CFP: Reading Writing Interfaces: Electronic Literature and the “Interface-free” (MLA 2012)
Reading Writing Interfaces: Electronic Literature and the “Interface-free”
2012 Modern Language Association Conference in Seattle (Jan. 5-8)
Send 300 word abstracts and a brief bio. by 15 March 2011 to Lori Emerson (lori dot emerson at colorado dot edu)
Given that, as Lisa Gitelman puts it, “media represent and delimit representing,” this special session seeks papers on how electronic literature creates, responds to, or reworks reading/writing interfaces; papers may also explore the relationship between electronic literature and the recent turn to the “interface-free.”
I would be grateful if readers would pass this CFP on to any e-literature scholars you think might be interested.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
3 Responses to “CFP: Reading Writing Interfaces: Electronic Literature and the “Interface-free” (MLA 2012)”.
I have a kind of a vague idea of what you mean by “interface-free”, but could you expand on this a bit, please, Lori?
Hi Jim, I’ve been doing some research on multitouch interfaces, ubiquitous computing and the other I just discovered “Natural User Interfaces”. Nearly all of the designers describe these interfaces in terms of how they just “disappear” and how users navigate them through “instinct.” Other than the fact that I wonder just whose “instinct” we are talking about here, but what this means for makers/writers/artists is that you can only work on the surface of the interface – you can’t work against it or draw attention to the interface because they’re completely locked down and/or completely “invisible.” So much e-lit seems to be invested in drawing attention to the limits and possibilities of the medium and the interface itself. I hope this helps turn things from the vague into the specific – I’ve been stockpiling so much information on interfaces that it’s difficult to get it all out!
I think what’s ‘intuitive’, concerning interfaces, is primarily what is customary. Customary in what might be described as the language(s) of interface design. But, also, what is ‘intuitive’ is what behaves as expected, given that expectations can be set up by visual metaphors.
I read a remark a couple of months ago by Murk Amerika to the effect that ‘video is the new net art’. So I thought maybe your ref to “interface free” was some sort of reference to that sort of phenomenon where there’s hardly anything but standard media now being done on the net; video, mp3 files, yada yada. Not very much Flash or Director work being done, currently.
Of course it would be a crying shame to see the net turn into nothin but television.
Leave a comment.