It has not been long since the last one, but there’s a new story at webyarns.com…

“This Is Not A Poem” is a toy, a game, a language engine, and a poem all at the same time….

The new plaything is at http://www.ThisIsNotAPoem.com

Also, in case you missed it, “My Nervous Breakdown,” released a few months ago, is available at
http://webyarns.com/MyNervousBreakdown.html

For other stories, both new and old, please visit http://www.webyarns.com

Many thanks for your interest!

yours,

alan
–
stories for the web
http://www.webyarns.com

Reference number: 426-0587-2010

Description

The post is dedicated to working for 1 year in the 3-year research project “Developing a Network-Based Creative Community: Electronic Literature as Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice” which is financed by the European initiative HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area: http://www.heranet.info/). BTH’s part of the project includes among others the mapping of existing pedagogical models for teaching electronic literature, explore future possible pedagogical models, to create an anthology of European electronic literature, and host a workshop dedicated to electronic literature and pedagogy. BTH therefore seeks a postdoctoral researcher to work with the following tasks:

• Identify pedagogical models for work with and teaching of electronic literature:
• Map existing anthologies, collections, and archives of electronic literature;
• Contribute to the work of an anthology of European electronic literature (to be published online and on DVD), and
• Participate in the research project and contribute to BTH’s work within the project.

For more information about ELMCIP, please consult: http://www.bth.se/tks/hum.nsf/sidor/elmcip or http://elmcip.net/

Eligibility and desired qualifications:

Candidates are eligible to apply if they possess a PhD degree or a foreign degree deemed to be the equivalent of a doctorate. Eligible candidates must have completed their degree within three years before the deadline. Candidates are expected to have a doctorate in a subject related to the topic of the research project ELMCIP, e.g. literature, digital culture and humanities, pedagogy and digital media. Candidates should have experience of working with university level education. Knowledge of digital literature and/or experience of editorial work, or work with archives, anthologies or collections will be advantageous.

The successful candidate will work with Principal Investigator Maria Engberg and Co-Investigator Talan Memmott.

Fulltime position. January 2011 to December 2011, or according to agreement.

Duration: 12 months

For more information:

Please contact Interim Dean Peter Ekdahl, +46 454-38 59 09, peter.ekdahl@bth.se or Principal Investigator at BTH, Ass. Professor Maria Engberg, 0455-38 53 67, maria.engberg@bth.se. Union representatives: SACO Mikael Åsman +46 457 385720 and TCO Monika Nilsson +45 455-385440.

Application should include:

• CV
• Copies of doctorate and other degrees.
• Notification of first possible start day
• BTH applies individual wages. Enter salary requirements in application.

Send your application, marked with reference number, by August 15, 2010 to:

Registrar

Blekinge Tekniska Högskola

371 79 Karlskrona.

SWEDEN
To email enquiries about application procedures: diarium@bth.se

For more information about BTH: http://www.bth.se/eng/aboutbth

This ad in English: http://www.bth.se/tks/hum.nsf/sidor/elmcip-postdoc

This ad in Swedish: http://www.bth.se/for/employments.nsf/jobs/d540767703c39650c12577440030ebb8

ELMCIP:

Developing a Network-Based Creative Community: Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice (ELMCIP) is a collaborative research project funded by the Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA) JRP for Creativity and Innovation.

ELMCIP involves seven European academic research partners and one non-academic partner who will investigate how creative communities of practitioners form within a transnational and transcultural context in a globalized and distributed communication environment. Focusing on the electronic literature community in Europe as a model of networked creativity and innovation in practice, ELMCIP is intended both to study the formation and interactions of that community and also to further electronic literature research and practice in Europe.

