Category Archives: exhibiting + presenting

showing my work at festivals, conferences, online exhibitions, publications…

Augmented e-poetry at ELO_AI

Strange things can happen to the reader when printed matter unlocks digital delights!

ELO_AI Arts Installation

ELO_AI Arts Program Installations

In early June an international collection of e-lit was installed in a gallery setting in downtown Providence (Rhode Island, USA) for the Arts Program of the Electronic Literature Organization 2010 Conference (ELO_AI), including my own piece, Underbelly. There were many wonderful works presented but I’d like to pick out a few that made me think about transliteracy in particular: Requiem, Ethereal Landscapes and Between Page And Screen.

The creators of these works augment their digital art and e-poetry with print, employing a delightful topsy-turvy kind of transliteracy, whereby the printed matter becomes a device for reading the digital, rather than the usual way remediation goes when texts originated for print are digitized. Reading these works, you wonder, where is the poem, where is the story? The poem, the art is powerfully and clearly present, but you’re aware that it doesn’t exist in the computer and it doesn’t exist on the page – it’s between these realms, slipping and sliding along the virtuality continuum – or perhaps it’s the reader who is transliterately sliding around in mixed reality?

It’s an experience that simultaneously displaces and enchants the human reader. It slides you into a magical zone where somehow your corporeal reading equipment – eyes (and reading glasses) – have been substituted by a black & white graphic and a webcam or barcode reader. It’s only when, and if, you allow yourself to be transformed like this that the poetry appears for you.

Have a look at the works, see where they take you… Read More »

29 June 2010 by crissxross | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Electronic Literature Directory launches

Electronic Literature Directory

The Electronic Literature Directory is a resource for readers and writers of born-digital literature. Created by the Electronic Literature Organization, it provides an extensive database listing electronic works, their authors, and their publishers. The descriptive entries are drafted by a community of e-lit authors who also tag each work and identify the techniques used in its creation. Discussions of entries are ongoing and offer a networked, peer-to-peer model for literary review.

This will be a great resource of e-literature, and already contains a substantial amount of work, but it’s just the beginning, there is much more to add! Anyone with an account can submit entries to the Directory (but authors may not write about their own works) and entries must be about e-literature (defined below) although e-lit antecedents, such as Raymond Queneau’s 100,000,000,000,000 Poems, are included.

Electronic Literature refers to works with important literary aspects that take advantage of the capabilities and contexts provided by the stand-alone or networked computer.

See also the lively debate here: Electronic Literature Directory Gets a Redesign, in response to the question posed, “What do you think about electronic literature? Has it lived up to the hype?”

On a personal note

Visiting the Directory the other day, I was delighted to see some of my early works entered – a surprise too! How odd it felt to read an interpretation of  Heights, that I hadn’t quite intended:

With an eerie sound of wind blowing, the poem describes a fall from the Heights. On its surface, the piece describes a journey to the top of a building and a near disastrous slip. Taken metaphorically, Heights tells a story of faith and doubt, as the writer struggles to hold on for fear of falling.

Certainly, it’s a valid interpretation and I sincerely appreciate it, but since I don’t personally subscribe to a faith, it surprised me. I was tempted to log in to add a qualifying note – my reflex reaction – but really, once a work is published and out there, it has a life of its own. Who am I to meddle? What authority do I have to privilege some interpretations over others? Indeed, thanks Tanci, for making me look at Heights afresh.

18 May 2010 by crissxross | Also posted in crissxross | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Underbelly in PW10 at Arnolfini

Performance Writing 2010 – PW10 festival 8 & 10 May

PW10 is a partnership event between Performance Writing and the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol. It will be a two day gathering of many who have been associated with Performance Writing over its illustrious 15 year history. The weekend will comprise performances, talks, readings, exhibitions, interventions and a workshop.

Underbelly is part of an exhibition of digital textwork/e-literature curated by J. R. Carpenter for the festival. It’s being shown alongside these works by the following fantastic writers/artists:

Before sending a CD of Underbelly to J.R. for the exhibition, I made some tweaks to it, which I’ve long been wanting to do but hadn’t found time lately due to the demands of my freelance work. So now I think I should accept – deep breath – that the piece is finally finished! I can move on to new work… Bliss!

5 May 2010 by crissxross | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Underbelly in Beta & Transliteracy

Underbelly screenshot

Screenshot of Underbelly

Underbelly ‘beta version’ launched today!

UPDATE: new version uploaded 26 March 2010

Underbelly is my latest playable media fiction that I created in Flash. I call it a playable fiction because you need to explore it with your mouse to find and play the many voices of the narrator. It’s about a woman sculptor, carving on the site of a former Yorkshire colliery, now landscaped into a country park. As she carves, she is disturbed by a medley of voices, along with her ticking biological clock, and the player/reader is plunged into an underworld of the artist’s repressed fears and desires mashed up with the disregarded histories of the 19th Century women who once worked underground mining coal.

Yesterday I performed Underbelly at the stimulating and wonderfully amplified Transliteracy Research GroupTransliteracy Conference in Leicester at the new Phoenix Square Digital Media Centre. The conference was a rich mix of practitioners’ talks, academic papers and artists’ presentations. I was delighted to share an artists’ panel, classed as Transliterate Practice, with Michael J Maguire, who performed his experimental piece, cameltext, and Steve Gibson, who talked about his game-installation, Grand Theft Bicycle. (Later in the day I took a joy ride on his eponymous bicycle and caused a bit of havoc in game-art shooter land;) To get a flavour of our panel session, see the liveblog: Practice in Transliteracy – parallel session 2

Calling for Underbelly user testers

Taking my cue from another Transliteracy presentation, Kirsty McGill on Remote Audiences, I’d like to engage some remote user testing of Underbelly. As discussed in my panel’s session, one kind of transliterate practice is where an individual artist takes on a number of roles to create a multimedia digital work across what are traditionally considered different disciplines. This is certainly how I made Underbelly – I devised, wrote, designed, programmed, animated, image-edited, sound recorded/mixed and even performed the voices. One thing I didn’t do was carve the sculptures – that’s the work of my sister, Melanie Wilks. I relish working in multiple media on my own, independently, but one of the downsides is that I hardly have anyone around me to grab and say, ‘Hey, have a go at this, does it work for you?’ (other than my hard-pressed partner, Dane Gould, whom I can’t thank enough) and usability testing is essential for interactive pieces.

So I would be very grateful if, after playing with Underbelly, you would leave comments for me here about any bugs or issues you might find, or any improvements you’d like to see to the user interface. Comments on any other aspect of the work would be most welcome too. Cheers.

11 February 2010 by crissxross | Also posted in Flash artworks | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)