[Englecturers] new research community

[englecturers at lists.ucr.edu]

-----Original Message-----
From: mmari002 at student.ucr.edu [mailto:mmari002 at student.ucr.edu] 
Sent: Monday, April 11, 2005 10:01 AM
To: Steven Axelrod
Cc: toby.miller at ucr.edu
Subject: new research community


Dr. Axelrod,

I wanted to let you know about a new online research 
community that I've formed with several other graduate 
students from various schools.  As you know, finding 
colleagues with like-interests can be a challenge, yet in 
order to avoid redundancy in research and to engage in the 
the larger academic discussions, networking is crucial.  We 
thought we would take advantage of the latest networked 
discussion technology to create a weblog to help us continue 
our discussions and find other like-minded (and differently-
minded!) researchers.  

The focus of the community is electronic art and literature, 
with a special emphasis on particular forms.

This is an open community, so all readers can suggest 
threads of discussion and help guide the themes.

Toby Miller is the sponsor for this project.

Please pass the word on to anyone or any listservs that 
might be interested.

Thank you,
Mark Marino



WRT 

We Request Theorists. 

Whether you are a narrative nerd, a games geek, bot boffin 
or IF infatuated or a respectable media theorist, please 
accept our invitation to stop by WRT: 
http://WriterResponseTheory.org 

WRT is a blogging collective dedicated to the discussion and 
exploration of digital character art -- any art involving 
electrons and making use of letters, alphanumerics, or other 
characters in an interesting way. Our primary focus is on 
active and interactive works, in which users input text and 
receive textual responses as output. Our URL -- Writer 
Response Theory -- is a play on Reader Reponse Theory and 
therefore shifts the investigative focus to a reader/writer 
whose textual input will change the works they encounter. We 
see ourselves as writers or creators responding to theory; 
as writers creating theory, a theory which is also a 
response to writers. 

We'd like you to join our community through commenting, 
suggesting new topics, or helping/heckling us from your own 
blog. 

Some objects of study include ASCII art, blog fiction, 
chatbots, email fiction, e-poetry, hypertext fiction, and 
interactive fiction (IF). What are the methods of design, 
the modes of usage, and the relationships between scriptons 
and textons in these art forms? 

Why Read This? 
WRT is an open site. Everyone who reads this blog is a 
member and may suggest a thread or a link. As long as it 
pertains to digital letter/character art we will post and 
pursue it. WRT is a research and discussion collective - not 
an announcement site. 

Members may follow a topic or pursue a particular blog 
author. Organize and reorganize us as you see fit. 
Individual blog authors may post outside the scope of WRT, 
but the home page will remain dedicated to digital character 
art. 

Who Runs This? 
Christy Dena is a postgrad student in New Media and Creative 
Writing at the School of Creative Arts 
(http://www.sca.unimelb.edu.au), Uni of Melbourne, 
Australia, . Her research interests are crossmedia- storytelling
(http://www.crossmediastorytelling.com), and 
bot fiction. She teaches 'interactive narrative' and writes 
for Australian New Media Arts magazines. 

Jeremy Douglass is a PhD student in English Literature at 
the University of California at Santa Barbara. His research 
focuses on interactive fiction and reader response to 
textual new media. Jeremy is also a database and web 
developer for numerous projects, including the academic 
search engine Voice of the Shuttle. 

Mark Marino is a Ph.D. candidate at UC Riverside, studying 
chatbots, electronic literature, games, and other doodads. 
He is editor of Bunk Magazine(www.bunkmag.com). He currently 
teaches at UC Riverside. 

Wildly Repetitive Title: What does W.R.T. stand for? 
With respect to our wildly repetitive title, what's the real 
term? Writer Response Theory, We Realize Text, Web-Ridden 
Texts, Wrong Right Theory, Wide Robed Techies, We Rotten 
Tomatoes, and perhaps just WRiTing.