Electronic Literature Organization

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The Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) is a nonprofit organization "established in 1999 to promote and facilitate the writing, publishing, and reading of electronic literature".[1]

History[]

Founded by Scott Rettberg, Robert Coover, and Jeff Ballowe, the Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) was established in Chicago in 1999 with Ballowe as its first president and Rettberg serving as executive director.[2][3] During this period the ELO made the decision to embrace, along with hypertext narrative and fiction, emerging forms of electronic-based literary works, including interactive narrative, net poetry, and others. Supported early on through sponsorships from dot.com businesses, it changed direction following the dot.com crash and 9/11 and moved to UCLA under the guidance of noted media theorist N. Katherine Hayles, where it was supported by UCLA's English, SINAPSE, and Design|Media Arts departments. Its first conference, "State of the Arts", was held at UCLA in 2002. Marjorie Coverley Luesebrink, the electronic literature artist writing under the name M. D. Coverley, took over as the Organization's second president at this time. Also during this period the ELO's publications about preservation, archiving and dissemination, Acid-Free Bits (2004) and Born-Again Bits (2005) occurred; work on the Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 1, an anthology of electronic literary works, was also begun.

In 2006, upon the departure of Hayles from UCLA to Duke University, the ELO moved to the University of Maryland, College Park where it was supported by the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities under the direction of Digital Humanities scholar Matthew Kirschenbaum, with literary scholar Joseph Tabbi serving as President. Under Tabbi's leadership, the Organization developed the Consortium on Electronic Literature (CELL), "an open access, non-commercial resource offering centralized access to literary databases, archives, and institutional programs in the literary arts and scholarship, with a focus on electronic literature."[4] The project received funding from a National Endowment for the Humanities Start Up Grant. The growth of the Organization due to its academic affiliations created the need to bring electronic literature scholars and artists together more frequently. This awareness led to the ELO's symposium, "The Future of Electronic Literature", that took place at the University of Maryland, College Park on May 3, 2007 and its first open conference and festival, "Visionary Landscapes", at Washington State University Vancouver, chaired by Dene Grigar and John Barber in June 2008.[5]

In 2010 the ELO moved to MIT under the leadership of then-President Nick Montfort (2010–2013) and later Dene Grigar (2013–2019). This period is marked by the publication of the Electronic Literature Collection, Volumes 2 and 3, as well as the Pathfinders Project, produced by Dene Grigar and Stuart Moulthrop. Also during this period, the ELO expanded its board of directors to include international scholars and artists and began hosting conferences and festivals outside the United States. Following the 2010 conference and festival at Brown University, chaired by John Cayley, and the 2012 conference and festival at West Virginia University, chaired by Sandy Baldwin, the ELO held conferences and festivals in Paris, France (2013); Milwaukee, WI (2014); Bergen, Norway (2015); and Victoria, B.C. (2016). It also held exhibits, readings, and performances at venues and events like the Library of Congress, the Kitchen, Modern Language Association, Association of Writers and Writing Programs, the Society of Literature, Science and the Arts, and the International Symposium on Electronic Art. The book series, Electronic Literature, edited by Helen Burgess, Dene Grigar, Maria Mencia, and Rui Torres and published by Bloomsbury Academic Press, was developed while the ELO was located at MIT. Partnerships with the Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI) and the New Media Consortium (NMC) also occurred during this period. On July 1, 2017 the Organization moved to Washington State University Vancouver.

During its history, the Organization has been supported by grants from the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada).

ELO Prizes[]

The Electronic Literature Organization awards a number of prizes for creative work and critical scholarship in the field of electronic literature.[6]

The ELO awards three prizes:

  1. The N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature
  2. The Robert Coover Award for a Work of Electronic Literature
  3. The Marjorie C. Luesebrink Career Achievement Award

Each year, the public are invited to submit nominations, with final recipients then selected by a panel of experts.

The N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature[]

The N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature is awarded to the best work of criticism or scholarship that focuses on electronic literature in a given year. The prize is named after the scholar and literary critic N. Katherine Hayles, who funds the award through a donation. Eligible works can be any length or form, but winners have typically been either book-length monographs or edited collections. The award is accompanied with a $1,000 prize.[6] The prize was first presented in 2015.

Mark C. Marino is the only scholar to have received the award on two separate occasions, in 2016 for his collaboration with Jeremy Douglass and , entitled Reading Project, and again in 2020 for his book Critical Code Studies. When Scott Rettberg received the Hayles prize in 2019 for his book Electronic Literature, he became the only person the have won both the Hayles and Coover prizes, having been awarded the latter in 2016 for his part in Hearts & Minds.

