[Air-l] Visionary Landscapes: Electronic Literature Organization 2008 Conference

[David M Silver]

Visionary Landscapes: Electronic Literature Organization 2008 Conference

Thursday, May 29-Sunday, June 1, 2008
Vancouver, Washington

Sponsored by Washington State University Vancouver
& the Electronic Literature Organization

Dene Grigar & John Barber, Co-Chairs
http://www.vancouver.wsu.edu/dtc/elo08.html (website, coming August 8)

Producing a work of electronic literature entails not only practice in
the literary arts but sometimes also the visual, sonic, and the
performative arts; knowledge of computing devices and software programs;
and experience in collaboration, interdisciplinarity, and hybridity. In
short, electronic literature requires its artists to see beyond
traditional approaches and sensibilities into what best can be described
as visionary landscapes where, as Mark Amerika puts it, artists
“celebrate an interdisciplinary practice from a literary and writerly
perspective that allows for other kinds of practice-based art-research
and knowledge sharing.”

To forward the thinking about new approaches and sensibilities in the
media arts, The Electronic Literature Organization and Washington State
University Vancouver’s Digital Technology and Culture program are
inviting submissions to the Electronic Literature Organization 2008
Conference to be held from May 29 to June 1, 2008 in Vancouver, Washington.

“Visionary Landscapes: Electronic Literature Organization 2008
Conference” is interested in papers that explore forms of digital media
that utilize images, sound, movement, and user interaction as well
as––or in lieu of––words and that explore how we read, curate, and
critique such works. Topics may include:

• New, non-screen, environments for presenting multimedia writing and
/or electronic literature
• Research labs and new media projects
• Strategies for reading electronic literary works
• Curating digital art
• Innovative approaches to critiquing electronic literature
• Emerging technologies for the production of multimedia writing and /or
electronic literature
• Building audience for new media literary works and writing
• Digital, literary performances
• Publishing for print or electronic media connecting literature and the
arts through common archiving and metatag strategies
• Artistic methods of composition used in intermedia storytelling
(improvisation, collaboration, sample and remix, postproduction art,
codework, hactivism, etc.

In conjunction with the three-day conference, there will be a juried
Media Arts Show. Along with prizes for the most notable work, selected
artists will be awarded bursaries to attend the conference featured at
the show. Submission guidelines will be posted beginning August 15, 2007
on the conference website.

The keynote speaker is internationally renown new media artist and
writer, Mark Amerika, named a "Time Magazine 100 Innovator." His artwork
has been exhibited at the Whitney Biennial, the ICA in London, the
Walker Art Center, and the Denver Art Museum and has been the topic of
four retrospectives. Amerika is also the author of many books, including
his recently published collection of artist writings entitled META/DATA:
A Digital Poetics (The MIT Press), founder of the Alt-X Network, and
publisher of the electronic book review. He currently holds the position
of Professor of Art and Art History at the University of Colorado at
Boulder.

Deadline for Submissions for Presentations: November, 30, 2007
Notification of Acceptance: December 30, 2007

Vancouver, Washington, located in the Pacific Northwest just across the
Columbia River from Portland, OR, is about a six hour drive south of
Vancouver, Canada and three hours south of Seattle, Washington. The
conference day events will take place at Washington State University
Vancouver, a Tier One research Institution built in the foothills of the
Cascade Mountains with views of Mt. Hood and Mt. Saint Helens. The
official conference hotel is the Hilton Vancouver located in downtown
Vancouver, Washington with easy access to restaurants, bars, and evening
conference events. Special rates have been negotiated for conference
attendees. A conference shuttle will take attendees to and from the
campus daily. The recommended airport is PDX at Portland, which is about
a seven minute drive to downtown Vancouver, WA.

The cost of the conference is $150; graduate students and non-affiliated
artists pay only $100. Conference registration covers access to all
events, the reception, some meals, and shuttle transportation.

For more information, contact Dene Grigar at Grigar at vancouver.wsu.edu