[a pen]

Interesting digital poetry creation by Jim Andrews: “A project in visual poetry and programming. The project consists of an interactive software pen that uses four ‘nibs’ whose ‘inks’ are lettristic animations of letters.”

[nick monfort at #interventions]

Nick Monfort at the interventions conference talking about literature at the edge. Think of edges in graph theory and how endges act as connectors.
Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone

[digital writing: mfa applications sought]

Applications Sought:

 

A two-year position, including full tuition and a stipend, leading to an MFA.

Information on how to apply to Brown's graduate school is linked from the programme's website.

Since 1990, Brown’s Graduate Program in Literary Arts has earned recognition as an international leader in the field of electronic writing.  Today, writing digital media is part of the trans-departmental digital arts development at Brown involving Literary Arts, Music, Visual Art, Modern Culture and Media, Computer Science, and other departments. Links have also been forged with the Digital+Media Center at the Rhode Island School of Design. Though the focus is still on writing and thus on the text, students in literary hypermedia take courses offering the additional possibility of working in mixed hypermedia, including computer graphics, animation, electronic music, video, and virtual 3-D environments. A new experimental workshop, 'Cave Writing,' has been launched in Brown’s immersive virtual reality environment in the Center Computation and Visualization. Our faculty include Professor Robert Coover, who was the moving force behind these initiatives and, since 2007, Professor John Cayley.

Further information about ongoing activities can be found at http://writingdigitalmedia.org

Previous fellows: Talan Memmott, William Gillespie, Brian Kim Stefans, Daniel Howe, Aya Karpinska, Justin Katko. Current fellows: Samantha Gorman, Ian Hatcher, Edrex Fontanilla. Previous writing fellows who completed electronic theses or taught eWriting at Brown as graduates include: Bobby Arellano, Mark Amerika, Matthew Derby, Mary-Kim Arnold, Judd Morrissey, Noah Wardrip-Fruin.

Electronic Writing fellows have access to all the resources of the Literary Arts Program and its innovative and engaged faculty directed by Professor Brian Evenson. Please see the website for a complete listing.

 

 

 

[cfp: born digital]

Educational Insights (an online journal mostly focused on education) has a call for papers out. Due date for abstracts is 15 of June:

Teresa Dobson, Academic Editor | Michael Boyce, Managing Editor

Born Digital (Contemporary Art and Education)

"Over the last 20 years a new generation of art and literature born as electronic, or borne within distributive digital channels, has developed in tandem with new ways of defining, measuring and decoding them (i.e. reading), and along side new delivery mechanisms for pedagogical methods and practices. Born Digital wishes to explore these new artifacts and their new distributive form in the context of pedagogy and artistic practice.

A wide range of new forms wherein narrative is restructuring and redefining itself are of interest: Blog novels; E-literature; Narrative within locative applications such as google maps and geo-tagging with GPS; RSS poetics; Narrative in the context of mobile games and social media applications such as youtube, flickr and facebook. Likewise, consideration and analysis of the digital artifacts born out these mediums is a concern to us.

We are interested playing with the concept of being Born Digital, taking into account multiple meanings of Born, including: Existing as a result of birth; Having a natural or perfectly suited ability; Existing as a result of a particular situation or feeling; And keeping in mind its homonym Borne, to play with a notion of transport, of delivery, of support and endurance.

Generally, we support submissions using an original approach, which avoid excessive commentary on any canon, and we encourage efforts to express the matter within the structure of the medium itself. That being said, we expect rigorously critical investigation within the parameters of any play.

Please submit your précis by June 15, 2009 to educational.insights@ubc.ca

For more information : born digital"

[experimental media: call for scholar, research & artist in residence]

EMPAC is pleased to announce that it is accepting applications for both its Artist in Residence and its Scholar and Researcher in Residence programs.

