Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice (ELMCIP): A Report from the HERA Joint Research Project

Introduction

4 ELMCIP REPORT Exquisite Corpus: Issues in Electronic Literature: http://vimeo.com/76686430 includes a set of rapid-fire interviews with seventeen authors and critics participating in the ELMCIP seminars in 2011 and 2012, and addresses both issues in electronic literature and in digital culture more generally. INTERDISCIPLINARY PRACTICE, PUBLIC INVOLVEMENT AND KNOWLEDGE EXCHANGE The ELMCIP project was fundamentally interdisciplinary. Within the PIs and within the larger group of people working on the project, one encountered literary scholars, poets, fiction writers, computer programmers and technicians, social scientists, designers, librarians and information scientists, installation artists and curators, database developers, and critical theorists. The most fundamental basis of the knowledge exchange embedded in the project was the idea that each output of the project should be viewed not in isolation, but as a branch of the project from which a larger community could bud. Thus, the project was not isolated to the work of the PIs and postdocs involved in the project. Each of the ELMCIP seminars, workshops, performances, and publications invited the involvement of diverse writers, artists, and researchers. The project Principal Investigators (PIs) not only published research outcomes in peer-review journals but created new peer-review and knowledge exchange platforms. For example: the majority of the workshops solicited papers via an open call; the Remediating the Social exhibition included peer-reviewed commissions via an open call; the international conference was likewise peer-reviewed via an open call. In each case the principal investigators sought to bring in diverse disciplines and voices. Further and perhaps most importantly, while each of the project events included some panel presentations , papers, and other traditional means of disseminating scholarly discourse, 5 CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION IN PRACTICE the majority of the events also included public performances and events at which works of electronic literature were read and performed before a live audience. In each case, these performances included local authors and artists alongside international artists. The project also put a premium on longevity and sustainability. When ELMCIP produced an exhibition to accompany a conference, it was not for the edification of the PIs alone, but a public exhibition at a cultural venue that ran far longer than the conference. The anthology was produced from work solicited from artists across Europe. It was distributed in libraries and conferences across Europe.” When ELMCIP produced a research database, it was set up so that it would not only be open-access but would also be open to contributions from authors and researchers around the world. This principle formed the basis for international knowledge sharing. EDUCATIONAL OUTREACH Several of the project outcomes explicitly aimed at developing further opportunities for research and pedagogy. Talks at the Electronic Literature Pedagogy workshop in Karlskrona addressed electronic literature pedagogy in diverse contexts ranging from secondary schools, to design programs, to junior colleges , to Ph.D. programs, to public outreach contexts. Two of the most significant outcomes, the Knowledge Base and the Anthology of European Electronic Literature , serve as both teaching and research tools, the lifespan of which will long outlast the range of the funded project itself. Indeed, both these openly accessed online projects are already being used in classrooms around the world on a daily basis. And the Electronic Literature Knowledge Base, which already documents thousands of works and resources, continues to grow. IMPACT, PRESENT, AND FUTURE USES OF THE ELMCIP PROJECT RESULTS From the standpoint of present and future use value, the most important impacts of the ELMCIP project include: • A cohesive but interdisciplinary European research community in the field of electronic literature. Before the ELMCIP project, there were many researchers and creative artists working in the field of electronic literature but there was 6 ELMCIP REPORT no sense that they were bound together in a common enterprise or network in comparison to the field in the Americas. After the conclusion of the ELMCIP project, Europe is squarely in the center of the international field. In 2013, the two most significant international conferences in the field, the Electronic Literature Organization conference, and the E-Poetry Festival, were both held in Europe, in Paris and London, respectively. • A robust digital humanities research infrastructure. After three years of continuous development, the ELMCIP Electronic Literature Knowledge Base is currently the most extensive open access research platform in the international field, including thousands of records and used daily by researchers and in classrooms across Europe and internationally. In providing a new model of...