Tag Archives: Kate Pullinger

The Internet of Bodies and Ghislaine Boddington

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I stumbled across this event on my Twitter feed (h/t @katepullinger; Note: Kate Pullinger is a novelist and Professor of Creative Writing and Digital Media, Director of the Centre for Cultural and Creative Industries [CCCI] at Bath Spa University in the UK).

Anyone who visits here with any frequency will have noticed I have a number of articles on technology and the body (you can find them in the ‘human enhancement’ category and/or search fro the machine/flesh tag). Boddington’s view is more expansive than the one I’ve taken and I welcome it. First, here’s the event information and, then, a link to her open access paper from February 2021.

From the CCCI’s Annual Public Lecture with Ghislaine Boddington eventbrite page,

This year’s CCCI Public Lecture will be given by Ghislaine Boddington. Ghislaine is Creative Director of body>data>space and Reader in Digital Immersion at University of Greenwich. Ghislaine has worked at the intersection of the body, the digital, and spatial research for many years. This will be her first in-person appearance since the start of the pandemic, and she will share with us the many insights she has gathered during this extraordinary pivot to online interfaces much of the world has been forced to undertake.

With a background in performing arts and body technologies, Ghislaine is recognised as a pioneer in the exploration of digital intimacy, telepresence and virtual physical blending since the early 90s. As a curator, keynote speaker and radio presenter she has shared her outlook on the future human into the cultural, academic, creative industries and corporate sectors worldwide, examining topical issues with regards to personal data usage, connected bodies and collective embodiment. Her research led practice, examining the evolution of the body as the interface, is presented under the heading ‘The Internet of Bodies’. Recent direction and curation outputs include “me and my shadow” (Royal National Theatre 2012), FutureFest 2015-18 and Collective Reality (Nesta’s FutureFest / SAT Montreal 2016/17). In 2017 Ghislaine was awarded the international IX Immersion Experience Visionary Pioneer Award. She recently co-founded University of Greenwich Strategic Research Group ‘CLEI – Co-creating Liveness in Embodied Immersion’ and is an Associate Editor for AI & Society (Springer). Ghislaine is a long term advocate for diversity and inclusion, working as a Trustee for Stemette Futures and Spokesperson for Deutsche Bank ‘We in Social Tech’ initiative. She is a team member and presenter with BBC World Service flagship radio show/podcast Digital Planet.

Date and time

Thu, 24 June 2021
08:00 – 09:00 [am] PDT

…

@GBoddington

@bodydataspace

@ConnectedBodies

Boddington’s paper is what ignited my interest; here’s a link to and a citation for it,

The Internet of Bodies—alive, connected and collective: the virtual physical future of our bodies and our senses by Ghislaine Boddington. AI Soc. 2021 Feb 8 : 1–17. DOI: 10.1007/s00146-020-01137-1 PMCID: PMC7868903 PMID: 33584018

Some excerpts from this open access paper,

The Weave—virtual physical presence design—blending processes for the future

Coming from a performing arts background, dance led, in 1989, I became obsessed with the idea that there must be a way for us to be able to create and collaborate in our groups, across time and space, whenever we were not able to be together physically. The focus of my work, as a director, curator and presenter across the last 30 years, has been on our physical bodies and our data selves and how they have, through the extended use of our bodies into digitally created environments, started to merge and converge, shifting our relationship and understanding of our identity and our selfhood.

…

One of the key methodologies that I have been using since the mid-1990s is inter-authored group creation, a process we called The Weave (Boddington 2013a, b). It uses the simple and universal metaphor of braiding, plaiting or weaving three strands of action and intent, these three strands being:

1. The live body—whether that of the performer, the participant, or the public;

2. The technologies of today—our tools of virtually physical reflection;

3. The content—the theme in exploration.

As with a braid or a plait, the three strands must be weaved simultaneously. What is key to this weave is that in any co-creation between the body and technology, the technology cannot work without the body; hence, there will always be virtual/physical blending. [emphasis mine]

…

Cyborgs

Cyborg culture is also moving forward at a pace with most countries having four or five cyborgs who have reached out into media status. Manel Munoz is the weather man as such, fascinated and affected by cyclones and anticyclones, his back of the head implant sent vibrations to different sides of his head linked to weather changes around him.

Neil Harbisson from Northern Ireland calls himself a trans-species rather than a cyborg, because his implant is permanently fused into the crown of his head. He is the first trans-species/cyborg to have his passport photo accepted as he exists with his fixed antenna. Neil has, from birth, an eye condition called greyscale, which means he only sees the world in grey and white. He uses his antennae camera to detect colour, and it sends a vibration with a different frequency for each colour viewed. He is learning what colours are within his viewpoint at any given time through the vibrations in his head, a synaesthetic method of transference of one sense for another. Moon Ribas, a Spanish choreographer and a dancer, had two implants placed into the top of her feet, set to sense seismic activity as it occurs worldwide. When a small earthquake occurs somewhere, she received small vibrations; a bigger eruption gives her body a more intense vibration. She dances as she receives and reacts to these transferred data. She feels a need to be closer to our earth, a part of nature (Harbisson et al. 2018).

…

Medical, non medical and sub-dermal implants

Medical implants, embedded into the body or subdermally (nearer the surface), have rapidly advanced in the last 30 years with extensive use of cardiac pacemakers, hip implants, implantable drug pumps and cochlear implants helping partial deaf people to hear.

Deep body and subdermal implants can be personalised to your own needs. They can be set to transmit chosen aspects of your body data outwards, but they also can receive and control data in return. There are about 200 medical implants in use today. Some are complex, like deep brain stimulation for motor neurone disease, and others we are more familiar with, for example, pacemakers. Most medical implants are not digitally linked to the outside world at present, but this is in rapid evolution.

