WRT: Writer Response Theory

My latest articles in SLATE Magazine explore the notion of the art space in virtual worlds. In part one I analyse how some spaces are remediations of the real world and then in part two I pose ideas about what would be the ‘white cube’ equivalent (the ideal environment to experience art) in a virtual […]

TADS 3, a “robust, modern programming environment specially designed for creating Interactive Fiction,” is officially out in General Release 3.0.12. The freeware release comes in author and player kits for Windows, Unix, and Mac OS X, and is complemented by an admirably packaged bookshelf of documentation, including Getting Started, a Tour Guide, and system, technical, […]

Recently, Mark discussed the 2003 ELDRAS hoax in which a chatbot / author committed suicide in anticipation of imminent reincarnation. Tracing the explosion of discussion on the message board, he notes some lessons for hoaxing and viral marketing - in particular, citing a lacuna, some original news source that doesn’t exist.

When I first read about […]

Netspeak, or its phreaky (ph5e@k) kin leet (l33t), has been sneaking into schools and various narrative forms for quite some time. Here’s a Slashdot post from 2002 about its entry without a hall pass. Since instant messaging and texting is such a dominant part of youth culture, where else would it go? (According to Mobile Youth, 3.2 billion text messages sent in the UK in March 2006.) Of course, it was just a matter of time before it showed up in fiction, though not always how you’d expect.

TTYL (2004), TTFN (2006)
By Lauren Myracle

This is a pair of best-slling print-based, teen-oriented epistolary novelsl written entirely in texting. They are, to my knowledge, the only novels written entiely in this format. Author Myracle, of course, has a MySpace page for all her fans to post their messages of luv, sending their own netspeak messages back. Her next outing: l8r, g8r

An upcoming issue on theories and practices of blogging requests submissions of papers/projects/manifestos by October 6, 2006 to guest editors Michael Benton and Lauren Elkin of the journal Reconstruction: studies in contemporary culture. From the CFP:

We are especially interested in the experiences, theories and perspectives of those who actually blog. We are looking for longer […]