Arts and Humanities Commons^™

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 …

Twine And The Challenge To Reading, Stuart Moulthrop

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

The article considers the Twine story-game platform in relation to important critiques of earlier forms of electronic literature (specifically hypertext) from which it descends. Arguments for the significance of Twine are made based on aesthetic approaches (the fusion of literature and game culture) and the refinement of writing itself.

Play this paper in Twine

From Wordsworth’S Poetic Problem To Puzzleless Interactive Fiction, Timothy Wilcox

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

Steve Meretzky’s 1985 A Mind Forever Voyaging functions as the first major text-adventure which does not structure its interactions around challenging, often cryptic, puzzles. Instead, the work allows readers to observe and record social change leisurely, requiring one to match wits with one’s imagination more so than the computer. This development of puzzleless interactive fiction has had forward-leaning influence. Chris Klimas’ development of Twine traces back in design philosophy to Meretzky’s innovations here, and autobiographic explorations in the medium develop then from this shift away from puzzles toward more subjective experiences. In addition to this forward influence, however, I trace …

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 …

From Ai With Love: Reading Big Data Poetry Through Gilbert Simondon’S Theory Of Transduction, Andrew Klobucar

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

Computation initiated a far-reaching re-imagination of language, not just as an information tool, but as a social, bio-physical activity in general. Modern lexicology provides an important overview of the ongoing development of textual documentation and its applications in relation to language and linguistics. At the same time, the evolution of lexical tools from the first dictionaries and graphs to algorithmically generated scatter plots of live online interaction patterns has been surprisingly swift. Modern communication and information studies from Norbert Weiner to the present-day support direct parallels between coding and linguistic systems. However, most theories of computation as a model of …

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 …

“Decolonize” E-Literature? On Weeding The E-Lit Garden (A Riposte To Anna Nacher's "Gardening E-Literature"), Kathi Berens

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

This essay, a RiPOSTe to Anna Nacher's forthcoming "Gardening E-Literature" in Electronic Book Review (5 July 2020), asks: Should the e-literature community include third-generation works in collections, syllabi, databases, prizes? A related question: do third-gen makers have a role in “decolonizing” e-literature? Who or what “colonizes” e-lit? E-literature began as a coterie and has become a scholarly field. Using the comparison of a field versus a walled garden, the essay examines critiques of e-literature and variations on field definitions. It ends with two ideas about how to "decolonize" e-literature; about how equity and inclusion work in tandem with decolonization; and …

(Un)Continuity In African Literature: Facebook Memoir And Suicide As Excape In Akachi's Sixteen Notes On How To End A Life, Onyekachi Peter Onuoha Mr

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

Facebook nonfictional creative of Chukwuemeka Akachidiscontinues and continues our perception of autobiography in the twenty first century. Depression is a clinical condition if not diagnosed on time, could lead to suicide. This paper, through application of Psychoanalytic and Trauma theories, observes that suicide is a product ofaccumulated memories that find meaning in individual memory, resulting in self-help. This paper observes that, mental illness is influenced by self-perception of Akachi’smemory in relation to his identity: economic, cultural and socio-political being as received by others and self. It submits that suicide is a burden of memory, which either makes the individual or …

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. …

Autopia And The Truelist: Language Combined In Two Computer-Generated Books, Nick Montfort

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

Autopia (Troll Thread, 2016) and The Truelist (Counterpath, 2017) are computer-generated literary books. I reported at ELO 2014 on two of my text-generating “novel machines” (Montfort 2014). The two projects discussed in this paper are about novel-size, but are different sorts of projects. Autopia’s text consists of headline-style sentences made entirely of the singular and plural names of cars. This project manifests not only as a print-on-demand book from a post-digital publisher, but also as a web project and a gallery installation. The Truelist’s 140 pages of verse are available in offset printed book form and also as a …

Translating A Work Of Digital Literature Into Several Languages: A Case Study, Serge Bouchardon, Nohelia Meza

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

In 2010, the digital literature piece Déprise was published online (http://deprise.fr). Progressively, it has been translated from French into English (Loss of Grasp, 2010), Italian (Perdersi, 2011), Spanish (Perderse, 2013), and Portuguese (Perda de controlo, 2016). Every translation required changes to the original version in French but also to the other versions, leading to an intercultural and multilingual dialogue between the translators and the author.