Artist in Residence Program

The combination of artist-driven content with contemporary media and performing arts technology in the field of time- based arts stands in the center of the artistic research and production activities of EMPAC. EMPAC’s goal is to provide an environment to support the realization of works at any stage from inception to completion. This means that an EMPAC residency can support works which take a long period of time to develop and which may need different resources at different phases of the production. Along with a state-of- the-art facility, we offer residents the support of a full time staff of experts in audio, video and stage technologies. Commissions are initiated by EMPAC whereas residencies are open to artist proposals.

» More Information, Guidelines, + Application Process

Scholar and Researcher in Residence Program

EMPAC aims to create an environment of fertile creation, cross- pollination, and intellectual stimulation. Visiting scholars and researchers will participate in the formation of an intellectual community in scientific and engineering disciplines that may also engage perceptual and artistic knowledge and practice. EMPAC will also be a platform for research activities in areas such as augmented reality, virtual reality, scientific visualization, audification, haptics, human/machine interfaces and interaction, auralization, and multi-modal modeling in large-scale, fully media-integrated environments.

» More Information + Application Process

[dac conference]

DAC09 will be held on the campus of the University of California Irvine,for three and a half days in mid-December 2009.

The Themes for this iteration of DAC:

* Embodiment and performativity
* Mobile/locative/situated/wearable practices
* Software/platform studies
* Environment/ sustainability/ climate change
* Interdisciplinary pedagogy
* Cognition and Creativity
* Sex and sexuality

More information can be found at the conference website: http://dac09.uci.edu

DAC09 is now accepting paper proposals, and inviting offers of participation in other aspects of the conference.

The site and the conference are at this point a work in progress.

New and updated material will be added regularly.

[reader 2.0]

Here is some info from my presentation on how I see readers who engage with born digital works.

Links to the web works I mentioned in my presentation:

http://twitter.com/manyvoices
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lynetter/2099009488/in/set-72057594139269787/
http://www.viddler.com/explore/hughgarry/videos/12/97.564/
http://emersoninbeijing.com
http://www.wetellstories.co.uk
http://thewhalehunt.org
http://transition.turbulence.org/Works/dynamo/index.html

Screen shots and the presentation to follow.

[digital stitchings: my interview with rachel beth egenhoefer ]

I recently did an interview with digital/textile artist/creator Rachel Beth Egenhoefer for Furtherfield:

Jess: What are the main differences (pros and/or cons) of creating a work that is to be experienced digitally, and that which is contained within physical material borders (sweets, fabric etc...)? - this is very much a question to you as a *creator*

Rachel Beth: In some ways I feel like this is a hard question for me to answer because my work is very much about bridging these two experiences and pointing out that they aren't that different.

There's lots of clich'e answers like the digital being accessible anywhere on the web and that the material has the traditional sense of making and 'aura', but my work really sits between them and is about bringing the two together. Making the digital tactile, and the tangible coded.

Jess: What aspects of the digital would you like to be able to bring into your future work?

Rachel Beth: My most recent work, and the work I did during my residency in the UK uses motion and acceleration tracking. I'd like to continue using ideas around mapping motion and interaction. I'm not so interested in data visualization but rather how mapping actions and systems can make for new interactions or parallels. I've also begun to work with hacking the Nintendo Wii that has just kind of opened a whole slew of ideas. So I can see myself working more with that.


Jess: How would you define a literate reader/experiencer of your work? (I'm thinking especially of the lovely melting sweets...how do you want your IDEAL audience to participate?)

Rachel Beth: I don't really have an ideal audience. I strive to have multiple entry points in my work. I've had computer scientists view my work who know much more about code than I do but never knew that a knitting pattern looks exactly the same, or ludites who hate technology but suddenly realize there are simple, beautiful concepts in computing. Some people see my work and don't realize it's even a piece, some people spend hours coming back and looking at it. I'm okay with either of these extremes. It's my hope that people find something to grab on to or relate to. Leaving a door partly open allows other people to add their own perspective as well. It's always rewarding (well most of the time rewarding) when people discover things in your work you didn?t see before.


Read more over at Furtherfield.

