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##Day 5: ELO Conference

####Stuart Moulthrop - Intimate Mechanics: Play and Meaning in the Middle of Electronic Literature

  • results of a work created in different circumstances
  • depth, cf. Hayles: textons vs. scriptons (surface)
  • works of misdirection or perception -- forgery?
    • "pseudo-literature", e.g. policeman's beard[?]
  • in other kind of work, engagement made questionable
    • "para-literature"
    • work that foregrounds its own algorithm
    • Moulthrop's World Clock
  • "Code is sentenced to execution"
  • Galloway, Gaming
    • "To play the game means to play the code of the game. To win means to know the system."
    • algorithm vs. "allegorithm"
  • Twine games fundamentally "cross-bred", combination of hypertext engine, interactive narratives
  • Porpentine's "Howling Dogs": http://aliendovecote.com/uploads/twine/howling%20dogs.html#2m
  • ?'s "mechanics of intimacy" vs. Moulthrop's "intimacy of mechanics"
  • "hypertext doesn't know where it's going"
  • ability to stand among and against hegemonic interests
  • text vs. game?
    • constitution of work as balance between expression of story and logic of game
  • discussion of "Howling Dogs"
  • what are the remainders?
    • privileging narrative over non-narrative
    • Jason Nelson's Sydney's Siberia: http://www.secrettechnology.com/sydney/
      • infinitely zoomable text
      • although w/o story dynamics, can still encompass user action and is ergodic
    • something without ergodics?
    • everything comes from somewhere and it comes in a particular way

####Anastasia Salter - Code before Content? Brogrammer Culture in Games and Electronic Literature

  • how e-lit can be defined and understood in relation to STEM, gender, race, sexual identities, (lack of) diversity
  • brogrammer: bro, frat boy tradition of toxic masculinity + programmer
    • association of code with masculinity that amplifies in disturbing ways
    • Weissmann, "the brogrammer effect"
    • Kate Losse on brogramming
    • be aware of choice in platforms, networks
    • "the leaky pipeline"?
      • part of brogrammer effect
    • hbr.org study on games industry
  • reflection of games community, port over to e-lit?
  • #1ReasonWhy there aren't more women in games
    • rape and sexual harassment
    • gendered assumptions
    • overt sexualization
    • harassment
    • silencing
  • should we exhort everyone to code debate in DH
    • coding literacy as a basic skill creates credential creep
    • rhetoric of future generations will be better at coding mirrors rhetoric of the digital native
  • uncritically accepting the corporation-driven coding tools we have may simply replicate the challenges and assumptions
  • Losh, "What can the digital humanities learn from feminist game studies?": http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/9/2/000200/000200.html
  • IMPORTANT: the biases may not be as transparent as they are with e.g. pink toys
    • e.g. algorithms themselves are biased
  • code feminism: used and executed for feminism
  • feminist codework: not meant to be executed
  • what is relation of feminism to e-lit?
    • when does "access" become danger of becoming filling a quota?
  • the importance of GUI for opeining barriers of access
    • e.g. flash's existence enabled a large amount of feminist work
  • the difficulties of Twitterbots
    • incredibly technically complicated
    • hostile to feminist perfomances, performances of feminist works
  • Sea and Spar Between
    • subverting gendered expectations by mashing up Emily Dickensen's poetry w/ Melville's
  • Taroko Gorge remixes
  • pedagogical insight (also from unconference): mixing two types of activities to see the relationship between cooking and coding?
  • Twine (as platform)
  • Squinkifier's Quing's Quest: http://squinky.me/2014/09/01/quings-quest-vii-the-death-of-videogames/
  • is embracing the call to code who we want to be?
  • Q & A
  • how do we argue for inclusivity w/o reinforcing myth that women haven't been contributing all along?
  • great works become platforms, entry points for others
  • question of pay? e.g. Patreon, kickstarter campaigns

