A Half-Century of Hypertext: "Living e-Lit"
We are thrilled to extend a warm welcome to all digital storytelling enthusiasts, literary aficionados, and tech explorers to our highly anticipated inaugural lecture at the Center for Digital Narrative. Join us for a talk that celebrates the intersection of technology and storytelling in the digital age.
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Prepare to be captivated by speaker Robert Arellano, whose deep connection to the genesis of digital narrative has shaped decades of creative writing and educational endeavors in the realm of electronic literature. Arellano taught some of the first digital writing workshops, from 1991 onwards. In 1996, Arellano published the first hypertext novel to appear on the web, Sunshine '69.
Arellano will provide an up-to-the-moment update on a recent keynote presentation delivered at the "Half-Century of Hypertext" celebration hosted by Brown University. This event promises to provide a fresh perspective on the evolution of hypertext and its influence on modern digital narratives.
Through Arellano's unique lens, we'll traverse the evolution of hypertext from its earliest conception to its ubiquitous use in the present day, witnessing its profound influence on modern digital narrative and our everyday interactions on the internet. From early experiments to today's frontiers, we'll explore the fusion of technology and imagination, from the earliest digital experiments in nonlinear text technology to the augmented reality of the present.
Bio
Robert Arellano has been practicing digital narrative since 1989. While completing his Master’s degree at Brown, for which he submitted the 250-year-old university’s first digital graduate thesis, he and his mentor Robert Coover launched their pioneering electronic writing workshops. Since then, Arellano has taught more than 100 hypertext and experimental literature courses as a faculty member at Brown, the Rhode Island School of Design, the Institute of American Indian Arts, the University of New Mexico, and most recently the Oregon Center for the Arts, where in 2010 he founded the department of Emerging Media & Digital Arts (EMDA).
The New York Times called Arellano’s Sunshine ’69 “a raucous interactive novel that uses '90's technology to evoke the drug-imbued spirit of the '60's.” When Sonicnet serialized it online in 1996, it became the earliest hypertext novel ever published on the Web. Arellano is the author of six more novels in print, including Havana Lunar, shortlisted for the Edgar Allan Poe Award, as well as dozens of stories selected for anthologies by editors including Joyce Carol Oates, Lee Child, and Julio Ortega.
Arellano has served as an education advisor to Microsoft and Apple, delivered keynote lectures at the Sundance Film Festival and the Media Arts Symposium of the European Capital of Culture, and been granted research fellowships by both the Mellon and Rockefeller foundations. In his auxiliary career as a musician, Arellano performs on tours across Europe, the U.S. and Latin America with his longtime collaborator Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, for whom he has played lead guitar on dozens of recordings including the award-winning albums Joya and I See a Darkness.
