[conference: language in the (new) media]

Language in the (New) Media: Technologies and Ideologies

Thursday, September 3 to Sunday, September 6, 2009
University of Washington
Seattle, WA, USA

Download a PDF version of this call for papers

Keynote speakers

• Naomi Baron, American University, USA
• Sally Johnson, University of Leeds, England
• Jannis Androutsopoulos, Kings College London, England
• Theo van Leeuwen, University of Technology Sydney, Australia

Background
This is the third in a series of conferences organized around the role of the media in relation to the representation, construction and/or production of language. The first two conferences were held at Leeds University, England: in 2005, Language in the Media: Representations, Identities, Ideologies, and, in 2007, Language Ideologies and Media Discourse: Texts, Practices, Policies. In 2009, the conference will be leaving Leeds and coming to Seattle.

Conference theme
We invite you to submit abstracts for papers which explore the representation, construction and/or production of language through the technologies and ideologies of new media - the digital discourse of blogs, wikis, texting, instant messaging, internet art, video games, virtual worlds, websites, emails, podcasting, hypertext fiction, graphical user interfaces, and so on. Of equal interest are the ways that new media language is metalinguistically represented, constructed and/or produced in print and broadcast media such as newspapers and television (see below).
With this new media theme in mind, the 2009 conference will continue to prioritize papers which address the scope of the AILA Research Network on Language in the Media by examining the following types of contexts/issues:

• standard languages and language standards;
• literacy policy and literacy practices;
• language acquisition;
• multilingualism and cross-/inter-cultural communication;
• language and communication in professional contexts;
• language and class, dis/ability, race/ethnicity, gender/sexuality and age;
• media representations of speech, thought and writing;
• language and education;
• political discourse;
• language, commerce and global capitalism.

Abstract submission
Please submit abstracts for papers (20 minutes plus 10 for discussion) by email to lim2009@u.washington.edu no later than Thursday 26 February 2009. Abstracts should include a title, your contact details (name, mailing address, email) and a description of your paper (250 -350 words). The conference committee will begin reviewing abstract submissions immediately after the deadline; notification of acceptance will be Thursday 19 March. (Please send your abstract as a Word document or in the body of your email.)

Program and registration
In order to help your early planning for the conference, we have already finalized the basic program structure for the conference a copy of which can be downloaded here (as a PDF). This outline shows the start and finish times of the conference, the main social events (reception, BBQ and conference dinner), as well as lunches and coffee breaks. The conference planning committee is also arranging an optional program of tours and activities for Sunday 06 September. A business meeting for the AILA Network will also be scheduled for the Sunday morning.

Official conference registration will begin on Thursday 19 March, with early registration ending Thursday 21 May. The final deadline for presenter registration will be Thursday 23 July in order to be included in the final program. Registrations after 23 July will be charged an additional late registration fee of $25.00.

Conference registration
Early registration – until 21 May	$350
Early registration (full-time students)	$300
Registration – until 23 July	$380
Registration (full-time students)	$330
Day rate registration (accepted until 20 August)	$150

[haptics and hypertext]

"Reading is a multi-sensory activity, entailing perceptual, cognitive and motor interactions with whatever is being read."

Anne Mangen at the National Centre for Reading Education and Research, University of Stavanger published a paper in October on haptics and immersion in hypertexts such as M.D. Coverley's Califia (2000), C. Guyer and M. Joyce's Lasting Image (2000) and there is reference to afternoon.

Mangen's article is interesting in it's approach, taking a phenomenological one. She explains: "If we take the main purpose and motivation for our reading to be that of becoming immersed in a fictional world, then the text will have to provide the necessary setting for such a phenomenological sense of presence – by way of whatever modality telling the story."

Though people do seem to equate turning the pages of print books with clicking a mouse Mangen notes that these two activities are quite different: there is an "ontological" difference.

"The feeling of literally being in touch with the text is lost when your actions – clicking with the mouse, pointing on touch screens or scrolling with keys or on touch pads – take place at a distance from the digital text, which is, somehow, somewhere inside the computer, the e-book or the mobile phone."

Mangen goes on to explain that the demand to click/interact in certain hypertext stories actually undoes any possible sense of immersion (a la Marie-Laure Ryan).

"The links in a hypertext fiction present themselves as an experiential potential, a latently accessible actualisation of something currently unavailable, which becomes readily accessible with the click of a mouse. The sensory–motor affordances of the computer make it very easy to rekindle our attention, getting access to something beyond our present experience. As such, text or icons that yield (i.e., hot spots) afford haptic interaction with the computer. We experience these as links to be clicked on, and such
affordance is necessarily incompatible with phenomenological immersion."

