[Nettime-bold] FW: Dazzling! - the winner of the trAce/Alt-X New Media Writing Competition 2000 + trAce renames itself with a brand new image (fwd)

["Talan Memmott" <talan@percepticon.com>]

CONTENTS

* Dazzling! - the winner of the trAce/Alt-X New Media Writing Competition
2000
* trAce renames itself with a brand new image


"Dazzling style" is how judge Shelley Jackson describes the winning entry
in the second trAce/Alt-X New Media Writing Competition. The contest,
hosted by the trAce Online Writing Centre at The Nottingham Trent
University in partnership with the Alt-X Online Publishing Network, aims
to discover the best contemporary web-based writing and bring it to the
attention of the literary world both on and offline. The result and
supporting information can be found at http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/comp.cfm

This year's winner is Talan Memmott, an artist/writer from San Francisco,
California. Born in 1964, he came to writing by way of visual art, having
worked in video, installation art, painting, and performance art, as well
as working as a professional chef. His winning site 'Lexia to Perplexia'
http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/newmedia/lexia/index.htm combines design, theory
and fiction and provides a challenging example of what can be achieved on
the internet by artists who are brave enough to mix art and programming.

An Honourable Mention goes to Nick Montfort, William Gillespie & Dylan
Meissner, whose 'The Ed Report' combines hypertext and humour in a
hilarious clickable narrative.

Talan Memmott, who gave an innovative demonstration of his site at last
year's trAce Incubation conference using not a computer screen but three
whiteboards and coloured markers, won ?1000 when he rose to the top of a
shortlist featuring online-writers from South Korea, Australia, Brazil,
America, and the UK. On hearing he had won, he said, "This is fantastic! I
am truly honored to receive this award."

Artistic Director of trAce, Sue Thomas, said: "Talan Memmott was first
published by trAce in 1999 when his piece Reasoned Metagoria appeared in
frAme, our journal of culture and technology. His style is both elegant
and contemplative, a prime example of the best of the net."

Mark Amerika, Director of Alt-X, notes that Talan's work, "like so much of
the best new work emerging on the net, puts into play a renegotiation of
the image/text relationship."

This relationship between image and text has been a constant theme in
net-based writing, so much so that when this round of the competition was
launched, the organisers presented the competitors with a challenge -to
describe what kind of art they are making and what name they give to
themselves as writers/artists. Most were reluctant to be pinned down,
using such descriptions for their work as:

Hypertext : web-specific writing : net literature : Net Art :
net-art-writing : Interactive Fiction : Hypertext Fiction : hypermedia :
digital literature : lit[art]ure : cyberpoetry : Hypermedia Literature :
Web Poetry : Web Art : electronic literature : Organic hypertext and many
others including just Online Content.

And for themselves:

Artist/theorist; Artist/writer/thinker/designer; Creative human;
Cybermancer; Cyberpoet; Digital artist; Hacker/poet; Hypermedia novelist;
Information Artist; Meta-Author; Metaweb commentator; New media artist;
Writer/multimedia artist and many more. One entrant declared simply "Poet
still works for me, because it means "maker."

A full list of responses is now available on the competition website at
http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/comp.html The site also features the judge's
remarks, the shortlist, an overview of the submissions and an interview
with Talan Memmott by Mark Amerika.

PLUS  - A REDESIGN FOR TRACE

TrAce this week renames itself to the trAce Online Writing Centre and puts
on a different set of colours. The traditional upper case A typo remains,
but the well-known orange and black logo is transformed to shades of blue.
Artistic Director Sue Thomas said, "The new look heralds an expansion of
our services in 2001. This will be our most ambitious year ever, with
several exciting new projects in the pipeline, including an Online Writing
School and more support for professional online writers. We have also
added a new facility to the site so users can submit in their own news
stories about on and offline events."


Ends

Note to News Editors: For further information please contact:

Jennifer Spencer, Director of Corporate Affairs on +44 (0)115 948 6542
jennifer.spencer@ntu.ac.uk or Kate Dawson, Press Officer on +44 (0) 115948
6589 kate.dawson@ntu.ac.uk or Jenny Bingham, Press Office Consultant on
Tel: +44 (0)115 848 6499 jenny.bingham@ntu.ac.uk

trAce Online Writing Centre
The Nottingham Trent University
Clifton Lane
Nottingham
NG11 8NS
ENGLAND
Tel: +44 (0)115 8486360
Fax: +44 (0)115 8486364
http://trace.ntu.ac.uk
trace@ntu.ac.uk
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