Kevin Warwick, a pioneer in this area, has interconnected himself and his partner with implants for joint use of their personal and home computer systems through their BrainGate (Warwick 2008) implant, an interface between the nervous system and the technology. They are connected bodies. He works onwards with his experiments to feel the shape of distant objects and heat through fingertip implants.

‘Smart’ implants into the brain for deep brain stimulation are in use and in rapid advancement. The ethics of these developments is under constant debate in 2020 and will be onwards, as is proved by the mass coverage of the Neuralink, Elon Musk’s innovation which connects to the brain via wires, with the initial aim to cure human diseases such as dementia, depression and insomnia and onwards plans for potential treatment of paraplegia (Musk 2016).

…

Given how many times I’ve featured art/sci (also know as, art/science and/or sciart) and cyborgs and medical implants here, my excitement was a given.

*ETA December 28,2021: Boddington’s lecture was posted here on July 27, 2021.*

For anyone who wants to pursue Boddington’s work further, her eponymous website is here, the body>data>space is here, and her University of Greenwich profile page is here.

For anyone interested in the Centre for Creative and Cultural Industries (CCCI), their site is here.

Finally, here’s one of my earliest pieces about cyborgs titled ‘My mother is a cyborg‘ from April 20, 2012 and my September 17, 2020 posting titled, ‘Turning brain-controlled wireless electronic prostheses into reality plus some ethical points‘. If you scroll down to the ‘Brain-computer interfaces, symbiosis, and ethical issues’ subhead, you’ll find some article excerpts about a fascinating qualitative study on implants and ethics.

Next Horizons: Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) 2016
 conference in Victoria, BC

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The Electronic Literature Organization (ELO; based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology [MIT]) is holding its annual conference themed Next Horizons (from an Oct. 12, 2015 post on the ELO blog) at the University of Victoria on Vancouver Island, British Columbia from June 10 – June 12, 2016.

You can get a better sense of what it’s all about by looking at the conference schedule/programme,

Friday, June 10, 2016

8:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.: Registration
MacLaurin Lobby A100

8:00 a.m.-10:00 a.m: Breakfast
Sponsored by Bloomsbury Academic

10:00 a.m.-10:30: Welcome
MacLaurin David Lam Auditorium A 144
Speakers: Dene Grigar & Ray Siemens

10:30-12 noon: Featured Papers
MacLaurin David Lam Auditorium A 144
Chair: Alexandra Saum-Pascual, UC Berkeley

  • Stuart Moulthrop, “Intimate Mechanics: Play and Meaning in the Middle of Electronic Literature”
  • Anastasia Salter, “Code before Content? Brogrammer Culture in Games and Electronic Literature”

12 Noon-1:45 p.m.  Gallery Opening & Lunch Reception
MacLaurin Lobby A 100
Kick off event in celebration of e-lit works
A complete list of artists featured in the Exhibit

1:45-3:00: Keynote Session
MacLaurin David Lam Auditorium A 144
“Prototyping Resistance: Wargame Narrative and Inclusive Feminist Discourse”

  • Jon Saklofske, Acadia University
  • Anastasia Salter, University of Central Florida
  • Liz Losh, College of William and Mary
  • Diane Jakacki, Bucknell University
  • Stephanie Boluk, UC Davis

3:00-3:15: Break

3:15-4:45: Concurrent Session 1

Session 1.1: Best Practices for Archiving E-Lit
MacLaurin D010
Roundtable
Chair: Dene Grigar, Washington State University Vancouver

  • Dene Grigar, Washington State University Vancouver
  • Stuart Moulthrop, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee
  • Matthew Kirschenbaum, University of Maryland College Park
  • Judy Malloy, Independent Artist

Session 1.2: Medium & Meaning
MacLaurin D110
Chair: Rui Torres, University Fernando Pessoa

  • “From eLit to pLit,” Heiko Zimmerman, University of Trier
  • “Generations of Meaning,” Hannah Ackermans, Utrecht University
  • “Co-Designing DUST,” Kari Kraus, University of Maryland College Park

Session 1.3: A Critical Look at E-Lit
MacLaurin D105
Chair: Philippe Brand, Lewis & Clark College

  • “Methods of Interrogation,” John Murray, University of California Santa Cruz
  • “Peering through the Window,” Philippe Brand, Lewis & Clark College
  • “(E-)re-writing Well-Known Works,” Agnieszka Przybyszewska, University of Lodz

Session 1.4: Literary Games
MacLaurin D109
Chair: Alex Mitchell, National University of Singapore

  • “Twine Games,” Alanna Bartolini, UC Santa Barbara
  • “Whose Game Is It Anyway?,” Ryan House, Washington State University Vancouver
  • “Micronarratives Dynamics in the Structure of an Open-World Action-Adventure Game,” Natalie Funk, Simon Fraser University

Session 1.5: eLit and the (Next) Future of Cinema
MacLaurin D107
Roundtable
Chair: Steven Wingate, South Dakota State University

  • Steve Wingate, South Dakota State University
  • Kate Armstrong, Emily Carr University
  • Samantha Gorman, USC

Session 1.6: Authors & Texts
MacLaurin D101
Chair: Robert Glick, Rochester Institute of Technology

  • “Generative Poems by Maria Mencia,” Angelica Huizar, Old Dominion University
  • “Inhabitation: Johanna Drucker: “no file is ever self-identical,” Joel Kateinikoff, University of Alberta
  • “The Great Monster: Ulises Carrión as E-Lit Theorist,” Élika Ortega, University of Kansas
  • “Pedagogic Strategies for Electronic Literature,” Mia Zamora, Kean University

3:15-4:45: Action Session Day 1
MacLaurin D111

  • Digital Preservation, by Nicholas Schiller, Washington State University Vancouver; Zach Coble, NYU
  • ELMCIP, Scott Rettberg and Álvaro Seiça, University of Bergen; Hannah Ackermans, Utrecht University
  • Wikipedia-A-Thon, Liz Losh, College of William and Mary

