The NEXT Museum

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The NEXT: Museum, Library, and Preservation Space is a repository of net art, electronic literature and games. It is supported by the Electronic Literature Lab, Washington State University at Vancouver and the Electronic Literature Organization. [1] [2] This is a digital museum dedicated to reviving and maintaining these works to make them accessible to all. Physical artifacts are held at the Electronic Literature Lab in Washington, US.

Contents

History

This digital museum originally housed 30 separate collections of 2,500 electronic literature works [1] [3] which had increased to over 3,000 works by 2022. [4] The NEXT uses an Extended Electronic Metadata Schema (ELMS) to describe the complex and interactive digital works it holds. This metadata describes the work and alerts readers to potential reading issues such as fleeting text, color use, or requirements for moving a mouse or moving with a virtual reality environment. [4]

Reviving works

Electronic literature pieces have used software available at the time that are since obsolete, such as HyperCard, Eastgate Systems' StorySpace, Director, ToolBox, and Flash. The NEXT has re-created these works by migrating them to newer systems.

The NEXT Museum has re-imagined many individual works, including:

Individual author collections

The NEXT Museum also focuses on collections for notable authors in the electronic literature field, which include their own digital works and other donated physical or digital materials. For example, the Marjorie C. Luesebrink Collection holds 66 works. Luesebrink created and published 27 of these works under the pen name M.D. Coverley--and the NEXT Museum re-imagined, migrated, and developed video playthroughs of these works as they were written on now-obsolete software. The other works in this collection were donated by Luesebrink and include her personal copies of other author's works. [11]

Author collections include: [12]

Online journal and publication collections

Online journals were founded by communities and individuals. The NEXT Museum has curated and collected works from these journals, including the Iowa Review Web (1999-2008) BeeHive (1998 -2004), Cauldron and Net (1997-2002 founded by Claire Dinsmore), Poems That Go (2000-2004), Turbulence.org (1996-2016 co-founded by Jo-Anne Green), and The New River (1996 - present). [13]

Academic publications

Stuart Moulthrop and Dene Grigar co-authored two works to document The NEXT's Pathfinder project, which provided video and audio recordings of currently inaccessible works using historically appropriate platforms, termed "traversals": [14] [15] [16] Pathfinders: Documenting the Experience of Early Digital Literature (June 2015) [17] [18] [19] and Traversals: The Use of Preservation for Early Electronic Writing [20] [21] (April 2017).

Cambridge University Press, Digital Literary Studies, has released Dene Grigar and Mariusz Pisarski's work: The Challenges of Born-Digital Fiction (March 2024), as a print work [22] and as a multi-media online work. [23] [24] [25]

Exhibitions

The NEXT Museum curates exhibitions, such as Vision Unbound for Women's History month (2024), [26] Hypertext an art in Italy September 5-8 2023 in conjunction with the ACM Hypertext Conference, [27] [28] [29] and AfterFlash. [30] [31] [32]

Related Research Articles

Hypertext fiction is a genre of electronic literature, characterized by the use of hypertext links that provide a new context for non-linearity in literature and reader interaction. The reader typically chooses links to move from one node of text to the next, and in this fashion arranges a story from a deeper pool of potential stories. Its spirit can also be seen in interactive fiction.

Electronic literature or digital literature is a genre of literature where digital capabilities such as interactivity, multimodality or algorithmic text generation are used aesthetically. Works of electronic literature are usually intended to be read on digital devices, such as computers, tablets, and mobile phones. They cannot be easily printed, or cannot be printed at all, because elements crucial to the work cannot be carried over onto a printed version.

<i>afternoon, a story</i> Hypertext fiction by Michael Joyce

afternoon, a story, spelled with a lowercase 'a', is a work of electronic literature written in 1987 by American author Michael Joyce. It was published by Eastgate Systems in 1990 and is known as one of the first works of hypertext fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Electronic Literature Organization</span>

The Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) is a nonprofit organization "established in 1999 to promote and facilitate the writing, publishing, and reading of electronic literature". It hosts annual conferences, awards annual prizes for works of and criticism of electronic literature, hosts online events and has published a series of collections of electronic literature.

<i>Patchwork Girl</i> (hypertext) Work of electronic literature by Shelley Jackson

Patchwork Girl or a Modern Monster by Mary/Shelly and Herself is a work of electronic literature by American author Shelley Jackson. It was written in Storyspace and published by Eastgate Systems in 1995. It is often discussed along with Michael Joyce's afternoon, a story as an important work of hypertext fiction.

<i>Victory Garden</i> (novel) Novel by Stuart Moulthrop

Victory Garden is a work of electronic literature by American author Stuart Moulthrop. It was written in StorySpace and first published by Eastgate Systems in 1991. Victory Garden is one of the earliest examples of hypertext novels, and is notable for being very inventive and influential in its genre. It is often discussed along with Michael Joyce's afternoon, a story as an important work of hypertext fiction.

