Grand Text Auto

Ours is a group blog, founded in May 2003, about computer mediated and computer generated works of many forms: interactive fiction, net.art, electronic poetry, interactive drama, hypertext fiction, computer games of all sorts, shared virtual environments, and more. Andrew, Mary, Michael, Nick, Noah, and Scott all work as both theorists and developers, and are interested in authorship, design, and technology, as well as issues of interaction and reception.

Mary Flanagan is a software artist, technoculture theorist, and activist. She coedited Reload: Rethinking Women in Cyberculture (MIT Press, 2002), re:skin (2007). She is working on several more books including Critical Play (2009). She writes on gaming, gender, and what she calls “playculture.” Mary’s art explores technology in everyday life and has been shown recently at SIGGRAPH, Gigantic Art Space, and the Guggenheim. She’s also at work on Rapunsel, a project to teach girls programming, and co-directs Values at Play, a project about computer apps and values, and runs the influential Tiltfactor lab.

Michael Mateas is an assistant professor of computer science at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His work in expressive AI involves developing new forms of art and entertainment while also advancing AI research goals. His projects include Office Plant #1, Terminal Time, and, with Andrew, the interactive drama Façade.

Nick Montfort is assistant professor of digital media at MIT, where he continues to develop games, poems, and other sorts of digital projects. He wrote the book Twisty Little Passages. With Noah, he edited The New Media Reader and wrote Acid-Free Bits. With Scott, he wrote the sticker novel Implementation.

Scott Rettberg is an associate professor in the department of Humanistic Informatics at the University of Bergen, Norway. He founded the Electronic Literature Organization and has written and collaborated on e-lit works, including the hypertext novel The Unknown, “The Meddlesome Passenger,” and the email novel Kind of Blue. He wrote Implementation with Nick.

Andrew Stern is a designer, writer and engineer of personality-rich, AI-based interactive characters and stories. With Michael he has recently completed the interactive drama Façade, a 5-year art/research project. He was a lead designer and software engineer at PF.Magic, developing Virtual Babyz, Dogz, and Catz. He’s also been doing research lately with Zoesis and USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies.

Noah Wardrip-Fruin edited The New Media Reader with Nick and both First Person and Second Person with Pat Harrigan. An alumnus of Brown’s graduate writing program and interdisciplinary Ph.D. program, he is now a faculty member at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His literary collaborations for computational media include Gray Matters, The Impermanence Agent, the installation Talking Cure, and the VR Cave piece Screen.

Thanks to UC Santa Cruz’s Baskin School of Engineering for hosting Grand Text Auto.