The partners include: The University of Bergen, Norway (PL Scott Rettberg, Co-I Jill Walker Rettberg), the Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland (PI Simon Biggs, Co-I Penny Travlou), Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden (PI Maria Engberg, Co-I Talan Memmott), The University of Amsterdam, Netherlands (PI Yra Van Dijk), The University of Ljubljana, Slovenia (PI Janez Strechovec), The University of Jyväskylä, Finland (PI Raine Koskimaa), and Univerity College Falmouth at Dartington, England (PI Jerome Fletcher), and New Media Scotland.

http://aphasic-letters.com/noise/

Noise! 2010 is a one-day, marathon event, featuring a staggering array of artists and works including performance, sound, moving image, language, and culinary craft.

This year, curators Caspar Stracke, Danny Snelson, and Tianna Kennedy contribute an exciting and expansive approach to the event’s theme—mapping signal innovation, distortion, and destruction from the historical avant-garde to contemporary media art practitioners.

Noise! 2010 will mark the conclusion of free103point9′s organizational residence at the Ontological; join us on Saturday, June 26 to celebrate what has been an extraordinary partnership since 2006. Noise! 2010 is presented in association with the Ontological-Hysteric Incubator.

There are only a few posts, so far, to Netartery. They’re by Gregory Whitehead, Andy Campbell, Jhave Johnston, and myself. Currently 13 people have agreed to post at least 6 times per year. That number will probably increase and decrease and, hopefully, balance out to something steady in terms of semi-regular posts.

Netartery is like netpoetic in that the reader and writership will consist probably primarily of writers. But the focus is not so much on ‘electronic writing’ as a more general ‘writers gone wrong’ approach. Gregory Whitehead, for instance, is an audio writer. I’ve been following his work since the 80′s and regard him as the best literary audio artist I’ve encountered.

Jhave Johnston and Andy Campbell are also involved. Jhave Johnston is a Montréal-based poet-programmer who is producing some of  the strongest contemporary poetic net art. And Andy Campbell has been producing digital fiction since the early nineties and continues with his truly outstanding project dreamingmethods.com . The other people involved (who haven’t posted yet) are Chris Joseph, Christina Ljungberg, Christine Wilks, Jason Quackenbush, Kedrick James, Leonardo Flores, Marcus Bastos, Michael Harold, and Regina Célia Pinto.

Netartery is primarily a place to post about one’s new work and new work of interest to the group and its readership, and about related issues. New work, interesting ideas, events, and so on. The people posting to Netartery are media writers and scholars of media writing. They are ‘writers gone wrong’ in this sense. They might write books, but they are also involved in other forms of artistic writing. These can be vispoetic or performative, programmerly, audio-oriented, and what not.

File Prix Lux

All,

UPDATE: Joerg has mentioned that this same work is also getting an honorary mention at Ars Electronica. Holy crap….time to move to a new format. Again congratulations to Joerg and vote for him at File Prix

Our very own Joerg Pringer has been nominated for the File Prix in Brazil for his “ABCDE……” IPhone creation.

And you can VOTE FOR HIM here .

And explore the other nominees, some interesting and not-so-interesting work. And obviously Joerg should win.

And again……..VOTE FOR HIM here .

Announcing: _feralC_ – A Socumentary

_feralC_ is a socumentary* which is textually driven by the interactions of five Twitter chars [primary characters or entities] and their Pupa Mistress (PM). The PM initially functions as a Twitter based information hub for the interactions between the chars and other contributing entities (such as yourself). These additional contributing entities, or secondary chars, may or may not be biological-based: please note that Synthetic individuals may contribute to the project’s tweet flow. Please play nice with the Synths.

Inquisitive #feralC Chars in Action

As the five primary chars are unveiled, “audience” members are encouraged to participate in the project’s flow by following and responding to each individual char via Twitter. If you are tweet-responding, please make sure to tag your tweets with the #feralC hashtag. And be warned: if you choose to actively participate you’ll be drawn into the narrative flow – including episodic summaries posted at netwurker.net. If you don’t want your input to be incorporated in this fashion, please message the PM directly or via her email.