Stuart Moulthrop is an innovator of electronic literature and hypertext fiction, both as a theoretician and as a writer. He is author of the hypertext fiction works Victory Garden (1992), which was on the front-page of the New York Times Book Review in 1993, Reagan Library (1999), and Hegirascope (1995), amongst many others. Moulthrop is currently a Professor of Digital Humanities in the Department of English, at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. He also became a founding board member of the Electronic Literature Organization in 1999.

David Kolb is an American philosopher and the Charles A. Dana Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Bates College in Maine.

Eastgate Systems is a publisher and software company headquartered in Watertown, Massachusetts, which publishes hypertext.

Judy Malloy is an American poet whose works embrace the intersection of hypernarrative, magic realism, and information art. Beginning with Uncle Roger in 1986, Malloy has composed works in both new media literature and hypertext fiction. She was an early creator of online interactive and collaborative fiction on The WELL and the website ArtsWire.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stephanie Strickland</span> American poet

Stephanie Strickland is a poet living in New York City. She has published ten volumes of print poetry and co-authored twelve digital poems. Her files and papers are being collected by the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book And Manuscript Library at Duke University.

Marjorie Coverley Luesebrink was an American writer, scholar, and teacher. Writing hypermedia fiction under the pen name M.D. Coverley, she is best known for her epic hypertext novels Califia (2000) and Egypt: The Book of Going Forth by Day (2006). A pioneer born-digital writer, she is part of the first generation of electronic literature authors that arose in the 1987–1997 period. She was a founding board member and past president of the Electronic Literature Organization and the first winner of the Electronic Literature Organization Career Achievement Award, which was named in her honor. Lusebrink was professor emeritus, School of Humanities and Languages at Irvine Valley College (IVC).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dene Grigar</span>

Dene (Rudyne)Grigar is a digital artist and scholar based in Vancouver, Washington. She was the President of the Electronic Literature Organization from 2013 to 2019. In 2016, Grigar received the International Digital Media and Arts Association's Lifetime Achievement Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scott Rettberg</span> American-Norwegian digital culture professor and author

Scott Rettberg is an American digital artist and scholar of electronic literature based in Bergen, Norway. He is the co-founder and served as the first executive director of the Electronic Literature Organization. He leads the Center for Digital Narrative, a Norwegian Centre of Research Excellence from 2023 to 2033.

Richard Holeton is an American writer and higher-education administrator. Holeton's creative works are foundational in the hypertext and electronic literature genres. As a writer, his most notable work is the hypertext novel Figurski at Findhorn on Acid, which has been recognized as an important early work of electronic literature and is included in the hypertext canon.

<i>Figurski at Findhorn on Acid</i>

Figurski at Findhorn on Acid is a hypertext novel by Richard Holeton published on CD-ROM by Eastgate Systems in 2001 and republished on the open web by the Electronic Literature Lab, Washington State University, in 2021. Re-Imagined Radio presented a radio interpretation of this novel in 2022 in which Holeton made an appearance. It is a work of interactive fiction with various paths for readers to choose from, an early example of electronic literature, and one of 23 works included in the literary hypertext canon.

<i>These Waves of Girls</i> 2001 hypermedia novella by Caitlin Fisher

These Waves of Girls is a hypermedia novella by Caitlin Fisher that won the Electronic Literature Organization's Award for Fiction in 2001. The work is frequently taught in undergraduate literature courses and is referenced in the field of electronic literature as a significant example of early multimodal web-based hypertext fiction, placing Fisher "at the forefront of digital writing".

King of Space is a work of electronic literature by author Sarah Smith. This interactive narrative is set in a collapsing solar system aboard an abandoned starship, where an escaped terrorist encounters the last star-captain and his ship's Priestess. The story weaves elements of gaming into a dark science-fictional ritual of fertility and regeneration.

<i>Uncle Buddys Phantom Funhouse</i>

Uncle Buddy's Phantom Funhouse is an early multimedia hypermedia text written by John McDaid and released by Eastgate Systems in 1993. The main portion of Funhouse was written for Macintosh's HyperCard app, but portions of the hypermedia novel are also contained in the original box. The use of transmedia storytelling, meta-fiction, and epistolary format makes this a potential early example of an alternate reality game.

