A shower of Strange Rain commentary

Electronic Literature, Events,
2/9/12

(See what I did there?) The last couple of months have seen an uptick in published commentary on Strange Rain, much of it owing to notice the app received at this year’s Modern Language Association conference in Seattle. Strange Rain was included in a wide-ranging electronic literature exhibit curated by Dene Grigar, Kathi Inman Berens, and Lori Emerson, and was also the topic of a paper presented by Mark Sample for the panel “Reading Writing Interfaces: Electronic Literature’s Past and Present.” Also featured in the e-lit exhibit were Ruben & Lullaby and Blue Velvet at dedicated stations, and Chroma and Public Secrets indirectly as part of the Electronic Literature Collection 2. I feel very fortunate to see such a variety of projects garnering interest, and in such good company to boot—a Storify archive has been posted that captures some of the who, what and when.

Below are links to the two MLA-related essays which discuss Strange Rain, along with another piece from a recently-launched Tumblr called The Chimerist (they don’t love my writing, but I find it somehow inspiring when folks tweet critical reviews of their own work, so I’m following that example!).

“Toward a Mobile and Geolocative E-Lit Aesthetic”, by Kathi Inman Berens

“Strange Rain and the Poetics of Motion and Touch”, by Mark Sample

“Strange Rain”, by The Chimerist

Tag-team talk with Craig Dietrich at USC’s Digital Studies Symposium

Digital Humanities, Events, Interactive Design, Music,
3/3/10

Moderated by Freewaves founder Anne Bray, the Digital Studies Symposium at USC (open and free to the public on Thursday evenings) has been hosting weekly conversations between pairs of digital designers about the myriad, ever more swiftly flowing currents of the digital humanities. Anne was kind enough to invite my Vectors collaborator Craig Dietrich and myself down to the Zemeckis Center to speak on February 11th, and video of the talk has been posted to Vimeo (see below). There’s also a video archive of all the prior speakers on the DSS site.

Digital Studies Symposium 2_11_10 (1 of 3) from MA+P @ USC on Vimeo.

Digital Studies Symposium 2_11_10 (2 of 3) from MA+P @ USC on Vimeo.

Digital Studies Symposium 2_11_10 (3 of 3) from MA+P @ USC on Vimeo.

Pictures at an exhibition: Blood Sugar at UCLA

Digital Humanities, Events, Flex, Wii,
2/2/09

Just wanted to share a few snapshots taken just prior to the opening of the installation of Blood Sugar at the UCLA Art | Science Center (the exhibit runs through February 20). The event went quite well—people seemed to really be engaging with the content of the piece, and we got lots of positive feedback about the use of the Wii remote and nunchuk as controllers. “Feels like Minority Report,” one visitor commented.

One interesting tip that might be of use to other folks wanting to create Wii remote-driven installations using the sensor bar: we found that stacking two sensor bars one on top of the other resulted in significantly more reliable pointer control.