5:00-6:00: Reception and Poster Session
University of Victoria Faculty Club
For ELO, DHSI, & INKE Participants, featuring these artists and scholars from the ELO:

  • “Social Media for E-Lit Authors,” Michael Rabby, Washington State University Vancouver
  • “– O True Apothecary!, by Kyle Booten,” UC Berkeley, Center for New Media
  • “Life Experience through Digital Simulation Narratives,” David Núñez Ruiz, Neotipo
  • “Building Stories,” Kate Palermini, Washington State University Vancouver
  • “Help Wanted and Skills Offered,” by Deena Larsen, Independent Artist; Julianne Chatelain, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
  • “Beyond Original E-Lit: Deconstructing Austen Cybertexts,” Meredith Dabek, Maynooth University
  • Arabic E-Lit. (AEL) Project, Riham Hosny, Rochester Institute of Technology/Minia University
  • “Poetic Machines,” Sidse Rubens LeFevre, University of Copenhagen
  • “Meta for Meta’s Sake,” Melinda White

 

7:30-11:00: Readings & Performances at Felicita’s
A complete list of artists featured in the event

Saturday, June 11, 2016

 

8:30-10:00: Lightning Round
MacLaurin David Lam Auditorium A 144
Chair: James O’Sullivan, University of Sheffield

  • “Different Tools but Similar Wits,” Guangxu Zhao, University of Ottawa
  • “Digital Aesthetics,” Bertrand Gervais, Université du Québec à Montréal
  • “Hatsune Miku,” Roman Kalinovski, Independent Scholar
  • “Meta for Meta’s Sake,” Melinda White, University of New Hampshire
  • “Narrative Texture,” Luciane Maria Fadel, Simon Fraser University
  • “Natural Language Generation,” by Stefan Muller Arisona
  • “Poetic Machines,” Sidse Rubens LeFevre, University of Copenhagen
  • “Really Really Long Works,” Aden Evens, Dartmouth University
  • “UnWrapping the E-Reader,” David Roh, University of Utah
  • “Social Media for E-Lit Artists,” Michael Rabby

10:00: Gallery exhibit opens
MacLaurin A100
A complete list of artists featured in the Exhibit

10:30-12 noon: Concurrent Session 2

Session 2.1: Literary Interventions
MacLaurin D101
Brian Ganter, Capilano College

  • “Glitching the Poem,” Aaron Angello, University of Colorado Boulder
  • “WALLPAPER,” Alice Bell, Sheffield Hallam University; Astrid Ensslin, University of Alberta
  • “Unprintable Books,” Kate Pullinger [emphasis mine], Bath Spa University

Session 2.2: Theoretical Underpinnings
MacLaurin D105
Chair: Mia Zamora, Kean University

  • “Transmediation,” Kedrick James, University of British Columbia; Ernesto Pena, University of British Columbia
  • “The Closed World, Databased Narrative, and Network Effect,” Mark Sample, Davidson College
  • “The Cyborg of the House,” Maria Goicoechea, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

Session 2.3: E-Lit in Time and Space
MacLaurin D107
Chair: Andrew Klobucar, New Jersey Institute of Technology

  • “Electronic Literary Artifacts,” John Barber, Washington State University Vancouver; Alcina Cortez, INET-MD, Instituto de Etnomusicologia, Música e Dança
  • “The Old in the Arms of the New,” Gary Barwin, Independent Scholar
  • “Space as a Meaningful Dimension,” Luciane Maria Fadel, Simon Fraser University

Session 2.4: Understanding Bots
MacLaurin D110
Roundtable
Chair: Leonardo Flores, University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez

  • Allison Parrish, Fordham University
  • Matt Schneider, University of Toronto
  • Tobi Hahn, Paisley Games
  • Zach Whalen, University of Mary Washington

10:30-12 noon: Action Session Day 2
MacLaurin D111

  • Digital Preservation, by Nicholas Schiller, Washington State University Vancouver; Zach Coble, NYU
  • ELMCIP, Allison Parrish, Fordham University; Scott Rettberg, University of Bergen; David Nunez Ruiz, Neotipo; Hannah Ackermans, Utrecht University
  • Wikipedia-A-Thon, Liz Losh, College of William and Mary

12:15-1:15: Artists Talks & Lunch
David Lam Auditorium MacLaurin A144

  • “The Listeners,” by John Cayley
  • “The ChessBard and 3D Poetry Project as Translational Ecosystems,” Aaron Tucker, Ryerson University
  • “News Wheel,” Jody Zellen, Independent Artist
  • “x-o-x-o-x.com,” Erik Zepka, Independent Artist

1:30-3:00: Concurrent Session 3

Session 3.1: E-Lit Pedagogy in Global Setting
MacLaurin D111
Roundtable
Co-Chairs: Philippe Bootz, Université Paris 8; Riham Hosny, Rochester Institute of Technology/Minia University

  • Sandy Baldwin, Rochester Institute of Technology
  • Maria Goicoechea, Universidad Complutense de Madrid
  • Odile Farge, UNESCO Chair ITEN, Foundation MSH/University of Paris8.

