In October 2015 I visited the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University to conduct research into Uncle Roger, the first commercial work of electronic literature by pioneering artist Judy Malloy. There, among the twenty-seven boxes comprising the Judy Malloy Papers, I sifted through notebooks, computer readouts of code of her works, images she took of her many works, correspondence with other artists, and exhibition papers. The materials associated with Uncle Roger were contained primarily in Box 3. Despite the fact that Uncle Roger was limited to one box and was organized in folders, it was still difficult to determine what constituted the serial novel, what can be called Version 1.0, or where the information was located for the database narrative created in GW-BASIC, or Version 4.0. Furthermore, the handmade artist's box with hand-designed inserts, Version 3.3, was dispersed in different folders in the box, and the floppy disks themselves were archived separately and were, understandably, inaccessible for use. Unless someone knew exactly what they were looking for among the materials in the archive, they would have 20

No abstract

No abstract

Many pioneering works of electronic literature are now largely inaccessible because of changes in hardware, software, and platforms. The virtual disappearance of these works--created on floppy disks, in Apple’s defunct HyperCard, and on other early systems and platforms--not only puts important electronic literary work out of reach but also signals the fragility of most works of culture in the digital age. In response, Dene Grigar and Stuart Moulthrop have been working to document and preserve electronic literature, work that has culminated in the Pathfinders project and its series of “Traversals”--video and audio recordings of demonstrations performed on historically appropriate platforms, with participation and commentary by the authors of the works. In Traversals, Moulthrop and Grigar mine this material to examine four influential early works: Judy Malloy’s Uncle Roger (1986), John McDaid’s Uncle Buddy’s Phantom Funhouse (1993), Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl (1995) and Bill Bly’s We Descend (1997), offering “deep readings” that consider the works as both literary artifacts and computational constructs. For each work, Moulthrop and Grigar explore the interplay between the text’s material circumstances and the patterns of meaning it engages and creates, paying attention both to specificities of media and purposes of expression.

Sarah Smith's King of Space, published in 1991, is the first work of science fiction produced as electronic literature. Released on a 3.5-in. floppy disk and requiring a Macintosh computer running System Software 7.0-MacOS 9x, it is now inaccessible to scholars interested in early digital literary forms, particularly of science fiction by women authors. Because this work is interactive and involves animations, images, sound, and words, preserving it requires an approach that retains as much of these experiences as possible for future audiences. To accomplish this task, our lab--the Electronic Literature Lab at Washington State University, Vancouver--used the Pathfinders methodology developed by Grigar and Stuart Moulthrop, adding to it Live Stream play-throughs on YouTube promoted through social media channels. This essay outlines our process and discusses the potential of this methodology for preserving other kinds of multimedia and interactive work.