If engagement isn’t high on your list, feel free to absorb the feralC Tweet list and/or blog entries and contribute via comments instead. For more comprehensive information on how to participate, please visit the Instructions Page:

“_feralC_ uses Twitter as its principle story-telling medium. If you’re not familiar with Twitter, here’s the official glossary and a basic explanation…

The _feralC_ story develops as the 5 primary chars [characters] chat and interact through their tweet dialogues:

• Gossama
• Hud Ballardrina
• Shadow McClone
• Miss Stressa
• Quentin Reader

The story unfolds via live Sessions where both primary chars and secondary chars [see below] engage with each other. These Sessions normally last between 1 – 2 hours. Check the Welcome Page for regular updates regarding Session times. Each Session is monitored and recorded by the Pupa Mistress – a “Behavioural Augmentologist” who oversees the chars through her Twitter stream [you can also follow her updates through this RSS Feed]…Pupa also analyses and summarises char [inter]actions via various blog posts featured on the Welcome Page: these are categorised by Series, Episode and Session numbers…

As _feralC_ is dynamically designed to incorporate audience responses, the developing story will also be shaped by you and others who choose to participate [you're "secondary chars"].  Primary chars may also respond sporadically to you – the secondary chars – outside scheduled Session times, so don’t be shy in responding through replies at any time. In order to become part of the dialogue and contribute to the storyline, please make sure to tag your tweets with the #feralC hashtag if contributing via Twitter. If you’re not a Twitter user you can still participate via comments on this blog [please still include the text "#feralC" in your comment if you're directly addressing or responding to a char] or email the PM with questions or contributions.

#feralC Chars

An easy way to passively follow all 5 chars and their collective dialogue is to regularly check in with the _feralC_ Twitter list found here. You can also search for updates on the project via Twitter by typing in “#feralC” into the Search bar. There are various clues peppered throughout the project that are designed be pieced together to develop the story. Please actively question the chars and openly speculate regarding how these elements fit and shape the storyline. There’ll also be elements that you’ll encounter during _feralC_ that incorporate Augmented Reality and QR Code technology.

Please be patient while the story unfolds: the project is designed to progress over the long term. Most of all, be curious, search for clues and enjoy delving into the _feralC_ world: the chars [well at least *most* of them] don’t bite…”

Commissioned by: Arnolfini. Hosted by Alias Frequencies.

—————————————————————————————————————————–

* “A “socumentary” is an entertainment form that merges Choose Your Own Adventure /Alternate Reality Drama/Social Game and Social Networking conventions. The result is a type of synthetic mockumentary that exists entirely within social media formats.

Texts by mez breeze

3 June, 5pm-8pm
Reading Room in Arnolfini and online at
http://automatist.net/deptofreading/wiki/pmwiki.php/CommonPractice
contact common_practice on Skype to join the session
(next sessions: 24 June, 9 and 30 September)
Italo Calvino said ‘the storyteller explored the possibilities implied in
his own language by combining and changing the permutations of the figures
and the actions, and of the objects on which these actions could be brought
to bear’. It is by following this principle that common practice will start.

The first session will open with mez breeze’s mezangelle poems, written in a
blend of code and language, and we will be practising a simultaneous
reading/writing reworking of these texts to experience their language-code
operations during the event.

common practice is a reading group that uses Wiki and Skype to perform a
Calvino-style manipulation of texts. Through unpredictable cobbling together
of texts, poetry, people, code, language, Wiki, chat, conversations etc. we
will co-produce untagged and free style body/ies of knowledge.

The reading groups that make up common practice will take place in June and
September. You are invited to read, write, tinker with and intervene in the
literary and theoretical texts and poetry together with others through the
simple-to-use online tools. You can join us in the Reading Room at Arnolfini
or online and via Skype (contact: common_practice).

common practice references the widespread and increasingly familiar activity
of using online tools in everyday to communicate, contact, work, socialise,
play, research, be entertained etc. The practice embodies the curiosity to
experience ways in which human and machine skills and abilities perform
together.

