Art and Design Commons^™

Breathe The Machine, Matt S. Roberts, Terri Witek, Teresa Carmody, Dengke Chen

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

Breathe the Machine

interspecies morph edition featuring a video conference and solo or synched blow-ins

Teresa Carmody Dengke Chen Matt Roberts Terri Witek

The FaaS were future-oriented. Every day, they contemplated the question: what kind of ancestor will you be?

A collaborative group composed of a prose writer, new media artist, 3-D animator, and poet enter your personal computers and suggest that in this particularly viral moment, individual breaths + machines may be the closest we get to community touch. An animated video conference offers the project's conceptual framework, including questions about invasive species and intimacy in this new world …

Landscapes Of Light And Text And Layer: A Projection Poetry Performance, Jason Nelson Dr.

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

A digital poetry performance in seven locations. This online performance mixes pre-recorded video of projection poetry in seven places/landscapes around SE Queensland, Australia with a live digital poetry reading.

The theme of this performance is landscapes of change, exploring places in SE Queensland impacted by bushfires, deviated by floods, altered by drought, damaged by weapon testing, trees thousands of years old, home of non-human creatures and the revealed geology that roads carve.

Using pico/portable projectors, digital poet Jason Nelson, will add a poetic light-based skin to these landscapes, recording the results, replaying them during the performance. As the projection videos …

The Tenders: Embrasures In The Fort’S Collapse, Judd Morrissey, Abraham Avnisan, Mark Jeffery

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

The Tenders: Embrasures in the Fort's collapse (zoom edition) is an simultaneous multi-channel mixed reality performance that engages with structures of the fort and the home, combining remote live performance and augmented reality poetics with 3d scans of the site of Fort Dearborn, an early American garrison out of which the city of Chicago was incorporated. Juxtaposing excavations of urban monuments with scans of the bedazzled home of self-taught artist, Loy Bowlin, who embodied the persona of "the original rhinestone cowboy", The Tenders seeks to invert and queer colonial narratives lodged deep within the American imaginary.

Phone Down Magic On (An Augmented Reality Performance/Reading), Laura Zaylea

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

Phone Down Magic On is designed as a chapter book for children, grades 3-5, and each chapter begins with augmented reality content. The story follows three young friends who text each other before bed. By holding a phone above the physical chapter book, readers see the characters’ texting session as if it were happening on their own phones… and when a parent says to put the phone down, the texting stops and the “magic” begins. The screen interface dissolves into a dream scene, and clues to a mystery are presented in floating text presented within animated sequences supported by sound …

Tweet Your Shared Adventure: An (Un)Continuous E-Lit Jam, Sarah Whitcomb Laiola

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

ABOUT:

For this virtual engagement session of ELOrlando, participants will create and play a collaborative work of e-lit on Twitter, modeled after Choose Your Own Adventure-style hypertext fiction. This e-lit jam will run the course of the conference, from Thursday July 16-July 19, on the hashtag #TYSA (T[weet] Y[our] S[hared] A[dventure]). All Twitter users in the ELO community are invited to join.

HOW THIS JAM WILL JAM:

On the first day of the conference, the session’s organizer (Sarah Whitcomb Laiola, @DrSarathena192 on both Twitter and Discord) will tweet out on #ELOrlando and #TYSA the beginning of an adventure story. …

Savage Words, Lee Tusman

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

Savage Words is a realtime massive multiplayer online text space as well as a collaborative poem and asynchronous chatroom. It is a corner of the internet built on the platform Your World of Text, an infinite grid of text editable by visitors.

Throughout the conference period, participants can join in a communal writing, a textual table of simultaneous and asynchronous shared writing. ASCII images, freewheeling conversations, 'Poetry', and other forms of experimental text will be woven together into a freewheeling shared work.

Screenshots of the unfolding text will be saved at regular intervals, to be published after the conclusion of …

Poetry For Seers Or The Peruvian Visual Poetic Tradition In Front Of New Media, Michael Hurtado, Pamela Medina, Enrique García, Michael Prado

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

Since the first decades of the twentieth century, Peruvian poetic tradition has been characterized by experimental uses of language. Among these possibilities, some records tensioned this medium from the link with the plastic arts, as in the case of the poetry of José María Eguren, while others opted for the playing with the spatiality and visuality of the blank sheet, such as in the case of the work of Carlos Oquendo de Amat. However, it is not until the appearance of the poetry of César Vallejo, specifically with a poems like Trilce in 1922, that these breakages force us to …

Falproject, Mohsen Hazrati

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

"A fāl or Bibliomancy is good or bad, the profit or the loss whose occurrence is predicted by hearing a word or a voice, seeing the movement or the expression, opening or reading a book, or observing a specific motif or image." Mohammad Vojdani

FAL Project is a VR-AR Prediction Machine based on an Old Iranian Bibliomancy tradition.