Though I agree with a large part of what Mangen and others argue, I do wonder whether there is a different kind of reader, perhaps emerging in line with this turned-on, 21st century, tech world, a reader who actually becomes more immersed the more physical the demand of reading becomes? I know reading some narratives like Donna Leishman's Red Riding Hood (mentioned in this blog before) which requires a greater degree of haptics (compared with afternoon et al), I found myself more "in" the story, actually moving my own way around. Perhaps gamer-readers won't find this cross-modal situation distracting, though Mangen notes that as a "psychobiological rule" we tend to allow motor senses to overpower cognitive ones.


Read the full article here (if you have access):
Hypertext fiction reading: haptics and immersion, by Anne Mangen in the Journal of Research in Reading, Volume 31, Issue 4 (p 404-419).

See also this article that is freely available: Storybooks On Paper Better For Children Than Reading Fiction On Computer Screen, According to Expert in ScienceDaily (Dec. 22, 2008).

[creative writing & new media masters campus week seminars]

Following yesterday's slog, the students get a bit of a break today when they can sit back and listen to a few presentations including one by me on reading multimodal narratives, a panel on african digital literature and Peter Howard on digital poetry.

From the programme:

10.00-11.00 Meet your Reader Dr Jess Laccetti presents a reader�s eye view of new media writing.

11.00-11.30 Break

11.30-12.30 African Writing and New Media
Chair: Professor Sue Thomas
IOCT PhD student and novelist Anietie Isong introduces his research into African Writers and the Internet, and Nur Yaryare of the Somali Afro European Media Project presents his plan for a new media African heritage project in Leicester.

12.30-13.30 Lunch break

13.30-15.00 Writing and Publishing New Media
Chair: Kate Pullinger
Sara Lloyd and Michael Bhaskar, digital editors at Pan Macmillan, discuss Sara�s Book Publisher�s Manifesto for the 21st century, and Chris Meade, former CWNM student and Director of if:book London, presents Digital Livings, a report commissioned by CWNM to assess the potential of new media as a career path for writers.
Preparatory Reading for this session:
Book Publisher’s Manifesto for the 21st century by Sara Lloyd
Digital Livings by Chris Meade

15.00-15.30 Break

15.30-16.30 E-Poetry
This year CWNM offers an E-Poetry workshop for the first time. Tutor Peter Howard presents an introduction to E-Poetry including a selection of his own work.

Read more at the ioct blog.

[new media writing and publishing, 22 Oct 2008, ioct]

Every autumn, First Year CWNM students spend a week on campus at DMU. This year Campus Week includes a day of discussion open to DMU students, staff, and the general public. It takes place on Wednesday 22 October 2008 at the Institute of Creative Technologies, De Montfort University, Leicester. Admission is free and booking not required, but space is limited so arrive early to secure a seat.

10.00-11.00 Meet your Reader Dr Jess Laccetti presents a reader’s eye view of new media writing.

11.00-11.30 Break

11.30-12.30 African Writing and New Media
Chair: Professor Sue Thomas
IOCT PhD student and novelist Anietie Isong introduces his research into African Writers and the Internet, and Nur Yaryare of the Somali Afro European Media Project presents his plan for a new media African heritage project in Leicester.

12.30-13.30 Lunch break

13.30-15.00 Writing and Publishing New Media
Chair: Kate Pullinger
Sara Lloyd and Michael Bhaskar, digital editors at Pan Macmillan, discuss Sara’s Book Publisher’s Manifesto for the 21st century, and Chris Meade, former CWNM student and Director of if:book London, presents Digital Livings, a report commissioned by CWNM to assess the potential of new media as a career path for writers.
Preparatory Reading for this session:
Book Publisher's Manifesto for the 21st century by Sara Lloyd
Digital Livings by Chris Meade

15.00-15.30 Break

15.30-16.30 E-Poetry
This year CWNM offers an E-Poetry workshop for the first time. Tutor Peter Howard presents an introduction to E-Poetry including a selection of his own work.

16.30-17.00 Plenary

17.00 End

[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.

[employment opportunity - Kairos is hiring]

Kairos - An online academic open-access peer-reviewed journal that focuses on digital and multimodal practises and pedagogy. They're hiring a Praxis section assistant editor(s) and a Reviews section assistant editor(s).

Get applications in by Friday, September 19, 2008. Interviews are scheduled for soon after. The start dates is November, 2008.

[ 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.