More importantly, however, common practice also refers to the fact that it
is done in common – together with others. Thus it is social space of
knowledge materialised through co-labour, codeworking and language. Anxiety,
concern and conflict might be part of the practice in the same way that
curiosity, hospitality and kindness are hoped for. This is practice in flux,
nomadic practice that exists in the common. Knowledge and experiences
generated during the session will be captured by its users.

common practice is a series of curated events initiated by Magda
Tyzlik-Carver, hosted by the Reading Room in Arnolfini, and online by
Department of Reading
http://automatist.net/deptofreading/wiki/pmwiki.php/CommonPractice and
project.arnolfini  http://project.arnolfini.org.uk/?t=5 .

Please bring your own laptop with wireless enabled to join the common
practice in the Reading Room. If you don’t have your own laptop, there will
be a common computer available to use by those without one. Wiki-page will
be also projected on the wall so it will be possible to follow the practice.

- MANUAL FOR THE COMMON PRACTICE SESSION -

In order to take part in common practice all you need is an account on Skype
and a connection to the internet for the time of the session. You can also
join us in the Reading Room at Arnolfini at the time of the session. Please
bring your laptop with you.

The space of the session is a Skype-chat and a Wiki-page. The Wiki
(http://automatist.net/deptofreading/wiki/pmwiki.php/Seisure) contains two
poems by mez breeze, each line marked by a number.

The Department of Reading Internet System (doris) connects the chat and the
pool directly. doris listens to the chat, records all entries and allows for
manipulation of the poems directly through the chat. In this session we will
make use of the module [getput]. This module consists of two commands,
namely [get], which allows to get any one of the lines from the poems
directly to the chat; and [put], which allows to put any entry of the chat
into any one of the numbered lines on the Wiki.

To get any line from one of the poems into the chat, write: “get 1″ or “get
6″ depending on which section you want to get the line from. The text will
not be deleted on the Wiki, but can be altered in the chat and replaced
later on by using the command “put”. In between the two poems is an empty
column that can as well be addressed by the commands [get] and [put] via the
related numbers – this will become operative during the session.

doris allows to modify, rewrite, edit or manipulate the poems with the
command [put]. To place any entry or rewritten line into the poems, write it
in the chat, then press ENTER, and then write: “put 1″ in the chat and press
ENTER again. This will place the entry in line 1 of the Wiki and overwrite
the previously given line of the poem. If you want to position an entry in
section 3 or 4 or 9 or any other, you need to change the number in the
command accordingly. For example, if you want an entry to be in section 4,
the command should be: “put 4″, etc.

There are some signs, so called markups, that allow for italic, bold and
coloured text. They can be used as well through the Skype-chat, simply in
writing them along with the related entry that you would like to post on the
Wiki. In order to set an expression italic, you would have to use two
apostrophes at the beginning and the end of that expression – like
”italic”. When it comes to bold, just use three apostrophes ”’bold”’.
It’s also possible to use colours in this reading session. The signs % is
necessary in this case, again one before the name of the colour, then one
after the name of the colour. Next comes the text and then comes another %
sign to stop the colouring. Like this: %blue%coloured-invisi.belles%.
The mark-up [[<<]] introduces a line-break.

You need to refresh the Wiki-page from time to time to see the changes.
Since the poems easily might interfere with the marks-ups as it plays with
quite similar signs, it can happen that you don’t necessarily get, what you
might have intended with an entry.

In a solar system Flashed and sunned on the rock of human affairs

Because, you see, the Flash and ActionScript development environment–let’s call it the Flash Development Platform– is so multiple in languages, development tools, delivery platforms, ‘enterprise solutions’, and little guy gotchas–and the Flash IDE in CS4 and, to a slightly lesser extent, in CS5, is so crawlingly slow concerning code editing, compilation, and debugging–that even the little guy is forced to look outside the Flash IDE for coding and debugging tools that don’t almost forbid creativity, because the CS4 and CS5 Flash IDE does, concerning editing code, compiling, and debugging it.

