Author: christy

Jill Walker, the theorist behind ‘distributed narrative‘, has organised and participated in a panel on Viral and Distributed Narratives (as arranged by Jessica Henig). The panel is part of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts 19th Annual Conference held recently in Chicago. It is the first time that electronic literature has been included in the conference streams. But back to the panel:

Scott Rettberg, Arts and Humanities, Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, “Implementation in Context: Viral, Locative, Situationist”
Implementation by Nick Montfort and Scott Rettberg is a novel about psychological warfare, terror, identity, and the idea of place, a project that borrows from the traditions of net.art, mail art, sticker art, conceptual art, situationist theater, serial fiction, and guerilla viral marketing. Implementation was first published as a serial novel printed in fragments on stickers distributed in monthly installments. Readers then posted the stickers in public spaces around the world, photographed them, and returned those photographs to the project site, where they are archived by date and by location. This paper presents Implementation in three distinct relevant contexts: that of recent viral “meme-based” sticker art and street graffiti projects, that of recent locative media and mapping narrative projects, and finally in the context of situationism, a movement of an earlier era that advocated participatory “opposite of works of art” and demanded that “the inner city to be laid out as field of activity for artists.”

I’ve spoken about Implementation before, especially at talks I’ve given, but this talk is from the co-creator of the project. As I do, Rettberg situates the work within the paradigm of meme-art and locative arts, and then adds in situationism.

Jessica Henig, English, University of Maryland, “As Thin as Reality: Shelley Jackson’s “Skin”
In her short story “Skin,” hypertext author Shelley Jackson moves her canvas from the screen to the body. “Skin” is published only as tattoos on participants, each of whom becomes one word in the story. In addition to challenging our usual notions of reading and authorship, this raises critical questions about the location of the story: Is it on the participants? Is it the participants themselves, their own stories as they go about their daily lives? Does it exist only inaccessibly on Jackson’s computer, waiting to be distributed? In fact, “Skin” exists on all of these levels, but the strategies for approaching it differ depending on which story one wants to read. This paper examines “Skin” in the context of Espen Aarseth’s “indeterminate cybertext,” and looks at the ways in which it requires us to revise our algorithms for finding, reading, and understanding a story.

Henig has made her powerpoint available for download. She talks about ’emergence’ and systems, which is good. [If you haven’t already read it: I’m using polysystem theory to map CME.] Henig talks about John Holland’s Hidden Order and focuses on ‘aggregation’ and ‘flow’. It seems this is a taxonomical analysis, which I find immensely interesting as I’ve been battling with it for months. [See comments for details on the correct talk] Henig would be good to talk to, it seems, about the CME software I’m conceiving. Here is a nice quote from her presentation:

Recognizing the identity of these works as complex adaptive systems allows us to read them, but it also allows us to investigate, predict, and improve future emergent narratives.

Jill Walker, Humanistic Informatics, University of Bergen, Norway, “Pattern Recognition: Reading Distributed Narratives”
In earlier work, I have proposed the term distributed narrative to describe the increasing number of texts where elements of a story are distributed in time or space. By using the term narrative, rather than discussing the larger group of texts variously called “contagious media” or “crossmedia”, I wish to emphasize the ways in which our basic knowledge of narrative structures allows us to see connections between fragments that may have no explicit links. In this paper, I will look closely at fragments of a distributed narrative, examining how each segment signals to the reader that there is more to be found, and arguing that repetition and variation are prime tropes in distributed narrative. Comparing techniques used in weblogs and their surrounding co-texts to techniques used in Marc Saporta’s Composition No. 1, a novel written in 1962, printed on loose sheets of paper that the reader was asked to shuffle. The comparative reading will build on narratology, hypertext theory, and theories of emergence.

Okay, Jill is here distinguishing herself from “other” approaches (as I have done with her). The difference, she says, is that she is claiming distributed narratives work because of narrativisation. I have been thinking about this for a year or so and have been moving backwards and forwards between seeing what the audience member does in CME as narrative-based or something different. Currently I view what the audience does as narrative- AND play-based. I do see them as different and as both having a role. This is where I think ergodics is the unifiying concept of these areas. But back to her points, she cites two tropes: repetition and variation. This makes sense. As we’ve seen in countless simultaneous media usage studies, youth are using media in different ways.

The explanation for this behavior is the constant search for complementary information, different perspectives, and even emotional fulfillment. [Finanzen]

Indeed, what all three presenters cover is correct, valid and true. I’m excited that there are panels happening about the area, and that there is another couple of researchers. What I’m keen for, however, is an advanced discussion about CME. I know it is important and necessary to have the explanantions of the phenomenon, its antecendents and proof of existence, but I’m yearning for hardcore debates about its cogs.

For those cross-media researchers out there (and those interested in how academia is framing cross-media issues), here are some calls for papers:

SCAN > Convergences

Call for Contributions
New technologies and News: Convergences and Divergences
A special issue of ‘Scan’, edited by Chris Atton & Graham Meikle

N.B. This is a slightly revised CFP from that appearing earlier this year. Potential contributors who have already submitted work for consideration need not resubmit. Due to a revised publication schedule at Scan, we are able to extend the deadline for submissions to 30 April 2006.