####Jon Saklofske - Prototyping Resistance: Wargame Narrative and Inclusive Feminist Discourse

  • DH and e-lit as defamiliarizations of the tools, techniques, mechanisms of the digital
  • Mountz et al's "For Slow Scholarship": http://ojs.unbc.ca/index.php/acme/article/view/1058/1141
  • game environments as test chambers or labs for experimentation
  • Flanagan: "we all have an opportunity, even a responsibility, to evolve with [games] and push ourselves to model the world we wish to create"
  • wargames initially appear as counterintuitive site to examine feminist politics; link to masculinity so deeply-ingrained
  • idea of just warrior privileges masculinity
    • politics of rescue, vicitimization
    • men rescuing less capable others (read: women)
  • women portrayed as rewards, passive supporters; when they are warriors, they are seen as the exceptions that prove the rule
  • does the female warrior need to be a masculine figure?
  • values-based game design
  • most war games feed just war conception, but others do not (e.g. This War of Mine)
    • "Those who can cause the most harm have the most power"
  • What would a feminist war game look like?
    • if violence against women is supposed to be acceptable, how can games include feminist warriors?
    • ideas for some
      • women warriors category
        • women adapt to war or war adapts to women
          • e.g. suffrajitsu; naturalize these environments in order to break down the exceptionalism?
          • valorization, becomes rewarding?
          • or does this just reinforce patriarchal values?
        • a chess game where the Queen must be checked to win
        • necessitation of cooperative combat betwen genders
        • equal opportunity warfare may not solve masculine warfare
      • survivance frames "warrior" in the context of healing
      • war as a losing condition instead of winning condition
      • potential goals (some examples)
        • de-funning the war
        • questioning the necessity and economies of war (resource management and acquisition)
        • contradicting the othering; rehumaning soldiers and victims
        • reconfront killing as murder rather than distancing oneself from it
        • question why war is a habitual response to conflict and difference
      • example mechanics
        • a loading screen with detailed biographies of victims you killed
          • loading takes longer the more victims you killed
        • permanent, unforeseeable consequences to choices
        • could tie in War (card game) result in equality and the end of the game
        • player as a bullet or bomb when there is nothing beneficial to shoot
        • reinforce a "too late" sympathy that only reveals consequences when you've already lost
        • whoever you kill, you become (a game you play backwards)
        • playing with keystrokes, keyboard keys ("space" or "escape")
        • an annoying conscience voice
  • Mattie Brice: games themselves aren't teaching values...lessons
  • ?: "algorithms must learn to tell stroies and scream in pain"
  • armed conflicts disconnect values from practice

####Anastasia Salter, Diane Jakacki, Liz Losh, Stephanie Boluk

  • Anastasia Salter
    • a girl gamer!
    • Dungeons and Dragons as maybe the best example in terms of history
      • used to be very sexist, but now...maybe...more fluid understanding of gender?
      • not as overt as it could be
  • Diane Jakacki
    • what do we mean by war games? (e.g. thermonuclear war, LEGO)
    • Assassin's Creed -- Can I or should I continue to play it?
    • what is cathartic may not be good modelling behaviour (as in stabbing people with a hidden blade)
    • AC Syndicate
      • Eve(e?) coded as intelligent, stealthy, and sly while Jacob is charismatic and brutish
        • non-overt sexualization
        • still encouraged brutishness eventually
  • Liz Losh
    • intense affective labour of community management gendered female
    • what if mechanics of violence and mechanics of intimacy were not so easily separable or binary?
    • what if the military complex entertainment complex as origin of video games is not as hegemonic as we assume it to be?
    • what is a wargame you would NOT design?
      • as in what do you refuse to engage with/in vs. engage with/in critically?
    • female computers and war game analysts often important figures in war
    • FemTechNet's theoretical touchstones
  • Stephanie Boluk
    • war on feminism (in games)
    • think about antagonism against feminism in terms of the "spoilsport" and "feminist killjoy" figures
    • writing against the ghost of the "magic circle jerk" (reactionary "dont touch my video games" misogynists who circle the wagons of the magic circle)
      • games as escapist, immersive, depoliticized fantasy
    • Ahmed 2010: "situations of conflict vilence, and power are read as about the unhappiness of feminists, rather than being what feminists are unhappy about"
    • Huizinga: "the spoil-sport shatters the play-world itself"

