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1. Reading Virtual Geographies

   In John Muir's first published article, "Yosemite's Glacier," the eminent nature writer compares Yosemite Valley to a worn book, suggesting that to understand the physical geography of the valley a visitor must employ a reading practice similar to the study of literature. Over the century since, nature writers and ecocritics have continued to call for a more critical engagement with our natural world through literature and other media. However, as 21st century readers who are perhaps more likely to experience Yosemite Valley via Google Earth than in Muir's prose--much less as a physical space--we must begin to ask how or in what ways can we continue to "read" natural spaces as that are increasingly mediated through digital tools such as Google Earth and Second Life. To address this question I argue that we must learn to apply the same ecocritical reading practices that give subjectivity to the natural world to the digitally mediated geographies that increasingly define the spaces we inhabit.

   Eric Dean Rasmussen - 21.06.2012 - 12:41

2. Slow Games, Slow Poems: The Act of Deliberation in "Slow Year"

   “Video games are actions,” declared Alexander Galloway in a manifesto that stakes out the
   essential differences between videogames and other forms of expressive culture, such as
   literature, photography, and cinema. But what about videogames in which action looks like
   inaction? What about videogames in which action means sitting still? What about a videogame
   that purports to be less a game and more a meditation—a work of literature? In this paper
   I explore a prominent yet remarkably understudied example of a slow game—a game that
   questions what counts as “action” in videogames. This game is A Slow Year (2010), designed
   for the classic Atari 2600 console by Ian Bogost. Comprised of four separate movements
   matching the four seasons, A Slow Year challenges the dominant mode of action in videogames,
   encouraging what I call “acts of deliberation.” These acts of deliberation transform the core
   mechanic of games from “action” (as Galloway would put it) into “experience”—and not just
   any experience, but the kind of experience that Walter Benjamin identifies as Erfahrung, an
   

   Eric Dean Rasmussen - 21.06.2012 - 12:55

3. Re:Cycle - A Computationally Generative Ambient Video System

   Ambient video art is designed in the spirit of Brian Eno's ambient music - it must never require our attention, but must reward our attention whenever it is bestowed. It comes in many forms, ranging from the kitsch of the Christmas yule log broadcast to more mature moving image art created by a number of contemporary video artists and producers. The author has created a series of award-winning ambient video works. These works are designed to meet Eno's difficult requirements for ambient media - to never require but to always reward viewer attention in any moment. They are also intended to support viewer pleasure over a reasonable amount of repeated play. These works are all "linear" videos - relying on the careful sequencing and meticulous transitioning of images to reach their aesthetic goals. Re:Cycle uses a different approach. It relies on a computationally generative system to select and present shots in an ongoing flow - but with constant variations in both shot sequencing and transition choice. The Re:Cycle system runs indefinitely and avoids any significant repetition of shots and transitions.

   Eric Dean Rasmussen - 21.06.2012 - 12:57

4. Locating the Literary in Electronic Ludicity: Jason Nelson's Evidence of Everything Exploding

   Literary gaming (Ensslin 2014) is situated at the interface between literary computer games and ludic digital literature. The conjunction of literary close-reading and gaming is inherently paradoxical because literature and computer games are two entirely different receptive, productive, aesthetic, phenomenological, social and discursive phenomena. Reading, according to Hayles (2007), requires deep attention, which allows subjects to focus on an artefact such as a print novel or digital fiction for an extended period of time without, however, losing a sense of the actual world surrounding them. Gameplay, on the other hand, typically involves hyperattention, which literally glues players to the screen, thereby creating "artificial" basic needs, such as the urge to finish a level or quest before being able to focus on any other activity. (Literary) art games tend to "détourn" commercial game aesthetics (Dragona 2010, Vaneigem 1967) to evoke a critical meta-stance in players towards the ludic and textual expectations created by mainstream game culture.

   Eric Dean Rasmussen - 21.06.2012 - 13:51

5. Abandoning Canon: Fluid Texts and Implicit Collaboration in Electronic Narratives

   Digital technology enables artists - photographers, musicians, writers, filmmakers, illustrators,
   animators, etc. - to place their work not in a strictly definable where, but effectively everywhere
   (everywhere, that is, where infrastructure and access are available). Where once the lines between
   author, text, and reader could be drawn with linear vectors, digital technology and their increasing
   availability and accessibility bring author, text, and reader into a potentially endless cycle of narrative, creation, wherein the roles are fluid and the text may never be fixed. Because of this capability, Astrid Ensslin argues that the idea of literary canon must depart from "its traditional self-contained, closed, and rigidly exclusive connotations. Instead, an inclusive, open concept has to be adopted, which works in terms of a continuous process of integration, modification and discharge" (2006, n.p).

