatgo/gallery/fall2002/firefly/index.html

4:15 p.m.-4:30 p.m. PST
Mez Breeze (AUS): “_Clo[h!]neing God N Ange-Ls_,” Cauldron & Net
https://elo-repository.org/cauldronandnet/volume2/features/mez/clone/clo...

4:30 p.m.-5:00 p.m. PST
Conversation and Toast: Leo Flores, Chris Funkhouser, and Dene Grigar