What are the specificities of the translation of digital literature in comparison to the translation of literature in general? What does translation teach us …

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.

Non Infinite Stories: How Digital Allow To Create Infinite Reconformations Of A Text?, David Núñez

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2020

Last year I presented at ELO, in Ireland, the Artistic piece "Bastard" a digital fiction that combine a fragmented novel to create 10x149 differents texts and optimized in 4 billions coherent stories with narrative structures. In Orlando we want to explain how the system works, theory and functioning, and invited all the members to produce they personal "infinite" fiction.

Non Infinite Stories is an electronic publishing house that creates a dynamic hyperliterature system to give each reader a unique book by using a digital combinatorial processes, specific narrative rules and optimization of fragmented works in chapters of short narrative blocks, …

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 …

Humanities In The Open: The Challenges Of Creating An Open Literature Anthology, Christian Beck, Lily Dubach, Sarah A. Norris, John Venecek

Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This book chapter was a part of the publication, "Open Pedagogy Approaches: Faculty, Library, and Student Collaborations." It highlights a case study from the University of Central Florida of creating an open literature anthology.

Cross-Modal Distraction On Simultaneous Translation: Language Interference In Spanish-English Bilinguals, Violet Young

The Pegasus Review: UCF Undergraduate Research Journal

Bilingualism has been studied extensively in multiple disciplines, yet we are still unsure how exactly bilinguals think. Though the existence of a bilingual advantage is debated, this effect has been shown in tasks using selective attention. These tasks study the effects of language interference, where two types of interference are observed: interlingual (between-languages) and intralingual (within one language). This study examines language interference in Spanish-English bilinguals using an auditory-visual simultaneous translation experimental setup. Sixteen college English monolinguals and 17 college Spanish-English bilinguals were tested. Participants translated or repeated words displayed on a screen while ignoring distractor words played through headphones. …

Gender In Dystopia: The Persistence Of Essentialist Ideologies In Octavia Butler's Parable Of The Sower, Elijah Drzata

The Pegasus Review: UCF Undergraduate Research Journal

If we were living in a dystopian society, we might view gender, sexuality, and race differently. When survival is on the line, it would be a privilege to fight back against any remaining bigotry. Octavia Butler's novel Parable of the Sower provides us with possible answers to these situations, as well as a look into the future of society if we do not change. In this essay, I situate Octavia Butler's dystopic novel in the context of gender. Laura Olamina, the protagonist, is seemingly forced to perform a new gender and sexual identity. My goal is to queer the straightness …

Sport In The Middle Of Crisis, Richard C. Crepeau

On Sport and Society

It has been two weeks since the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, an event that has thrown American society into a state of shock and mourning, followed by protest, marches, and rioting. It has been over fifty years since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the city of Memphis. That event also sent the country into a state of shock and mourning, with protest, marches, and rioting.

Intercollegiate Athletics Part Ii, Richard C. Crepeau

On Sport and Society

Perhaps the biggest news in intercollegiate athletics concerns the changing NCAA policy on player commercial endorsement. At the end of April, the NCAA Board of Governors approved recommendations allowing athletes to be paid for endorsements. These will now go to the NCAA annual meeting in January, and, if approved by the full membership, the new policy will go into effect for the 2021-22 academic year. (Placing this in terms of “academic year” is the NCAA’s subtle way of promoting the pretense of the “student athlete.”)

College Sports In The Covid19 World (Part I), Richard C. Crepeau

On Sport and Society

Even though College Sports are no longer being played, the NCAA and colleges continue to make news. Some of the news is an expected part of the norm, while other news concerns the new world of Covid19 and the future of intercollegiate athletics or, more to the point, football and basketball.