[inanimate alice & media literacy]

While working on the second Education Pack to accompany Inanimate Alice and to coincide with the release of Episode 4 (yay!) I'm researching various countries and their (sometimes very different) approaches to the teaching of new media writing/digital literature/electronic literature/born digital fiction... (insert term of your choice). I've recently come across an interesting publication: "A European Approach to Media Literacy in the Digital Environment" created by the Commission of the European Communities published on the 20th of December 2007. The report reminds readers that although media use is widely acknowledged as a key enabler, there is little understanding of how "the media work in the digital world, who the new players in the media economy are and which new possibilities, and challenges, digital media consumption may present" (p.2)



This EU document also presents a very detailed definition of media literacy including the notion of critical literacy. Some aspects of the definition have tinges of transliteracy, encouraging the use of different kinds of media and their role in daily life:

[exploring a million penguins - order and chaos in a wiki novel]

@ the IOCT on 23 April 2008

presenter: Bruce Mason

In February 2007, DMU and Penguin Publishing collaborated to host the world’s first wiki novel - “A Million Penguins” - using the same software that runs Wikipedia. Over a five week period nearly 1,500 people signed up to edit the novel, over 11,000 edits were made and it was viewed over 500,000 times leading the CEO over Penguin Publishing to muse that it was maybe the “most written novel in history.”

In this seminar, Bruce Mason will outline the results of a research project held at the Institute Of Creative Technologies (IOCT) which investigated the social behaviour that unfolded during the writing of “A Million Penguins.” What kinds of collaboration, conflict and compromise occurred and what did it tell us about future online writing possibilities? Did a sense of community arise or did we see nothing but chaos and vandalism?

The seminar will not require any particular knowledge of wikis or online writing.

About the presenter
Bruce Mason is an IOCT Post-Doctoral Research Fellow specialising in social research and web2.0 activities. He previously worked at DMU with Professor Sue Thomas on an Arts and Humanities Research Council Funded Project (http://www.ioct.dmu.ac.uk/tnn/) that investigated the potential for folksonomy in academic research.

About A Million Penguins
A Million Penguins is a collaborative online novel, a wiki which was open to anyone in the world to write and edit. The project ran from 1st Feb to 7th March 2007, was organised by Kate Pullinger (http://www.katepullinger.com) of De Montfort University and Jeremy Ettinghausen of Penguin, with Sue Thomas, Professor of New Media at De Montfort and an editorial team of students enrolled on De Montfort’s Online MA in Creative Writing and New Media.

[grading digital storytelling]

For ages now I've been on the hunt for some rubrics geared towards grading digital stories...I mean, how do we mark for both narrative (and all the aspects including point of view, plot, character, language etc...) AND the digital medium (images used, html, sound, user-interaction etc...). Bryan Alexander has been keeping track of web 2.0 storytelling and education and he also wonders whether there are any rubrics out there tackling both the medium and the content. I've found Meg Ormiston's rubrics at tech teachers and another rubric at the bottom of the "Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling" page. The latter is based on rubrics found here, Dr. Helen Barrett's work and Scott County, Kentucky Schools.









Does anyone know of any more?

[web 2.0 + storytelling = education]

Creating Lifelong Learners has an interesting post on a "Digital Storytelling Blog Carnival" featuring links to everything educators might like to know about digital storytelling. A link from his (Matthew Needleman's) post leads to an EduCause Connect conversation featuring Bryan Alexander, Director for Research at the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education (NITLE) and Gail Matthews-DeNatale, Associate Director for Academic Technology at Simmons College.

A blurb about the discussion:

"Digital storytelling merges leading-edge technology with age-old storytelling processes. Digital stories are typically in video format but can also include Web pages, digital maps, and other emerging technology mashups. With the addition of a Web 2.0 focus, audience also becomes co-author. How do these concepts apply to pedagogy and how can instructors evaluate and assess the process and final product?"

The discussion begins with the question: "What is Web 2.0 storytelling and how is it different from multi-media?" Bryn responds: "Web 2.0 storytelling is the combination of web 2.0 platforms and practises with storytelling, the desire to tell a story and narrative structure." He also add that web 2.0 is based on the social and micro content, both these ideas have a big impact on how students can use the web.

Gail: "With the 2.0 experience there is a much lower barrier to use..."

Bryn also makes the point that educators shouldn't try to stop students from using wikipedia or googling for answers but should encourage students how to "search more broadly."

"How do you access digital story telling production?"

Gail: "I'm a very big fan of the process...the power of story as this kind of conversational iterative process is the power of assessment (formative assessment)...I give them a rubric and they give feedback according to the rubric."

Bryan: "This is the problem with the audio, you can't tell if I'm agreeing or disagreeing...it's important to recognise that we've been composing in multimedia for a long time...it's hard for us to recognise the history of technology, we tend to define tech. as the most recent thing. We can draw on how people were asssessing hypertext in the 80s and how people were assessing web pages in the 90s. You have to select evidence and materials and assess them and that process (of selection) can be assessed."

Gail: "I would add to this that there is a context, what I'd have a first year, first semester student do would be very different for a final year communication student...Sometimes it's useful to have two rubrics, one for the subject matter and one for the media literacies."