##Day 4: Creation and Teaching

##Day 3: Curation

  • Curator has 5 (main) jobs:

    1. put on a show
    2. take care of the works while in your possession
    3. preserve work for posterity
    4. educate audience, including audiences that could not be there physically
    5. promote the show

  • Gallery card, Next Horizons

    • backs generally blank, holdover from when you would mail them out
    • still a tradition; good way to have all the info on hand (think EMR kit)

  • what else is going on during or around your exhibit?

  • Many shows funded by grants

    • e.g. SSHRC Connections Grant
    • affects timing
      • grant has to be written after you have a plan, authors, other info

####Phases of putting together an exhibit

  • see curating-handout.docx
  • Have an overarching conceptual framework
    • usually a theme (e.g. Next Horizons)
  • Determine the space you have to work with
    • every space has its own affordances and constraints *e.g. number of outlets, locks and security, budget
  • Think through tiny details
  • Conduct a site visit
  • Think about your audience
  • Juried vs. invited shows
  • Ethics of selection (e.g. race, gender, nationality)
  • Know your tech, what you need

####Curatorial Plan

  • detailed map of where works are
  • label with other specific details
    • e.g. authors, relative size, "no E" for no electrical outlets
  • start with preliminary plan, refine and iterate as you go
  • guidelines/instructions on day of exhibit
  • convenient to hand out to any helper, get them caught up quickly

####Curatorial Statement

  • every exhibit has a "gig site"

    • for documentation, archiving
    • archiving also done through promotional materials
    • authors, bios, link to original works

  • Docents

    • partly security
    • partly to guide people and engage them with the exhibit
      • especially important with ELit, experimental literature
    • applying what you learned in a professional environment

####Bloom's Theory of Cognition

  • from bottom to top

    • knowledge
    • comprehension
    • application
    • analysis
    • synthesis
    • evaluation
    • creation

  • scaffold up

  • Start small and grow into it

  • Careful of wording

    • e.g. grants
      • "presentation" vs. "exhibition" or "event"
        • former sounds more like research
    • "reception" vs. "launch party"
      • former can sound a bit snooty

  • impact reports, useful for getting money for next show or adjusting/improving things

  • never hijack the jury or put in your own work

####Different kinds of exhibits

  • see curating-handout04.docx
  • most exhibits I see are probably exploratory; wouldn't others require some kind of base knowledge?
  • maybe can revise a very basic assumption...or maybe all of ELit generally disrupts assumptions because it is so experimental