[ELO - collection 2: call for work]

The Electronic Literature Organization seeks submissions for the Electronic Literature Collection, volume 2. We invite the submission of literary works that take advantage of the capabilities and contexts provided by the computer. Works will be accepted from June 1 to September 30, 2008. Up to three works per author will be considered; previously published works will be considered. The Electronic Literature Collection is a biannual publication of current and older electronic literature in a form suitable for individual, public library, and classroom use. Volume 1, presently available both online (http://collection.eliterature.org) and as a packaged, cross-platform CD-ROM, has been used in dozens of courses at universities in the United States and internationally, and has been widely reviewed in the United States and Europe. It is also available as a CD-ROM insert with N. Katherine Hayles' full-length study, Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary (University of Notre Dame Press, 2008). Volume 2, comprising approximately 50 works, will likewise be available online, and as a cross-platform DVD in a case appropriate for library processing, marking, and distribution. The contents of the Collection are offered under a Creative Commons license so that libraries and educational institutions will be allowed to duplicate and install works and individuals will be free to share the disc with others. The editorial collective for the second volume of the Electronic Literature Collection, to be published in 2009, is Laura Borràs Castanyer, Talan Memmott, Rita Raley and Brian Kim Stefans. This collective will review the submitted work and select pieces for the Collection. Literary quality will be the chief criterion for selection of works. Other aspects considered will include innovative use of electronic techniques, quality and navigability of interface, and adequate representation of the diverse forms of electronic literature in the collection as a whole. For volume 2, we are considering works of electronic literature in video. Works submitted should function on both Macintosh OS X (10.5) and Windows Vista. Works should function without requiring users to purchase or install additional software. Submissions may require software that is typically pre-installed on contemporary computers, such as a web browser, and are allowed to use the current versions of the most common plugins. To have a work considered, all the authors of the work must agree that if their work is published in the Collection, they will license it under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-

NoDerivs 3.0 License, which will permit others to copy and freely redistribute the work, provided the work is attributed to its authors, that it is redistributed non-commercially, and that it is not used in the creation of derivative works. No other limitation is made regarding the author's use of any work submitted or accepted. To submit a work, prepare a plain text file with the following information: * The title of the work. * The names and email addresses of all authors and contributors of the work. * The URL where you are going to make your .zip file available for us to download. The editorial collective will not publish the address of this file. * A short description of the work — less than 200 words in length. * Any instructions required to operate the work. * The date the work was first distributed or published, or "unpublished" if it has not yet been made available to the public. Prepare a .zip archive including the work in its entirety. Include the text file at the top level of this archive, and name it "submisson.txt". Upload the .zip file to a web server so that it is available at the specified location. Place all of the text in the "submisson.txt" file in the body of an email and send it to elc2.elo@gmail.com with the name of the piece being submitted included in the subject line. The Electronic Literature Collection is supported by institutional partners including: Brown University, Literary Arts Program; Center for Program in Contemporary Writing at the University of Pennsylvania; Duke University, Program in Literature; Hermeneia at the Open University of Catalonia; Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies; nt2; Pomona College, Media Studies Program;UCSB, Department of English; University of Bergen, Department of Literary, Linguistic, and Aesthetic Studies, Program in Digital Culture; University of Dundee, School of Humanities. Institutional sponsorship opportunities are still available. If your organization or academic department is interested in more information, please contact Helen DeVinney, Managing Director of the ELO, at hdevinney@gmail.com.

[ TIR-W Volume 9 no. 2 Instruments and Playable Text ]

From the guest editor Stuart Moulthrop:

"Our work is animated by the desire to evoke from simple rules a plausibly infinite set of expressions. We come at this problem from various perspectives, techniques, and points of the aesthetic compass, and we arrive at happily different results, but a certain resemblance remains.

For Judy Malloy, who was a master composer when I was still learning canon and fugue, the key to invention lies in the artful crossing of pattern and chance, of musical and cybernetic form, in her "Concerto for Narrative Data."

John Cayley, who would be our Che or Tristan Tzara if this were an actual movement, gives us a newly re-engineered version of "riverIsland," an exploration of poetry-as-simulation that continues to define the possibilities of its form.

