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1. Digging For The Roots Of Interactive Storytelling

   This paper is a writer's reflections on the pre-computer origins of interactive narrative. It seeks out forms of human expression dating back to prehistory that can viewed as the precursors of contemporary interactive storytelling and contemplates what can be learned from these forms that can be applied to contemporary works of interactive storytelling. The examined forms include the participatory myth-based dramas of the ancient Egyptians and Greeks; coming of age rituals in traditional societies; games that blend spiritual beliefs and athleticism; and various Judeo-Christian and pagan religious practices.

   Scott Rettberg - 08.01.2013 - 11:46

2. Avatars Sharing Agency: Metaphor in Interactive Narrative Environments

   This paper considers how the avatar focuses the metaphor of interactivity in video games and interactive narrative environments. It argues that, despite serving as the on-screen representation of user input, the avatar has some independent agency (whether through design or representational practice) that influences its behavior. Thus, rather than merely relying upon it as her transparent stand-in, the player must negotiate with the avatar to achieve her goals. The negotiation serves to dramatize interactivity as an imperfect conduit between the textual and extra-textual worlds. While not so evident in video games, this imperfection sustains the metaphor of interactivity, deepening expressivity in interactive narrative environments.

   (Source: Author's abstract, 2008 ELO Conference site)

   Scott Rettberg - 08.01.2013 - 16:32

3. The Machinimatic Moment

   "The Machinimatic Moment" discusses a type of filmmaking that uses videogame engines (commonly referred to as machinima). I contend machinima exists within a liminal space between a number of diapoles including: production/consumption, play/cognition, and synthesis/critique. While much of machinima can be considered self-referential in that it consistently remarks upon the game itself and, in many ways, its limitations, other productions reveal sophisticated, compelling stories that are neither game nor traditional filmic narrative. I conclude by arguing that its liminality gives machinima distinctive and interesting qualities.

   (Source: Author's abstract, 2008 ELO Conference)

   Scott Rettberg - 09.01.2013 - 14:41

4. "A Machine Made of Words by a Machine Made of Numbers"- Authorial Presence in Niemi’s Stud Poetry

   Primary Text: Marko Niemi’s Stud Poetry, a demo of which would run during the presentation.

   The paper opens with a brief discussion of the inherently conservative nature of the ELO’s definition of electronic-literature and the critical tendencies which this encourages. It has a strong focus on those critics who identify the forms which electronic literature has taken as an extension of modernist experimentation in the Twentieth Century, while disregarding the new possibilities which programmable media furnishes the poet with.

   These possibilities are manifest in Niemi’s Stud Poetry, a text which has been consistently overlooked since its publication, perhaps because it presents a challenge to the dominant critical trends. Stud Poetry cannot fully be understood in terms of print-based modernist experimentation, Dada or Burroughs, because it would be impossible to achieve without a computer program. Niemi wrote the code which ‘writes’ each poem/game.

   Jill Walker Rettberg - 23.08.2013 - 12:24

5. Digital Arena: Stories Beneath Your Feet and Fingertips: Playing Locative Stories — Kathi Inman Berens

   Fall 2014 Electronic Literature Reading Series

   The Bergen Electronic Literature Research Group at the University of Bergen and the Bergen Public Library present:

   Stories Beneath Your Feet and Fingertips: Playing Locative Stories by Kathi Inman Berens

   Tuesday, November 4, 2014, 6-8 pm, Bergen Public Library

   Kathi Inman Berens, Fulbright Scholar of Digital Culture visiting UiB from the University of Southern California, showed literary works set in cityscapes from Los Angeles, Toronto, Paris, London, even a locative story set in Bergen.

   Humans have always scrawled stories onto their physical environs -- cave paintings, decorative friezes, eighteenth-century broadsides, graffiti, billboards. Equipped today with smart phones, artists and ordinary people are telling stories pinned to exact geospatial location using Google Maps, Twitter, and Layar (Augmented Reality).

   Alvaro Seica - 16.02.2015 - 16:46