*See Resources for Curating ELit docx

####No Legacy Exhibit

####This Afternoon

  • Pick among the works to decide which to display

##Day 2: Theory and Reading Strategies

####Theoretical Approaches

####Traversal

  • looking at how text displays on screen
    • flicker on screen -- no longer exists with LED
    • speed of text
    • way the text is broken up, how that changes from platform to platform (char length limits)
  • look for the "breadcrumbs" (skeuomorph)
    • designs carry over: comp looks like a television on top of a typewriter
  • screen green and looks the way it does because of radar
  • looks clunky and drab, but looks like gaming systems that already existed
    • tradition of home-grown computing systems (build-your-own)
    • what terminals for games should look like
  • Uncle Roger plot
    • about Jenny, who works as a nanny for a rich family
    • then becomes a word processor (terms for computers were first people) in a room full of word processors
  • 2nd part: first kind of database narrative (think Her Story)
  • 3rd part: keep pressing return, keep getting narrative
  • delivered as a serial novel, part by part for 1st two parts
  • 3rd made more interactive, had social media component
  • For more, see Dene and Stuart Molthrop's approach
  • Lexia distinct from paragraph, page, etc. of print; more like a node
    • Can be words, sounds, images, etc.
  • See day2DH.docx on Basecamp
    • "On the Theories Underlying the Traversal"
      • Montfort, "Toward a Theory of Interactive Fiction"
      • traversal: any particular encounter or reading of a hypertext
      • for Dene and Stuart: emphasis on human agency (cf. Aarseth)
      • "a reflective encounter with a digital text in which the possibilities of that text are explored in a way that indicates its key features, capabilities, and themes"
      • about physical interaction, historical and material context
  • Bannoti on "action research"
  • think about sensory modality, looking for and synthesizing patterns
  • The Gutenberg Elegies: books have sensory modality too

####Deep Reading

  • translation becomes a mode of deep reading, getting at syntactic, linguistic
  • Varela, Embodied Mind
  • Rita Carter (cog psy), talks about brain and sensory modalities
  • e e cummings, l(a
  • looking beyond the diegetic
  • Uncle Buddy's Phantom Funhouse, McDaid: http://scalar.usc.edu/works/pathfinders/john-mcdaid
    • a fiction told through artifacts
  • Study can't be purely theoretical; has to be grounded in material particulars and details about its use, reuse, maintenance, etc.
    • a lot of the time, is Platonic approach
  • deep reading: deep borrowed from Hayles' manifesto, "Print is Flat, Code is Deep"
  • code as both social codes or programming codes
  • non-conscious processes (including most material aspects) often escape conscious notice
  • nostalgia for the material? The old becomes new again?
  • Should we exhort every elit critic to code?
    • it is helpful, but not absolutely necessary (exclusionary)
    • even if it's not your thing, be aware that it's out there and shapes what you think

####More Theories of Digital Reading/Criticism

  • Eagleton, "The Function of Criticism"
  • social responsibility involved in building archives outside of "automatic" or "passive" curation by large corporations (e.g. Google)
  • criticism as a kind of binding/bounding or packaging
    • where are its points of contact, its boundaries, what escapes them?
  • Shelley Jackson, Skin: http://ineradicablestain.com/skindex.html
    • piece the text together by being together, embodied presence
    • What happens when the people die?
    • Counter to Plato's ideal text
    • Playing withe the physical medium of "preservation" or "inscription"
  • Montfort and Rettberg, Implementation: http://nickm.com/montfort_rettberg/implementation/
  • Both works rely on specific idea or set of transmissions and associations of/about networks (e.g. digital/not digital?)
  • oral, print-based, electronic literature
    • lots of times, everything defaults to print (often upsets lit scholars)
  • Textualities and "Texturalities" (points to material exp. of reading)?
  • Hayles, Writing Machines
  • Especially with ELit, there are so many different "copies" (inscriptions) that it would be almost impossible to pick an ideal one
  • Recurring theme or place to look to: studies of cognition and reading?

####Shapeshifting Text Theory

  • How do we study texts that change/transform/flicker -- "shapeshifting texts"?
  • describes how text change
    • at the level of meaning
    • at the visual level (on screen)
      • importation of artforms
  • https://shapeshiftingtexts.wordpress.com/
  • How do different groups deal with these changes? (List of institutions)
    • How texts disseminated, archived, studied

