Translations

For their final project, the Year One CultureNet students were asked to take a conventional print-based research or position paper and convert it into a web-based project for consumption by an audience other than their peers and instructor.  Nicole Lim took her Psychology 100 paper on baby boomers + health care and turned it into a web-based resource for senoirs.  Jamie Cue took a CultureNet 101 position paper on community and turned it into a web-based exploration of community.  Likewise, Jordan Harbord Harbord took terms explored in Communications 112 and CultureNet 100 to create a multi-media meditation on the present/future and manifest destiny.

In Year Two, we anticipate pairing CultureNet students with Computing Science students to create web-based projects that synthesize programming and the humanities for their own take on the “digital humanities”.  The 2008/09 projects will be inspired by VECTORS - a multi-media journal published by the University of Southern California, which brings together academics and designers to rethink how we receive information and ideas produced in a scholarly setting.

Here we have Jamie, Jordan, and Nicole’s web projects paired with their design statements where they explain the thinking behind the translation of the print-based project into a web-based project.

Jamie Cue: FACEBOOK VS. COMMUNITY and Design Statement

Jordan Harbord Harbord: We Are Living In The Future and Design Statement

Nicole Lim: Baby Boomers and Health Care and Design Statement

Reviewing Reviews

Resource Centre for Cyberculture Studies

Since 1997, RCCS has been publishing online review of books expanding the field of cyberculture/digital media/new media studies. The majority of the reviews are accompanied by engaged reponse from the author.

The Book Review index for June 2008 includes Michele Willson’s response to a review of her book Technically Together, which we used in the 2007/08 first-year CultureNet seminar.

The May 2008 highlight: N.Katherine Hayles’ response to reviews of Electronic Literature Collection (Volume 1). Hayles edited this collection along with Nick Monfort, Scott Rettberg and Stephanie Strickland. For anyone new to the world of electronic literature, this collection and Kimberley DeVries’ review are an excellent entry point.

Capilano + CultureNet

An Information Session
on How to Stop Reading

Capilano General Information Night
Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Campus tour: 6:30 p.m.
Presentation: 7:15 - 8:45 p.m.
Capilano College, North Vancouver campus
Library building, rooms 321 & 322

The student speaker will be Jordan Harbord Harbord, who recently completed her first term in CultureNet. Likewise, CultureNet faculty will be on hand to answer any program specific questions you might have both before and after the presentation.

Hope to see you there!

Electronic Literature Conference

Stop Reading

Andrew Klobucar and I have just come back from the Electronic Literature Organization conference in Vancouver WA this past weekend where 120 artists and scholars met to present and talk about electronic literature. Hosted by Dr. Dene Grigar and Dr. John Barber from the Digital Technology and Culture program at Washington State University - Vancouver, the conference offered a dizzying sense of eletronic literature’s global vibrancy with participants from Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and South America. As the conference organizers noted, the presentations and art works demonstrated that electronic literature (however we might define the term) is very much alive and of interest to both the pioneers and a new generation of digital remixologists. I left the conference inspired by the diversity of projects on offer and a desire to collaborate with new media artists and programmers alike.

A few of the artists that caught my attention:

Serge Bouchardon
J.R. Carpenter
Ian Hatcher
Donna Leishman
Victoria Welby

TCR Tributaries

Floating Down the Dig Lit River

What are the creative and poetic possibilities of RSS syndication and how might the introduction of iterative publishing processes affect our experience of digital literature? How can a book be transformed and reworked through an exploration of the formal and aesthetic structure of the stream?

Join us in Vancouver on Saturday, May 24th at 7:30 pm to launch a new artwork by Montreal-based writer and artist J.R. Carpenter.

Tributaries & Text-Fed Streams is a project by J.R. Carpenter that re-purposes the original text of an issue of literary quarterly The Capilano Review (TCR) as a raw material for a new digital artwork. The work is commissioned by The Capilano Review and curated by Kate Armstrong. The work will be simultaneously launched on Turbulence.org.

The launch event will feature a reading by the artist in addition to a programme of experimental readings by practitioners in disparate fields such as quantum physics, geography, and poetics, arranged to explore ideas of streams, seriality, or flow. Participants include Maria Lantin, Michael Boyce, Jeremy Venditti, Global Telelanguage Resources (Andrew Klobucar - CultureNet/CapCollege), and J.R. Carpenter.

After this short program there will be a reception. The event will take place at Helen Pitt Gallery in Vancouver on Saturday, May 24th starting at 7:30 pm.

A number of the participants are guest lecturers/instructors who were associated with Year 1 of CultureNet. This event offers a good taste of one aspect of the program’s focus. Faculty will be attending this event and can make themselves available to answer questions regarding CultureNet.

Saturday, May 24th, 2008
Launch with experimental readings and a reception to follow
Helen Pitt Gallery
102-148 Alexander Street
Vancouver
7:30pm
Suggested donation by sliding scale: $5-$10

URLS:

Tributaries & Text- Fed Streams: http://tributaries.thecapilanoreview.ca/

The Capilano Review: http://www.thecapilanoreview.ca/
TCR Issue 2-50 : “Artifice and Intelligence”: http://www.thecapilanoreview.ca/archive.php?id=series2/2_50
J.R. Carpenter: http://luckysoap.com/
Turbulence: http://www.turbulence.org
Kate Armstrong: http://www.katearmstrong.com

CultureNet: http://www.capcollege.bc.ca/programs/culturenet