Session 3.2: The Art of Computational Media
MacLaurin D109
Chair: Rui Torres, University Fernando Pessoa

  • “Creative GREP Works,” Kristopher Purzycki, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee
  • “Using Theme to Author Hypertext Fiction,” Alex Mitchell, National University at Singapore

Session 3.3: Present Future Past
MacLaurin D110
Chair: David Roh, University of Utah

  • “Exploring Potentiality,” Daniela Côrtes Maduro, Universität Bremen
  • “Programming the Kafkaesque Mechanism,” by Kristof Anetta, Slovak Academy of Sciences
  • “Reapprasing Word Processing,” Matthew Kirschenbaum, University of Maryland College Park

Session 3.4: Beyond Collaborative Horizons
MacLaurin D010
Panel
Chair: Jeremy Douglass, UC Santa Barbara

  • Jeremy Douglass, UC Santa Barbara
  • Mark Marino, USC
  • Jessica Pressman, San Diego State University

Session 3.5: E-Loops: Reshuffling Reading & Writing In Electronic Literature Works
MacLaurin D105
Panel
Chair: Gwen Le Cor, Université Paris 8

  • “The Plastic Space of E-loops and Loopholes: the Figural Dynamics of Reading,” Gwen Le Cor, Université Paris 8
  • “Beyond the Cybernetic Loop: Redrawing the Boundaries of E-Lit Translation,” Arnaud Regnauld, Université Paris 8
  • “E-Loops: The Possible and Variable Figure of a Contemporary Aesthetic,” Ariane Savoie, Université du Québec à Montréal and Université Catholique de Louvain
  • “Relocating the Digital,” Stéphane Vanderhaeghe, Université Paris 8

Session 3.6: Metaphorical Perspectives
MacLaurin D107
Chair: Alexandra Saum-Pascual, UC Berkeley

  • “Street Ghosts,” Ali Rachel Pearl, USC
  • “The (Wo)men’s Social Club,” Amber Strother, Washington State University Vancouver
Session 3.7: Embracing Bots
MacLaurin D101

Roundtable
Zach Whalen, Chair

  • Leonardo Flores, University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez Campus
  • Chris Rodley, University of Sydney
  • Élika Ortega, University of Kansas
  • Katie Rose Pipkin, Carnegie Mellon

1:30-3:30: Workshops
MacLaurin D115

  • “Bots,” Zach Whalen, University of Mary Washington
  • “Twine”
  • “AR/VR,” John Murray, UC Santa Cruz
  • “Unity 3D,” Stefan Muller Arisona, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern; Simon Schubiger, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern
  • “Exploratory Programming,” Nick Montfort, MIT
  • “Scalar,” Hannah Ackermans, University of Utrecht
  • The Electronic Poet’s Workbench: Build a Generative Writing Practice, Andrew Koblucar, New Jersey Institute of Technology; David Ayre, Programmer and Independent Artist

3:30-5:00: Keynote

Christine Wilks [emphasis mine], “Interactive Narrative and the Art of Steering Through Possible Worlds”
MacLaurin David Lam Auditorium A144

Wilks is British digital writer, artist and developer of playable stories. Her digital fiction, Underbelly, won the New Media Writing Prize 2010 and the MaMSIE Digital Media Competition 2011. Her work is published in online journals and anthologies, including the Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 2 and the ELMCIP Anthology of European Electronic Literature, and has been presented at international festivals, exhibitions and conferences. She is currently doing a practice-based PhD in Digital Writing at Bath Spa University and is also Creative Director of e-learning specialists, Make It Happen.

5:15-6:45: Screenings at Cinecenta
A complete list of artists featured in the Screenings

7:00-9:00: Banquet (a dance follows)
University of Victoria Faculty Club

Sunday, June 12, 2016

 

8:30-10:00: Town Hall
MacLaurin David Lam Auditorium D144

10:00: Gallery exhibit opens
MacLaurin A100
A complete list of artists featured in the Exhibit

10:30-12 p.m.: Concurrent Session 4

Session 4.1: Narratives & Narrativity
MacLaurin D110
Chair: Kendrick James, University of British Columbia

  • “Narrativity in Virtual Reality,” Illya Szilak, Independent Scholar
  • “Simulation Studies,” David Ciccoricco, University of Otago
  • “Future Fiction Storytelling Machines,” Caitlin Fisher, York University

Session 4.2: Historical & Critical Perspectives
MacLaurin D101
Chair: Robert Glick, Rochester Institute of Technology

  • “The Evolution of E-Lit,” James O’Sullivan, University of Sheffield
  • “The Logic of Selection,” by Matti Kangaskoski, Helsinki University

Session 4.3: Emergent Media
MacLaurin D107
Alexandra Saum-Pascual, UC Berkeley

  • “Seasons II:  a case study in Ambient Video, Generative Art, and Audiovisual Experience,” Jim Bizzocchi, Simon Fraser University; Arne Eigenfeldt, Simon Fraser University; Philippe Pasquier, Simon Fraser University; Miles Thorogood, Simon Fraser University
  • “Cinematic Turns,” Liz Losh, College of William and Mary
  • “Mario Mods and Ludic Seriality,” Shane Denson, Duke University

Session 4.4: The E-Literary Object
MacLaurin D109
Chair: Deena Larsen, Independent Artist

  • “How E-Literary Is My E-Literature?,” by Leonardo Flores, University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez Campus
  • “Overcoming the Locative Interface Fallacy,” by Lauren Burr, University of Waterloo
  • “Interactive Narratives on the Block,” Aynur Kadir, Simon Fraser University

Session 4.5: Next Narrative
MacLaurin D010
Panel
Chair: Marjorie Luesebrink

  • Marjorie Luesebrink, Independent Artist
  • Daniel Punday, Independent Artist
  • Will Luers, Washington State University Vancouver

10:30-12 p.m.: Action Session Day 3
MacLaurin D111

  • Digital Preservation, by Nicholas Schiller, Washington State University Vancouver; Zach Coble, NYU
  • ELMCIP, Allison Parrish, Fordham University; Scott Rettberg, University of Bergen; David Nunez Ruiz, Neotipo; Hannah Ackermans, Utrecht University
  • Wikipedia-A-Thon, Liz Losh, College of William and Mary

12:15-1:30: Artists Talks & Lunch
David Lam Auditorium A144

  • “Just for the Cameras,” Flourish Klink, Independent Artist
  • “Lulu Sweet,” Deanne Achong and Faith Moosang, Independent Artists
  • “Drone Pilot,” Ian Hatcher, Independent Artist
  • “AVATAR/MOCAP,” Alan Sondheim, Independent Artist

