The NEXT Museum
The NEXT: Museum, Library, and Preservation Space is a repository of net art, electronic literature and games. It is supported by 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.
Electronic Literature Lab
[edit]The Electronic Literature Lab holds the hardware and software that the NEXT Museum depends on to show electronic literature works in their original environment. This lab is housed at the Washington State University at Vancouver Washington. Dene Grigar founded and directs this lab. The lab contains over 80 vintage computers from 1977 onwards.[3]
History
[edit]This digital museum originally housed 30 separate collections of 2,500 electronic literature works[1][4] which had increased to over 3,000 works by 2022.[5] 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.[5] The lab opened officially in 2011.[6]
Reviving works
[edit]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:
- Charles Bernstein, An Mosiac for Convergence (1997 original publication, 2019 re-imagined)[7]
- Richard Holeton, Figurski at Findhorn on Acid[8]
- Caitlin Fisher, These Waves of Girls[8]
- John McDaid, Uncle Buddy's Phantom Funhouse[9] in 2021
- Stuart Moulthrop, Victory Garden[10] in 2022
- David Kolb, Socrates in the Labyrinth and Caged Texts[11] in 2022
- Bill Bly, We Descend in 2023[12]
Individual author collections
[edit]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.[13]
Author collections include:[14]
- Jo-Anne Green
- N. Katherine Hayles
- Richard Holeton
- Micheal Joyce
- Robert Kendall
- David Kolb
- Deena Larsen
- Marjorie Luesebrink. The Marjorie C. Luesebrink Collection at ELO’s The NEXT features 66 works created and collected by this pioneering digital literary artist who publishes under the name M. D. Coverley.[15]
- Stuart Moulthrop
- Jason Nelson
- Alan Sondheim
- Sarah Smith
- Stephanie Strickland
- Rob Swigart
- Helen Thorington
- Jody Zellen
Online journal and publication collections
[edit]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).[16]
Academic publications
[edit]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":[17][18][19] Pathfinders: Documenting the Experience of Early Digital Literature (June 2015)[20][21][22] and Traversals: The Use of Preservation for Early Electronic Writing[23][24] (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[25] and as a multi-media online work.[26][27][28]
Exhibitions
[edit]The NEXT Museum curates exhibitions, such as Vision Unbound for Women's History month (2024),[29] Hypertext an art in Italy September 5-8 2023 in conjunction with the ACM Hypertext Conference,[30][31][32] and AfterFlash.[33][34][35]
References
[edit]- ^ a b "Students create virtual museum of digital literature". WSU. 2021-09-02. Retrieved 2024-02-26.
- ^ "WSU Vancouver students create virtual museum of digital literature". Washington State University Vancouver. 2021-06-09. Retrieved 2024-02-26.
- ^ "The Electronic Literature Lab". dtc-wsuv.org. Retrieved 2024-05-06.
- ^ "A Tour of ELO's The NEXT | ELMCIP". elmcip.net. Retrieved 2024-02-24.
- ^ a b 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.
- ^ "The Electronic Literature Lab". dtc-wsuv.org. Retrieved 2024-05-06.
- ^ Grigar, Dene (June 2020). "Maintaining Accessibility to Born-Digital Literary Art". The Digital Review (1).
- ^ a b Grigar, Dene (September 2021). "The Ethics of Digital Preservation: Obligation to Future Generations". The Digital Review. 1.
- ^ Grigar, Dene (October 2023). "Reimagining Hypertexts". The Digital Review (3).
- ^ Grigar, Dene. "Reconstructing Stuart Moulthrop's Victory Garden". The Digital Review. 2.
- ^ "Caged Texts". archive.the-next.eliterature.org. Retrieved 2024-02-25.
- ^ "We Descend, The Complete Edition". The NEXT. Retrieved 2024-02-26.
- ^ 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.
- ^ "The NEXT Individual Artists and Scholars". The NEXT. Retrieved 2024-02-26.
- ^ 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.
- ^ "The NEXT Online Journals". The NEXT. Retrieved 2024-02-26.
- ^ culturalstudiesleuven (2018-07-02). "Traversals: The Use of Preservation for Early Electronic Writing". Cultural Studies Leuven. Retrieved 2024-03-24.
- ^ "Review of Traversals: The Use of Preservation for Early Electronic Writing". Leonardo/ISASTwith Arizona State University. 2018-07-01. Retrieved 2024-03-24.
- ^ "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.
- ^ "Project Description". Pathfinders. Retrieved 2024-03-24.
- ^ 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) - ^ "Pathfinders: Introduction to Pathfinders". Pathfinders. Retrieved 2024-03-24.
- ^ "Traversals". MIT Press. Retrieved 2024-03-24.
- ^ "Traversals: The Use of Preservation for Early Electronic Writing". academic.oup.com. Retrieved 2024-03-24.
- ^ 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.
- ^ "The Challenges of Born-Digital Fiction: Editions, Translations, and Emulations". Electronic Literature Lab. Retrieved 2024-03-24.
- ^ 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.
- ^ Flor, Micz. "Hypertext & Art, A Retrospective of Forms - Musei Capitolini, Rome, 2023". Home of Micz Flor (in German). Retrieved 2024-03-25.
- ^ "Vision Unbound". the-next.eliterature.org. Retrieved 2024-03-25.
- ^ "Hypertext and Art". the-next.eliterature.org. Retrieved 2024-03-25.
- ^ "Hypertext and Art". the-next.eliterature.org. Retrieved 2024-03-25.
- ^ "Christian Wachter (@[email protected])". FeDiHum. 2023-09-06. Retrieved 2024-03-25.
- ^ "afterflash | Exhibit". the-next.eliterature.org. Retrieved 2024-03-25.
- ^ "Afterflash". dtc-wsuv.org. Retrieved 2024-03-25.
- ^ "These Waves of Girls - Caitlin Fisher". www.yorku.ca. Retrieved 2024-03-25.