This project is about generating a virtual environment of a prediction using unlimited online data based on the Persian Mysticism and tradition into a VR artwork. As there are so many people who get matched results based on their niyats(Intent of prediction) …

Glitch Reading: [Re]Mediation And The Protocols Of Reading, Jacob Reber

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

In this paper, I outline a methodology for reading poetic works that operate between media environments, noting the subtle shifts and failures that mark the material changes. The space between mediums and processes of remediation produce residue from the various material substrates and protocols of reading that adhere to works moving through networks. The attention to the residue can be understood as glitches, which proliferate the possibilities of reading and reveal the construction of imbricated reading environments. This is a practice I want to consider through the framework of glitch reading. Drawing on Rosa Menkman's theorization of glitches and Tan …

The Aesthetics Of Multicoding Esolangs, Daniel J. Temkin

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

In the influential 2005 paper "A Box, Darkly," Michael Mateas and Nick Montfort introduced the idea of multicoding: when one text holds multiple meanings, depending on context. Examples include polyglots, programs that can run successfully in two different languages, as well as sentences that can be read in French or English. Esoteric programming has a history of explicit multicoding languages. The best known are Piet, whose programs are images, and commands are the change in color from one pixel to the next; Shakespeare, with code written as plays, and Chef, whose programs are recipes that work in the kitchen. While …

Electronic Writing As Hypermaterial Playground, Michael B. Heidt

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

The text examines e-lit’s potentials for reframing the question of digital materiality through playful poetic practice. To this end, the discussion reconstructs the genealogy between concrete poetry and electronic writing:
Digital structures, such as source code, programmable logic devices, neural networks, databases, and sensor readouts, accompany us continuously, yet remain annoyingly hard to fathom. Although we ceaselessly interact with them, it is hard for humans to relate to these materials, to shape or see them. However, as long as we allow the material reality of these structures to slip through the cracks of the collective imaginary, it remains easy for …

Procedural Montage: A Design Trace Of Reflection And Refraction, Jasmine T. Otto, Angus G. Forbes

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

Narrative media may vary the adjacency of fixed textual passages to drive rhizomatic readings through a montage procedure. We present the design of “exul mater”, a hypertext fiction which locates perlocutionary acts in virtual spaces and resonant gaps. We reflect on sculptural fiction, the (de)formance of complex systems, and tarot reading as methods of layering metaphorical blends into polysemous juxtapositional elements. "exul mater" consists of one set of such elements and their pairwise juxtapositions, as presented through an interface which supports higher-order ‘gap-filling’ reading(s). We draw on peer feedback to address challenges to readability arising from the narrative application of …

Why Are We Like This?: Exploring Writing Mechanics For An Ai-Augmented Storytelling Game, Max Kreminski, Melanie Dickinson, Michael Mateas, Noah Wardrip-Fruin

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

Why Are We Like This? (WAWLT) is a playful, co-creative, AI-augmented, improvisational storytelling game in which one or more players explore and influence an ongoing simulation which they then glean for narrative material. It uses the recently developed simulation technology of story sifting (the recognition of microstories in a chronicle of simulation events), via the Felt library, to afford a new kind of playful, social, and creative writing experience. In this paper, we discuss our primary design goals: (1) using computation and interaction design to support casual player creativity, and (2) foregrounding character subjectivity as a driver for …

Exhibiting, Disseminating, Teaching: Digital Literature In Danish Public Libraries, Malthe Stavning Erslev

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

Danish public libraries have since 2010 exhibited, disseminated, and taught digital literature. This paper lays out the general trajectory of their work, and introduces the notion of a post-digital literacy: a theoretical lens through which to conceptualize and articulate the importance of teaching digital literature in K-12.

In fruitful dialogue with a variety of other parties and institutions, including Aarhus University and the ELO, a handful of public libraries have developed considerable and impressive expertise, grounded in practice-based experimentation. Their efforts, which have taken place in the course of six projects, are the case into which this paper inquires. …

The Borders Between Linear Narrative And Interactive Forms, Eric S. Miller

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

This paper traces the boundaries between linear narrative forms and interactive forms. The paper starts with a glossary of relevant terms and then attempts to untangle issues that tie these forms together and separate them. It attempts to answer questions such as:

1. Where are there major overlaps between these forms?

2. What are the specific affordances of interactive forms?

3. What are the specific affordances of linear forms?

The paper draws from multiple sources, such as Computers as Theatre by Brenda Laurel, Narrative as Virtual Reality by Marie-Laure Ryan and Half-Real by Jesper Juul. Agency is the core attribute of interaction, though …

Productive Misreading In Intermedia Art: Four Approaches By A Musician, Jeff Morris, Elisabeth Blair

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

This discussion examines the evolution and lessons of four artistic performance works that engage with text and imagery with the mindset of a composer, rather than as an author or visual artist. The works involve computer music, improvisation, video art, generative art techniques, and challenging aesthetics. An analytical discussion reveals that different forms and mechanisms of reading are manifest in the artworks, and reflections upon these elucidate the intermedial nature of reading and the productive, expressive potential of interfering with these processes.

