Hypertext News from the Western US

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US: West

California

Another good conference on new media: from March 8-10, University of California, Santa Barbara, hosts Interfacing Knowledge: New Paradigms for Computing in the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. Featuring Peter Lunenfeld, Lev Manovich, and Katherine Hayles.

This year Art In Motion (AIM) III, in partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, presents Luna Park, a series of lectures, events, and critical inquiries into digital art practice and culture. During winter and spring 2002, a lecture series and two-day symposium will examine art, technology, entertainment, and activism in the context of globalization, the growing privatization of culture, and our fascination with the spectacular. Featured artists and theorists include Natalie Jeremijenko, DJ Spooky, Coco Fusco, and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. AIM is the annual international festival of time-based media presented by the University of Southern California School of Fine Arts. AIM is directed by artist Janet Owen. The AIM III lecture series and symposium are programmed by artist and AIM Executive Producer Christiane Robbins. Events are free; museum admission is not included.

The Electronic Literature Organization's State of the Arts Symposium will be held at the University of California, Los Angeles, from April 4-6. The event will unite many of the leading writers, critics, publishers and readers working in the field of electronic literature for three nights and two days of readings, demonstrations, and concentrated discussions on the state of the arts of electronic literature. Keynote speakers include novelist Robert Coover, critic Katherine Hayles, and author and publisher Jason Epstein. Register now and receive a 25% early-bird discount.

The UCLA Department of Art History and the Graduate Digital Cultures Group announce Digital Utopia? Digital Dystopia: Rendering the Artistic Object, a conference to be held 1-2 February in Los Angeles. Plenary speakers: Steve Kurtz, Lev Manovich, Scott McCloud.

The Electronic Literature Organization has announced that they are moving their headquarters to UCLA this fall. Details are available at The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Happy Birthday to {fray}, which has just turned 5! Don't miss Derek Powazek this weekend at eNarrative 3 in San Francisco!

To celebrate the recent publication of Richard Holeton's Figurski at Findhorn on Acid, Holeton will give a reading at Stanford University's Meyer Library on Friday, 14 September at 6 pm. This event is hosted by Academic Computing and Stanford University Libraries, in association with eNarrative 3.

The global Fray Day 5 will take place on Saturday, 8 September 2001. If you'd like to organize a Fray Day in your town, just write to info@fray.org with information about where you are and how you'd like to participate. In other {fray} news: {fray} is up for a Webby! Congratulations, Derek Powaczek!

Now at fray: new work by Mary T. Helmes and photos from Fray Cafe Austin.

The Associated Writing Program's Web Fair 2001 will be held in Palm Springs, CA from Thursday, April 19 to Saturday, April 21, 2001. Don't miss this: Evolution and Revolution in Hypertextual Media: The Future of Hypertext on The Internet, with Diane Greco, M.D. Coverley, and Ed Falco. The AWP Web Fair 2001 coordinator is Michael Neff, editor of webdelsol.

In the latest issue of SIGNUM, Brenda Laurel, interactive media guru and author of Computers as Theater, reveals her thoughts on what happened at Purple Moon.

Gene Golovchinsky's Web page provides useful links to papers and an interesting archive of randomness, notably a wonderful set of Russian trip notes.

Rain. Subway. Norbert Streitz's talk. Impossible questions from improbable Russians. Interpreting over lunch. Mad dash to airport. Wrong airport. Mad dash to next airport. Right Airport, wrong floor....

No bus, no bus, no bus, no bus. Bus.

User-interface designer Bruce Tognazzini and Brenda Laurel ("Computers as Theater") have joined Don Norman and hypertext pioneer Jakob Nielsen at the Nielsen Norman Group, a consulting firm.

The Women at the Millennium mail art exhibition, which includes the email-based hypertext Forward Anywhere by Judy Malloy and Cathy Marshall, now has a website. Carla Cryptic, the artist who organized the show, reports that despite poor weather and fire alarm protests, over a hundred people attended the exhibit opening.

Andreas Dieberger has an exciting new job at IBM Almaden, a new address, and a new website. Congratulations, Andreas!

Hypertext pioneer Doug Engelbart will host a colloquium SERIES this fall at Stanford. The Colloquium begins on January 6th and will convene for 10 consecutive Thursday evenings from 4 to 7 P.M. PST. The colloquium will be webcast live. Thanks, Jim Rosenberg!

"Thirty years ago, when I led the team that developed NLS, the first hypertext system, and pioneered collaborative computing, I had a vision of computing that was to augment human intellect by following a comprehensive strategy. . . . I would like to use this Stanford Colloquium -- An In-Depth Look At The Unfinished Revolution -- as an opportunity to share with you a comprehensive strategy that will enable individuals and organizations to begin to cope with the increasingly more rapid pace and constant state of change in modern society. More specifically, the Colloquium will give us a forum to engage in lively dialogue on how we can improve our abilities to leverage our collective IQ.

