At the 2002 Electronic Literature
Online conference in Los Angeles, Katherine Hayles' keynote
address warned that the incessant development of the software
and hardware is rendering old computer based works obsolete
and inaccessible. Although obsolescence is a problem for
every form of cultural production, the reliance of computer-based
creations upon a constantly evolving delicate matrix of
software and hardware, makes preserving and archiving digital
work especially challenging. Out of last Spring's discussions
emerged the "PAD"
initiative, and acronym for "preservation, archiving,
and dissemination." PAD is an effort to develop a software
standard (and perhaps eventually software products) that
would give writers and artists some influence over the future
development of the hardware/software interface, especially
with regard to three practical goals of preservation, archiving,
and dissemination.
In the discussions of the last
year, apparently available and relatively simple solutions--for
example, preserving digital works by creating emulators
that allow us to migrate them to new platforms--end up becoming
complex, and implicated in many other issues. Here are a
few: the value of earlier works (are they worth saving?);
cost (at what expense?); technical feasibility (how can
it be done?); ownership of works and software platforms
(what sort of open-ness and access is necessary for this
project). Such a project requires constant attention to
creators and users (who benefits, and it what ways?).
The April conference has two primary purposes: to address
the general issues surrounding an attempt to preserve, archive
and disseminate works created on the computer, and, in dialogical
spirit, by offering a public account of the PAD project,
we hope learn from those participating in the conference.
For information contact Professor
William Warner (English, UCSB) at warner@english.ucsb.edu
Schedule
(download
printable version)
Thursday, April 3
9:00 - 9:15:
Welcome
and Introductory Comments
Dean
David Marshall (Dean of Humanities and Fine Arts, English,
UCSB) (audio)
introduced by Bill Warner (word
document)
Bill Warner (English, UCSB) (audio)
Jeff
Ballowe (co-founder, Electronic Literature Organization)
(audio)
(word
document)
9:15 - 10:25
"The
Opposite of Property"
Keynote Speaker: James
Boyle (Duke University Law School)
(audio)
(questions
on audio)
introduced by Bill Warner (word
document)
10:30 - 12:00
Archiving
Digital Work: Defining the Present
Commentary:
Howard
Besser (Professor of Education & Information Studies
on leave from UCLA, and Director of the Moving Image Archive
and Preservation Program at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts)
(audio)
Alan Divack (Archivist for the Ford Foundation) (audio)
Presentation of Endangered Works:
Marjorie
Luesebrink (M.D. Coverley, Hypermedia author (Califia)
and President, ELO Board of Directors) (audio)
(questions for the panel on audio)
12: 00- 1:30
Lunch
1:30 - 2:45
Library
of Congress to the Rescue (audio)
(questions
on audio) (powerpoint
presentation)
Keynote Speaker: Stewart
Brand (Co-founder, Global Business Network; president,
The Long Now Foundation)
introduced by Alan Liu
2:45 - 4:15
Other
Digital Preservation and Archiving Initiatives: Panel
Chair, Jeff
Ballowe (co-founder, Electronic Literature Organization)
Howard
Besser (Professor of Education & Information Studies
on leave from UCLA, and Director of the Moving Image Archive
and Preservation Program at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts)
(audio)
Julia
Flanders (Director,Women Writers Project, Brown University)
"Tilting
at Windmills: The Use of Standards in the Future of Electronic
Literature" (audio)
(word
document)
Merrilee Proffitt
(Program Officer, RLG) "Introduction
to METS, the Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard"
(audio)
(powerpoint
presentation)
Joseph