I like Gail's idea of having two rubrics...that would certainly make it clear to students exactly how their work was being assessed...but, for transliteracy or digital literacy or new media literacy etc...should we be working towards rubrics (and other strategies) that can more fully *intertwingle* form (process) and content?

Listen to the entire podcast here but I've tried to embed it below:

This discussion took place at the ELI 2008 Annual Meeting in San Antonio, Texas where Gail Matthews-DeNatale presented a session at ELI 2008 called "Digital Story Making: Understanding the Learner's Perspective" and Bryan Alexander presented a workship at ELI 2008 on "Web 2.0 Storytelling".

[literacy in transliteracy]

"maintaining heterogenous contradiction is essential"


(Julia Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language, 189).

While catching up on some reading and sifting through my google reader, my thoughts keep turning to Monday's transliteracy workshop. Again the notion of literacy appeared (initially) to cause some discomfort or at least problematisation. What *exactly* is literacy? Did we mean it in a linguistic book-sense? Should we be employing another term? Although it seemed there was general agreement that literacy points to modes of comprehension that extend beyond letters to mean *codes* in a broader sense, I frequently am asked why we don't just say visual literacy or multi-media literacy etc... For me, transliteracy is very much about a plurality - it isn't *just* visual or oral or linguistic and it isn't just about being media savvy. I think a large part of being transliterate is the ability to carry multiple literacies between media. For me, aspects of the web seem to exemplify this. I'm thinking of Twitter and sending updates via a mobile (txt literacy perhaps) to the web (web literacy) and then someone being notified of those updates on their mobiles, via rss aggregators, IM or just be following along on the web. Amidst these kinds of information exchanges there are also literacies required to navigate across literacy borders, to *read* images and sounds. I'm also thinking of web fictions (Dene Grigar's Fallow Field, Donna Leishman's Red Riding Hood, Marjorie Luesebrink's Fibonacci's Daughter etc...) which require readers to be literate in sounds, images, text and interaction and often this literacy requires readers to amalgamate these literacies into the same instant of reading/understanding/interacting/performing. Maybe using the word literacy in transliteracy might also be thought of (in my view) as a Kristevian move; (like Judith Butler and Luce Irigaray too suggest); one can challenge traditions (literary and otherwise) from within. So, using the term literacy can suggest a critique of (monomodal?) foundations. A sort of productive mimesis, repetition with a difference?

Iterability is "the logic that ties repetition to alterity"

(Derrida, "Signature, Event, Context," 180).

[reading links in dene grigar's fallow field]

Today's guest lecture (conducted via Skype) for the Creative Writing and New Media Master's will focus on the role of links in Dene Grigar's Fallow Field. The lecture is due to take place today at 14:00 GMT.

I'll begin with a bit of background, describing my theory of multi-mimesis and giving an idea of how I see links functioning (at least the potential for links using Fallow Field as an exemplar web fiction).

Here is an excerpt from my reading of links in Fallow Field:




NB: The first footnote in my excerpt refers to the source text, Fallow Field, and the second reference is to an e-mail I received from Dene.

[thesis]

Have just printed out a draft of the entire thesis...first time I've actually seen the *whole* thing.

It's BIG.


And I've already found typos...

[kristeva: the woman question]

As I begin to write (or at least think about writing!) my thesis introduction I'm reflecting on the double-bind I find apparent in certain web fictions: a desire to multi-mimetically represent combined with a simultaneous recognition of its inadequacy. In her text on Colette, Kristeva sees representation (or creation) as incommensurable with any singular identity. For any identity must constantly be questioned, reworked, and repositioned:

"Is there a feminine genius, then? The genius of women from the last century has invited us not to elude the question and to consider this: concerns about the feminine have been the communitarian path that has allowed our civilization to reveal, in a new way, the incommensurability of the singular. Although it took root in sexual experience, that incommensurability of genius is realized in the risks that each person is capable of taking, by calling into question thought, language, one's time, and any identity that finds shelter in them." (Kristeva, Colette 426-427).

An interview with Kristeva (which I found thanks to the Continental Philosophy Blog)



She explains that the epistemological tradition underpinning modern linguistics presuppose a split between subject and object. This "soliditiy of consciousness" (Descartes anyone?) becomes contentious during periods of social flux which Kristeva suggests are times of creation and innovation. And this is her theory, that the subject is dynamic and its constitution (signifiance) is dynamic. An example of this dynamism in language is found in Joyce (for Kristeva) as he wants readers to "hear the rhythm of his sentences." I wonder how this might transform in the online environment. How might the rhythm of image come to bear on the signifiance of Red in Donna Leishman's fiction or on the autodiegetic narrator of Dene Grigar's Fallow Field?