Hypertext pioneer Randy Trigg has left Xerox PARC to join Work Practice & Technology Associates. With Kaj Gronbaek, he is the author of "From Web to Workplace", and a discussion of his early work on link types remains one of the most-popular issues of HypertextNow. He's currently working with The Global Fund For Women.

Eastgate's Mark Bernstein writes that "the Hypertext 2000 planning meetings were held in Palo Alto last week. On the way back to the airport, I stopped for lunch at Buck's Woodside -- an eatery notorious for its popularity with venture capitalists and other computer-industry dealmakers. Even the checks at Buck's are part of the new economy; my check reminded me, 'Never underestimate the customer's ability to consume.' The rainbow shimmer of the internet bubble. The waitress was only slightly surprised by my taking a digital photo; Buck's takes industry tourists and pilgrims in stride.

Judy Malloy (author of its name was Penelope and co-author with Cathy Marshall of Forward Anywhere) has an interesting paper on Public Literature: Narratives and Narrative Structures in LambdaMoo. She's currently editing a volume on Women in New Media, forthcoming from MIT Press.

Andreas Dieberger is known for his work on social navigation in hypertext -- including a memorable Hypertext '96 paper on using MUDs to coordinate social Web browsing. Starting in January, he'll join the research staff at IBM Almaden.

Timothy Koozin's study, On Metaphor, Technology, and Schenkerian Analysis, uses Shockwave to explore the spatial metaphors that underly the method of analyzing music. Extremely interesting. Thanks, John R. Smith, Jr.

Deena Larsen and Ken Anderson have started a Hypertext Reading Group, meeting each month at the University of Colorado's Norlin Library to discuss a new hypertext fiction. The first meeting, scheduled for September 3, will discuss Bill Bly's We Descend. Open to the public; for details, contact Professor Anderson.

Jim Jones has released a fresh update of his artifactual hypertext, Local News.

Scott McCloud (author of Understanding Comics) offers a peek at his story machine, a tool "for unlocking imaginations by throwing an endless series of conceptual curve balls." It's a diagrammatic idea-generating device. Hypertext writers might also want to think seriously about McCloud's 24-Hour Comic -- an intriguing exercise.

David Sims' Q&A with Scott McCloud, author of Understanding Comics, follows up McCloud's Web99 lecture on "Learning From Comics".

Digital storyteller Abbe Don is the subject of an extensive profile in the Chicago Tribune Magazine.

Leslie Harpold's latest Hoopla feature is a delightful set of home page kits, prefabricated home pages designed for such archetypical characters as "goth girls" and "west coast designers". A lovely take on genre and Web page design (an area pioneered by Marshall and Furuta's 1995 paper on Genre as a Reflection of Technology in the World Wide Web) (postscript)

The latest issue of Salt Hill includes Life In The Chocolate Mountains, a new hypertext by M. D. Coverly.

Bruce Tognazzini explores the worst case scenario of user interface design in When Interfaces Kill: What Really Happened to John Denver

Dan Shafer surveys digital storytelling as a chronicle of our time in Everyday Life in Cyberspace, and calls for special efforts to preserve the Web. He argues that people should be careful about deleting old Web pages; they may be valuable data for achaeologists!

The Ballad of Sand and Harry Soot, by Stephanie Strickland and Janet Holmes, was much admired at the Cybermountain Workshop.

Joe Lambert and Nina Mullen have created a new Center for Digital Storytelling at Berkeley. The San Jose Mercury had extensive coverage of the opening of the center and offers a nice survey of digital storytelling today.

Jakob Nielsen revisited his 1996 list of Top Ten Mistakes of Web Design. He found that people continue to make the same errors (often through ignorance or inattention, sometimes because they disagree with Nielsen). In addition, Nielsen identifies ten new mistakes that arise from new technology and from applications that didn't exist in 1996.

New at the Iowa Review: Robert Kendall's Frame Work.

Scott McCloud's book,Understanding Comics, is well known to hypertext writers, but McCloud's Web site contains new and fascinating work.

N. Katherine Hayles' notable talk on Dinosaur or Postmodern Mutant? Narrative in the Age of Information has a new URL. An interesting, informal interview of Hayles by Josephine Bosma may be found in the latest issue of Swallow.

hell.com tries its best to resist reading. Visitors to this fiction site are greated with a dialog that warns "no entry"; persistent readers will be led through a maze of twisty little warnings and evasions. Navigational feints run wild. Wired News interviewed its designer, Kenneth Aronson.