There is growing discussion over the coming football season in the world of Covid19. When will it start? What will it look like? Will it take place at all? The discussions around these questions spin in many directions and, at times, crisscross one another. Are there any guidelines that …

Little Magazines, Postwar Internationalism, And The Construction Of World Cinema, Louise Kane

Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This essay explores how two interwar film magazines, Close Up (1927-33) and Experimental Cinema (1930-4), pioneered early forms of world cinema as part of wider postwar attempts to forge transnationalism, improved international relations, and humanistic dialogue among people and nations. I argue that both magazines presented the cinema as a form of global community through their establishment of film societies and clubs, inclusive contributor policies, turn toward Russian cinema, and staunch rejection of Hollywood cinema’s commercialism. These strategies enabled the construction of a shared, albeit idealistic, vision of world cinema centered on comparative approaches, anti-imperialism, and the preservation and documentation …

What We Miss, Richard C. Crepeau

On Sport and Society

It has been several weeks since the world changed. The regular patterns of life have been disrupted, and keeping track of what day it is has required some effort. Sport with its familiar patterns and rhythms is gone. March Madness took on a very different meaning; the NHL and the NBA shut down; spring training in Arizona and Florida ended abruptly; the Olympics have been postponed for a year; and across the world, sports at all levels have been cancelled or postponed.

Michael Jordan In Orlando For Baseball, Richard C. Crepeau

On Sport and Society

ESPN has now aired the first four episodes of “The Last Dance.” There will be ten in all. This documentary is being marketed as a new and candid look at Michael Jordan and the 1997-1998 Chicago Bulls. It is receiving rave reviews and, so far as I have seen, this is a good piece of documentary film making. As many of you know Jordan left basketball in mid-career to pursue baseball in the Chicago White Sox organization. During the 1994 baseball season, Jordan played for the Birmingham Barons of the Southern League. In early May of that year he came …

Improving Country And Destination Image Can Bring More American Tourists To Cuba, Suja Chaulagain, Jessica Wiitala, Xiaoxiao Fu

Rosen Research Review

Country image, how an entire country is perceived by potential tourists, and the more specific destination image are important concepts in tourism marketing. They have a profound impact on a person's intent to travel to a particular destination. Suja Chaulagain, Jessica Wiitala and Xiaoxiao Fu of Rosen College of Hospitality Management have used the example of Cuba to examine the impact of country image and destination image on U.S. tourists' travel intentions. Their work provides guidance for Cuba's tourist marketing industry for attracting more tourists from the United States.

Lgbt Events: Sense Of Belonging For Lgbt Travelers, Jeeyeon (Jeannie) Hahm, Heejung Ro

Rosen Research Review

A successful event or festival can be a huge draw to a tourist destination. As lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) travelers are increasingly recognized as a growing market for tourism, events aimed at this demographic are expanding in number and scale. It is therefore useful to understand what factors influence attendance. In a study designed to do just this, Dr. Jeeyeon Hahm and Dr. Heejung Ro from the Rosen College of Hospitality Management looked at psychological variables related to social identity to examine what influences satisfaction and repeat attendance at LGBT events.

Human-Machine Communication: Complete Volume. Volume 1

Human-Machine Communication

This is the complete volume of HMC Volume 1.

Ontological Boundaries Between Humans And Computers And The Implications For Human-Machine Communication, Andrea L. Guzman

Human-Machine Communication

In human-machine communication, people interact with a communication partner that is of a different ontological nature from themselves. This study examines how people conceptualize ontological differences between humans and computers and the implications of these differences for human-machine communication. Findings based on data from qualitative interviews with 73 U.S. adults regarding disembodied artificial intelligence (AI) technologies (voice-based AI assistants, automated-writing software) show that people differentiate between humans and computers based on origin of being, degree of autonomy, status as tool/tool-user, level of intelligence, emotional capabilities, and inherent flaws. In addition, these ontological boundaries are becoming increasingly blurred as technologies emulate …

Toward An Agent-Agnostic Transmission Model: Synthesizing Anthropocentric And Technocentric Paradigms In Communication, Jaime Banks, Maartje M. A. De Graaf

Human-Machine Communication

Technological and social evolutions have prompted operational, phenomenological, and ontological shifts in communication processes. These shifts, we argue, trigger the need to regard human and machine roles in communication processes in a more egalitarian fashion. Integrating anthropocentric and technocentric perspectives on communication, we propose an agent-agnostic framework for human-machine communication. This framework rejects exclusive assignment of communicative roles (sender, message, channel, receiver) to traditionally held agents and instead focuses on evaluating agents according to their functions as a means for considering what roles are held in communication processes. As a first step in advancing this agent-agnostic perspective, this theoretical paper …