Caitlin Fisher
Fisher is also a Co-founder of York’s Future Cinema Lab, former Fulbright and Canada Research Chair, and an international award-winning digital storyteller.
[8] She currently serves as President of the Electronic Literature Organization, and on the international Board of Directors for HASTAC - the Humanities, Arts, Technology, Alliance, and Collaboratory.
The goal of the CDN is to deepen our knowledge of how digital technologies impact one of the most fundamental human activities: how we tell the stories, that shape our lives and understanding of the world.
[10] Fisher is the author of Canada's first born-digital hypertextual dissertation[7] and the winner of the first Electronic Literature Award for Fiction, in 2001, for the hypertext novella These Waves of Girls.
Fisher acted in Midnight Stranger, one of the world's first interactive CD-ROM dramas, in 1993 [11] She recently directed Fiery Sparks of Light, a volumetric XR project featuring iconic Canadian women poets (Atwood, Brossard, Tolmie, Lubrin).
[2] Larry McCaffery, the award juror, wrote: "I found myself hooked on Waves from the moment I first logged on and watched Caitlin's gorgeous graphic interface assemble itself out of images of moving clouds drifting across the screen, mingling with the sounds of girls laughing.
"[18] In the abstract for a critical review of Fisher's project, Raine Koskimaa writes, "These Waves is a class-room example of the so-called associative hypertext.
"[19] These Waves of Girls is a foundational work of hypermedia and is widely studied at the university level in North America, Europe and Asia.
Selected in 2008 for publication by the Library of Congress as one of 300 global works of critical importance in the field, it was translated into Mandarin by researchers at Asia University.
The work is taught in undergraduate literature courses and is referenced in the scholarship as a highly influential example of early multimodal web-based hypertext fiction.
I’m sure that was instrumental in terms of having access to the kind of job I have now in the Faculty of Fine Arts: to being able now to do theoretical work, to build software, to write fiction and poetry, and pull together all those parts of my life."
The exhibition was reviewed in The Lancet and this piece was singled out for its impact: "...Of the remaining contributions, one of the most engaging is Shadowpox: The Antibody Politic, developed by Alison Humphrey, Caitlin Fisher, Steven J Hoffman, and Lalaine Destajo.
This interactive installation quite literally renders visible the invisible, as participants must choose whether or not to be vaccinated against the 'shadowpox' pathogen, before having the opportunity to trace the impact of their decision as an animated population is exposed to the threat of infection.
This is undoubtedly one of the most powerful and playful ways to illustrate both the individual and population-level implications of community immunity...."[23] 2023 Garden of Future Delights –– augmented reality triptych.
2023 Diamonds – Computationally-generated poetry created for immersive XR, ELO 2023 Overcoming Divides: Electronic literature and social change, Media Arts Festival, Coimbra, Portugal.
Slogans for Energy transition – banners and XR installation (with Ruth Beer (Emily Carr), Sean Caulfield ( Alberta) and Patrick Mohan (Western).
2022 Decameron 2.0: a virtual reality anthology (with the Decameron Collective), ELO Media Arts Exhibition, Como, Italy 2022 Fiery Sparks of Light: XR Volumetric poetry with Griffin Poetry award winners Margaret Atwood, Nicole Brossard, Canisia Lubrin and Sarah Tolmie.
2016 Sheila Carfenders, Doctor Mask & President Akimbo Virtual Reality Novel (with writer Richard Ehrlich, Electronic Literature Organization Arts Festival, Victoria, June.
Markham Chez Moi: Lesbian Bar Stories from Before You Were Born (with Tony Vieira) 2014 [24] 2012/2011 “Circle”, Augmented Reality Tabletop Theatre, Electronic Literature Organization Media Arts Show (Awarded 2012 Jury Prize), Morgantown, Virginia.
Also shortlisted for the 2011 International New Media Writing Award (UK) 2013 200 Castles: an echo chamber for generating parallel and imaginary universes” Biblioteque Nationale, Paris.
2013 (January-Feb) Augmented Reality Storytelling Retrospective, Nouspace Gallery and Media Lounge, Washington State University 2013 (January) ‘Circle’ Modern Languages Association Conference, “Avenues of Access” Exhibit, Boston * 2012/2011 “Circle”, Augmented Reality Tabletop Theatre, Electronic Literature Organization Media Arts Show (Awarded 2012 Jury Prize) , Morgantown, Virginia.
Also shortlisted for the 2011 International New Media Writing Award (UK) * 2010 “Requiem: networked augmented reality shadow box poem” , ELO_AI Gallery, Providence, Rhode Island.
*2008 “Andromeda” Augmented reality poem (winner of the 2008 international Digital Literature Award Ciudad de Vinaròs).
2023 Honourable mention (3rd in international field), Robert Coover Award for Digital Creation with the Decameron Collective for Decameron 2.0 2020 Mourou-Strickland Fellow (Government of France) 2015 Shortlisted (1 of 5), Robert Coover Award for Digital Creation 2013 Fulbright Visiting Research Chair [30](University of California, Santa Barbara) where she conducted research on a project titled “Emerging forms of cultural expression: data visualization, augmented reality and new media storytelling and tools for artists and humanists”.
2018 “Forking paths, simultaneous timelines and river monsters: stories hypermedia and spatial narratives tell about identities" (Dis)tributaries: synthetizing identities through image, text and sound, Brock University [31] 2017 “Coding the memory Palace” (with Damon Baker) Electronic Literature Organization conference, Porto, Portugal.