Next come some younger though no less accomplished talents, beginning with Shawn Rider, a writer, digital designer, and meta-gamer who is represented here with two pieces, "PiTp," a work laid open deliberately to digital intervention, and "So Random," a story that tells itself each time, specially, just for you.

Elizabeth Knipe, another relatively new player, offers "activeReader," an interactive media piece that brings its own interpretation of reader engagement and emergent, open form.

Nick Montfort, equally at ease with aesthetic programming and the long-form palindrome, offers what we might call a minimum instrument, "The Purpling," a maze of recirculating expression built from humble Web pages.

Last in train is my own "Under Language," a sort of talkative poem with consequences, far less credible in its claim to infinity than most of its companions, but still a kind of game, for those who will play."

Read the new issue here.

[job opportunity - creative industries research fellow]

Creative Industries Research Fellow

Policy & Research

Contract:
Three days a week (or equivalent), Six month initial contract with possibility to extend for further six months

Salary:
£40,000-£50,000 (pro-rata), plus benefits

Closing date:
5pm, 13 August 2008

Location:
London

Core Purpose of Role:
This role will involve researching and writing analytical pieces on the creative industries and helping Hasan Bakhshi, who leads NESTA's policy development and research on the creative industries, to manage NESTA's ambitious programme of research on the Arts & Innovation.

The position will suit an analyst who wants to combine a NESTA research fellowship with their academic research or freelance work on the creative industries, or someone who is seeking a secondment, as we can be flexible on the exact pattern of working hours in the week.

To apply:
To apply, please email or post your CV and covering letter to recruitment@nesta.org.uk, or Tanya Holland, NESTA, 1 Plough Place, London EC4A 1DE.

For further information and to review the Candidate Brief and Role Profile please visit our website at
http://www.nesta.org.uk/creative-industries-research-fellow/.

NB. Interviews will take place on Wednesday 20 August.

[Future of Creative Technologies - new IOCT journal]

The Future of Creative Technologies is a new journal just launched by the IOCT at DMU. In the first 18 months of the IOCT's lifespan (yup, it's only been 18 months) the IOCT has benefited from a wide range of significant and fruitful partnerships. This first issue of the journal reflects on those relationships and includes "thought pieces" and articles from each of the keynote speakers. Authors include Howard Rheingold, Claudia Eckert, Bruce Mason and Sue Thomas, Wendy Keay-Bright, Pauline Oliveros and Martin Rieser. All the pieces are extremely interesting and as they've been pulled together into this publication you can really see how transdisciplinary the IOCT is.

In the opening editorial director of the IOCT, Prof. Andrew Hugill says:

"The diversity of the content is deliberate, and is intended to stimulate readers not only from the range of disciplines represented herein, but also as a way of exploring further a discussion which lies at the heart of the IOCT: what does it mean to be transdisciplinary? how can we foster good practice in transdisciplinary research? and, what outcomes might we expect from such research?"

These are similar questions which will be taken up in an academic context in the conference I'll be organising (provisionally slated for 2010) and out of which will grow an academic publication.

[interrupt festival hosted by john cayley]

eUInterrupt 2008, to be held at Brown University from October 17-19, is a three-day festival of readings, performances, and symposia organized around the theme of “interruption” in digital art and programmable literary practices. Why “Interrupt”? In computing, a hardware interrupt request or IRQ is used to prioritize the execution of certain processes over others. It is a command sent to the processor to get its attention, signaling the need to initiate a new operation.

In the context of contemporary art, the act of interruption is a performance that redirects threads of process and lines of thought into fields of new expression. Interrupts trigger the moment when a process of creation yields a public manifestation. The cycle of ongoing work is paused by a challenge, calling for the attention of a provisional community: just as we read ICQ as “I seek you,” we can read IRQ as “I argue.” In this sense, interrupts articulate critical thresholds at which formal expressions are offered up to (or forced into) new circuits of communication, countering that which came before and making a case for new artistic and political futures.

We ask you to attend and participate.