[matricide in leishman's red riding hood]

I'm tidying up my final thesis chapter (omg!); making things a bit clearer, rephrasing, adding some quotations, and deleting what is repetitive or unneccessary. I'm finding this last bit (deleting) the most difficult as there seem to be so many things I want to say about the works I'm researching. While going over Donna Leishman's Red Riding Hood in terms of the multiple worlds that are available to the reader I've been stuck on the penultimate scene (of the linear reading). Red is in bed at her grandmother's house, with what looks to be a bag of knitting paraphernalia at her feet. As she sleeps the suspicious boy-wolf draws back a curtain and enters. He reaches over, seemingly to brush the hair off Red's face but then, suddenly and wholely unexpectedly (at least on my part) he reveals a gun which he holds to Red's head. Ok. So maybe this is *straight-forward* murder, boy kills girl. But, before the wolf entered the room the reader also had a chance to *violate* Red, though not as violently. The reader can touch Red's distended stomach to reveal a pregnancy; Red is carrying a girl. This is really a double murder, a murder of mother and daughter. But how might we interpret this? If Showalter demands the killing of "the Angel in the house, that phantom of female perfection who stands in the way of freedom" and who turns out to be Woolf herself [Showalter 265], then does the killing of Red signify the death of a blockade to Red's freedom? Is it with death that Red can escape that double-bind: the inadequacy of representation and the concomittant desire to represent her becoming subjectivity? Kristeva argues that we are always negotiating the other within as subjects in process, so here is this an overt inability to negotiate (or at least a challenge) the pivot between self and other? Also, if Red is unaware of either the wolf or of the reader touching her stomach, does this suggest a Cartesian split between mind and body, the two for Red here are seemingly disconnected? Or is this simply the death of the woman as "body"? (I'm thinking here of Robyn Longhurst who writes about pregnant woman as "containers"). Then in death that bind and that split dissolve? But, because it is the wolf who facilitates this, does that intimate that a man is necessary to bring a woman *together*, to resolve her identities? And what about choice...and, the most important question: does Red really die?

[nano technology]

I was reading an article on the super conductor/layered oxide NaxCoO2 that, through various "conducting probe-mediated reversible electrochemical sodium intercalation/deintercalation reactions" information can be written and then erased (I'm sure I'm over-simplifying). In awe of the words used (oxidated, intercalated, superconductivity, nitrogen flux, nanolithographic) and wondering what this might mean for us, the end users of technology led me - via a google search - to a whole new world. A world of a thinking so different from my current, humanities-based research. (it's invigorating to be reminded how we can (or is it just me) get very focused one something which is just a tiny part of a bigger everything) In this world where one can measure conductivity (among a myrid of other things so different from my current examination of multi-mimesis and transliteracy in women-authored web fictions), language and story and critique have the privilege of ephemerality, rather this seems to be a world where experiments are necessary and quantifiable results are produced. One such product is the 3D Atomic Holographic Optical Data Storage Nanotechnology. It is a rewritable holographic removable disk.

"An Atomic / Photonic / Molecular / Quantum / Spintronic / Holographic Switch is the method of using a UV laser atom nanoparticle optical switch defined by a non-contact terahertz nano/microwave electric field modulator using attosecond, femtosecond, terahertz UV photons (electromagnetic radiation) simultaneously to alter properties of ferroelectric molecules for data and light expression. Through the use of UV photon induced electric field poling and dynamically changing the internal geometry of individual ferroelectric atoms in a 3 dimensional optical crystal coated on a high / low velocity substrate.
The UV laser diodes and electric field transducers of the Integrated Read/Write Head can be used in any combination or sequence to control the molecules which include UV/blue photon frequencies and quantum energy level as well as Nano/Micro electro static field strength (voltage) and switching field densities (frequency).The only rub is the cost per bit will be cheaper, faster to access, and faster to store for a much longer time uneffected by many environmental conditons." (see here for more)

[the reading revolution]

On Tuesday the 3rd of July I'll be speaking along with Cally Poplak, Director of Egmont Press, Paul Duffield, Manga Artist, Sue Horner, Head of Standards and Assessment Policy, QCA, and Joshua Beasley (he will offer the views of a "young person"). We'll be discussing what reading means today, in the 21st century. Of course I'm going to talk about reading online and the need for critical literacy as well as multi-modal sensibilities.

I don't know about the others, but since I'm on the panel I know it won't be a repeat of the recent very one-sided Digitise or Die session held the South Bank Center in London.

[transliteracy colloquium]

Tomorrow is the big day! We'll be sharing our blossoming thoughts on transliteracy with a wide variety of delegates (including Microsoft, the Cartoon Network, Pixel Lab, researchers, practitioners, etc...). I'm looking forward to hearing what transliteracy might mean to an artist or perhaps to an engineer - will be a great learning opportunity.

