2021, Electronic Literature (E-lit) and Covid, a member of research team.

The team consisted of Scott Rettberg (University of Bergen) and Søren Bro Pold (Aarhus University), a project leader. Funded by Theme Funding by DARIAH EU small grant.

In the project, we were interested in how the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting measures, and movement of cultural life online were reflected in electronic literature and other online digital narrative practices. To this end, we were working on developing an analytical research study, an open-access research collection, an online exhibition and a critical study of electronic literature and digital art produced during this time of COVID 19. Some of the research outputs so far include:

An online exhibition, Covid E-lit. It was curated and organised by the research team as a part of 2021 Electronic Literature Organisation Conference & Media Art Festival;

A documentary film, Covid Elit: Digital Art during the Pandemic, by Anna Nacher, Søren Pold, Scott Rettberg, and Ashleigh Steele based on interviews with digital authors and artists who produced works reflective of the conditions of life during the 2020-2021 pandemic (44:12 min). It features interviews with Annie Abrahams, Abraham Avnisan, Giselle Beiguelman, xtine burrough, Sharon Daniel, Ben Grosser, Mark Jeffery, Erik Loyer, Mark C. Marino, Bilal Mohamed, Judd Morrissey, Jörg Piringer, Giulia Carla Rossi, Mark Sample, Alex Saum-Pascual, and Jody Zellen.

Pandemic Elit – a research collection documenting the exhibition and research in the ELCMIP Knowledge Base (University of Bergen);

The outputs of the project so far were presented at:

• ELO 2021 Conference & Festival: Platform (Post?) Pandemic (May 2021, online);
• Oslo International Poetry Festival, film screening (premiere), June 2021.
• Covid E-lit: Digital Life During the Pandemic, University of Bergen, film screening (September 2021);
• Japanese Association for Digital Humanities JADH2021 “Digital Humanities and COVID-2019” (September 2021, online);
• Media Arts, Data, and Design Center, University of Chicago, film screening (May 2022);
• DARIAH-EU Annual Event 2022: Storytelling, presentation and film screening (May 31-June 3, 2022, Athens).
• MLA2023, Electronic Literature and the Long Pandemic panel session, January 2023 (a paper accepted).

Publications:

Anna Nacher, Søren Bro Pold, Scott Rettberg, A Pandemic Crisis Seen from the Screen: A Reflection on Pandemic Imagination, [in:] Encountering the Plague. Humanities Takes on the Pandemic. eds. Wojciech Sowa, Tony Whyton, Intellect, London 2024. (open access, https://doi.org/10.1386/9781789389869_13)

Anna Nacher, Søren Bro Pold, Scott Rettberg, “Pandemic Genres: Processing the COVID-19 Pandemic through Electronic Literature”, Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures, no. 26, 2023,  doi:10.20415/hyp/026.e01 (open access)

Anna Nacher, Soren Brø Pold, Scott Rettberg, COVID E-LIT: Digital Art from the Pandemic curatorial statement, EBR electronic book review, 06-06-2021;

Anna Nacher, Soren Brø Pold, Scott Rettberg, Platform In[ter]ventions: an Interview with Ben Grosser, EBR electronic book review, 11-07-2021;

xtine burrough, Anna Nacher, Soren Brø Pold, Scott Rettberg, All of the spaces collapsing: an interview with tine burrough, EBR electronic book review, 06-05-2022;

January 2018-January 2020, The aesthetics of post-digital imagery – between new materialism and object-oriented philosophy, a principal investigator.

Funded by National Science Center Poland.

I was interested in how the production of images is getting transformed in the conditions of what Berry calls the postdigital constellation. Since my basic assumption was that coming up with unifying theory of visuality is not possible in the age of proliferating digital images, I focused on a few specific areas where interpreting image production on the ground of representationalism becomes misleading and does not allow for fully grasping the nature of such processes (imagery produced within the sensing technology circuits in art and environmental management as well as the then nascent popular technologies of VR). Therefore, I undertook the theoretical task to re-examine the notion of representation so that it acknowledges the post-digital imagery production, with its shift towards automatic and quasi-automatic data flows, often directly connected to the physical environment.

The outputs of the project were presented at:

2018, SLSAeu Green Conference, European Society for Literature, Science and the Arts – University of Copehagen (a paper “>>Graying<< the green”);

2018, Politics of the Machines – Art and After, Aalborg University Copenhagen (a paper “The politics of ontological coalitions – bonding across realms”);

2018, Transient Topographies – Space and Interface in Digital Literature and Arts, National University of Ireland, Galway (a paper “Post-digital imagery and its hybrid materialities”);

2018, Cultures of Participation – Arts, Digital Media and Politics, Aarhus University (a paper “VR – the culture of (non)participation”);

2017, Re:Trace – 7th International Conference on the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology, Danube University Krems | Goettweig Abbey | Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna  (a paper “The post-digital imagery as relational object”);

2017, “Virtualities and Realities”, 2nd Open Fields Conference & Festival, RIXC Center for New Media Culture, Arts Academy of Latvia, Riga (a paper ” Between “dance of agency” and distributed agency of techno-ecological artistic practice”).

Publications:

Anna Nacher, VR – the culture of (non)participation? Reframing the participative edge of virtual reality, [in:] Cultures of Participation. Arts, Digital Media and Cultural Institutions, eds. B. Eriksson, C. Stage, B. Valtysson, Routledge, New York and London 2020.

Anna Nacher, “Techno-ecological media installations as the strategy of network”, “Acoustic Space” vol. 17, “Virtualities and Realities. New Experiences, Art, and Ecologies in Immersive Environments”, RIXC Center for New Media Culture, Riga 2019.

Anna Nacher, The Techno-Ecological Practice as the Politics of Ontological Coalitions, Proceedings of EVA Copenhagen 2018 – Politics of the Machine – Art and After (open access), Electronic Workshops in Computing, British Computer Society, dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVAC18.17

Anna Nacher, In Praise of the (Post) Digital, Electronic Book Review, 5. Aug. 2018 (open access).

2012, “Participatory urban culture – nodes and flows” (Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage), a principal investigator and a research team leader

The project was carried out within the framework of the Observatory of Culture programme run by Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, in cooperation with Małopolska Cultural Institute, project no. 05159/12 DMP.

The project aimed to capture the non-formalized or formalised only partially practices of participation in urban culture, especially the alternative trends in Kraków.

Cultural participation has been conceptualised in the context of social communication, and the processes of mediatization which are the activities picked up by the networks of friends and acquaintances, which creates the flows of information and activity in urban space. Another important research goal of the project was to apprehend the junction points (the localisations where most of the cultural events have been carried out) as well as the flows and links between them.

Within the project, I coordinated the methodology of the research and the research team. I have also edited the final report available in the open access as the separate online publication. I presented the outcomes of the project at TEDxKraków in 2014 (YouTube clip includes the short description in English).

The outputs of the project were presented at:

2013, Communication and the City (Voices, Spaces, Media), University of Leeds  (a paper “Nodes and flows of Kraków urban cultural life”, co-presenter: dr Magdalena Zdrodowska).

Publications:

(In Polish, a report) Spacerowicze, nomadzi i sieciowi łowcy okazji (raport z badań), Małopolski Instytut Kultury, Kraków 2012.