References

  1. 1 2 "Students create virtual museum of digital literature". WSU. 2021-09-02. Retrieved 2024-02-26.
  2. ↑ "WSU Vancouver students create virtual museum of digital literature". Washington State University Vancouver. 2021-06-09. Retrieved 2024-02-26.
  3. ↑ "A Tour of ELO's The NEXT | ELMCIP". elmcip.net. Retrieved 2024-02-24.
  4. 1 2 Grigar, Dene; Snyder, Richard (2022). "Metadata for Access: VR and Beyond". In Frode, Alexander (ed.). The Future of Text. Vol. III. doi:10.48197/fot2022. ISBN   979-8367580655.
  5. ↑ Grigar, Dene (June 2020). "Maintaining Accessibility to Born-Digital Literary Art". The Digital Review (1).
  6. 1 2 Grigar, Dene (September 2021). "The Ethics of Digital Preservation: Obligation to Future Generations". The Digital Review. 1.
  7. ↑ Grigar, Dene (October 2023). "Reimagining Hypertexts". The Digital Review (3).
  8. ↑ Grigar, Dene. "Reconstructing Stuart Moulthrop's Victory Garden". The Digital Review. 2.
  9. ↑ "Caged Texts". archive.the-next.eliterature.org. Retrieved 2024-02-25.
  10. ↑ "We Descend, The Complete Edition". The NEXT. Retrieved 2024-02-26.
  11. ↑ Lillvis, Kristen; White, Melinda (2023-08-28). "Review: Marjorie C. Luesebrink Collection at ELO's The NEXT". Reviews in Digital Humanities. IV (8). doi: 10.21428/3e88f64f.fb0bd342 . ISSN   2766-9297.
  12. ↑ "The NEXT Individual Artists and Scholars". The NEXT. Retrieved 2024-02-26.
  13. ↑ "The NEXT Online Journals". The NEXT. Retrieved 2024-02-26.
  14. ↑ culturalstudiesleuven (2018-07-02). "Traversals: The Use of Preservation for Early Electronic Writing". Cultural Studies Leuven. Retrieved 2024-03-24.
  15. ↑ "Review of Traversals: The Use of Preservation for Early Electronic Writing". Leonardo/ISASTwith Arizona State University. 2018-07-01. Retrieved 2024-03-24.
  16. ↑ "The Challenges of Born-Digital Fiction: Editions, Translations, and Emulations: Cover of Dene Grigar & Stuart Moulthrop's Pathfinders". The Challenges of Born-Digital Fiction: Editions, Translations, and Emulations: The Multimedia Accompaniment to the Print Edition. Retrieved 2024-03-24.
  17. ↑ "Project Description". Pathfinders. Retrieved 2024-03-24.
  18. ↑ Ortega, Élika (2016-02-23). "Preservation Paths. A Review of Pathfinders: Documenting the Experience of Early Digital Literature by Dene Grigar and Stuart Moulthrop". Digital Literary Studies. 1 (1). doi:10.18113/P8dls1159747 (inactive 2024-03-25). ISSN   2376-4228.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of March 2024 (link)
  19. ↑ "Pathfinders: Introduction to Pathfinders". Pathfinders. Retrieved 2024-03-24.
  20. ↑ "Traversals". MIT Press. Retrieved 2024-03-24.
  21. ↑ "Traversals: The Use of Preservation for Early Electronic Writing". academic.oup.com. Retrieved 2024-03-24.
  22. ↑ Grigar, Dene; Pisarski, Mariusz (2024). THE CHALLENGES OF BORN-DIGITAL FICTION: Editions, Translations, and Emulations. Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781009181488. ISBN   978-1-009-18147-1. ISSN   2633-4380.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  23. ↑ "The Challenges of Born-Digital Fiction: Editions, Translations, and Emulations". Electronic Literature Lab. Retrieved 2024-03-24.
  24. ↑ Grigar, Dene; Pisarski, Mariusz (February 21, 2024). The Challenges of Born-Digital Fiction: Editions, Translations, and Emulations (PDF). doi:10.1017/9781009181488. ISBN   9781009181488. ISSN   2633-4399.
  25. ↑ Flor, Micz. "Hypertext & Art, A Retrospective of Forms - Musei Capitolini, Rome, 2023". Home of Micz Flor (in German). Retrieved 2024-03-25.
  26. ↑ "Vision Unbound". the-next.eliterature.org. Retrieved 2024-03-25.
  27. ↑ "Hypertext and Art". the-next.eliterature.org. Retrieved 2024-03-25.
  28. ↑ "Hypertext and Art". the-next.eliterature.org. Retrieved 2024-03-25.
  29. ↑ "Christian Wachter (@ChristianWachter@fedihum.org)". FeDiHum. 2023-09-06. Retrieved 2024-03-25.
  30. ↑ "afterflash | Exhibit". the-next.eliterature.org. Retrieved 2024-03-25.
  31. ↑ "Afterflash". dtc-wsuv.org. Retrieved 2024-03-25.
  32. ↑ "These Waves of Girls - Caitlin Fisher". www.yorku.ca. Retrieved 2024-03-25.
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