Colorado

Dana Atchley, founder of the Cresyted Bugttge Digital Storytelling Festival, passed away recently from complications of his bone marrow transplant. Atchley's performance work, Next Exit, was justly acclaimed as a seminal combination of electronic art and theater. His work on the Festival, his tireless search to establish commercial roles for digital storytelling, and his insistence that digital storytelling was a popular form --that everyone has a story to tell -- helped shape the emergence of the medium. A memorial service will be held January 28, 2001 at 3 p.m. at the Cowell Theater, Fort Mason Center, San Francisco.

Deena Larsen's Marble Springs has been selected for the Electronic Easel exhibition at the University of Colorado. Curated by Simon Zalkind, the show runs June-Augiust, 20000.

Hypertext critic and technoculture poet Joe Amato has taken up a new position at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Deena Larsen, author of Samplers and Marble Springs, will be speaking at the Digital Storytelling Festival in Crested Butte, Colorado, September 16-18. Other speakers include Brenda Laurel (who told a wonderful, imprompty story last year about dancing in the meadow), Abbe Don, Dan Bricklin, and many others.

Stained Word Window, a new hypertext poem by Deena Larsen, uses an innovative geometric interface to explore the mysteries of seeing (and not seeing). Stained Word Window is the latest addition to the WordCircuits gallery. Larsen is the author of Marble Springs and Samplers: Nine Vicious Little Hypertexts.

Mark Amerika has a new Web Project, Phon:e:me, commisioned by the Walker Museum of Art. Also, in Trace, Amerika argues that copyright is the tool of "lawyers who play the copyright card to protect moneyed interests" and should be replaced with free distribution.

The First Cybermountain Hypertext Writers' Workshop convened in Denver in June. Organized by Deena Larsen, the workshop brought together more than twenty hypertext writers and system designers for round-the-clock critiques and explorations. Position papers from participants will be published later this year by Aarhus University. Planning is already under way for next year's workshop.

Hawaii

New short hypertext fiction from Sarah Brunner: Some Days.

Web diarist and writer Sarah Bruner has launched a new design for her Web site.

Sarah Bruner is an interesting Web storyteller, not (yet) especially hypertextual, but with an interesting feel for Web pacing. Her journal is mirror mirror.

Sarah Brunner's Three Quarter Moon is a linear short story published on the Web. It's not a hypertext, but uses links as punctuation. When it comes to sex, I've got a lot to learn about scruples.

New Mexico

Lawrence Clark has moved from Texas A&M to take up a tenure-track position at New Mexico Tech. Congratulations! Red chili or green?

Chris Willerton suggests that hypertext readings and studies might be a very popular addition to the Computers and Culture area of the Southwest/Texas Culture Association conference (February 9-12, 2000, in Albuquerque)

New Mexico State's Lawrence Clark has a new hypertext, WeR1, in the current issue of ReSoundings.

At the next regional meeting of the SW/Texas Popular Culture Association, hypertext author Marjorie Luesebrink will discuss her use of popular music, particularly songs by the Grateful Dead, in her epic hypertext Califia, which is forthcoming from Eastgate Systems. She will also perform a reading of Califia. The conference will be held February 9-12 in Albuquerque, NM.

Lawrence Clark is planning a session of hypertext fiction readings at the Southwest/Texas Popular Culture/American Culture Association meetings, February 9-12, 2000 in Albuquerque, NM. Writers interested in participating should contact Prof. Clark by email, or phone (505) 835-5242.

Oklahoma

True North author Stephanie Strickland presented a panel, "Time Dimensions of Hypertext," at the annual meeting of the Science and Literature Society on October 8, in Norman, OK. Also presenting papers on this panel are hypertext authors Marjorie Luesebrink and Deena Larsen.

Oregon

Baldwin Cartoonist Christopher Baldwin recently dropped by Eastgate for lunch. Baldwin draws Bruno, a memorable Web comic, and created the characters for Bernstein's "Where Are The Hypertexts?" and "Where the Hypertexts Are", not to mention the virtual bookstore cat that inhabits the Eastgate Development Peekhole. A big topic of discussion: the best way to arrange collaborative projects with hypertext writers and comic artists.

Washington

Patchwork Girl author Shelley Jackson has a collection of short stories forthcoming from Anchor/Village. Her web site features some new, spontaneous spoken word recordings.

Dave Farkas, Professor of Technical Communication at the University Washington, has a message for The Pacific Northwest Writers Association: think about the possibilities of hypertext fiction. Speaking at the 45th Summer Conference of this traditional writing group, Dave noted that e-books (a hot topic for these writers) will change the business side of publishing more than they will change the craft of writing. Non-linear storytelling is a much more fundamental response than e-books to the new possibilities of the digital age. Farkas especially singled out Patchwork Girl and the www.eastgate.com as examples of the craft.

Shelley Jackson, author of Patchwork Girl, now has a Web site: Shelley Jackson's Ineradicable Stain.

Shelley Jackson, author of Patchwork Girl, has a new story, "Musee Mecanique," in Conjunctions. Congratulations!

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