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1. Polish “aesthetics”: Vaporwave outside the center

   Vaporwave is an artistic movement, developed under the conditions of global capitalism, which functions in the space of global Internet. Piotr Płucienniczak – author associated with electronic literature, but also with Polish redefinition of vaporwave aesthetics, emphasizes that vaporwave is, on the one hand, an international cultural code, and on the other hand presents critically and ironically "goods inaccessible to us, poor people". I would like to discuss this paradox in my speech based on the analysis of the Polish postvaporwave projects. The western, American vaporwave is generally described by its critics (also in Poland) by means of hauntology, accelerationism and nostalgia. The Western vaporvawe expresses nostalgia for the 90s – a time of utopian thinking about timeless prosperity and development of technology. I put forward the thesis that these categories (especially nostalgia) do not quite match the Polish varieties of vaporwave aesthetics. The most recognizable, comprehensive and well thought out Polish vaporwave project is Z U S w a v e.

   Vian Rasheed - 12.11.2019 - 03:40

2. Boys and their Brains: Neuro(a)typicality and Gamer Masculinity

   In recent years independent and amateur videogame designers have come from the margins to test the boundaries of the medium. Using forms like the ‘walking simulator’ and the ‘desktop simulator’ - forms that forego challenge and combat in favour of storytelling - they have pioneered new modes of interactive autobiography, exploring topics such as parenthood, gender, mental health, grief and faith. Meanwhile, gamer masculinity, that normative and normatizing identity, has been evolving. As the ‘hardcore gamer’ generation grows up, commercial videogame publishers have begun courting this ageing audience with titles that aim to satisfy gaming traditionalists (for whom independent games are often considered too sedate and cerebral to qualify as ‘real’ videogames) while also engaging issues like fatherhood and neurotypicality. This panel sheds light on gaming culture’s growing pains by addressing a series of titles centred on boys and their brains. These games enlist players in advancing stories about survivalist dads and decapitated know-it-alls, terminally ill toddlers and quasi-autistic online gamers.

   Jorge Sáez Jiménez-Casquet - 14.11.2019 - 14:26

3. Next Generation: On the Verge of Electronic Poetry but not quite. The Case of Women Poets in Spain.

   In a world overloaded with information, a Google search with the Spanish words "mujer, poesía, tecnología” does not produce any result integrating the three of them. It would look as if the conjunction of those three terms remits to an empty signifier, an incongruous combination. However, for Spanish critics dedicated to exploring these crossroads, to study the ways in which we have used technology as a tool of poetic exploration, of inquiry about our new prosthetic identity, this scarcity only denotes a space out of field, existing but outside the focus of interest of a culture increasingly mercantilist and vacuous.

   Jorge Sáez Jiménez-Casquet - 14.11.2019 - 14:53

4. Writing for Vast Interactive Spaces

   In November 2018, Studio Tender Claws launched Tendar, the first long-form, augmented reality game to merge AR technology with human sentiment analysis. Gameplay centers around an artificially-intelligent pet fish that responds to the player’s actions, emotions, and physical surroundings via a combination of generative and hand-scripted dialog. The fish recognizes over 100 user emotions and 200 physical objects as it navigates eight distinct developmental stages. As a small independent game studio, our challenge was to generate and trigger engaging dialog for the vast combinatoric writing surface that the game presented, all while dynamically adjusting tone, affect, and content according to player actions and the fish’s emotional state.

   Jorge Sáez Jiménez-Casquet - 17.11.2019 - 11:43

5. Riveted, Structures, Lands

   "Riveted, Structures, Lands” explores loss and memory through interviews, live action shots and stop motion animations. These piece together the scope and remains of my great-grandfather’s civil engineering work as well as the creative endeavors of my great-grandmother. The oral history of my great-grandfather’s work for Union Pacific Railroad is told by my grandmother, who suffers from dementia, and struggles at times with recollection. Many of my great- grandfather’s engineering works still stand, though they are not marked with his name. His blueprints provide additional clues to understanding this lifelong work. Only through the date stamps on the exterior of the bridge and his own signature on the blueprints can I verify that he did have a part in their design. Through hunting down the Union Pacific structures that remain, I piece together the fragments of my grandmother’s memories about the extent of my great- grandfather’s work in the Western United States. By animating the blueprints and quilt pieces I begin my own approach to understanding the few cherished artifacts they passed down to the next generation.