Previous Winners of the Hayles Award[]

Year Recipient(s) Title of awarded work
2020 Mark C. Marino Critical Code Studies (The MIT Press)[7]
2019 Scott Rettberg Electronic Literature (Polity)[8]
2018 Joseph Tabbi The Bloomsbury Handbook of Electronic Literature (Bloomsbury Academic)[9]
2017 David Jhave Johnston Aesthetic Animism: Digital Poetry’s Ontological Implications (The MIT Press)[10]
2016 Jeremy Douglass, Jessica Pressman, & Mark C. Marino Reading Project: A Collaborative Analysis of William Poundstone's Project for Tachistoscope (University of Iowa Press)
2015 Sandy Baldwin The Internet Unconscious: On the Subject of Electronic Literature (Bloomsbury Academic)[11]

The Robert Coover Award for a Work of Electronic Literature[]

The Robert Coover Award for a Work of Electronic Literature is given to the best work of electronic literature in a given year. All forms and genres are eligible for consideration. The prize is named after the American writer and co-founder of the ELO, Robert Coover. The award is accompanied with a $1,000 prize.[6] The prize was first presented in 2015.

Previous Winners of the Coover Award[]

Year Recipient(s) Title of awarded work
2020 Karen Ann Donnachie & Andy Simionato The Library of Nonhuman Books[7]
2019 IP Yuk-Yiu False Words[8]
2018 Will Luers, Hazel Smith, & Roger Dean novelling (New Binary Press)[9][12]
2017 Alan Bigelow How to Rob a Bank[10]
2016 Roderick Coover, Scott Rettberg, Daria Tsoupikova, & Arthur Nishimoto Hearts & Minds: The Interrogations Project[13]
2015 Samantha Gorman & Danny Cannizzaro Pry (Tender Claws)[11]

The Marjorie C. Luesebrink Career Achievement Award[]

The Marjorie C. Luesebrink Career Achievement Award is given to artists and/or scholars who are recognised as having made a major achievement to the field of electronic literature. The award is accompanied with a $1,000 prize, that is usually granted to an emerging scholar or artist of the recipient's choosing.[6] The prize was first presented in 2016, when it was given to its namesake, Marjorie Luesebrink.

Previous Winners of the Luesebrink Award[]

Year Recipient(s)
2020 Judy Malloy[7]
2019 Mez Breeze[8]
2018 N. Katherine Hayles[9]
2017 John Cayley[10]
2016 Marjorie C. Luesebrink

Annual ELO Conference & Media Arts Festival[]

The ELO hosts an annual gathering for scholars and artists called the Electronic Literature Organization Conference & Media Arts Festival. It is considered one of the major international conferences for new media scholars, artists and practitioners. The conference is typically referred to in the shorthand ELO2018, ELO2019 etc. The ELO conference has been running since 2008, where it was first held in Vancouver, Washington.[14] The conference is typically held in the summer months.

Date Location Conference Chair(s) Keynote Speaker(s) Conference Theme Notes
2021 University of Aarhus & University of Bergen Søren Pold (University of Aarhus)

Scott Rettberg (University of Bergen)

"Platform (Post?) Pandemic" ELO2021 Conference Website

ELO2021 was planned and hosted as an online conference because of the COVID-19 pandemic

2020 University of Central Florida, Orlando, United States Anastasia Salter (University of Central Florida)

Mel Stanfill (University of Central Florida)

Shira Chess (University of Georgia) "(un)continuity" ELO2020 Conference Website

ELO2020 had to be adapted to an online conference because of the COVID-19 pandemic

2019 University College Cork, Ireland James O'Sullivan (University College Cork) Michael J. Maguire (Dublin Business School, Ireland)[15]

Anne Karhio (NUI Galway, Ireland)[16]

Astrid Ensslin (University of Alberta, Canada)[17]

"Peripheries" ELO2019 Programme & Book of Abstracts

ELO2019 Exhibition Programme

ELO2019 Conference Poster

ELO2019 was the first time the conference was held in Ireland

2018 Montréal, Québec, Canada Bertrand Gervais (Université du Québec à Montréal)

Caitlin Fisher (York University)

Skawennati (Independent artist) & Jason Edward Lewis (Obx Laboratory for Experimental Media)

Rui Torres (University Fernando Pessoa)

Claudia Kozak (Universidad de Buenos Aires)

Serge Bouchardon (Université de Technologie de Compiègne)

"Mind the Gap!" ELO2018 Conference Website
2017 University Fernando Pessoa, Porto, Portugal Rui Torres (University Fernando Pessoa) Friedrich W. Block (Brückner-Kühner-Foundation/Kunsttempel, Germany)

Eugenio Tisselli (Independent artist)

(University of California, Santa Barbara, United States)

Matthew Kirschenbaum (University of Maryland, United States)

"Electronic Literature: Affiliations, Communities, Translations" ELO2017 Book of Abstracts & Catalogs
2016 University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada Dene Grigar (WSU Vancouver)

Ray Siemens (University of Victoria)

