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.

Humanities in the European Research Area

Shortly before Christmas, we received some excellent news from the Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA) review panel. Our project “Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice” has been recommended for funding, pending final contract negotiations with the European Science Foundation to be completed in January 2010. Scott Rettberg, of the University of Bergen Linguistic, Literary, and Aesthetic department’s Digital Culture Group, will be the Project Leader. The total budget for the project as a whole will be just under 1.000.000 Euros.

“Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice” (ELMCIP) is a 3-year collaborative research project which will run from 2010-2013. The project will be funded under HERA joint research project theme: ’Humanities as a Source of 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.

The project will fund three post-docs and one PhD. The positions that will be advertised include: a 20-month post-doc in electronic literature bibliography at the University of Bergen, a 12-month post-doc focused on electronic literature publication and education at Blekinge Institute of Technology, and a three year PhD in electronic literature and design at the Edinburgh College of Art. The project also funds a three-year post-doc in ethnography of digital culture at the Edinburgh College of Art (Penny Travlou).

The research outcomes of the project will include: a series of case studies and research papers on electronic literature, a series of public seminars on electronic literature in different cultural contexts, the production of an extensive online knowledge including papers and presentations from the seminars, project information and bibliographic records of works of electronic literature, a workshop on electronic literature and education and a companion anthology of electronic literature including pedagogical materials, a major international conference, a public exhibition of electronic literature artworks and performances. All publications resulting from the project, including conference proceedings, exhibition catalog, project documentation and the DVD anthology, will be made available on an open access basis.

As the lead partner, the University of Bergen will be responsible for overall project administration, for research and a seminar on electronic literature communities to take place in 2010, for the production of the project’s online knowledge base, and for the production of the project’s final report. UiB’s share of the project budget, pending ESF approval, is 298.625 Euros.

More information, including a website for the project, details of planned public events, and calls for projects and positions associated with ELMCIP, will be forthcoming soon.

Ulriken from our porch, originally uploaded by srett.

The sun peeked out this morning on a clear sky, revealing Bergen blanketed in winter splendor, a day after the winter solstice.

Implementation at the Brandeburg Gate, Berlin

Implementation at the Brandenburg Gate

Slideshow of Implementation photos from Berlin.

1) Email at implementationphotos at gmail dot com with your postal mailing address, and we will send you an installment of stickers from the novel.

2) Choose interesting places to put the stickers up in public environments and stick them there.

3) Photograph the sticker, attempting to get photos of the sticker both at a close/legible view and from some distance, showing the placement of the sticker in its environment.

3) Standard or high photo resolution on most contemporary digital cameras will work for this — we are trying to get photos that would be of suitable resolution for a book project.

4) Send the photographs to implementationphotos at gmail dot com — in the subject of the email include the location (City, State/Region, Country – you can be more specific if you like) where the photograph was taken and the installment number, which will be indicated on the back of the sticker sheets. Please also indicate if you would like the photo to be attributed to you, or if you would prefer to remain anonymous.

For the purposes of the book project, photos received over the course of the next month (returned before 15 January 2010) will be most useful. By submitting the photos, you agree to grant us the rights to use the photos for the book project and online versions of the project.

Gmail takes up to 25MB attachments per email message.

If you enjoy the experience and would like to put up more stickers, let us know and we will send you another installment.

Happy implementing!

• 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.