Scott Rettberg

Tuesday, March 15th 12:15-14:00
HF Building, Room 301
“Reading Chatbots”
Visiting Fulbright lecturer Mark Marino, Asst. Professor of Writing at the University of Southern California, will discuss his current book project: Reading Chatbots: Conversational Actor Networks: an interdisciplinary investigation into autonomous conversational agents drawing upon theories from Communication, the Humanities, and Social Sciences. The book demonstrates a methodology of software studies, reading chatbots with attention to their performance of race, gender, sexuality, and class. markcmarino.com

Monday, March 21st 14:15-16:00
Sydneshaugen Skole, Room 304B
“Exquisite_Code”
Media artist Brendan Howell is in from Berlin as a visiting lecturer at KHiB. Howell will present the “Exquisite_Code” project, and other electronic literature related projects. Exquisite_Code is an algorithmic performance system for heterogeneous groups of writers. www.wintermute.org/brendan/

Tuesday, March 22nd 17:00-19:00
Note: Date changed
HF Building, Room 400
“A Show of Hands — Networked Fictions”
Visiting Fulbright lecturer and e-lit author Mark Marino, along with e-lit author Rob Wittig, will present an evening of readings from network-based fiction, locative narrative, and ludic works of computer-based fiction. markcmarino.com

This semester we have initiated a new research group at UiB — the Electronic Literature Research Group. With so much research activity now happening in our group in this area, and after consulting with our colleagues in Digital Culture, we decided that it would be good to have a separate research group focused specifically on e-lit, digital art, and other digital media aesthetic-related research in addition to our existing research group in Digital Culture. We are hoping that the group will extend beyond our colleagues in the program at UiB and include researchers and writers interested in these topics from elsewhere, in other UiB departments, in Bergen (and the world).

Our first events will take place this week at UiB. We are welcoming e-lit author, researcher, and new media artist Talan Memmott to campus. We invite you to join us for two events.

On Tuesday Feb 15th, in HF 371 from 12:15-2PM, Talan will present his dissertation-in-progress “Mythologies of Electronic Textuality.”

On Thursday evening Feb 17th, in HF 301 from 5-6:30PM, Talan will show and discuss some of his creative work including electronic literature and video work.

Some of Talan’s e-lit, video, critical writing and other curiosities can be found at: talanmemmott.com

Talan is also to be congratulated for the release this week of the Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 2 — which includes 63 works of electronic literature. Talan was one of four editors of the anthology. Also note that UiB was a sponsor of the collection along with MIT, Duke, Brown University, and other peer institutions.

I hope that you will be able to join us for one or both events. Later this term, we will welcome two Fulbright lecturers with us for three week stays: Mark Marino from the University of Southern California, and Rtia Raley from The University of California at Santa Barbara. We are planning several different events, including a release party for the ELC2, later in the term.