Tabbi (English, University of Illinois, Chicago) "On
the Dissemination of Content Once It Has Been Preserved
and Archived: The electronic book review
as a Case Study" (audio)
(word
document)
(questions
for the panel on audio)
4:30 - 5:15
The
New Media Reader (MIT,
2003): Overview of Migration Strategies
introduced by Bill Warner and Matt Kirschenbaum
(introduction
on audio) (audio)
(questions
on audio)
Noah
Wardrip-Fruin (Creative Writing Fellow Brown University)
Nick Montfort
(Ph.D. Student, Department of Computer and Information Science,
University of Pennsylvania)
5:15 - 6:00
Refreshments, hors d'oeuvres
6:00 - 7:30
Good
Vibrations: Writers, Artists, the Works
Producers:
Marjorie
Luesebrink (M.D. Coverley; Hypermedia author (Califia)
and President, ELO Board of Directors)
Scott
Rettberg (Assistant Professor of New Media Studies,
Literature Program, Richard Stockton College of New Jersey)
Presenters:
Thomas
Swiss (English and Rhetoric of Inquiry, University of
Iowa; Editor of The Iowa Review Web), Rediscovers selections
from The
Iowa Review Web (audio)
Lisa
Jevbratt (Studio Arts & Media Arts and Technology,
UCSB)., Demos Softbot 1:1 (audio)
Stephanie
Strickland (Print and new media poet), reveals "V:Vniverse"
(audio)
(word
document) (image
one) (image
two)
George
Legrady (Studio Arts & Media Arts and Technology,
UCSB), Premieres Melanie
Wein's (Media Design, BA Ravensburg) "The
Fleetingness of Bits" (audio)
Jason
Nelson (Author of Flash narratives), A Flash Reading
(audio)
Friday, April 4
8:30-9:00
Coffee and bagels
9:00 -10:00
Chair, Bill
Warner (English, UCSB)
Matt
Kirschenbaum (English, University of Maryland) "The
Anatomy of a Digital Object" (audio)
(powerpoint
presentation)
Geof
Bowker (Communications, UC San Diego) "Remembrance,
Commemoration, Oversight and Oblivion: Collective Cultural
Archives over the Millennia" (audio)
(word
document)
(questions
for the panel on audio)
10:00 - 11:30
The
Technology of E-Literature Preservation: The Shape of a
Solution
Chair, Alan
Liu (English, UC Santa Barbara, director of Voice of
the Shuttle and Transcriptions Project, author of The
Laws of Cool: Knowledge Work and Information Culture)
PAD Technology Plan Overview: Issues and Approaches (audio)
Nick Montfort
(E-literature writer and scholar, technology analyst and
journalist, RA at MIT Media Lab; co-editor of The New
Media Reader., Ph.D. Student, Department of Computer
and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania), "Further
Reading: Interpreters & Emulators for Electronic Literature."
(audio)
David
Durand (SGML, XML, versioning, collaborative
applications, Ph.D.from Brown University Computer Science
Department.) (audio)
and Liam
Quin (SGML, XML; editor of journal Markup Languages:
Theory & Practice; author of three books on XML; previously
developer for SoftQuad, Inc. Currently W3C Staff Contact
for the XML Core activity) "X-Literature: Building
XML Representations of E-Literature" (audio)
(slides
on pdf)
Noah
Wardrip-Fruin (E-literature writer and scholar, co-editor
of The New Media Reader and Person: New Media
as Story, Performance, and Game. Current a faculty
memmer at the U. Baltimore's School of Information Arts
and Technologies and a Creative Writing Fellow at Brown
University) (audio)
(powerpoint
presentation), Robert
Kendall (audio)
(powerpoint
presentation) and Jean-Hugues
Réty (Adaptive hypertext systems; collaborator
with Robert Kendall on Connection Muse. Assistant professor
at Paris 8 University) "X-Literature Solutions for
Archiving, Studying, and Authoring Electronic Literature"
(questions for the panel on audio)
11:45 - 1:00
Copyright/
Open Source Roundtable (audio)
Chair, Bill
Warner (English, UCSB), Introduction (word
document)
Rob
Swigart (English., San Jose State University) (word
document)
Harvey
Harrison, (President Liquid Knowledge, Inc.; lecturer
Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences, UCLA.)
Geert
Lovink