1:30-3:00 : Concurrent Session 5

Session 5.1: Subversive Texts
MacLaurin D101
Chair: Michael Rabby, Washington State University Vancouver

  • “E-Lit Jazz,” Sandy Baldwin, Rochester Institute of Technology; Rui Torres, University Fernando Pessoa
  • “Pop Subversion in Electronic Literature,” Davin Heckman, Winona State University
  • “E-Lit in Arabic Universities,” Riham Hosny, Rochester Institute of Technology/Minia University

Session 5.2: Experiments in #NetProv & Participatory Narratives
MacLaurin D109
Roundtable
Chair: Mia Zamora, Kean University

  • Mark Marino, USC
  • Rob Wittig, Meanwhile… Netprov Studio
  • Mia Zamora, Kean University

Session 5.3: Emergent Media
MacLaurin D105
Chair: Andrew Klobucar, New Jersey Institute of Technology

  • “Migrating Electronic Literature to the Kinect System,” Monika Gorska-Olesinka, University of Opole
  • “Mobile and Tactile Screens as Venues for the Performing Arts?,” Serge Bouchardon, Sorbonne Universités, Université de Technologie de Compiègne
  • “The Unquantified Self: Imagining Ethopoiesis in the Cognitive Era,” Andrew Klobucar, New Jersey Institute of Technology

Session 5.4: E-Lit Labs
MacLaurin D010
Chair: Jim Brown, Rutgers University Camden

  • Jim Brown, Rutgers University Camden
  • Robert Emmons, Rutgers University Camden
  • Brian Greenspan, Carleton University
  • Stephanie Boluk, UC Davis
  • Patrick LeMieux, UC Davis

Session 5.5: Transmedia Publishing
MacLaurin D107
Roundtable
Chair: Philippe Bootz

  • Philippe Bootz, Université Paris 8
  • Lucile Haute, Université Paris 8
  • Nolwenn Trehondart, Université Paris 8
  • Steve Wingate, South Dakota State University

Session 5.6: Feminist Horizons
MacLaurin D110
Panel
Moderator: Anastasia Salter, University of Central Florida

  • Kathi Inman Berens, Portland State University
  • Jessica Pressman, San Diego State University
  • Caitlin Fisher, York University

3:30-5:00: Closing Session
David Lam Auditorium MacLaurin A144
Chairs: John Cayley, Brown University; Dene Grigar, President, ELO

  • “Platforms and Genres of Electronic Literature,” Scott Rettberg, University of Bergen
  • “Emergent Story Structures,” David Meurer. York University
  • “We Must Go Deeper,” Samantha Gorman, USC; Milan Koerner-Safrata, Recon Instruments

I’ve bolded two names: Christine Wilks, one of two conference keynote speakers, who completed her MA in the same cohort as mine in De Montfort University’s Creative Writing and New Media master’s program. Congratulations on being a keynote speaker, Christine! The other name belongs to Kate Pullinger who was one of two readers for that same MA programme. Since those days, Pullinger has won a Governor General’s award for her fiction, “The Mistress of Nothing,” and become a professor at the University of Bath Spa (UK).

Registration appears to be open.

[The Picture of] Dorian Gray opera premiered as part of World New Music Days festival held in Slovakia & Austria: *Kate Pullinger interview

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I’m delighted to be publishing an interview with Kate Pullinger a well known Canadian-born writer, resident for many years in the UK, about her opera project. (For her sins, she supervised my De Montfort University’s [UK] master’s project. There were times when I wasn’t sure either of us was going to survive largely [but not solely] due to my computer’s meltdown at the worst possible moment.)

Here’s a bit more about Kate from the About page on her eponymous website,

Kate Pullinger writes for both print and digital platforms.  In 2009 her novel The Mistress of Nothing won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, one of Canada’s most prestigious literary prizes.  Her prize-winning digital fiction projects Inanimate Alice and Flight Paths: A Networked Novel have reached audiences around the world.

Kate Pullinger gives talks and readings frequently (look at the Events page for future events); she also offers private 1-1 mentoring for emerging writers in both print and new media.  She is Professor of Creative Writing and New Media at Bath Spa University.

As well as The Mistress of Nothing, Kate Pullinger’s books include A Little Stranger,  Weird Sister, The Last Time I Saw Jane, Where Does Kissing End?, and When the Monster Dies, as well as the short story collections, My Life as a Girl in a Men’s Prison and Tiny Lies.  She co-wrote the novel of the film The Piano with director Jane Campion. In 2011, A Curious Dream: Collected Works, a selection of Pullinger’s short stories, was published in Canada.

Kate Pullinger is currently working on a new novel and an associated digital fiction that build on themes developed in her collaborative digital fiction project, Flight Paths:  A Networked Novel.

Other current projects include a libretto based on Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Grey, commissioned by the Slovak National Theatre in collaboration with the composer Lubica Cekovska.  This work will be premiered in Bratislava in 2013.  Recent projects include working with digital artist James Coupe on Surveillance Suite, a project that generates stories using facial recognition software.

Kate Pullinger was born in Cranbrook, British Columbia, and went to high school on Vancouver Island. She dropped out of McGill University, Montreal, after a year and a half of not studying philosophy and literature, then spent a year working in a copper mine in the Yukon, northern Canada, where she crushed rocks and saved money. She spent that money travelling and ended up in London, England, where she has been ever since.  She is married and has two children.

You can read more about Kate and her academic work here on her faculty page on the Bath Spa University website.

As for Kate’s work as a librettist on the opera, Dorian Gray, based on the Oscar Wilde novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, she worked with composer, Ľubica Čekovská for the opera, which was debuted on Nov. 8, 2013 in Bratislava, Slovakia as part of the World New Music Days festival, founded in 1922 and *held in Slovakia and Austria in 2013..

Here’s Kate’s interview:

  •  I am assuming you went to the premiere? How was it? And, if you didn’t attend, what do you imagine (or what were you told) happened?

