digital poetry – loriemerson

from Apple Basic to Hypercard, or, Translating Translating bpNichol

[reblogged from the Media Archaeology Lab] As a result of a number of recent researcher visits to the MAL, the question we’ve been mulling over lately is whether, or how, works of digital literature can be said to have “manuscript versions.” Here is the background to this question: on 7 June 2012, I blogged about the 5.25″ […]

by Lori Emerson

“The whole world is faking it”: Computer-Generated Poetry as Linguistic Evidence

The following is a short review I wrote of discourse.cpp (pdf available here) by O.S. le Si, ed. Aurélie Herbelot, published by the Berlin-based Peer Press in 2011. The review was just published in the December issue of Computational Linguistics. * discourse.cpp (Peer Press, 2011) is a short collection of computer-generated poetry edited by computational linguistics […]

by Lori Emerson

“Reading Writing Interfaces” Book Project Description

Reading Writing Interfaces: From the Digital to the Bookbound (forthcoming University of Minnesota Press, 2014) Table of Contents: Introduction Chapter 1: Indistinguishable From Magic | Invisible Interfaces and Digital Literature as Demystifier 1.0 Introduction | Invisible, Imperceptible, Inoperable 1.1 Natural, Organic, Invisible 1.2 The iPad | “a truly magical and revolutionary product” 1.3 From Videoplace […]

by Lori Emerson

latest addition to the Archeological Media Lab: original “First Screening” 5.25 inch floppies

I had the great fortune of meeting Lionel Kearns in Vancouver last spring and discussing bpNichol’s 1984 Apple IIe poem “First Screening.” (If you don’t know Kearns, he is a longtime Vancouver-based poet who was a student of Earle Birney and also one of the four people to first rescue “First Screening.”) After explaining that […]

by Lori Emerson

Activist Media Poetics: Electronic Literature Against the Interface-free (MLA 2012)

Below is the text of the paper I delivered at MLA 2012 in Seattle, WA. It was part of the special session I organized on E-literature and the interface; you can find summaries of papers delivered by Dene Grigar, Mark Sample, and Stephanie Strickland/Marjorie Luesebrink here. The full text of Mark Sample’s paper, “Strange Rain […]

by Lori Emerson

sifteo cubes in the humanities classroom

I recently ordered, with glee, Sifteo cubes in the hopes that I might be able to use them either in the classes I teach or perhaps add them to the Archeological Media Lab which, while largely invested in studying outdated computer hardware and software, is also broadly concerned with the study of interface design. As […]

by Lori Emerson

Performing E-Literature | E-literature Performing

Below is my curatorial statement for the Electronic Literature Exhibit that will take place at the MLA Annual Convention January 2012. Rather than focus my statement on the works I suggested we include in the exhibit, I’ve instead focused on the notion of a reading or performance of e-literature like the one that will take […]

by Lori Emerson

An Exhibit & Reading of E-literature at MLA 2012

I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to help organize – alongside Dene Grigar and Kathi Inman Berens – the first ever electronic literature exhibit and reading at the MLA Annual Convention in Seattle, WA January 5th through the 7th. The exhibit in particular, which is formally supported by the MLA, marks an important moment in […]

by Lori Emerson

Marshall McLuhan and the Avant-Garde

Recently I stumbled upon an odd but thrilling little publication from 1966 called Astronauts of Inner-Space: An International Collection of Avant-Garde Activity which includes – according to the front cover – 17 manifestoes, articles, letters, 28 poems and 1 filmscript. The collection is so astounding that I had to make a pdf of it – […]

by Lori Emerson

on “e-literature” as a field (part 2)

While I’m not finding this conversation between Mark Bernstein and myself to be terribly productive, I also am not fond of having my opinions mis-represented. Allow me, then, to post one final time about the wording in our MLA 2012 proposal. I’ve had a few days to think and I now recognize that – while […]