NUI Galway to host first Irish digital cultures conference

NUI Galway will host the first conference of the newly launched Digital Cultures Initiative, the first conference in Ireland to focus primarily on literature that is native to digital platforms and ecosystems, such as electronic literature and born-digital literature.

‘Other Codes – Digital Literatures in Context’ will focus on the various contexts for the production, dissemination and reception of digital literature in its different forms, as well as the cultural, national, geographical and institutional settings within which digital literary practice takes place.

The two-day international conference will feature presentations on topics such as, Twitter poetry, hyper-text fiction, storytelling through computer games, extended cinema and much more.

Participating speakers will feature several internationally renowned scholars and practitioners in the field including Sandy Baldwin (Rochester Institute of Technology, US), María Mencía (Kingston University, London), Jessica Pressman (San Diego State University, US) and Scott Rettberg (University of Bergen, Norway).

Speaking about the conference, Professor Sean Ryder, Director of Digital Cultures Initiative at NUI Galway, said: "This conference is the first major gathering in Ireland of international scholars and practitioners of ‘digital literature’.

"Ireland’s rich literary heritage has traditionally been based on the medium of print. But the future will see writers exploring more and more the creative capacities of digital technology. The Other Codes conference will help us think about what that future may be like."

Professor Daniel Carey, Director of the Moore Institute at NUI Galway, said: "No development in what we call ‘literature’ has more lasting significance than the emergence of the digital. I look forward to the ways in which this conference will deepen our understanding of this phenomenon which will only grow in significance over time."

The main organiser of the conference, Dr Anne Karhio at NUI Galway, commented on the event: "There is an increasing need for authors, artists and scholars to employ not only the creative potential of the digital domain, but also to interrogate these technologies, and explore their wide implications on our place in the world. Literature native to new platforms can explore and interrogate them from within."

The conference starts today Thursday, 11 May and Friday12 May in the Hardiman Research Building.

The conference is funded by the Irish Research Council, the European Commission via Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions and NUI Galway.

For full conference details visit: othercodes.wordpress.com/schedule/ and for registration visit: othercodes.wordpress.com/registration/ or email [e-mail].