places to publish?
I've noticed recently that there seem to be very few journals/magazines in which there are opportunities to publish new media work, a lot of the good ones have folded or changed direction, and many people seem to publish mainly on their own websites. Universities, however, generally prefer you to pu
blish the work in journals (preferably refereed) and don't look upon displaying a work on a website as publication. Does anyone have any good suggestions for publication besides the Iowa Review Web, (and my own journal soundsRite!)? And why do you think there are such limited places now to publish?
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9 Responses to “places to publish?”.
Hi, Hazel–
Try http://www.drunkenboat.com, http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu, http://www.TheNewRiver.us, http://www.bornmagazine.com (for collaborative works: text plus artist), and others…
I think there are more places now than ever to publish in, but, yes, it’s still a small number of venues. I like Jason Nelson’s idea: query, query, and more queries… Suggest web art to places that have never thought of it before, and they might just go for it…
turbulence.org for net art (and they commission)
aslongasittakes.org for sound work. i also published an interactive sound work there.
http://www.eliterature.org . they do a pretty good job of it.
i agree that there are fewer online journals for new media now. and there are far more for print-like poetry and so on. and millions of blogs.
there is also less new media work for the web being produced, be it literary or otherwise artistic. but millions of poemy poems and videos.
you rarely see any projects that people have spent a lot of time on. instead, most of what we see is firefly media.
i think that the main reason is monetary. there hasn’t been much development of monetary economy around such work. and it’s a hell of a lot of work to produce interesting work of this sort.
also, concerning, say, grants and that sort of ‘patronage’, well, those sorts of funds are usually for a particular local or national constituency. the emphasis is on funding the artists in the constituency for venues within the constituency for an audience in the constituency. what funding agencies are invested in international art over the net?
all of which is kind of depressing.
but all of that doesn’t really negate the artistic and political value of trying to create real new media art for the net (that isn’t firefly media). the net is not going away. instead, it continues to gain importance in our lives from both a practical and an artistic viewpoint. there has to be real art developed in and for and of net media, or we have a medium that acts only as a distribution and information channel for art in other media. a medium that, concerning art, is always pointing to some other medium, to some other place. how interesting and deep and humanly meaningful can such media be? and how human can the people be who use it all the time?
Many thanks Alan for that. I guess my observation is that there seem to be less places specifically dedicated to new media writing as Beehive was. Last time I looked at drunken boat it had changed direction somewhat, and I can’t remember all the ins and outs with Born magazine but it has never been a place for general submissions. I didn’t know about Blackbird though, and am very pleased to be introduced to that!! There are certainly a number of ‘galleries’ attached to journals now which are very useful. Hazel
I would check out the rebooted Leonardo Electronic Almanac. I don’t really know if the gallery feature will continue, but this might be a good place to consider.
Another fine place is Hyperrhiz .
I would also consider looking at conferences which feature online galleries alongside their live events. DAC09 was one such event. ISEA 2011 is looking for work, too.
Hi Hazel,
I am the editor and co-founder of SpringGun, an online journal that publishes poetry, flash fiction, book reviews, and interviews. We also curate/publish/cradle (in Jason Nelson’s words) digital writing and new media work. Our next reading period begins April 1, 2010 and I urge you to spread the word and/or submit! http://www.springgunpress.com
Also, I have recently had my own work curated/published in the journal, Trickhouse which houses as they put it “words, images, videos, sounds, works in progress,collaborations, experiments, and phenomena that evade categorization.” It’s a beautiful publication. http://www.trickhouse.com
To try and address your final question, I think that your observation that most artists post their work on their personal websites is right on. We started publishing new media on SpringGun in order to give established and emerging artists a new kind of community online, but don’t care at all that their work also remains on their sites.
Publication of course means to make public and when artists are self-publishing, by the time we get it we’re “re-publishing” in a way. I think maybe (speculating here) that some editors worry about the preciousness of exclusivity. In other words, if it’s already published and available to the public, what value is it to publish it again? I of course believe there is plenty of value in it, otherwise SpringGun would not be concerned with publishing new media; furthermore, it is impossible to submit such work to our journal if it doesn’t already exist elsewhere online.
Best of luck,
Erin Costello
editor@springgunpress.com
It’s great to get all these comments and I am very pleased to be alerted to a number of sites which either I haven’t looked at, such as SpringGun, or know about but may not have perused recently. I agree with Davin that some of the galleries attached to conferences may be good places to look at (and submit!!) work. I have a piece coming out in aslongasittakes (thanks Jim) and concur that is a very good site. Another place I should have mentioned is the Australian-based journal Scan which has a gallery.
I agree with Erin that potential editors of such journals are probably put off by the fact that publication is not ‘first publication’. As an editor as well as a practitioner, I do find it a bit odd to be publishing work which is already out there, and do prefer to publish work which is new if possible. But I still think, like Erin, that there is a place for sites that are collections of work. Amongst other things, people can visit these sites and get an overall sense of what is happening in new media writing, even if the work exists somewhere else. And I think Jim has a valid point— that the amount of time and expertise needed to produce new media work is massive and doesn’t normally bring with it economic rewards. This (together with a lack of understanding amongst literary enthusiasts about just how interesting and important new media writing is) creates knock-on effects in terms of output by new media writers and dissemination of their work. Anyway thanks for yr comments-very useful, Hazel.
Digital Humanities Quarterly is looking for electronic work, and Hyperhiz is another place. The Electronic Literature Collection, from the ELO, is coming out with the second volume this year, and a third won’t be far behind.
Trickhouse looks like spam to me. Ah, ok. Change that com to an org and you have something real. But really, change that, Erin. When you said “it’a a beautiful publication” I clicked on the link and it made me sad. Dot coms often fail us where dot orgs lift.
Digital Humanities Quarterly say they are looking for electronic work, but they haven’t published any in several years. I have sent them electronic stuff but they really don’t know what to do with it, are befuddled and totally at a loss to deal with it. They must have a grant that requires them to say they are looking for electronic work.