Artists in Residence:
* Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries *

Confirmed Headliners:
* Alan Sondheim & Foofwa d'Imobilité *
* Laetitia Sonami *
* Eugenio Tisselli *
* Marko Niemi *

Details and arrangements to be confirmed:
* cris cheek *
* Abigail Child *
* Chris Funkhouser *
* Loss Pequeňo Glazier *
* Talan Memmott *
* Bill Seaman and Penny Florence *
* Patricia Tomaszek *

Critics, theorists, artists and students who would like to attend are asked to contact John_Cayley (at) brown.edu. We will be organizing two or more round table sessions during the festival, and we invite brief presentations intended to spark critical discussions relating to the work of interruption within the context of digitally mediated language practices. Participants will also be invited to instigate discussion at these round tables.

If you would like to attend, and particularly if you have institutional backing, we ask you to consider supporting Interrupt with a registration contribution of $50 (checks only please) made out to 'Brown University' and sent to:

Interrupt 2008
Brown University
Literary Arts Program
Box 1923
Providence RI 02912

For letters of invitation, please contact John_Cayley (at) brown.edu. Register now.

To read more about what we mean by Interrupt and for other details about the festival – including the preliminary program, schedule, location, venues, and accommodation information – please refer to our website: http://interrupt2008.net

Organized and hosted at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design by graduates and undergraduates from Literary Arts, Modern Culture and Media, MEME, RISD D+M, and other departments.

Funding and support for Interrupt currently includes the following sources: Brown Creative Arts Council, the Literary Arts program, RISD Digital+Media, MEME, the Brown Graduate School, the Comparative Literature department.

[digital humanities postdoc position]

Two amazing postdoc. positions have opened up at Umeå University's HUMLab:

The postdoctoral fellowships are one-year positions, with a possible extension of one year. For the postdoc positions, applicants will be expected to have a Ph.D. in a humanities discipline (from a non-Swedish university) and a specialty in any of the following five research areas: participatory media, digital cultural heritage, digital art/architecture, electronic literature, and
critical perspectives.

Read more at http://blog.humlab.umu.se/postdocs and make sure to apply if you are qualified and interested in becoming a part of HUMlab and Umeå University! We are committed to taking very good care of visiting fellows. Fellows will normally have a double affiliation to the lab and
to a suitable department/school and discipline.

Deadline for applications: June 12, 2008.

[Open Source Embroidery: Craft and Code at HTTP Gallery]

Ele Carpenter, a digital-textile artist who I interviewed for Furtherfield, is curating a super exhibition. It's a must-see:

Preview: Friday 16th May 6-9pm, 17th May – 15th June 2008

Open Fridays to Sundays 12-5pm

http://www.http.uk.net/

This exhibition explores the connections between the collaborative characteristics of needlework, craft and Open Source software. This project has brought together embroiderers, patch-workers, knitters, artists and computer programmers, to share their practice and make new work.

HTML Patchwork in
progress

The centre-piece of the exhibition at HTTP Gallery is the HTML Patchwork developed in response to the popularity of quilting in Sheffield, the result of a participatory project initiated by Ele Carpenter in partnership with Access Space. The patchwork is built on open principles of collective production and skill-share where each person contributes a part to the whole. The final work is a collectively stitched patchwork quilt of HTML web-safe colours with embroidered codes, and a wiki website, where the makers of each patch identify themselves and write about their sewing process. Each patch is
personalised by the sewer, often including embroidered web addresses.

telinit Ø: time for bed, Lisa Wallbank, 2007
Knitted Blog (detail),
Suzanne Hardy, 2006-

In an interview with Jess Laccetti, Ele Carpenter said about the project: "The same arguments about Open Source vs Free Software can be applied to embroidery. The needlework crafts also have to negotiate the principles of 'freedom' to create, modify and distribute, within the cultural and economic constraints of capitalism. The Open Source Embroidery project simply attempts to provide a social and practical way of discussing the issues and trying out the practice. Free Software, Open Source, amateur and professional embroiderers and programmers are welcome to contribute to the project."