The study of news has always been central to the study of the media. But while the rise of new technologies such as the Net, mobile phones and digital TV has attracted enormous scholarly interest and has reinvigorated the field, there has not as yet been as much research on news and these new technologies as there might be. Some recent research has emphasised online journalism as a set of professional practices developed from existing journalistic philosophies and routines, though often privileging the dialogical nature of the medium to generate news agendas with media audiences (Deuze and Dimoudi, 2002). Other work emphasises journalism as a set of deprofessionalised practices that privilege grassroots ‘native reporting’ as a distinctive feature of an ‘alternative journalism’ (Atton, 2003). Such research highlights the potential of new technology use to enable new configurations of news production, distribution and reception; new modes of authorship and audiencehood; new kinds of producer and consumer. This special issue of ‘Scan’ invites contributions that are able to push forward our thinking about the modalities of news production and reception. We are particularly interested in papers that combine theory and practice to critically explore the claims made for the various manifestations of
these practices.

Who uses online news? What do they use it for? How is credibility judged? To what extent are relationships changing between reporters and readers, between news outlets and consumers, in a media environment that can be customised? How significant are participatory news and discussion projects such as Indymedia, Wikinews, OhmyNews or Slashdot?

What of news values and news content? What contributions are made to the discussion of news by online art and satire projects such as Tenbyten, News Reader or The Onion? And what of blogging? The blog may be just as much the province of the professional journalist as the amateur and, indeed, the much-vaunted ‘independence’ of blogs is often curtailed by a reliance on dominant news agendas and framing mechanisms (Haas, 2005).

Answers on a postcard to…

Chris Atton
Napier University, Edinburgh

Graham Meikle
Macquarie University, Sydney

Submission dates and guidelines
Completed papers should be sent to the issue editors by 30 April 2006.
Refereeing and revisions to be completed by 31 May 2006, for a June 2006 launch.

Submission details and style guidelines are at . Maximum length is 6,000 words.

‘Scan‘ is a refereed quarterly online journal of media arts and culture, hosted by the Media Department at Macquarie University, Sydney.

References
Atton, Chris (2003) ‘What is “Alternative” Journalism?’, Journalism:
Theory, Practice and Criticism 4(3): 267-272.

Deuze, Mark and Dimoudi, Christina (2002) ‘Online journalists in the
Netherlands: Towards a profile of a new profession’, Journalism: Theory,
Practice and Criticism 3(1): 85-100.

Haas, Tanni (2005) ‘From “Public Journalism” to the “Public’s
Journalism”? Rhetoric and reality in the discourse on weblogs’,
Journalism Studies 6(3): 387-396.

Dr Graham Meikle
————————-
Lecturer, Department of Media,
Division of Society, Culture, Media and Philosophy,
Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, 2109, Australia.

tel: (61 2) 9850-6899
fax: (61 2) 9850-6776
email:

e-Media > Inter-medial

The deadline for our inaugural issue is November 15, 2005. Special topic sections of the journal, to include more than one related essay, may be proposed. We intend our inaugural issue to premiere in Spring, 2006.

We are committed to the rapid turnaround of subsequent journal submissions in as practical a means as possible.

Manuscripts can be e-mailed to the editors at e-Media@Dartmouth.edu,
or a CD/DVD version may be mailed to:

Journal of e-Media Studies
JOE-MS is a blind peer-reviewed, on-line journal dedicated to the scholarly study of the history and theory of electronic media, especially Television and New Media. It is an inter-disciplinary journal, and we welcome submissions across the fields and methodologies that study media and media history.

Our goal is to promote the academic study of electronic media, especially in light of the rise of digital media and the changes in formal and expressive capacities resulting from new configurations of electronic media forms. We solicit the best new scholarly work on current and historical e-media issues and topics, including work on inter-medial relations to traditionally non-electronic media (such as cinema, theater, and print media).

We welcome essays in traditional textual formats. We strongly encourage submissions that utilize and develop the features that an on-line journal can afford, in order to realize new analytical and pedagogical practices and strategies.

Convergence > New Media Writings

CALL FOR PAPERS
Vol 12. no 4.Winter 2006
An End to the New? Re-assessing the claims for New Media Writing(s)

Guest-edited by Simon Mills, Gavin Stewart & Sue Thomas

The focus of the special issue

This special edition of Convergence marks the tenth anniversary of the trAce Online Writing Centre, UK. To commemorate this landmark event, the guest editors are seeking to evaluate the state-of-the-art of new media writing(s).

This special edition will seek to re-assess the claims made for these forms over the last decade, to challenge the dominant ideologies and terminologies of this maturing field, and to provide a critical re-evaluation of new media writing(s) in all its forms.

We encourage discussion of the following:

* The institutional settings of new media writing(s)
* The relationship between academia and new media writing(s)
* Re-assessments of the claims made for hypertext, new media or digital writing(s) over the past decade
* Art policies and development strategies for new media writing(s)
* The audience for new media writing(s)
* The economics of new media writing(s)
* Pedagogical approaches to new media writing(s)
* The historical context of new media writing(s)
* The relationship between new media writing(s) and other digital arts

Copy deadline for refereed research articles: 30 January 2006

All proposals, inq

uiries and submissions for this special issue to:

Gavin Stewart, Artistic Project Manager
Address: trAce Online Writing Centre
Nottingham Trent University
Clifton Lane
Nottingham
NG11 8NS
United Kingdom

e-mail: gavin.stewart@ntu.ac.uk
phone: ++44 (0)115 848 3569