On the topic of web 2.0 I see the BBC seems to agree with Jakob Nielsen that web 2.0 isn't about *good design*. Hrm...sounds a bit like *authors* who say a narrative isn't a narrative anymore when there is the addition of sound, image, video, etc...apparently words need to be sufficient to create the scene for readers, if words don't do the job, then that's not a good narrative (I have had *real life* authors tell me this btw)...but who says multiple modes actually do the same job as words? Aren't all representational devices different and each has a specific affordance? It all seems a bit to foreboding and reminiscent of the Digitise or Die panel...especially when Nielsen says: "Although people in their late 30s make very different use of the web to those in their teens, Mr Nielsen expects that when those teenagers grow up the time they spend online will diminish." My online use as only increased with age (although not 30...yet!)

[digitise or die: a personal reflection]

xposted at the PaRT blog.


As I entered the empty auditorium (I was the first there) I paused and took in my surroundings: padded leatherette seats for the audience, modern, sleek white armchairs for the panel, a bottle of water next to each long-necked microphone, dimmed lights, shining stage, and a background image centered behind the panel announcing the speakers and the title of the talk. I then settled in, ready for "compelling arguments" which, I read, would "leave [me] with a renewed enthusiasm for books and vowing to spend less time online."



Well...that didn't happen.


I suppose activating my prior knowledge (hearing an Atwood interview on Start the Week earlier in the day) and noting the bold "or" in the title of the talk should have dampened my enthusiasm. But it didn't. I was eager to hear what contemporary authors and a publisher might have to say about current developments in technology very firmly vis-a-vis books.

Rather than tackle issues arising from the evolution and expansion of digital lit. (things like multimodality, transliteracy, deep learning vs. surface learning, changing roles of the author and reader) all four speakers seemed to focus on the materiality of the book (almost always referred to in its singular form). Atwood and Wagner seemed to find it especially important that we find a book sensual, we can touch it (Stephen Page added that we could smell books...including the glue used for binding...) and, of course, read it in a bath. However, won't printed pages soak or at least dampen, blurring the font and wrinkling the pages? Why might bringing a book into the bath be the test for "good" reading?



"Besides, more people take showers these days than baths."

O'Hagan began the discussion with a story of how he "mispent his use" hunting for books and winding his way through the rows of books his local library had to offer - something impossible with e-books.



For O'Hagan the joy came from the difficulty of finding the books, they were "old" he says, "very often dusty and a little bit exclusive." "Democratization brings to an end that [notion] of exclusivity." Now, this seems to be the key and in fact the notion of exclusivity kept making an appearence throughout the remainder of the presentation. O'Hagan also made sure to equate exclusivity of reading with a eduction, taste, judgement - all serious qualities that the "democratization" of books (I think he means Austen's availablity on Project Gutenberg) threatens to "demolish" the world of books. "Throwing everything out there" is a "terrible" thing because all readers (not sure whether he means the educated or uneducated ones...) only get a "terrible mishmash" of "unedited...unjudged, uncontrolled material..." This is where O'Hagan brings in the idea of copyright but, not in terms of money (as Atwood said, authors don't do numbers, their agents do) but in terms of being recognised for "serious" ideas. Copyright O'Hagan says is to "select, edit and present material in a way that actually has meaning and umm virtue."

On that note Page begins his segment of the talk by admitting that publishers, writers, all those print-folk, have been "softened-up" as "luddites" who are "sentimentally attached to cracking a book open and sniffing the pages..loving the glue." He says the "technophiles" would love this to be the case but, Page explains, "it's not the truth." He does go on to make a pertinent point in relation to copyright (but I think it can be extended to all digital development) that it is constantly under revision and changes and "makes itself appropriate for the market, gets relegislated...and is adapting very successfully to the modern environment" (however he does not mention Creative Commons et al.). Copyright "must be protected." Those technophiles mustn't think of copyright as something "rather inconvenient." Enter blogger jibe but thank goodness "we don't have to read that stuff anymore." In fact, with the plethora of stuff on the internet, Page admits it's "getting harder to attract people" (those educated readers?). He goes on to insert a quote here but wait, he's forgotten where he's read it, "one reads so many"



Interestingly, putting a positive spin on abundance (unlike O'Hagan), Page explains that intention becomes increasingly important as does finding something "good" and having "trusted recommendations" (sounds like he's been buying books on Amazon...)