Hexart GDlib Script Error, digital print on canvas, James Wallbank,
2007
Weaving network cable in progress, Paul Grimmer, 2007

The project was developed by Ele Carpenter when working as an artist in residence at Access Space in Sheffield and Isis Arts in Newcastle upon Tyne. Access Space is an open access media lab using recycled computers and open source software. Anyone can drop in and use the lab to develop their creative projects.

The exhibition at HTTP Gallery in Harringay, North London, includes works by 11 artists and makers alongside the collectively made HTML Patchwork quilt and wiki. Other works in the exhibition include Susanne Hardy’s Knit-a-Blog, a collective knitting project made by contributors from across the UK and USA, Iain Clarke’s PHP Embroidery, which explores the open source PHP programming language as a form of self-generating weaving, as well as artworks by Paul Grimmer, Tricia Grindrod, Jake Harries & Keith o’Faoláin, John Keenan, Trevor Pitt, Clare Ruddock, James Wallbank, and Lisa Wallbank.

The HTML Patchwork has been created by people at: Access Space, Art through Textiles, The Patchwork Garden, The Fat Quarters, Stocksbridge Knit n Chat, Totley Quilters, Isis Arts, and the Banff New Media Institute at the Banff Centre for the Arts, Alberta, Canada.

Events at HTTP

Preview
Your chance to meet Ele Carpenter, the curator as well of some of the other exhibiting artists, to enjoy a few drinks and conversations about the exhibition.

Open Knitting and Embroidery
evenings
Dates and times TBC

Bring your knits, your embroidery and your friends for tea, biscuits and conversation amongst the artworks.

These events are open to the public and entrance is free, however advanced booking is necessary.

Contact:
Lauren Wright,
HTTP Gallery
lauren@furtherfield.org

HTTP
Gallery
http://www.http.uk.net/
Unit A2,
Arena Design Centre
71 Ashfield Road
London N4 1LD
+44(0)79 8129
2734
Click here for map
and location details

Further info:
www.open-source-embroidery.org.uk
www.eleweekend.blogspot.com
www.access-space.org

[candy + code @ the ICA]

Shamefully I arrived home quite late lastnight and then had to pack for today's trip up to York (Inanimate Alice is up for a Learning on Screen Award and the Faculty of Humanities is paying for me to go up there AND enjoy the 2-day conference!)...so I didn't really have *time* to blog. Is that a better excuse than the dog ate my blog post?

I'll catch up and post all the notes I made on the three incredible artists: Rachel Beth Egenhoefer, Dr Barbara Rauch and Nicola Naismith? They were all working on different things yet there were loads of crossovers. I was able to ask a few questions too during the final panel session but amazingly, we ended up going over and we had to be kicked out into the ICA bar (darn!). :)

I also want to *shout out* to Helen Sloan director of SCAN who is interested in social media and mapping business networks!

Thanks to Dr. Jane Harris for organising the event and to Lucy for all her help e-mailing updates and organising ppts etc...

Hopfully the National Science Learning Centre will have wireless...

[candy + code at the ICA, London]

On Monday night I'm going to have the pleasure of listening to three female [digital] artists who interestingly incorporate textiles/textures into their work which seem to (at least to me) question the role of code/coding (among other things). A kind of digital/textural semiotics perhaps? My job, after their presentations, is to ask them *riveting* questions. Hrm...anyone out there in the blogosphere have any questions they'd like to put to Rachel Beth Egenhoefer, Dr Barbara Rauch or Nicola Naismith? I won't be the only one asking questions though. Dr Jane Harris, Director of TFRG, and Helen Sloan, Director of SCAN will have their interviewing caps on too.







This what the ICA says about the event:

[transliteracy and digital art]

In the recently published Digital Artists' handbook, Kristina Anderson talks about making and modding technology. At the end of her chapter she makes an interesting point:

"Maybe we can say, we are making technology in order to understand it, and understanding technology in order to make our own."

This resonates (for me) with the concept of transliteracy. We've named transliteracy in order to understand it and in beginning to understand (conceptualise, interpret etc...) transliteracy perhaps we are making it our own, as a symbol of a 21st century literacy?