So much ado over the capabilities of ActionScript 3.0–and it is a marvelously powerful language for intermedia. For instance, it’s possible to make performance instruments in which microphone data can be subject to analysis either by amplitude (volume) or by frequency distribution–or both–and the sound itself can be processed down to the level of the sample, altering the sound, repeating it, changing the pitch, filtering the sound on the fly, and reacting visually as well to these various analyses of the microphone data.

This sort of relatively granular and extensive audio capability is years ahead of, say, HTML. The much-vaunted HTML 5 audio API merely allows developers to create video-like controls for audio files embedded in web pages. HTML 5 audio capabilities are as bare-bones as they could possibly be. But, then, we’re currently at Flash 10.1. Why wouldn’t something that has gone through 10 full development cycles be miles beyond something that has undergone 5 full development cycles? Flash does roughly one development cycle per year. Let’s say it takes HTML about 5 years to go from, say, HTML 4 to HTML 5. Do the math. That puts Flash about 25 years ahead of HTML. And that is a somewhat conservative estimate.

But, yeesh, getting at that amazing ActionScript 3.0 functionality and getting proficient with it is an incredible handful. Not so much the ideas as handful just the difficulties of the coding environment plus the multiple-tome volumes of ‘basic ActionScript programming methodologies’.

But wait. There’s more clouds. Consider the mysteries of AIR, Flex, and MXML. You see, Adobe is betting on two competing horses in their Flash-related development tools. AIR is an Adobe development platform that supports HTML+JavaScript+CSS+SQL+XML applications. Those nasty HTML 5 applications which have been the subject of a great debate concerning Flash vs. HTML 5. Such AIR  applications can be deployed to the web, and play in the browser, or as standalone applications that do not need a browser; they can run on the desktop on their own. Or on a variety of hand-held devices. And Flash ActionScript projects can also be developed under the AIR platform to be deployed in the same ways.

Plus, they can be deployed to a variety of devices–including the iPhone. But Apple has forbidden Flash applications on its devices such as the iPhone and the iPad. So here we have more cloud. Development hindered and advanced in odd, competitive  thrusts that seek to open development possibilities while also excluding the corporate competition’s own advances, products, and developers from deployment and hence competition for hearts, minds, allegiance, and financial participation in the economy defined by, say, the iPhone+iPad user-base.

Adobe has decided that its development tools and platforms need to support both Flash applications and applications developed without Flash whatsoever. If Flash goes under, they still have the other horse. Even Adobe is developing with the possibility of the end of Flash in mind. Of course, Adobe would say

‘No, you have it wrong–it’s not a matter of improving odds of corporate survival by putting two independent horses in the race but, rather, a matter of developing platforms that take advantage of what both can offer either together or separately, at times.’

Uh, right. That’s true. They would also point out that

‘,,,other development corporations, such as Microsoft, support quite a few programming languages, development tools, yada yada because the notion of a monolithic, programming language monoculture  just is not feasible, desirable, practical, is not flexible enough to deliver  the goods these days that need to be delivered across platforms. And even, on a given platform, requirements are diverse enough to necessitate the existence of multiple languages and, consequently, tools.’

Yes, they’d say all that. And it would be true. But, still, it comes as a bit of a shock to Flash developers to see the platform complicated–though broadened–in so dramatic a way. Several of the artists I’ve spoken with who use Flash are still using CS3, where ActionScript 2.0, so different from ActionScript 3.0, is the language of use, and the Flash IDE is the single development environment.

Have I entered at the end of the horse race?? Has Flash ‘lost’? Well, let’s just say that the Flash platform has been transformed into one in which complex applications can be developed–and that is where Adobe is putting the money into Flash. Into enterprise-level application development, not the sorts of things that artists have developed in Flash for years.

They didn’t call it Babel for nothing.