Atwood then takes up the talk by suggesting a temporal change: had lastnight's discussion occurred 2000 years ago we would have been talking about "the death of the scroll." Well, that's what the title of the talk refers to then, digitise and authors and books die. At least Atwood exhibited a sense of humor, joking that if we stop publishing books we'll save trees - that's "the positive bit." Well, at least she mentioned a positive. What about access, what about empowerment, what about appealing to different kinds of learners, what about creativity, and why does digital lit. seem to be synonymous with supplanting "the book?" Sadly, it was Atwood's talk that left me the most disheartened. For her, a book is "having a voice with you" "even if that person is dead..." Does Atwood mean the author? So only dead people write books? The people in my row were certainly confused. Moving along, why would digital lit. be any different? Especially in the way the speakers were talking about online reading. For them it was exactly like a book, just text, appearing on a screen. No one mentioned the addition of images, sounds, and, most importantly especially from a pedagogical sense, interaction! This was not a discussion about the future of the book, this was a rant calling for the demise of reading text on a glaring computer screen. In fact Atwood explains, "We're supposed to be talking about computers and whether everybody is going to read your book on a computer...not yet." So that's digital lit.; a print novel not published on paper and left in it's "native" environment...hrm. Atwood goes on to say "it's very hard for one thing to read 500 consecutive pages of Anna Karina on a computer without having something go really wrong with your eyes." I think it would be difficult to read 500 pages straight of anything (nevermind the medium, I'd need a coffee break). How would you actually absorb that and then critically assess what was being said, by whom, and why? Fortuitously Atwood points out that "another thing with computers, you don't neurologically assimilate the information to the same extent that you do with the page...they've done tests of this and that's why when you send somebody a memo you have to itemise all the things you want them to do and number them otherwise they won't see those things."



Who are the "they" who have done such tests. Where were they conducted...what other tests share the same findings? I did some research and found Jakob Nielson explain how people read "web pages" (not memos, not digital lit...): "People rarely read Web pages word by word; instead, they scan the page, picking out individual words and sentences. In research on how people read websites we found that 79 percent of our test users always scanned any new page they came across; only 16 percent read word-by-word." Thus "we should teach students how to write hypertext and not how just to write printed documents." Exactly, and, we can teach students how to read online (see my lesson plan on Inanimate Alice). Even more crucially, I think, how are memos like novels or like digital lit.? How can these different objects which are crafted to perform different functions and employ different media, and (often) appeal to different audiences, be compared? Atwood sums up the inadequacy of this analogy when she responds to Page's call for "good" e-books by saying "what you mean by a good e-book is one that is really like a book" (not even a "good" book mind you, just a book.)

And so the talk continued until question time. Sadly Wagner didn't seem to moderate the question period and encourage either the panel to stop talking once questions had been (more or less) answered or more discussion from the floor. This resulted in only four questions being broached because certain participants felt it their duty to offer lengthy eulogies on the merits of the book (which no one really doubts). The first question was very good and raised my hopes and was asked by the director of accessiblity at a digital design agency concerning the accessibility of a digitised book (the font size can be easily changed, it can be turned into braille, and it can be transformed into audio) however "digital rights management threatens to slam the door shut...if copyright [drm] means there are such secure locks on digital books." Page answers: "I'm not quite sure how digital rights management would prevent that." Really, like this: "The impact of compatibility limitations can be especially serious for users with special needs. For example, visually impaired users may not be able to access digital content effectively if DRM renders the content incompatible with specialized text-to-speech devices or software. See All Party Parliamentary Internet Group, supra note 3, at 13-14 (noting that DRM can “prevent the disabled from accessing digital content . . . because the specialist hardware and software that
is used to convert the content into speech, Braille, or large type, fails to interwork with the protected material)."

After the first question (emanating from the second row), Wagner made a tactical decision and seemed to prefer taking questions from the back (I was in the first row) and from more seasoned looking people, preferably those with pens and paper (I had a digital camera). The second question was directed at O'Hagan: "is there no quality in digital text" to which he responded that "it's true" that to read "literary" work (previously referred to as high-culture) one should be smart or educated but "fact is, education and a serious literary culture have a partnership." By ignoring the merits digital literature offers and the different and wider audience it might reach, nevermind it's still neophyte state, O'Hagan made a call for the "reinstating of that connection" (between "serious books" and education). And he doesn't mean students using google to write term papers...



Favourite Quotes: "What they mean by content, we mean books." "One reason you haven't heard much of the longtail is because it's become a boardroom cliche."
Key Words: serious, literature, bath, paper, glue, book, education, intelligence, exclusivity, high-culture

Personal Aside: just because readers enjoy digital literature or art does not mean that by fiat they just will not appreciate or understand print lit. Why does the anxiety that one will eclipse the other remain? And, how different might this presentation have been had a digital writer or artist been involved?

[inanimate alice in the digitally literate classroom]

xposted from Frontline Books

Katherine Gallagher notes that “teachers…cannot ignore the new media, at any cost” and Rita Raley explains “the critical discourse on new media writing (in different accounts “cybertext” and “electronic literature”) asserts an intricate and necessary connection between the text and the medium.”