   (Source: Author's abstract, 2012 ELO Conference site)

   Eric Dean Rasmussen - 21.06.2012 - 13:53

6. Marking Transition: the Work of Neal von Flue

   For any regular Internet user, the hyperlink has become ubiquitous, almost rendered invisible
   through the frequency of its use. Trails in hypertext are meticulously laid out through the
   seemingly endless streams of data, connected by links imagined as points of intersection in the
   web. Links are used for reference, for navigation but also extensively in creative production, to
   fashion hypertextual narratives and images. It is in this realm of electronic literature, both visual
   and textual, that the function of the link shifts from the commonplace to a carrier of aesthetic
   potential.

   This presentation examines the aesthetic activation of the hyperlink as both an indicator of
   transition and site of transformation. It is a brief exploration of the hyperlink as a signifier, a
   mark both on and in the 'surface' of the digital text, through a close case study of two works by
   hypercomic creator Neal von Flue.

   Eric Dean Rasmussen - 21.06.2012 - 13:54

7. Bob Brown's Reading Machine and the Comic Experience of Electrified Reading

   A recent essay by Jessica Pressman explores Bob Brown's The Readies (1929) as an important predecessor of electronic literature. Pressman argues that Brown's reading machine, which was designed to automatically unfurl scrolls of magnified text before the reader’s eyes in a way similar to a film projector, exemplifies a “machine poetics” that emphasizes the mediation of reading itself, much in the way that electronic literature often does. Brown’s description of his reading machine does indeed seem to offer an uncanny prophesy for subsequent developments in visual poetry and in reading technologies, as Pressman and other critics, including Jerome McGann and Craig Saper, have pointed out. In emphasizing the futurist possibilities of Brown’s machine, however, critics have tended to ignore or downplay the willfully comic aspects of the manifesto in which he proposes it. The tone of Brown’s writing suggests that we ought to count Rube Goldberg, as much as Thomas Edison, among the inspirations for the machine.

   Eric Dean Rasmussen - 21.06.2012 - 13:55

8. Bringing the Art of Design to the National Park Service: The Fort Vancouver Mobile Project

   This panel offers three academic papers that explore the use of mobile technologies in electronic literature. Organized from contributions that appear in the forthcoming collection, Digital Storytelling with Mobile Media: Locative Technologies and Narrative Practices, edited by Jason Farman, the impetus behind each of these papers is the ways in which mobile media are transforming the creation, dissemination, and experience of electronic literature.

   The panel situates these mobile media narratives historically, acknowledging that mobile media have always affected the ways narrative is produced and disseminated. By locating mobile media historically and defining it broadly — yet simultaneously understanding the important impact of contemporary mobile technologies, especially locationaware mobile devices — this panel investigates the relationship between mobile technologies and narrative forms.

   Eric Dean Rasmussen - 21.06.2012 - 13:56

9. Electronic Literature for All: Performance in Exhibits and Public Readings

   Reaching out to new readers of electronic literature is now easier, thanks to the widespread use
   and accessibility of digital media--computers, smartphones, electronic tablets, gaming consoles.
   The channels are in place, but how do new audiences discover and read electronic literature?
   This paper will present two case studies of two different events whose purpose is to introduce
   readers to electronic literature. Both cases show how managing the performative aspects of electronic literature and its context is essential to engage new readers.

   (Source: Author's abstract, 2012 ELO Conference site)

   Eric Dean Rasmussen - 22.06.2012 - 11:56

10. Commenting Creative Code

    We consider how authors have added comments to electronic literature and how the facility for commenting code has been, and could be, used in unconventional yet productive ways by those working in the literary arts. Our central example is a gloss that we wrote, using JavaScript comments, to discuss the code for our poetry generator, “Sea and Spar Between”: http://blogs.saic.edu/dearnavigator/winter2010/nick-montfort-stephaniest... between/ As this generator is offered for anyone to use in future projects, it was originally written with some JavaScript comments to facilitate reuse. These were extensively expanded in an edition of the poem we call “cut to fit the toolspun course,” now under consideration for a special issue of Digital Humanities Quarterly on “The Literary.” The issues we encountered in writing this extensive, poetic gloss using comments will be central to our discussion.

    Eric Dean Rasmussen - 22.06.2012 - 12:59

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