Grand Text Auto

I recently answered a series of interesting questions about ppg256, questions that pertained to digital preservation among other issues.

I just wanted to share the one that I thought about the longest. Although I care deeply about properly addressing issues of energy use, recycling, and ethical sourcing of computer components, I think that there are some problems with putting a great deal of weight on these when one is specifically in digital art and digital poetry contexts. I was asked:

What effect does the environment, both location and ecology, have on the
work?  Does it have long term implications such as power usage, recycling,
etc?  Are those addressed in the work itself?

I’ve read a few books of poetry recently that I found particularly interesting, so why not mention them here?

Man Years by Sandra Doller. Beautifully damaged utteraces that are highly unusual, resonant with known ways of speaking, and allusive. E.g., in the poem “Eggphrasis,” which begins “eggs / eggs / baby”.

The Container Store by Joe Hall and Chad Hardy. Urban space is explored, and its commercial division and compartmentalization. The typography is compelling, with black blocks often occluding the text like the blind eyes of office buildings.

At the Media Systems gathering Janet Murray made a clarion call for deeper fundamental research in computational media, moving forward interdisciplinary understanding through the creation of new genres:

There has to be someplace where you say, “How do we reconfigure knowledge?” Because that is what happens when you have a new medium of representation, as with the printing press. And we’re not making fast enough progress there, because nobody’s getting rewarded for it, nobody’s being paid to do it.

When asking how the humanities, the arts, and computer science can come together to create new possibilities for media making and understanding, we might choose to be purely theoretical. But why would we do this, when we have decades of experience to draw upon?

Tiltfactor games scored recent applause from some of the biggest names in gaming journalism. Check them out:

Dad’s Gaming Addiction called buffalo “both an excellent mind teaser and a superb party game,” recommending it for families and older groups.

According to Play Unplugged: “If you’re looking for a game to bring to gathering that isn’t known for its tabletop proclivities (especially those with casual gaming friends), Buffalo is the game for you.”

Check out The Dice Tower’s video review of buffalo here.

ZOMBIEPOX also received a shout out from Dad’s Gaming Addiction as “a fantastic way to bring friends and families closer together.”

Full text PDF: An Emerging Canon? A Preliminary Analysis of All References to Creative Works in Critical Writing Documented in the ELMCIP Electronic Literature Knowledge Base

Circular Visualization of all critical writing references to creative works documented in the ELMCIP KB.

ABSTRACT: As of July 2013, the ELMCIP Electronic Literature Knowledge Base includes documentation of more than 2,000 creative works and more than 2,000 articles of critical writing. Many of the records of critical writing include cross-references to the creative works they address. This article presents a preliminary analysis of all of the critical writing-to-creative work cross-references currently documented in the Knowledge Base in the aggregate. By developing static and interactive visualizations of this data, we might begin to see the outlines of an emerging “canon” of electronic literature.

I have two new digital pieces (one a collaboration) that have just been published by James O’Sullivan’s New Binary Press:

Round is a computational poem that is non-interactive, deterministic, and infinite (boundless), since it simply substitutes text fragments for the digits 0-9 and presents a representation of the digits of pi. See the note for further information, and if the concept intrigues you at all, please, run the piece for a while.

The Media Systems gathering last summer brought together a remarkable group of participants from digital arts, digital humanities, and media-focused computer science. It was convened by a historic group of partners — the National Science Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, and National Endowment for the Arts (in their first-ever collaboration) together with both Microsoft Studios and Microsoft Research. I was amazed and pleased to spend three days with the group we assembled, discussing important topics for the future of computational media.

Members of the Tiltfactor team are heading to Gen Con (August 15-18th in Indianapolis) next week to run a booth featuring our games! This year, our booth will have even more gaming fun! In addition to unveiling two card games at the convention, we’re bringing back big Buffalo, our favorite name dropping card game, with a twist. JOIN THE CONTEST AND WIN PRIZES!

Here’s how to play:

1. Follow our Twitter or Facebook to find out the latest pair of big Buffalo cards we’ve released. We’re going to tweet out a new pair at noon and 3:00PM everyday!
2. Bring a person who matches the description on both cards to the booth. If you’re the first to complete the challenge, then you both WIN AMAZON GIFT CARDS!

If you visit this page on the Worl, you may wonder how to read it.

Now, if you just click on that link, you’ll be taken to that page on the Web. To get to the Worl page, you’ll need to install The Deletionist bookmarklet and, once you get to the Web page, click on it. If the page is exactly the same as when I viewed it (it may change, as it’s a wiki front page) you can be sure that your Worl page looks the same as mine did — we’re both looking into the same Worl.