(Independent artist) "Next Horizons" ELO2016 Conference Website

ELO2016 was the first time the conference was held in Canada ELO2016 was hosted alongside the 2016 Digital Humanities Summer Institute

2015 University of Bergen, Norway Scott Rettberg (University of Bergen) Espen Aarseth (IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark)

Stuart Moulthrop (UW–Milwaukee, United States)

"The Ends of Electronic Literature" ELO2015 Conference Poster

ELO2015 was the first time the conference was held in Norway

2014 University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, United States Stuart Moulthrop (UW–Milwaukee) "Hold the Light"
2013 Bibliothèque nationale de France / École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, France[18] Philippe Bootz (Laboratoire Musique et Informatique de Marseille) "Chercher le Texte: Locating the Text in Electronic Literature" ELO2013 was the first time the conference was held in Europe and outside of the United States
2012 Morgantown, West Virginia, United States Sandy Baldwin (West Virginia University) Florian Cramer (Willem de Kooning Academy, Netherlands) "Electrifying Literature: Affordances & Constraints" ELO2012 Conference Website
2010 Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, United States John Cayley (Brown University) "Archive" & "Innovate" ELO2010 Conference Website

ELO2010 was "dedicated to Robert Coover"

2008 Vancouver, Washington, United States Dene Grigar (WSU Vancouver)

John Barber (WSU Vancouver)

Mark Amerika (University of Colorado Boulder, United States) "Visionary Landscapes" ELO2008 Conference Website

Other activities[]

The activities of the Electronic Literature Organization include:

  • A book series published by Bloomsbury Academic Press, entitled "Electronic Literature".
  • The Electronic Literature Directory, a listing of electronic works and their authors.
  • The Electronic Literature Collection, an edited anthology of electronic literature. The first volume was released under a Creative Commons license in 2006.
  • Preservation, Archiving, and Dissemination (PAD) project to archive notable and threatened works.
  • The Electronic Literature Awards for creative and scholarly activities.
  • Readings, symposia and other outreach events such as the MACHINE series (since 2004) to publicise electronic literature.
  • Management of the Turbulence.org archives.[19]

Notes[]

  1. ^ "Electronic Literature Organization". ELO. 2008. Retrieved 2008-05-21.
  2. ^ "History – Electronic Literature Organization". eliterature.org. Retrieved 2017-10-17.
  3. ^ Keller, Julia (2001-05-18). "E-voking muses". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 2017-10-17.
  4. ^ Tabbi, Joseph. "The CELL Project", retrieved on 10 June 2017.
  5. ^ Rettberg, Scott. "Developing an Identity for the Field of Electronic Literature", Electronic Literature Communities, Morgantown, WV: University of West Virginia Press, 2015.
  6. ^ Jump up to: a b c d "ELO Annual Awards – Electronic Literature Organization". eliterature.org. Retrieved 2021-02-16.
  7. ^ Jump up to: a b c "ELO 2020 Prize Winners – Electronic Literature Organization". eliterature.org. Retrieved 2021-02-16.
  8. ^ Jump up to: a b c "Announcing the 2019 ELO Prizes – Electronic Literature Organization". eliterature.org. Retrieved 2021-02-16.
  9. ^ Jump up to: a b c "Announcing the Winners of the 2018 ELO Prize – Electronic Literature Organization". eliterature.org. Retrieved 2021-02-16.
  10. ^ Jump up to: a b c "Announcing the 2017 ELO Prize Winners – Electronic Literature Organization". eliterature.org. Retrieved 2021-02-16.
  11. ^ Jump up to: a b "Hayles and Coover Prizes Announced at ELO 2015 – Electronic Literature Organization". eliterature.org. Retrieved 2021-02-16.
  12. ^ O’Sullivan, James. ‘Publishing Electronic Literature’. In Electronic Literature as Digital Humanities: Contexts, Forms, and Practices, edited by Dene Grigar and James O’Sullivan, 255–66. Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781501363474.ch-022
  13. ^ See tweet from official Electronic Literature Organization account: https://twitter.com/eliterature/status/741940138452754436
  14. ^ "About the ELO Conference". dtc-wsuv.org. Retrieved 2020-03-09.
  15. ^ Maguire, Michael (2019). "Potential possibilities of peripheral porosity: a combinatory creative community keynote". Cork Open Research Archive.
  16. ^ Karhio, Anne (2019). "At the brink: electronic literature, technology, and the peripheral imagination". Cork Open Research Archive.
  17. ^ Ensslin, Astrid (2019). ""These Waves ...": writing new bodies for applied e-literature studies". Cork Open Research Archive.
  18. ^ "ELO 2013 "Chercher le texte" Commences in Paris". eliterature.org. Retrieved 2020-03-09.
  19. ^ Johnson, Paddy. "Turbulence.org Announces It Will No Longer Shutter. Moves to Canada

External links[]

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