[new media art and and and]

I've just been reading Oliver Grau's "Integrating Media Art into our Culture" published in the most recent issue (22) of a minima magazine. He begins his article with reference to something that seems (to me) to be a kind of new media and culture/theory/concept/history etc... tag cloud (though the information/keywords seem to be based on analyses of Ars Electronica rather than *new media* at large):

"Hundreds of names of artists, thousands of artworks, art trends, theory of media art in keywords, presented in an enormous huge circle (please visit http://www.asa.de/research/kontext). (1) Thirty-two slices are offered as a subdivision into themes, like representation, emotion and synaesthesia, the material issue in art, atmosphere, games, therapy, mission, art as spatial experience we find glimpses of a history of media art."

Gerhard Dirmoser and ASA-European are the creators behind this map and they've made accessible "ca. 32 views in context of live, social relations, society, arts of humanities, philosophical relations, personal identities, body examinations, and so on;90 definitions of performance art and performing arts, hundred of names from artists and literature, titles from exemplary books in this 32 views."

The ASA site's own poster let's users click on various parts which lead to zoomed in sections of information. A *map* like this would be interesting in terms of transliteracy; to track its contexts and relations, developments...

[machinima festival at dmu]

woo hoo! tomorrow I'm heading over to the machinima festival at dmu.

Check out the small print...guess who was one of the judges:

[Museum Residency: New Media]

The V&A is inviting applications from experienced and established practitioners for a New Media residency in the Sackler Centre for Arts Education, the first in an exciting new programme of residencies.We are particularly interested in UK based practitioners, who wish to work with the Museum’s spaces and use the facilities in our new Digital Studio with visitors, and who have a track record of development and regular exposure of new work.Purpose of the Residency

The new Sackler Centre at the V&A, opening in Spring 2008, will have two studios for museum residencies which will be occupied by artists/ craftspeople/ designers/ writers/ performers/ architects/ film and video makers etc. There will be 4 residencies of 6 months ( 26 weeks ) each year. This programme is integral to the philosophy of the Sackler Centre, helping to make it a dynamic, creative space. The residency offers practitioners the opportunity to develop new work, re-assess their practice or see work in different contexts by responding to and working with the Museum’s collections and to promote greater understanding of art and design processes for the public.

The aims of the residency are to:

· Enable the selected practitioner to carry out research, develop new skills and explore new ideas towards the creation of new work in the future

· Promote greater understanding of new media production processes for the V&A’s audiences.

· Create links between the V&A’s collections and contemporary art practice.

· Develop practitioners as ‘artist educators’.

· Raise the profile of contemporary art practice with the V&A’s diverse audiences.

The residencies will include a research and developmentphase, enabling practitioners to consider new directions for their own work, work with the collections and plan a project with the public. This could include holding open studios, running workshops or master classes, giving talks and presentations or working with specific groups to produce work for display. This programme of work will be negotiated with the successful candidate and confirmed by the V&A. Any additional activities, such as involvement in the Museum’s public programme will be separately negotiated and an appropriate additional fee agreed.

The resident artist will be supported in their public projects by the V&A’s experienced Education, Access and Diversity staff. This will make a significant contribution to the artist’s own CPD and help to develop a pool of ‘artist educators’ for future museum projects.

Expectations

The focus of the residencies will be on process and on engagement with audiences. We would like to achieve a balance of benefits for the artist, the public and the V&A. Evaluation is a very important component of the residency programme since we will be piloting new approaches and the resident will be asked to contribute to this.

Residents will be expected to:

· be based in the museum for a minimum of 3 days per week

· open their studio to the public for a minimum of one weekday, two late night Fridays per month and one weekend per month (to be arranged in advance)

· display work in progress in their studio (there may also be other opportunities for display elsewhere)

· contribute to the process of dissemination on the V&A website· provide feedback for the purposes of evaluation

Note : work produced during the residency remains the property of the maker, but the residency programme must be acknowledged in any subsequent public or press showing. Any work produced with the public as part of this residency is owned by the V&A.