   Jorge Sáez Jiménez-Casquet - 17.11.2019 - 12:04

6. Concrete Poetry as Vehicle for Exploring Digital Materiality

   Digital materials protrude into the most intimate corners of our lives, are part of the architectures that shape our dreams and desires. Yet the modes of their production are comparably poorly understood. In the described talk, I provide a discussion of the status of concrete poetry as a tool for practice-based research into the characteristics of digital materiality. As long as we allow code to slip through the cracks of the collective imaginary, it remains easy for corporate actors to misrepresent the character and influence of coded infrastructures: It is imagined to exist elsewhere, in server farms, on the quantum physical plane of the infinitesimal, within the disembodied sphere of formal logic, but not among us, not as part of everyday reality.

   While its effects, social media platforms, word processors, smartphone applications, are part of everyday reality, its digital substrates seem not to be. Resultingly, code is allowed to have unobserved social effects. Those who control the conditions of its production and operation are free to deploy this invisibility for any strategic goal they see fit.

   Jorge Sáez Jiménez-Casquet - 17.11.2019 - 13:40

7. Interspecies and Random/Electronic-Poetry. From “Black on Sheep” (Bovine poem) to “Robot-poem@s”

   This presentation will explore random e-poetry and interspecies based on two electronic works: one that intersect humanity and insect-like robotics titled “Robot-poem@s”, and an eproject/poem based on a performance with sheep: “Negro en ovejas/Black on Sheep.” Robotpoem@s consist of insect-like robots (five quadrupeds and a bigger hexapod) whose legs and bodies are engraved with the seven parts of a poem written from the robot’s point of view in bilingual format (Spanish and English). Binary constructs such as creator/creature are questioned by these creatures purposely chosen from open-source models resembling insects and spiders, thus emphasizing anxiety and removal from humans while underlying the already problematic relation between humans and technology. The final segment of the poem, number VII, rephrases the biblical pronouncement on the creation of humans, as perceived by the robot: “According to your likeness / my Image.” With this statement, the notion of creation is reformulated and bent by the power of electronics, ultimately questioning its binary foundations.

   Vian Rasheed - 18.11.2019 - 15:26

8. Tale of a Great Sham(e Text)

   The date is 1881.

   There are high rents and evictions, there is homelessness. In answer to the extra-ordinary times the Ladies’ Land League is directed by Anna Parnell to organize public meetings and protests. Thirteen women, speak, rally, and inspire female agency. Irish Women realizing their own political potential, moving the struggle away from government to the personal.

   This is an electronic text, which will be using 13 female voices and a computer. The visuals/text of the electronic text will be created using game development software and electroacoustic compositional techniques, presented as an interactive work within a web browser. The 13 female voices will sound original text created using works by Anna Parnell, processed using electroacoustic compositional techniques. Passive resistance is be combined with a constructive creative programme, developing the self-confidence of the audience and encouraging them to participate.

   “The best part of Independence is the independence of the mind.” (Anna Parnell)

   Vian Rasheed - 18.11.2019 - 15:56

9. Disrupting the Digital humanities

   All too often, defining a discipline becomes more an exercise of exclusion than inclusion. Disrupting the Digital Humanities seeks to rethink how we map disciplinary terrain by directly confronting the gatekeeping impulse of many other so-called field-defining collections. What is most beautiful about the work of the Digital Humanities is exactly the fact that it can’t be tidily anthologized. In fact, the desire to neatly define the Digital Humanities (to filter the DH-y from the DH) is a way of excluding the radically diverse work that actually constitutes the field. This collection, then, works to push and prod at the edges of the Digital Humanities — to open the Digital Humanities rather than close it down. Ultimately, it’s exactly the fringes, the outliers, that make the Digital Humanities both heterogeneous and rigorous.

   Hannah Ackermans - 03.12.2019 - 10:24

10. Locating Stephanie Strickland's True North

    Many essays about the hypertext poem, "True North," address Stephanie Strickland's use of color and maps, such as Deena Larsen and Richard Higgason's "An Anatomy of Anchors" and its instantiation into two distinct media forms, such as Joseph Tabbi's "Stephanie Strickland's True North: A Migration between Media." Strickland herself has written essays about the work, most notably "Quantum Poetics: Six Thoughts," where she reminds readers that her work "investigate[s] oscillation between image, text, sounds, and animation, both within and between hypertextually linked units" (32). This essay, therefore, takes a different tack from these excellent examples. It offers a discussion of the work's history of production, which is necessary for establishing valid information about versions and dates, and its mechanics because experiencing the hypertext poem will soon no longer be possible for readers. 

    Dene Grigar - 31.12.2019 - 01:13

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