Scott Rettberg

As we prepare to publish a photo book of Implementation we have been gathering and tagging new photographs submitted by people around the world at a dedicated Flickr site. We have gotten in hundreds of new photos and the process of using flickr to organize the material has been very interesting. I’ll write more about that process later, but for now I wanted to share this. Along with some others I have been putting Implementation stickers up in Bergen. As I photograph the stickers that people have put up, I have been recording the location information and adding that to flickr. Above is a Google maps/flickr mashup created with iMapFlickr. With this map, you can explore Bergen and explore Implementation. Have fun.

The University of Bergen department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies will have two PhD stipends available in 2010. The stipends are awarded competitively to two of the top candidates who apply. Candidates must have completed an MA degree, have an excellent educational and research record, and have a well-developed project description. Digital Culture is one of the groups within LLE. We have a strong possibility of securing a stipend in this round should an exceptional candidate apply. Applications are accepted internationally. The pay for a PhD candidate in Norway is very good. It is treated as a research job, and pay and benefits are commensurable with many assistant professor positions in the US. I strongly encourage researchers who have completed their MAs with a strong research record in digital culture, particularly electronic literature, to apply. The application deadline is Jan 31, 2010, for three year PhD candidacies to begin in September 2010.

Implementation at the Brandeburg Gate, Berlin

Implementation at the Brandenburg Gate

Slideshow of Implementation photos from Berlin.

I’m organizing a small conference, The Network as a Space and Medium for Collaborative Interdisciplinary Art Practice in Bergen, which will take place from November 8-10 at UiB and at Landmark Café. The gathering is focused on the increasing use of the network as a space and medium for collaborative interdisciplinary art practices including electronic literature and other network-based art forms. Researchers will present papers exploring new network-based creative practices that involve the cooperation of small to large-scale groups of writers, artists, performers, and programmers to create online projects that defy simple generic definitions and disciplinary boundaries. Panel topics (abstracts) include:

• Social Networks and Networked Cultural Practices
• The Evolving Cultural Landscape of Electronic Literature
• Remix Culture, Machinima, and Mash-ups
• Interdisciplinary Approaches to Producing Interactive Audiovisual Art Forms
• Collective Narratives Online, and
• Approaches to “Close Reading” and “Close Writing” Digital Artifacts

The seminar will be organized by the LLE Digital Culture group, which has invited contributions from about 20 international researchers and artists. In addition to the scholarly seminar Nov. 9th and 10th at the University of Bergen, two evening programs will take place Nov. 8th and 9th at Landmark Café at Bergen Kunsthall, to showcase innovative work (performance descriptions) and will be open to the public. Anyone interested in attending can register on the conference site. We will also be filming the performances, and intend to make some version of those recordings publicly available after the event. As with the Electronic Literature in Europe conference we held here at UiB last year, which helped to strengthen a European electronic literature network, it is my hope that this conference will serve to help build new relationships and strengthen connections between artists, writers, and researchers working in different aspects of collaborative interdisciplinary network-based art, and to suggest some directions for future creative activities and research. It should also be a good deal of fun. I’m looking forward to it.