Selection Criteria

The residency should be dynamic, ambitious and inspiring – pushing forward boundaries of perception about contemporary art and design We are looking for residents who can adopt a range of different roles and who are keen to develop those aspects of their career which include using collections, engaging in public programmes and communicating about their work.

Candidates must demonstrate:

· originality, and evidence of a strong personal style in their work

· dynamic and inspiring ideas about how they would use this opportunity and how they intend to meet the aims of the Museum Residency

· ideas for innovative ways to respond to the V&A’s collections

· an established practice, through a track record of development and regular exposure of new work through exhibitions at a regional, national and international level· an interest in or experience of working in educational / community settings

·an ability to work and communicate with a diverse range of people

Payment

This appointment will be on an Occasional Professional Assistant (OPA) basis and, for the avoidance of doubt, there is no intention to render the Resident an employee of the V&A. The artist will be paid approximately £7000 during their 6 month residency. This will be paid on completion of agreed work stages at the equivalent of £1083 a month (plus 8.3% rolled up holiday pay).

For more information e-mail: hr AT vam.ac.uk

[UK launch of the Electronic Literature Collection Volume 1]

Lastnight was the UK launch of the ELC, the cd and online collection of web works put together by the Electronic Literature Organization.

Guests included
- Scott Rettberg (http://retts.net/, writer, co-editor of ELC Volume 1, co-founder and first executive director of the Electronic Literature Organization)

And the UK-based writers who feature on the ELC Volume 1, who will show their work and discuss what Electronic Literature means for them:
- John Cayley (http://www.shadoof.net/in/)
- Jon Ingold (http://www.ingold.fsnet.co.uk/)
- Chris Joseph (http://www.chrisjoseph.org/)
- Kate Pullinger (http://www.katepullinger.com)

and me, in the place of Dr. Donna Leishman. Sadly I could not do a Scottish accent (I struggle with my own!) but as I spoke about The Deviant: The Possession of Christian Shaw (Sept 2004), Chris interacted/played with the story so audience members were able to enjoy exactly what Donna terms "the fragital":

"an uncommon pairing of the digital experience, involving the individualised remote onscreen touch, and the sense of a material and sensitive tangibility which is located in the drawing, movement, composition and the responsive actions of the visual practice."

[transliteracy colloqiuim - summing up session]

xposted at PaRT and the IoCT Blog

While everyone has an hour to work in their groups, refining the definition and characteristics of transliteracy, I'll add a bit about our summing up session. After lunch everyone had a chance to share ideas and ask questions to the panel about presentations or about the idea of transliteracy in general.

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[thinking blog award]

Yay! Angela Thomas has tagged me with the "thinking blog award."



From the thinking blog site: "remember to tag blogs with real merits, i.e. relative content, and above all - blogs that really get you thinking!"

Five blogs that get me thinking:

• Angela Thomas - especially all Angela's research into second life re: pedagogy and her unfaltering enthusiasm (and great presentations!)
• Sue Thomas - (no relation to Angela) although Sue posts on a variety of blogs it is her extensive work at trAce that I found when beginning my ph.d which showed me that there was someone *out there* with a deep interest in new media technologies and storytelling/writing. Of late, I'm a follower of Sue's musings on all things transliterate at the PaRT blog.
• Ruth Page - and her blog aptly named "digital narratives" which just fits so well with my research especially as Ruth is also concerned with where feminist theory comes into play in new media narratives.
• blogher - "where the women bloggers are." This blog, with numerous bloggers, is a space where (go figure) women bloggers can come together and (yup, that's right) blog. In 2005 the blogher co-founders (Elisa Camahort, Jory Des Jardins, Lisa Stone) held their first conference asking "where are the women bloggers" and now link to over 8000 blogs by women. Uplifting.
• Chris Joseph - originally known to me only as babel and as the uber-creative designer of works such as Inanimate Alice. With his current post at IoCT digital writer in residence his blog keeps me up-to-date with digital art side of new media.

So, what five blogs get you thinking?