Designing For Truth In Counterfactual Games, Mark Sample

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

This paper brings together two distinct and seemingly irreconcilable threads: first, the place of interactive narratives and games within the broader context of documentary media; and second, the value of counterfactual narrative as a documentary form. I will weave these two threads using my own counterfactual documentary game as the guide. Currently under development in Twine, the game is rooted in archival research about the past yet is about a version of the past that didn’t happen. The game asks the following counterfactual question: what if gene editing technology like CRISPR had been invented in the 1920s and 1930s, the …

The Level Of Creative Thinking Of Stem-Oriented Middle And High School Children Associated With The Level Of Self-Motivated Play And Success Within A Builder Game And Engagement In Builder Gaming Communities' Social Media Culture, John Aedo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Literature indicates that the United States has fallen behind other countries in the world in terms of creativity. At the same, children's self-motivated gaming and involvement in gaming communities have grown as a major pass time. The literature is inconsistent on the relationship between games and creativity with some indicating benefit while others indicate harm. Might the observed level of creative thinking among children be associated with the level of a priori self-motivated engagement with creative games and associated social media? Given the wide spectrum of the kinds of games, this research considers the "builder" (e.g. Minecraft) genre and related …

Afrofuturism In Animation: Self Identity Of African Americans In Cinematic Storytelling, Dana Barnes

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

My work addresses the importance of self-identity within the Black culture of the United States of America through the depiction of an African American boy who must look into himself to overcome a difficult bullying situation. Animation as a medium is an ideal tool for interrogating the Western perspective of identity through cinematic storytelling. Using established animation methods, I created a visual narrative to portray the impact self-identity has on an individual's actions in certain social conditions. The film expands the medium of animation to subvert the narrative expectations of bullying and presents the idea of identity as a nonconforming …

Compulsory: Art, Memory, And The Stigma Of Mass Incarceration, Jason Fronczek

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

This thesis combines photography, mixed media, and installation to explore the interrelation between art, memory, and culture; specifically, as they relate to (in)visibility and the stigma surrounding mass incarceration. Things that are compulsory are obligatory; they require that we follow a rule or law, but they also may be coercive or compelling. Compulsory, therefore, is defined alternately as something that is required and something that is irresistible. These definitions imply both desire and regulation, and these forces are often internalized and self-imposed. Following these definitions and their connotations, this thesis, titled Compulsory, combines photography and mixed media installation to explore …

Alexander: A Dive Into Identity, Inspiration, And Release Of The Creative Self, Alyssa Garoogian

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Alexander is a story of overcoming the fear of personal artistic expression. Alexander is the son of an affluent family who was found to have musical talent at a young age. Alex grows to enjoy music, but rote exercises alone begin to disillusion the promising musician. Regardless, Alexander dutifully practices piano exercises daily, bored by the lack of creative stimulation but afraid to openly admit it. After an accidental music note sparks his imagination, Alexander escapes into fantasy: a colorful visualization of the original music he creates. Within this fantasy, a warm, supportive community leads Alexander to his most significant …

Seeds Of Doubt, Amber Hilson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Seeds of Doubt is a two-dimensional (2D) animated film that explores how anxiety can stifle personal growth. The film demonstrates how accepting and coping with this anxiety can help you return to a place of calm and allow you to blossom. Roma, a young witch, struggles to use her magic to successfully make her crops grow. Her lack of confidence leaves her stuck inside the greenhouse until she is ready to move on to the tomato fields outside. She must first re-center herself and overcome her self-doubt before it consumes her completely. This idea is sourced largely from my own …

Ouroboros: The Evolution From Industrialized Mass Production To Auteurism In American Animation, Heather Knott

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

The evolution of animation in the United States and its resulting classification varies significantly from its global counterparts. Through a convergence of complex cultural, regulatory, and entrepreneurial influences, the medium's experimental artistic principals have remained firmly rooted in the mass-production style studio pipeline codified by Hollywood. Through the advent of academically centered animation education, the development of the internet, self-distribution, and the growing affordability of industry level hardware and software, the industry has expanded beyond the traditional narrow scope. This re-globalization of entertainment in the United States encourages an auteur approach to animated filmmaking that is challenging the strict association …

Party For One: A Monologue Of The Importance Of Oneself Through Book Arts, Jacob Zhefu Wan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

This thesis explores the importance of oneself through sexuality, context, and introspection in the art of book arts. I work with memories, imagination, and consciousness in the form of book arts to express the importance of the self from my personal experience. Through the use of colors, materials, spatial compositions, and other visual components to manifest the content of my art, I want to illuminate the awareness of otherness including gender issues and an individual's vulnerability. Playing with the texts of Chinese and English, I intend to create narratives with languages, images, and other mixed media. In addition to crafting …

Two's Accompany: Understanding Acceptance Through Animation, Brian Phinn

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Animation as a medium has broad appeal based on its ability to convey stories in universal ways. This art form bridges cultural barriers that allow relationships to form through shared interests. Music also shares similar traits. Based on the global understanding of music and its history of use in film, the conclusion is the acceptance of different musical tastes can parallel acceptance of differing ideologies. When clashing ideological beliefs cause societal conflict, it is essential to remember that friendships cultivate through commonalities. The purpose of this study is to create an animated short film that presents the story of two …