I saw the last two full rehearsals, and then the first two performances.  There are two casts in the Slovakian production – two of all the main roles – I’m not entirely sure why! It was so much fun, to hear the orchestra, and to see the production, and to hear the singers sing our work. Lubica had played me the opera many times using Sibelius, the software composers use, but that sounds like tinny computer music, so it was so pleasurable to hear her score played. And her score is really a wonderful work, very dense, clever, amusing, and tuneful.

  • Can you tell me a little bit about the story and which elements you chose to emphasize and which elements you chose to de-emphasize or eliminate altogether? How does your Dorian Gray differ from the other Dorian Gray opera by American composer Lowell Liebermann,?

I guess the main difference between my adaptation and most others is that I decided to make Dorian and his journey to hell central to the work and to not focus on his relationship with Lord Henry. Adaptations of the novel often make it a kind of two-hander between Dorian and Lord Henry, but we felt that there wasn’t room for that in what we were doing.

I don’t know the Liebermann adaptation at all.

  •  I looked up definitions for librettist and it seems the word means whatever the librettist and the composer decide. Could you describe your role as librettist for this opera?

I structured the story by creating three acts and the scenes therein, and then wrote the text for the singers. Lubica and I had a lot of discussion before I created the structure, and then on-going discussions as I worked on the libretto and she embarked on the score. I finished the libretto, but then continued to make changes as Lubica found issues with it, or we had new ideas. It was a lot of fun and we would like to work together again.

  • How did you two end up collaborating with each other? And what was the process like? e.g. It took about four years to bring this opera to life, yes? So, did the process change as the years moved on and as you got closer to the premiere? Did you learn any Slovak (language)?

The writing process, in total, took about 2.5 years really, the bulk of that Lubica’s time, as creating and scoring an entire opera for a full orchestra is an enormous task. After that, there is a lengthy publishing process, and then the production time. So for the last 1.5 years I did very little except wait for the occasional update.  Lubica was much more involved with the opera house in finding the director, conductor, and casting – and then once rehearsals started she was very involved in that process. Both the director, Nicola Raab, and the conductor, Christopher Ward, said how unusual it was to work with a living composer and librettist!

  • Did anything surprise you as you worked with the story or with the composer (Ľubica Čekovská)?

I learned a lot and there were many surprises.

At this point I’m interrupting the interview to excerpt part of a review in the New York Times, which I ask about in a question that follows the excerpt from A Music Festival Features Premiere of the Opera ‘Dorian Gray’ By GEORGE LOOMIS Published: November 13, 2013 in the New York Times,

The World New Music Days festival was first held in Salzburg in 1922 — around the time Arnold Schoenberg was perfecting his 12-note compositional system — and it remains a robust champion of new music. This year the 11-day program, sponsored by the International Society of Contemporary Music, was spread over three cities — Kosice and Bratislava in Slovakia, and Vienna — and included some 25 concerts, which were supplemented by many others thanks to partnerships with local organizations. A new opera was among the many works to receive their world premieres.

….

But the opera, as seen in Nicola Raab’s generally persuasive staging with sets by Anne Marie Legenstein and Alix Burgstaller that decadently depict Victorian drawing rooms, is marred by the decision to have the picture consist simply of an empty frame, an idea that perhaps seemed bold in concept but misfires in execution. [emphasis mine] Ms. Cekovska interestingly conveys the picture’s disfiguration musically through wordless boy-soprano melodies that recur increasingly distorted. [emphasis mine] But the melodies, to say nothing of the drama itself, need a visual analogue.

Now back to the interview,

  •  The one reviewer I’ve read, from the NY Times, expressed some disappointment with the choice to have an empty picture frame represent the ‘picture of Dorian Gray’ around which the entire story revolves. What was the thinking behind the decision and is there a chance that future productions (my understanding is that one isn’t permitted to make any substantive changes to a production once it has started its run) will feature a picture?

Well, that’s one critic’s opinion, and not one we agree with. Very early on in the process Lubica had the idea, which I think is genius, of representing the picture chorally – in early drafts there was a chorus on stage, and then this shifted to an electronic recorded chorus, where the music becomes gradually more and more distorted as the picture changes. With adaptations of Dorian Gray there is always a huge problem with how to represent the picture, which is so vivid and clear in our mind’s eye when we read Wilde’s original. Having an oil painting that gets older often just looks cheesy – it doesn’t look how you think it should look. So the empty picture frame, and the disintegrating chorus, in my opinion, is wonderful.

  • Given that I write mostly about science and technology, are there any opera technology tidbits about this production that you can offer?

Ha!  It was one of the most analogue experiences of my entire life!

  • How was your recent trip to China? Was it related to the opera project or an entirely new one and what might that be?

I went to China as part of a UK university exchange programme, looking at setting up collaborations with Chinese universities. It was a very interesting trip, though somewhat dominated by the appalling air quality in all three of the cities we visited.

  • Is there anything you’d like to add? (e.g. plans to bring the opera to Vancouver, Canada)

Opera productions don’t travel, so any future productions will have to be new productions, if you see what I mean – or co-productions. This is what the opera house hopes will happen. Ľubica Čekovská is a young composer with a steadily rising reputation, so I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there are future productions of it. I think it is a wonderful piece of work, but I’m biased.

Thank you, Kate for your time and for illuminating a topic of some interest to me. I’ve wondered about opera and librettists especially since many well known writers like you and Margaret Atwood are now working in this media. (Margaret Atwood is librettist for the opera ‘Pauline’ [about poet Pauline Johnson] which will have its world première on May 23, 2014 in Vancouver, Canada.)

For the curious, there’s another interview with Kate (she discusses the then upcoming opera and other work)  written up by Jeremy Hight in a Feb. 2011 article for the Leonardo Almanac and Ľubica Čekovská’s website is here. One final note, World New Music Days festival will be held in Vancouver, Canada in 2017, according to New York Times writer, George Loomis.

