On Monday, November 20, 2017 at 12 p.m. in the Digital Scholarship Lab at the Rockefeller Library, Scott Rettberg will give a talk entitled, “Combinatory Poetics in Electronic Literature and Cinema.” This event is free and open to the public. A light reception will follow the talk.

Aleatory and combinatory poetic methods have been an ongoing concern of the avant-garde stretching back to the early 20th century, and have crystallized as one of the main threads of practice in electronic literature. Scott Rettberg will discuss how an interest in combinatory poetics reflected first in projects such as the poetry generators “Frequency,” “Tokyo Garage,” and “After Parthenope” emerged in collaborations with Roderick Coover and Nick Montfort in the combinatory film “Three Rails Live” and subsequently with Coover the feature-length combinatory film “Toxi*City” and the new work-in-progress (recently filmed in Ireland) “Circe.”

Scott Rettberg is Professor of Digital Culture in the Department of Linguistic, Literary, and Aesthetic Studies at the University of Bergen, Norway. He holds a Ph.D. in English and is the author or co-author of novel-length works of electronic literature including The Unknown, Kind of Blue, Implementation, Toxi*City, Hearts and Minds: The Interrogations Project·—winner of the 2016 Robert Coover award for a work of electronic literature—and others. His creative work has been exhibited online and at art venues around the world, including the Venice Biennale, the Nobel Peace Prize Forum, ISEA, the Santa Monica Museum in Barcelona, the Beall Center, the Slought Foundation, the Krannert Art Museum, and elsewhere. Rettberg is the cofounder and served as the first executive director of the nonprofit Electronic Literature Organization.

Date: November 20, 2017
Time: 12 p.m.
Location: Patrick Ma Digital Scholarship Lab, Rockefeller Library, 10 Prospect Street, Providence, RI