Welcome to the trAce Online Writing Centre's Archives
This is the archival site for the digital materials associated with the trAce Online Writing Centre. Founded by Dr. Sue Thomas and located at Nottingham Trent University (Nottingham, England), trAce was the leading electronic literature community from 1995-2005. Through its journal, frAme, as well as online writing courses, fellowships, conferences, and other activities, it impacted the field far beyond the UK.
Currently, this site hosts the six issues of frAme and its precursor, Freebase. Others artifacts are intended be added to the site in the near future. In the meantime, we have included a PDF of trAce Online Writing Centre's Ten Year Celebration catalog that presents its many achievements in the emerging field of digital media.
ONLINE PUBLICATION
frAme Journal of Culture and Technology
(ISSN: 1470-2134)
From 1999 to 2004 frAme
published over 60 works by digital writers, critics,
and theorists. The insightful essays covered
everything from pop culture to ASCII art,
brain-computer metaphors to desktop absurdities,
identity to databases. Digital writers presented a
range of works: a serial email novel, interactive
hypermedia, code-based poetry, multi-layered
narratives, and illustrated texts. Curated by Simon
Mills (with assistance at times from Sue Thomas,
Helen Whitehead and Christy Sheffield Sanford), the
works in frAme represented a
snapshot of the trAce community’s engagement with
digital aesthetics.
Its URL was
http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk/frame/index.cfm
Image credits to frAme
frAme's Scope
(PDF of trAce's Ten-Year Celebration Catalog)
The culture and technology journal, frAme provided an arena to showcase work and present critical thought around the ways in which culture and technology were interweaving at the end of the 20th century. It published two issues a year and featured some of the most significant names in the international online writing scene of the time including Mark Amerika, Francesca da Rimini, Mark Dery, Matthew Fuller, & Geert Lovink. frAme was edited by Simon Mills who created the original trAce and continued as the principal designer of the whole website.