* I posted a little sooner that I should have. As of 10:30 am PST, I have added Kate Pullinger’s name to the heading, and added Austria and Slovakia as the sites for the 2013 World New Music Days festival.

ETA Dec. 18, 2013 at 3:30 pm PST: The opera, Dorian Gray, will be performed again in Bratislava at the National Slovak Theatre on 20 February, 5 April and 5 June 2014. More here.

Grey water and a short story from a GG winner

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I mentioned Kate Pullinger when she won Canada’s 2009 Governor General’s (GG) award for fiction (Nov. 20, 2009 posting) and it seems a GG winner never gets to rest on her laurels. Last summer she was asked to write a short story celebrating the 75th anniversary of the GG awards. From the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC) Canada Writes web space (from the Nov. 24, 2011 posting about Kate Pullinger’s story, Grey Water Lady),

Last summer, to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Governor General’s Awards and the CBC, we asked ten GG-winning authors write a story about winter.

Kate Pullinger tells the story of a jet-lagged and heartbroken waste-water specialist who seeks to inject some colour back in her life.

Here’s a brief excerpt from Kate’s story,

Domestic grey water – the recycling of waste water from the bath, sink, shower, washing machine, etc – had become her area of expertise almost by default. In the industry she was known as Grey Water Lady. Fondly.  But still. She’d been flown over by the government to have a look at Melbourne’s controversial desalination plant project, but as soon as she got off the plane she realised the clothes she’d packed were completely inappropriate and that she’d have to wear everything in her suitcase all at the same time in order to stay warm.

In addition to writing a story, Kate was asked to do something else,

We asked Kate to recommend a writer who she thinks is not as well known as they deserve to be. Come back on Tuesday [Nov. 29, 2011] to find out who she has chosen as her writer to watch.

As for Canada Writes, here’s more from the About Us page,

Canada Writes is Canada’s home for original writing of all kinds, including the CBC Literary Prizes. It’s a meeting place for writers- a place where you come to showcase your work through an ongoing series of writing challenges and competitions, and a resource to help you connect with other writers across the country. We also feature original stories from writers across the country, editorials, writing news and recommendations and writing workshops.

It is also home to the CBC Short Story Prize, the CBC Poetry Prize and the CBC Creative Nonfiction Prize.

Kate now lives in the UK but was born in British Columbia and grew up on Vancouver Island.

Mongoliad, nanotech novelists: Neal Stephenson and Greg Bear, and e-lit futures

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Kit Eaton at Fast Company recently featured  some information about a ‘new’ novel (both in form, it’s an app and in content, it’s being written by Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, and others). From Eaton’s May 26, 2010 article,

Late yesterday in San Francisco, at the SF App Showcase, a sneaky little startup company called Subutai demonstrated some of the tech that’ll be going into the Mongoliad app. This oddly-named creature is actually what we’re interested in–a reinvention of the novel as a serialized publication through a dedicated app. Stephenson isn’t the only one taking part, as both Greg Bear and Nicole Galland will be writing too, but Stephenson is really the core of the project.

This is exciting, as anyone who’s familiar with his [Stephenson] Diamond Age novel will attest: This book imagines a future where a super-smart, partially artificial intelligent book is created, and acts as a young girl’s life guide. The hope is, obviously, that Stephenson uses his imagination to leverage novel and unexpected aspects of smartphone or tablet PC tech to transform the resulting publication into something surprisingly new … possibly even more of a transformation than paper-based magazine publishers are attempting as they rejig their content models towards the iPad. Words like “para-narrative,” “nontextual,” and “extra-narrative” certainly suggest this.

Both Stephenson (Diamond Age, 1995) and Bear (Blood Music, 1988) wrote, at a fairly early stage,  stories/novels that featured nanotechnology. For example, Diamond Age’s  ‘partially artificial intelligent book’ is made possible with nanotechnology. Unfortunately, no details about the novel’s content were revealed either in Eaton’s article or on the company’s, Subutai, website. Eaton’s article does offer this,

Speaking at the SF event yesterday Subutai’s CE Jeremy Bornstein revealed that there would be gaming and social media events wrapped around and inside the novel, and even demoed a user profile page that included a measure of a user’s “standing” in the Mongoliad community. There was also scope for users to “rate” portions of the story as it progresses. And while it seems that user interaction won’t play a role in the actual text of the publication, it’s going to be such a blended-media thing that this means user’s inputs still affect the overall performance.

This doesn’t sound like anything outside of the ordinary community-building exercise that many authors and media publishers are engaged in these days but, as you can see in the first excerpt from Eaton’s article, they’re hoping Stephenson will come up with an unexpected way to exploit the capabilities of mobile technology.

As for the show where Mongoliad was announced, here’s a little more information about it (from an article by Daniel Terdiman on CNET’s geek gestalt blog,)

On Tuesday night, Socolow and Dale Larson, his partner in a consulting firm called SF App Studio, hosted the sixth iteration of their app showcase, the SF AppShow. And before a packed house of more than 200 people–their biggest crowd so far–at the famous 111 Minna Gallery here, the two gave a series of app developers the chance to get up on stage and take six minutes to explain their projects.

Part DiggNation, part Demo, and part real-world App Store front end, the SF AppShow seems to have a growing influence in the world of app development–be it for Apple’s iPad or iPhone, Google’s Android, or the BlackBerry–and the people who create the mobile products and evangelize them.

This all brought to mind Kate Pullinger, a writer who works both in the traditional media (she won the 2009 Governor General’s [in Canada] award for literature, The Mistress of Nothing) and is well-known for digital novels such as Inanimate Alice. This is from her April 29, 2010, posting titled, A Writer’s View of the Future of Publishing,

Over the past ten years I’ve been deeply enmeshed in discussions about the future of writing, and the myriad ways in which the new technologies have the potential to change literature. My interest is in text, and what happens to text when you put it on a screen alongside the full range of media computing offers. I write ‘digital fiction’, works that are not digital conversions but are ‘born digital’, using text and multimedia to tell a story that is meant to be viewed on a screen.

