[x] Also on Friday at x: Jim Bizzocchi interviews Deena Larsen

[Jim Andrews]

We'll start the evening on Friday at 7 with a 20 minute Skype interview by
Jim Bizzocchi of Deena Larsen followed by 10 minutes of discussion with
Deena. We'll then take a  break before Steve DiPaola is up.

Deena Larson will discuss the poetics of electronic literature -
reflecting her long experience with the making of e-literature and
with the community of e-literature makers.   Deena is passionately
committed to her own practice - and to the understanding and the
development of others practice.

She will address topics such as:
    * Why do we need to have complex stories - why do this sort of
layering of meaning with links, structure, images, etc?
    * How do her works address fundamental questions and challenges in
the field, such as being "lost in hyperspace" or "surely you can't
write something upside down, rightside up and backwards and still
have it make sense"?
    * Tool pushing - and how her works use the tools to tell the
stories.  How do the tools influence the story and the
structuring/linking strategy?
    * How to get started - or advance - your own practice in
electronic literature.

Deena Larsen is a poineer New Media/Hypertext/Cyber Literature/Electronic
Literature writer. The terms change, but basically the idea remains the
same--writing that incorporates an extra dimension as an integral part of
the work. Her  MA thesis in 1991 covered Hypertext and Hyperpossibilities,
and she has been exploring the infinite realm of possibilities involved in
writing with the "other dimensions" of links, secrets, navigation, random
orders, images, video, sound, and more ever since.  Her works have been
published in a wide range of online venues, including, Drunken Boat,
Inflect, Blue Moon Review, and the Iowa Review Web.  Her first work, Marble
Springs 1.0 (Eastgate Systems, 1993) was the first interactive,
collaborative work and pre-dated wikis and the internet.  She has recently
re-released Marble Springs 3.0 as a wiki
http://www.marblesprings.wikidot.com/.  She has also written the first
electronic literature textbook, Fun Da Mentals, which explains rhetorical
moves possible in this type of writing
http://www.deenalarsen.net/fundamentals.