Where does this leave artists, concerning Flash? Well, there are tools, such as Flash Catalyst, which are emerging. Catalyst promises interesting Flash projects with little or no coding. It’s sufficiently new, however, that no one knows much about it! But wait–there’s more. Catalyst is interoperable with Flash Builder, which is more a tool for the developers, the programmers, and a way for them to work (er presumably ‘productively’) with the designers. More enterprise-level tool design.

And let’s not forget the third-party Flash development tools such as FlashDevelop (a code editor), FDT (a code editor + project management tool (+debugger in the ‘enterprise’ version)) and DeMonster Debugger (a run-time debugger). These third party products were made to compensate for the truly dreadful Flash IDE concerning the speed of code editing, compilation, and debugging. And to offer coding environments where one may do one’s ActionScript, JavaScript, and MXML coding/debugging.

Let’s just end this murky report from the billowing expansive clouds of Flash-related development by noting that Web development in the current, expanding, shifting seas of computer languages, methodologies, platforms, standards (and lack thereof), and whatnot is enough to choke an ox. And I haven’t even talked about Flex or MXML. But I think I’ll spare us both!

Say what you will of Director, but it was never uh lucky enough to get the full corporate development platform treatment and remains a tool largely for individuals working on projects, rather than corporate armies of developers and designers working with huge databases and so on. Which is to say it remains a tool that caters quite well to artists. At the expense of its continued existence, possibly. Ah, well, there we have ‘progress’. Corporate progress. But the new learning curves are hell for artists.

You’ve heard the expression ‘the outer rings of hell’. Well, if you visit the ‘solar system’ graphic linking this article to the “Adobe Flash Platform”, you see that the ‘solar system’ they depict is actually more like a business model than a solar system (or the Infernoesque rings of hell?). The outer ring consists of business partners that form a ring labeled by Adobe “Ecosystem”. The inner rings are labeled “Technologies” and “Run Times”.  The diagram shows you your place in the ‘solar system’ that is the Adobe Flash Platform. Can’t find your place in the solar system?????? Oh, well, that is unfortunate. Perhaps you have been banished to the very outer and, as yet, undepicted rings of this increasingly corporatized development platform. Don’t tell me you don’t want to write an app the size of FaceBook. Get to work on it you hideous shade. Write an enterprise solution, monetize your software, earn your place in the solar system that is the Adobe Flash Platform, iHell.

Enough for one night of this report from the cloud. Time to sleep. Where is my cloudy pillow??? Good night??? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII’MMMMMMMMMMMMMMM FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGG. Somebody—–ANYBODY—–ANYBODY——-WAKE ME UPPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ja
http://vispo.com

The last couple of versions of Director (11 and 11.5) have been terrible. Jig Sound doesn’t work in Director 11.5. They’ve screwed up the audio somehow. The development of Director itself is now being done in India. I expect they’re being set up to fail. Adobe has no idea what to do with Director. It should be sold to a company that would develop it  properly. But Adobe wouldn’t want the competition with Flash. A pity. Flash has pretty much caught up with and, in most ways, eclipsed Director. So I’m going to give Flash a go.

Christine Wilks helped me with suggesting some books. I have ‘Essential ActionScript 3.0′ by Colin Moock and will soon have ‘ActionScript 3.0 Bible’. I also bought ‘Flash Builder 4 and Flex 4′. And then there’s the online ‘ActionScript 3.0 Language Reference’ and the ‘ActionScript 3.0 Developer’s Guide’ and ‘Developing Adobe® AIR 1.5 Applications with HTML and Ajax’… and on and on.

A bit intimidating but I’m on about page 300 of ‘Essential ActionScript 3.0′. No where near yet doing anything creative with it, but I’ve done some testing out of making small programs in the Flash IDE and small AIR apps in DreamWeaver and am using an ActionScript editor called FlashDevelop. Which is much faster than the code editor in Flash.

Basically, at the moment, I’m just wading through the first part of ‘Essential ActionScript 3.0′. OOP, Namespaces, Interfaces, Garbage collection, and other thrilling topics.

But just wait. Before a year has passed, I hope to have something good for you done with ActionScript.