I too cannot ignore new media (I don’t think anyone can). On a pedagogical front it is most important that students become and are encouraged to be digitally literate and transliterate (for example) in order to take into account both the story and the medium in which it is represented. What follows is my attempt to bring a digital fiction into the classroom.

(NB: You can tweak this lesson to make it level appropriate. I'm interested in hearing any reactions you or your student's might have)

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Digital Literacy Lesson Plan: Connection between story and medium in “Episode 1: China,” Inanimate Alice

Student Resource:

Digital Literacy: “Literature in a Hypermedia Mode: An interview with Marjorie Luesebrink” by Thomas Swiss and “Electronic Literacies” by Caitlin Fisher

Modes: “Examining a Picture” by Dr. Martha Driver, “On Gold and Silver Ages and the Elements of Hypertext” by Jennifer Ley (see page 2) and “Hypertext and the Art of Memory” by Janine Wong and Peter Storkerson

Reflective Reading: Handout Here

Media Type: Online, internet connection required

Objectives:

After completing this lesson, students will be able to:

• Identify and become familiar with multiple modes of representation.


• Critique the effects of various modes on the narrative.


• Give examples of explicit calls for participatory reading in Inanimate Alice.

Introduction to the Lesson:

Direct students to the resources listed above: “Literature in a Hypermedia Mode” and “Electronic Literacies.” Alternatively, print copies of both of the above for distribution in class. Divide class into small groups of two or three and have each group read one of the resources. Have each group share two points from their readings with the class (create a list on the white board). Ask for students’ reactions to the points garnered. Initiate a discussion of whether students think the points are relevant only to digital literacy or apply also to print works.

Teaching Strategies:

1. Begin by going over (with students) elements of representation: images, sound, video (streaming video, flash), animations, text, and links. Refer to the student resources listed under “Modes.”


2. Show students Episode 1: China, Inanimate Alice – this will take approximately five minutes.


3. Allow students to work in pairs and navigate the story on their own.


4. With the whole class explore the use of “sensory inputs”: sound, image, and text in this episode.

Some Directions:

• Notice that the music begins on the third screen. Why do you think it appears here? Turn your volume off (or turn the speakers off) and look at the third screen closely - what effect does the music have on the general tone of this screen? Does it lend a sense of urgency which otherwise is not there?


• On the sixth screen the arrows which allow the reader to proceed appear on the road. Why do you think they are placed here and not close to the text as in previous screens?

• Screen seven is in stark contrast to the preceding scene in terms of sound. This node is almost silent. What sounds do you hear? What do you think that noise is? What might it suggest about Alice’s home at the base?

• Screen eight enables the reader to proceed to the next part of the story relatively quickly. If the reader waits, a painting evolves on the left-hand side of the screen. What do you see emerge? Do you notice a difference in the colours used for each layer of the painting that appears?

• Midway through the narrative the reader and Alice must take photographs of all the wild flowers they can see. When you read the story for the first time, did you know you had to take the pictures or did you think it was only for Alice? How many flowers did you see? Was Alice’s mum driving too quickly for you to take photographs of all four flowers? Did the music help you concentrate?

• When Alice writes her list of things she’d rather be doing, does she sound like an eight year old? What else (hint, look at the font) helps us think she is only eight?

• Examine the final two screens of the story. How do the various modes help you understand that this is the end of the story (even if the words do not say: “the end”)? (hint: listen to the sound, notice the jeep driving off the screen, see the darkening sky)

Follow Up:

* Critical Thinking. Give an example from Episode 1 that demonstrates Alice’s comfort with technology. What other examples can you find to support this view? What message do you think the creators are trying to convey?

*Summarising. What, according to the story, are some of the benefits of technology? How does the story persuade readers that this is the case?

*Extending. Certain critics of hypertext suggest that the reader becomes disoriented resulting in an unintelligible narrative. Do you find yourself displaced when reading Episode 1 of Inanimate Alice? How do you think the creators attempt to guide the readers through the evolving narrative? Do you have your own suggestions for making the path through the narrative clearer? Explain your answers.

*Evaluating. Episode 1 of Inanimate Alice makes use of a variety of modes such as sound, image, text as well as demanding reader participation. In what way are these modes related? If you had to choose a single mode that adds the most to the story, which would it be? Explain your answer.

Student Assessment/Reflections
1)Use the Student Reading Response handout to encourage personal reflection on the reading process. Have students share their likes and dislikes of the online reading experience with partners. If the technology permits, have students post their responses on the class blog.
2)Inanimate Alice is just one example of an online fiction. Ask students to add their own choice (or more) to a class list on the class blog.