####Allison Parrish's Ephemerides

  • "Very very sim­ple pro­gram, but I think that this pro­gram is basi­cally a way of explor­ing in the same way that Voyager 2 (in a very smaller scale, obvi­ously) goes out into the uni­verse and explores." I created the source data with Pattern by parsing each text into individual sentences, then separating those sentences into standalone clauses, then parsing each clause into its grammatical constituents, and combining all of these into a shared data structure.
  • "To generate the poem, the procedure selects a clause at random and then, for each constituent in the clause, replaces it at random with a constituent drawn from the entire corpus that shares the same part of speech or grammatical role. The resulting text retains a lot of “grammaticality” and cohesion while still effectively introducing strange juxtapositions of the two source texts. The finishing touch is a simple procedure that enjambs the poem into stanzas and then into individual lines, roughly broken up by syllable count."
  • spatial metaphor
  • As a kind of computer vision: what parts of language are unexplored
  • generate by chance(ish) *"inhospitable"
  • ideas about naturalness of language; to short-circuit convention but also rely on it to make meaning
  • disrupting the idea of signal/noise, that we have to have something to communicate
  • http://www.decontextualize.com/2015/08/the-ephemerides/
  • http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/semantic-space-literal-robots/

####Presentations

##Day 1: Introduction, Survey of Genres

####Computer-generated (algorithmic?) Poetry

####Kinetic Poetry

  • bpNichol's work is often considered forerunner of kinetic poetry
    • adds dynamic, time-based elements
    • cousin of concrete poetry
    • Can be animated or interactive; varies
  • First Screening: Computer Poems (http://vispo.com/bp/videoversion.htm)
  • A process of defamiliarization from modes of method and interpretation that we have become used to
  • A process of play
  • Anipoems http://vispo.com/uribe/
  • Strong South American tradition in kinetic poetry

####ELit Apps

  • Issues of preservation -- how do we keep old apps alive?
  • The Great Migration, Jason Edward Lewis
    • Lewis often deals with tactile interaction, e.g. on large tactile screens
      • touching the creatures creates bubbles, sporadic words
      • Cherokee and Samoan heritage, lots of work focuses on identity
        • playing with physical appearance and (reading) identity
        • hence "Great Migration" of sperm to egg (touching sperm = icky)
    • When he performs work, he reads poetry aloud
  • Smooth Second Bastard, same as above
    • Colours and textures of letters, other things that we don't necessarily think about with print lit
    • How do things come into being and break apart? What is the interaction and performance of a piece like? Esp. important for kinectic poetry
      • Visual, sonic, kinetic, haptic
  • The World is White
    • questions of race, ethnicity
    • play words like a piano
  • "Appy booky things"
  • Strickland, Vniverse (pronounced Vin-i-verse): http://www.stephaniestrickland.com/vniverse
  • What are we when we engage with ELit? User? Reader? Player? Viewer? Etc.?
    • "Reader" forces you to think about disciplinary approaches, biases

####Hypertext poetry and prose

####Video Games

####Preservation

  • Google stopped indexing non-responsive websites, poses problem for preservation & access
  • Sometimes works can only be "accessed" as traces, other ppl's reactions to it
  • 3 ways to preserve work
    • emulation
    • migration (to another format or platform)
    • collection (hoard it, document the hell out of it; remake its contexts e.g. packaging)
      • also includes collecting the platforms to read the works
  • Issues of copyright can interfere with these
  • Cost also obvi an issue
  • Pathfinders: http://scalar.usc.edu/works/pathfinders/index
    • Trying to document E Lit
  • Context and materials are important for preservation AND access
    • e.g. colours, pacing different because of loading times
  • Instead of looking at creation as only using affordances, look at using constraints
    • Bugs as opportunities, thinking beyond what expectations about what counts as "works" or "doesn't work"
  • Preservation of Malloy's Uncle Roger: http://scalar.usc.edu/works/pathfinders/judy-malloy
  • Exploring the Electronic: http://dtc-wsuv.org/elit/elit-dhsi/
  • ELO Festival: http://elo2016.com/festival/
    • N.B. the metadata collected for each entry, how it links to others; valuable for scholarship and preservation
  • Given limited resources, how do you prioritize what is most important to preserve?
    • Geographical (e.g. US)
    • What is most endangered -- what is otherwise completely inaccessible?
    • Trying to be representative of as many diverse types as possible
  • Guiding question for preservation: what do I wish I had in past historical record and preserve that?