trAce and Writers for the Future are pleased to announce the winners of the New Media Article Writing Competition. The judges were Randy Adams, Associate Editor at trAce; Sue Thomas, founder and Artistic Director of trAce; and Tim Wright, trAce's Digital Writer-in-Residence. There were many worthy and intriguing entries, and we would like to thank everyone who submitted articles to the competition. The original call for submissions can be viewed here. Winning entries will be published in the coming weeks on the trAce website.
There were three categories, four prizes and one honourable mention:
Review - A Bad Machine Made of Words by Nick Montfort
Opinion - Are cell phones new media? Hybrid communities and collective authorship, by Adriana de Souza e Silva
Process - Writing 4 Cyberformance, by Karla Ptacek & Helen Varley Jamieson
Editor's Choice - Show Me Your Context, Baby: My Love Affair with Blogs, by Kate Baggott
Honourable Mention - Postcards From Writing, by Sally Pryor
- In the Review category (£100 GBP) we looked for reviews of: significant books; hardware or software that affects new media writing; web or net projects; trends arising from writers using the internet; personalities involved in new media writing or teaching. The winning review was A Bad Machine Made of Words by Nick Montfort, in which he reviews Dan Shiovitzs Bad Machine, "an intricate, compelling work of interactive fiction" originally released in 1998. Montfort, a Ph.D. student in computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania, is an electronic literature author, critic, and theorist. Montfort is co-author, with William Gillespie, of The Ed Report, which received honourable mention in the trAce/Alt-X New Media Writing Competition (2000). He has also written and edited books on new media.
http://nickm.com/
- In the Opinion category (£100 GBP) we asked for reasoned arguments, hobbyhorses and rants, serious-minded articles about new media writing, or humorous and satirical views of this emerging genre. The winning entry was Are cell phones new media? Hybrid communities and collective authorship, by Adriana de Souza e Silva. A Senior Researcher at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies (GSE&IS / CRESST) at UCLA, she holds a Ph.D on Communications and Culture at the School of Communications in the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Adriana's research focuses on how communication interfaces change our relationship to space and create new social environments.
http://www.souzaesilva.com/
- In the Process category (£100 GBP) we wanted articles that explored the internet as a creative medium for thinking, collaborating, communicating, coding, performing, exhibiting, imagining, visualising, teaching - and, of course, writing. Karla Ptacek & Helen Varley Jamieson won in this category with Writing 4 Cyberformance, "a chat log about online performance writing" by two members of Avatar Body Collision in Upstage. Karla Ptacek's work spans two decades in New York City as a writer, performer and director in multimedia ensembles; she holds an MA in Directing & MPhil in Distributed Performance Practices. Helen Varley Jamieson has a background in theatre as a writer, director and producer, and has worked in digital media and the internet since 1996.
http://www.avatarbodycollision.org/
- The Editor's Choice Award (£200 GBP) went to the entry that best investigated or challenged the aesthetics of new media writing. The winning essay was Kate Baggotts Show Me Your Context, Baby: My Love Affair with Blogs a passionate defense of blogs as "the only sign of the new revolution, the new democracy, and the new nervous system." Baggott is a Canadian freelance writer currently living and working in Germany. She has written about new media since 1996 and is a columnist for Globe Technology.
- Honourable Mention goes to Sally Pryor for Postcards From Writing, a multimedia presentation developed for CD and higher speed internet connections. Postcards From Writing "explores her encounter with Integrationism, a new semiology of communication and writing." Dr. Pryor is an Australian digital artist/programmer/animator and independent multimedia developer who has been working with digital art for 20 years.
http://www.sallypryor.com/
Prize Money Offered by:
trAce and Writers for the Future, a project for NESTA managed by the trAce Online Writing Centre at The Nottingham Trent University.
Writers for the Future is a project for NESTA managed by the trAce Online Writing Centre at The Nottingham Trent University. Writers for the Future explores innovative ways of writing using the internet, and provides criteria for best practice in the emerging genre of new media writing.
Founded in 1995, trAce connects writers and readers around the world in real and virtual space. We promote an accessible and inclusive approach to the internet with the focus on creativity, collaboration and training. This is where writers meet to experiment, create new work, and expand the potential of the global literary community. Membership is free.