However, as well as digital fiction, I also write books – novels and short stories – and have been functioning as a writer within the traditional publishing industry for more than twenty years. I’ve watched as the publishing and bookselling industries have struggled to come to terms with the new technologies and what they have to offer to both readers and writers. I’ve had many discussions with agents and publishers about what the future will hold. I’ve stumbled down my share of blind alleys, waking up to discover that last night’s certainty (fiction for UK mobile phones!) is this morning’s well-that-was-a-dumb-idea (fiction for UK mobile phones!).

Kate first wrote this piece for The Literary Platform (from their About page),

The Literary Platform is dedicated to showcasing projects experimenting with literature and technology. It brings together comment from industry figures and key thinkers, and encourages debate.

…

The key word circulating in book publishing at the moment is ‘experiment’. The showcase will demonstrate how traditional publishers and developers are experimenting with multimedia formats, how established authors are going it alone, how first-time novelists are bypassing publishers and how niche literary magazines are finding wider audiences.

Getting back to Mongoliad, I look forward to following the project’s progress especially in light of Kate’s comments about fiction for mobile phones, “last night’s certainty (fiction for UK mobile phones!) is this morning’s well-that-was-a-dumb-idea (fiction for UK mobile phones!).”

Two final comments. First, I was a student of Kate Pullinger’s at De Montfort University’s Masters of Creative Writing and New Media programme, which is now defunct. Second, I got curious about Subutai and it turns out it’s the name for a Mongolian general (from the essay on New World Encyclopedia which, in turn, has been modified from an essay originally found on Wikipedia)

Subutai (Subetei, Subetai, Sübeedei; Classic Mongolian: Sübügätäi or Sübü’ätäi) (1176–1248), also known as Subetai the Valiant, was the primary strategist and general of Genghis Khan (Temüjin) and Ögedei Khan. The son of a blacksmith, he rose through the ranks and directed more than 20 campaigns during which he conquered (or overran) more territory than any other commander in history. He gained victory by means of imaginative and sophisticated strategies and routinely coordinated movements of armies that were more than 300 miles away from each other. He is most remembered for devising the battle plan that destroyed the armies of Hungary and Poland within two days of each other, by forces almost a thousand miles apart.

I am amazed that someone who didn’t have telephones, telegraphs, or any other form of communication (pony express?) that could have traversed 1000 miles within two days to give updates and deal with changing conditions managed to destroy two armies at that distance from each other.

Cookie cutters; agility vs. rigidity; 2010 Canadian Science Policy Conference; Kate Pullinger GG 2009 award winner for fiction

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Ever wonder about all that talk about critical thinking? Supposedly that’s what education does for you, i.e. encourages critical thinking. I mention it because there’s a great little essay on The Black Hole blog about critical thinking in higher education. It’s called, Science is like Baking: The Rise of the Cookie Cutter PhD. I did have one minor quibble,

Together, these forces do what I think we should be very very scared of… they apply pressure to churn out PhDs faster, with more papers, with less flexibility in ideas and more rigid (read publishable) research project designs. So, in the end, little effort goes into helping the PhD students think critically about their field – and while I don’t believe this style of training is as far gone in the Humanities… I think it’s coming, so get yourself ready!

Sadly, I believe that the process is already gaining momentum in the humanities.

Rob Annan at Don’t Leave Canada Behind has a very pointed (scathing) analysis of a pre-budget submission from the SSHRC/NSERC/CIHR tri-council to the House of Commons Standing Committee.  [SSHRC = Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council; NSERC = Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council; CHIR = Canadian Health Institutes Research] From his posting,

… What does this mean? Sounds to me like stable, long-term funding is to be sacrificed at the altar of increased flexibility. And what exactly is a “dynamic approach” to funding research? This bureaucratic nonsense speak could have real consequences for researchers. Does agility, dynamism, and responsiveness mean that the agencies will be rapidly changing funding priorities from year to year? Will the agencies just start chasing the hottest trends?

Annan’s concern about “agility, dynamism and responsiveness” as a funding agency priority would seem to contradict The Black Hole’s essayist’s concern “with more papers, with less flexibility in ideas and more rigid (read more publishable) research project designs.”

In fact, we could end up with a situation where both apply. Imagine this. (1) A researcher applies for a ‘trendy’ area of research thereby fulfilling the funding agency’s dynamic, responsive funding requirement. (2) The researcher or PhD student’s academic institution or employer constrains the researcher to pump out multiple papers from a rigid research design under the funding agency’s the rubric of being responsive and agile.

Frankly, I’d like to see a little more agility and dynamism but I’d like it see it applied effectively. Sadly, I believe that my little scenario is more likely than not. The funding agencies are scrambling for money and, with the best of intentions, will do what it takes to get more so they can fulfill their mandate of supporting research. Meanwhile, the academic institutions will pay lip service to agility and dynamism while they apply the principles of rigidity and conformity used in production lines to pump out more product (publishable papers, awards, etc.) so they can maintain themselves and provide (their raison d’etre) education.

On other notes: there is a 2010 Public Science in Canada | Strengthening Science and Policy to Protect Canadians conference coming up in May. The keynote speakers are Stephen Lewis in an as yet untitled talk and [David] Suzuki and [Preston] Manning on Science: A Public Dialogue.  (Is there a Canadian science conference or science event where Preston Manning isn’t giving a keynote address?) More details can be found here.

On a personal note, congratulations to the Governor General’s latest fiction award winner, Kate Pullinger for the Mistress of Nothing. She was one of the leaders and teachers in my master’s programme (Creative Writing and New Media) at De Montfort University in the UK. I’m grateful that I had a chance to study in the programme (which was canceled after its 3rd year). I was able to experiment with creative writing techniques and science writing and that was a privilege.