Electronic Literature Collection, v. 1 Released

Under a Creative Commons License, the collection is "an anthology of 60 eclectic works of electronic literature," published online at collection.eliterature.org.

My favorites among the collection are the non-texual, graphic novel-like multimedia stories. Including:

"Deviant: The Possession of Christian Shaw is presented in a visual and almost entirely non-textual way, although the piece has a textual basis and its narrative and defamiliarizing aspects can easily be seen. The piece's effect arises from how it cuts off possibilities, putting the reader at the mercy of her exploration history. An interface offers tiny "active" portals, which may or may not carry the story forward; a world changes scale, and unnerving events take some effort to figure out." Maybe it's the Halloween mood, but I love the dark storyline, great modern graphics, and witch-trial atmosphere. The changeable storyline is very "new media."

"Urbanalities is a mash-up of Dadaist technique and VJ stylings, this Flash movie is the product of an "antagonist remix" by babel vs. escha. Seven scenes provide enigmatic observations on the nature of contemporary life, on seeing and being seen, understanding and miscommunication, destruction and creation. The texts in the piece are generated randomly as the piece runs, so the reader's experience of the piece is never exactly the same twice." Amazing graphics, short poems, and a musical sountrack - dada meets West Side Story.

-thanks to gray for sending along the link and collection announcement!-

Google buys YouTube for $1.65 Billion

On Monday, 10/9, Google bought YouTube for 1.65 billion dollars. Read the full story. How this will change the user-driven YouTube site remains to be seen. Check out the featured video, "a message from Chad and Steve" to hear the founders' perspective on the acquisition.

Looks like the dot-com bubble has been re-inflated!

Welcome to the first New Media PNW circular! As you may recall, this effort emerges from the workshop with Anne Wysocki held last February in the UWB Teaching and Learning Center, hosted by the redoubtable Becky Reed Rosenberg. Anne did a marvelous job of taking us into the “Generous Web” by considering how “memory, bodily experience, generosity toward difference, and the pleasures of learning and engagement can be woven into the design process….” We wanted to find a way to continue her efforts and to continue to educate ourselves about our new teaching and learning environment.

Our major goal now—in fact, our only goal at the moment!—is to get a conversation started on New Media and thereby create a virtual Learning Community around a series of questions. What is it? Is there any such thing? What’s “new” about it? What gets mediated? What are its cultural implications? How can we use it, if there is an “it,” in our classrooms? What does it have to do with iPods and MySpace? Cell phones and nanotechnology? How does it relate to the digital arts and scholarship? Is it fun?

We thought we’d start with one or more of these questions, a few short readings, and a little blog. The URL for the blog is: http://newmediawg.blogspot.com –bookmark it today! The blog will be updated (at least) weekly, and we welcome your posts and comments! You may post to the blog from your email by emailing: newmediabothell.blog@blogger.com. Have fun exploring the blogger site while you're at it!

For our initial reading, how about if we look at Borges’s “Garden of Forking Paths” (1941) paper (http://www.cybergrain.com/remediality/borges.pdf or http://www.geocities.com/papanagnou/) and V. Bush’s “As We May Think” (1945) (www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/194507/bush). These are linked to the blog's "links" section as well.

See what you think. Hear what you think. Touch what you think.

What next?

Gray and Amanda