E-Lit Competition Winners
Electronic literature (E-Lit) is born-digital, made on the computer and read on the computer so that its computational processes are part of its poetics. From Flash poetry to augmented reality, interactive fiction to hypertext, games to Netprov, electronic literature encompasses a wide variety of efforts to employ new media to create literary art.
Each year we run a student competition in electronic literature: student winners earn a cash prize and showcase their work at the annual DH Showcase in May.
2024 Competition
Winner
Robert Lang and Rachel Noe, “A Fine Madness”
Graduate student in the MFA in Creative Writing with Poetry emphasis (English Department) and Undergraduate student in Management Information Systems
An HTML-based interactive fiction created in Twine, “A Fine Madness” is presented as the online review of an uncovered unpublished novel that serves as the platform to observe the question of what it means to be human in a time where even our machines are asking us to verify our humanity. The scope of the project will cover 9 artistically distinct pathways each designed to tackle the thematic question in different ways. The build of the project we're submitting for the competition focuses on a simplified version of three of these pathways with some clues as to what lies in store for them and the other six. It was designed with this competition in mind, and we hope it intrigues and entertains readers and it has us!
The jurors say:
“Navigating A Fine Madness’s layered narrative is like losing oneself in a hall of mirrors reflecting essential questions—perhaps unanswerable—about navigating the precarities of our contemporary moment. I appreciated the project’s ambition, and its effective use of user input to accentuate the choices we make in this choose your own adventure hypertext experience.”
“Like a fever dream of Late Capitalism, this interactive meta-fiction brings a surrealist aesthetic into a last roadtrip through the Matrix via House of Leaves. Presented as an unfinished sample, the piece offers a mad escape room, with rabbit holes tunneling through code and the detritus of culture, ending in the mushroom cloud of hallucination.”
“frustrating but that frustration led to the ironic ending. So ambitious.”
Honorable Mention — It’s a tie!!
Marian Cuevas, "vivre"
Graduate student in the Master of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences (MALAS) program
vivre is an intimate exploration of day-to-day existence. The piece explores a relationship with our environment that fosters mindfulness, presence, and peace. The 8-bit style mini-game takes the player through a day of idleness and peace in which nothing really “happens” yet there is a lot to see. The graphics of this game are still being refined.
The jurors say:
“Vivre’s understated 8-bit graphics style role-playing game is rich with poignant philosophical questions. That nothing really happens in this day-in-the-life vignette is exactly the point, inviting us to take pleasure in the little things, brought delightfully to life through simple interactions and charming pixel art scenes.”
“delightful. A truly sweet post-COVID tribute to living simply and enjoying being alive."
Milagros Vilaplana, "Border Waters" *
Graduate MFA in Creative Writing (English Department)
“Border waters” is a poem that probes multiple ways electronic software can conflate the mobilization, fragmentation, crossbreeding of words and lines in English and Spanish on the computer screen to produce layered reflections on the natural and human effects of the Tijuana River watershed overflooding into the estuary and ocean on the San Diego side. The piece suggests the flow of river water is as organic as people leaving their land to seek asylum in the U.S. It borrows from the modernist linguistic tradition, as well as from the eco-poetic movement of our present era. An important focus is the collaboration between the non-human features (both code and AI) of the software used, 2023 Power Point, where agency is given to both. Various themes run into each other and come back as augmented refrains, from the philosophical questioning the nature of water, the human tragedy of a landslide, a mix, mismatch and erasure of classes and cultures and the internal cognitive disruption that these imbalances cause. Like an epic, it starts with a real event in 1993 when the Tijuana dam gates broke open and ends with a present-day U.S. family wanting to enjoy a day in the sun in.
* Note: the original YouTube video is no longer available. The project was re-conceptualized in Fall 2024 for an exhibit at the International Conference for Interactive Digital Story-telling in Colombia.
The jurors say:
“This complex piece offers a hypnotic visual osmosis of language in a rich animated digital concrete poem that depicts political borders and the toxic politics and pollution that flow through them, contaminating lives along the way. A powerful piece whose modernist and ecocritical tributaries course through to something new.”
“This piece is truly rich and complex. The digital concrete poetry was reminiscent of the tradition from bpNichol to The Dream Life of Letters. The content is equally powerful.”
“There is a LOT going on in this piece, conceptually, visually, and poetically. The layers of geopolitics and ecocriticism along with the skillful play of languages give Border Waters substance.”
Previous Competition Winners
No competition was held this year.
First Place: Brent Ameneyro, “Luck”
Honorable Mention: Abigail Hora, "Not to Me" and Bilal Mohamed, “Lost Inside: A Digital Inquiry”
No competition was held this year.
The competition was cancelled due to the COVID-19 Pandemic.
First Place: Jared Zeiders, “Ofermod V.2.2.6”
Honorable Mention: Brenda Taulbee, “Sensational Silence: Against Erasure”
First Place: Adrian Belmes, “Recursion”
Honorable Mentions: Marine Bernard, “NovaCorp” and Katie Chestnut, “Medusa’s Laughter”
First Place: Valorie Ruiz, “Brujerías”
Honorable Mention: Kristin Herr, "Blork the 60-Second Pet!"
First Place: Riley Wilson, “Driving Alone at Night”
Honorable Mention: Mariana Best, “Brave New Readers”
