ELO 2015 Bergen, Norway (+ Oslo)

This year we had an opportunity to present our work and arrange a workshop at the Electronic Literature Organization Conference. It was our first time to attend this event, though this years theme declared the end of the electronic literature: ELO 2015: The End(s) of Electronic Literature. In the “end” the conference will not be the last one. On the other hand what the end(s) of Electronic Literature refers too can be seen and heard e.g. in the talks of Key Note speakers Espen Aarseth and Stuart Moulthrop.

But let’s jump a bit back in time, while we had a chance to visit Oslo and to stay at our friends Marit and Joakims place before we continued to Bergen for the conference. Here are some glimpses of Oslo in a nutshell with Silvia and Daria as well as some local secrets introduced by our hosts.

After a weekend in Oslo we took the beautiful nearly 7h train trip to Bergen. In between 182 tunnels we enjoyed the subliminal views that we passed by.

In Bergen that should be one of the rainiest cities in Europe we actually enjoyed quite sunny weather while visiting one of the city’s seven mountain – Fløyfjellet. After setting up our artwork we also had a afternoon time to enjoy a 3,5h fjord cruise and a couple of times we enjoyed the seafood at the fish market.

Most of our time in Bergen was spent at the ELO conference. On the first day we arranged our Revisiting the Spam Folder workshop. And Linda participated in the Scalar publishing tool tutorial.

Of course the Key Notes were interesting. Other tracks we visited and were highlights for us were:

• Writing in Social Media and Spam
• Electronic Literature as Action and Event: Participatory Culture and “The Literary”
• Curating and Creating Electronic Works in Arts Contexts
• The Medium

Some of the tracks were recorded and archived and can be seen here.

At the End(s) of Electronic Literature Exhibition new as well as old classics and precursors of electronic literature were on display at the University of Bergen Arts Library.

The Electronic Literature community makes a great effort in collecting, documenting and publishing their works. Here are some links to more informations and artworks.

ELMCIP – Electronic literature knowledge base
Electronic literature organization

On Friday, the last day of the conference there was the opening reception of the exhibition Interventions in which our work Faceless Patrons was part of. The exhibition it self was in a old sardine factory USF rebuilt to a cultural space and open to the public during the whole conference.