View Callus’s essay, “Cover to Cover” in the ebr archive.

Luesebrink & Strickland: Patrick LeMieux is concerned that we should promote and honor research into important theoretical issues associated with language and computation, namely “multitemporal moments and multiscalar movements,” because we are positioned to see “what not only outpaces human consciousness but time and space itself.” What is the linguistic analogue of “something that is resolved conceptually but is unresolvable in practice”—could this not be a poetry generator for instance? […]See the full commentary

Luesebrink & Strickland: Stephanie Boluk places us “amidst [a] tempestuous and contestatory media ecology.” The terms “digital” and “electronic” begin to seem to her, and others, outdated, co-opted, or past their prime in terms of rhetorical usefulness. Ian Hatcher finds them too constraining. They should not be used to label technology-aware writing practices if they establish a Procrustean category (folder) as opposed to being one descriptor among others (tag). […]See the full commentary

Luesebrink & Strickland: We fully endorse Boluk’s view of what ELO does, investigating on every level investments that accompany toolsets and language, and in fact language as toolset. We also find ELO vested in learning how to read the nonhuman history of inscriptions in emerging genres and platforms. We believe that using the term “digital” with humanities, as at DHSI, or “electronic” with literature, in an MLA context, in fact permits just such an investigation. “Humanities” and “literature” themselves must change, and they are after all terms of recent vintage compared to very old conc… continue

Luesebrink & Strickland: If for Samantha Gorman ELO risks collapsing by virtue of irrelevance, and she would like us, therefore, to develop a distinctive contemporary “brand,” for Bishop we risk collapsing under our own weight and the undisciplined variety of work we support. He would like to see us disappear, assimilate, in regularized fashion back into the field from which he feels we came, namely literature. Apart from the fact that people in e-lit come from net.art, gaming, design, computer science and other fields in addition to literature, we note that the ELO’s efforts to become a r… continue

Luesebrink & Strickland: In almost complete contrast to Samantha Gorman, Donato would like us to look not toward those farther out on the technological-innovation curve, but those farther back, those on the other side of the digital divide. We cannot emphasize enough that we endorse this goal but must also confess that ELO has not found a realistic way to implement it. We do have a Standing Committee for Outreach on which we invite all interested members to serve. […]See the full commentary

Luesebrink & Strickland: Samantha Gorman, teaching at Rhode Island School of Design, was struck by the generational gap between herself and her students and the much wider gap between her students and older work collected by ELO. […] Gorman analyzes a form of generational aesthetics—as did Florian Cramer in his keynote for the 2012 ELO Conference—that is connected with advertising and the commercial. In order to remain engaged in “developing bodies and new blood: both in terms of evolving approaches and in terms of numbers” she advises looking to our “brand” and looking beyond any idea o… continue

Luesebrink & Strickland: Loss Pequeño Glazier’s call for entries to E-Poetry 2015 opens with full caps: DEDICATED TO THE CONCEPT THAT THERE EXISTS ONE WORLDWIDE CONTEXT FOR DIGITAL LITERATURE. We endorse this worldwide context and point out that such a context makes urgent Natalia Fedorova’s call: to study and practice problems of translation, both of natural languages and of code. To this end, Electronic Literature Collection/3, 2015, has obtained the services of critics as curators in a number of languages and also recruited several translators to help with curation and production. […]… continue

Luesebrink & Strickland: Amaranth Borsuk suggests that the ELO award prizes and help members in their career paths. In 2014 the ELO established the Hayles and Coover Awards for criticism and creation, respectively, of electronic literature works. We established a Standing Committee on Credentialing chaired by Joe Tabbi and another, on Publications, chaired by Philippe Bootz. We believe both can contribute to career-building. […]See the full commentary

Jhave Johnston’s lyric approach to temporary trajectories, perpetual calculus, and paradigm extinctions puts us on notice that we face headwinds of every kind drawn forward, as we are, by something beckoning at the limits of legibility.See the full commentary