[spectre] October on -empyre-: Digital Writing

[Michael Arnold Mages]

Writing is one of the oldest known technologies, but the concept of
writing did not change as substantially as the different forms of text
mediation have done, throughout the years. Nevertheless, the invention
of press and, most recently, of the computer, altered important
operations related to how words and paragraphs are organized. Also,
devices such as the Internet, DVD and mobile equipments allowed new
forms of writing and publishing.

During the month of October, Bill Seaman, Brigid McLeer, Friedrich
Block, Giselle Beiguelman and Sue Thomas will discuss, at the ­ empyre
­ mailing list (http://www.subtle.net/empyre), if the concept of
writing is still adequate to describe the most eloquent examples of
creative processes involving words and digital media.

Given the growing use of sound, image and programming at the web ‹
once claimed to be the media that brought text back to the center of
an increasingly image oriented culture‹, what is the state of the art,
on the field of digital writing? Issues such as the recombinant nature
of digital writing, writing for public spaces (and related notions of
placement / displacement), sampling as a form of intertextuality and
writing for mobile devices, among others, will be the central topics.

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+ Guest´s Bio
Bill Seaman ( http://www.billseaman.com ) received a PH.D. from CAiiA,
University of Wales, 1999. He holds a MSvisS degree from MIT, 1985.
His work explores an expanded media-oriented poetics through various
technological means. Seaman is Head of the Digital+Media Graduate
Department at RISD.

Brigid Mc Leer ( http://www.inplaceofthepage.co.uk ) is an Irish
artist and writer based in London. Her work is cross-disciplinary and
process-based. Moving between the practices of art, poetry,
architecture and critical writing, the challenge of 'place' and
'translation' has become a driving force of the work. She currently
lectures at the Bartlett School of Architecture and Goldsmiths College,
London .

Friedrich W. Block ( http://www.brueckner-kuehner.de/block ) is the
director of the Brückner-Kühner-Foundation and honorary director of
the Kunsttempel gallery in Kassel. Curator of numerous exhibitions,
e.g. the "p0es1s. Digital Poetry" show, Berlin (2004). He has
published about art and media, experimental literature, and the
media-culture of humor.

Giselle Beiguelman ( http://www.desvirtual.com) is a new media artist
and multimedia essayist who teaches Digital Culture at the Graduation
Program in Communication and Semiotics of PUC-SP (São Paulo, Brazil).
Her work includes the award-winnings "The Book after the Book" (1999)
and egoscópio (2002). She has been developing art projects for mobile
phones ("Wop Art", 2001), praised by many media sites and the
international press, including The Guardian (UK) and Neural (Italy),
and art involving public-access, by the web, SMS and MMS, and
internet-streaming for electronic billboards like "Leste o Leste?" and
"egoscópio" (2002), released by The New York Times, Poétrica (2003)
and esc for escape (2004).

Sue Thomas ( http://www.mti.dmu.ac.uk/~sthomas/ ) is the author of
several books, most recently 'Hello World: travels in virtuality'
(2004). She has managed numerous online writing projects and is
interested in the impact of digital technologies on writing and lived
experience - see the collaborative project Writing and the Digital
Life. In 1995 she founded the trAce Online Writing Centre at
Nottingham Trent University and was Artistic Director until joining De
Montfort University as Professor of New Media in 2005, where she is
developing research into transliteracy.
+

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