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trAce was founded in 1995 by Sue
Thomas. She initially wrote this personal account of
its development for Incubation
2000, the trAce International Conference on Writing and
the Internet, and updated it for Incubation 2002.
History of the trAce Online Writing Centre
Sue Thomas
1995
When I began this project it was purely a selfish thing.
Isolated in my own creative sphere of writing non-science
fiction fiction about technology I desperately wanted to
make contact with others working in the same area. The question
"Is there anybody out there?" has often been the impetus
for new explorations and discoveries, and so it was with
trAce. In 1995 I was Course Leader of the new Master's Degree
in Writing at The Nottingham Trent University, so I spent
plenty of time with writers, but those working in my own
special field were hard to find. However, the size and scope
of the web indicated that this might be where I might finally
find my own personal creative community, and so I began
to explore it in search of resources, first for myself,
and then for everyone else. But even in those early days
it was a huge task and so I was delighted when The English
& Media Studies Department supported the idea and provided
funding for what was at first called the 'Cyberwriting Project'.
This meant that I could employ Simon Mills, at that time
a student on the MA, to spend his summer vacation online
trawling the net for links. He surfed through hundreds of
sites, sorted the best of them into categories, and wrote
a short review of each. That October he collated his results
and photocopied them in booklet format for internal distribution
to writing students and faculty. What had begun as a personal
quest had grown into a very promising research project.
1996
After the success of the Cyberwriting booklet, Simon taught
himself HTML and put his collection of data online. At that
point we spent a lot of time discussing what the new website
should be called. 'Cyberwriting' seemed very passe and we
wanted a more notable name - but what? After much scouring
of dictionaries and emailing back and forth, the word 'trAce'
appeared and immediately it seemed the perfect choice. But
we did not expect it would prove to be such a puzzle to
so many people. We're often asked 'Is it an acronym? A specialist
computer term?' Indeed, 'trace' is a common function
on the web (see our Millennium trAceroute project, for example) but that is not
the source of our name. In fact, no-one has ever guessed
where it really came from. The first trAce
website was launched at the Virtual Futures Conference at
Warwick University in May 1996, and many people still remember
its famous spinning gif. Much expanded and updated over
the last four years, and now renamed to trAced, the original
resource continued under the care of Andy Oldfield.
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1997
Less than two years after its paper beginnings trAce had
established itself as the prime focus for online writing
in the UK - at least, that is, as far as the rest of the
world was concerned. Because whilst we were in frequent
contact with writers and online organisations in Australia,
the US, and a number of European countries, in England the
site was scarcely known. There are many reasons why the
UK has been slow to come to the internet. The cost of access
and hardware has played a large part, and there are historical
and cultural reasons for why the literary community feels
itself at odds with technology. But suffice it to say that
beyond London and a few northern
outposts, the UK artsworld was largely, and proudly,
offline. However, it couldn't stay that way forever, and
in August 1997 the Literature Department of the Arts Council
of England showed its faith in new media by awarding trAce
one of the largest single grants from its lottery-funded
Arts for Everyone Scheme. The money would support the creation
of an online community where writers from the UK, and most
especially from the East Midlands region, could meet, work
and learn with others around the world. It would provide
training and advice, access points for those who could not
afford to be online at home, and promote the skills of writing
for this new medium. By the end of 1997 the beginnings of
the site were visible and the organisation had begun to
expand and grow. We had launched frAme,
the trAce Journal of Culture and Technology, and were already
hosting our first virtual collaboration: Deep Immersion,
teaming Australian author Terri-ann White with poets Liz
Yorke in the UK and Gillie Griffin in Canada, and funded
by The Australian Network for Art and Technology.
1998
A year of planting and cultivation. Our membership
list grew steadily, both internationally and at home. We
ran free training workshops for authors in our region, teaching
everything from the basics of web-surfing to building a
website. Especially fruitful was 'Wired in a Week', when
we selected five local writers and taught them whatever
they needed to know in an intensive week of hands-on practice.
We launched the trAce/Alt-X
International Hypertext Competition and in September
the Noon Quilt
site opened for contributions. In October we held the first
trAce International Conference on Writing and the Internet.
It was a one-day event with guest speakers Dale Spender,
Mark Amerika, Cynthia Haynes, Jan Rune Holmevik, Liz Bailey,
Keith Brooke, Molly Brown, Peter Howard and Heather Rosenblatt.
That Christmas we gave away a highly unusual present, the
program code for the Noon Quilt, so anyone can now create
their own quilt using this shareware zip file downloadable
from the site.
1999
Blooming flowers and ripening fruit. Christy Sheffield Sanford was appointed our first
Virtual Writer-in-Residence, to be followed by Alan Sondheim in September. We selected Bernard Cohen as our 'flesh' Writer-in-Residence
and made preparations to welcome him in Nottingham that
June. The winners of the first trAce/Alt-X International Hypertext Competition
were announced. trAce appeared at venues in Holland, the
UK, and America. By then, the organisation had become so
well-known that it often needed no introduction. We appeared
on TV and radio and continued to be well-reviewed in the
UK, USA, and Australia. Kids on the Net, originally
intended to be a small site, grew hungrily and received
extra sponsorship funding from Experian. The Kids' site
Monster Motel was a huge success with over 600 monsters
written by children all over the world. In August the Eclipse Quilt attracted our highest number of hits
ever - 27,000 in 24 hours - as writers recorded their eclipse
impressions and others came to view them. By invitation,
we worked with various organisations including The Poetry
Society, The ICA, DA2 Digital Arts Agency, the NOW Festival
and the Cheltenham Literature Festival. At Cheltenham we
logged onto the website of our collaborators at LinguaMOO and, while trAce members in the UK, Texas,
and Norway waited with bated breath, we guided the celebrated
author William Gibson into the trAce meeting
room and helped him create a virtual suitcase which remains there to this day, safely
preserved in cyberspace. But we ended the year, and the
century, with a return to old media. The Noon Quilt, so
successful as a website, became a pocket-sized book too.
So the circle turns.
2000
The last year of the original project, and trAce was consolidating
and expanding. Virtual Writer-in-Residence Alan Sondheim
was with us as we tip-toed across the sleeping monster of
Y2K, and Alan McDonald took us through the first virtual
residency of the new millennium. I spoke at the Adelaide
Festival about the New People we all have become, and Helen
Whitehead took Kids on the Net to teachers in America.
But in July the gathering was back in Nottingham to celebrate
the culmination of five years of work, community and creativity.
Most of all, however, we came together to do what trAce
has always done and will continue to do: talk, share, inspire
and debate. And the topic is always the same: the making
of literature.
2001
The early months of 2001 were frantically b u s y. In partnership
with the Electronic Literature Organisation we launched
a series of monthly online chats about new media writing
and general writing issues. And as the Migrating Memories
project was launched, so at the same time the Online Writing
School came to fruition. We saw the School as an opportunity
to put into practice everything we had learned in the last
six years, creating an environment where writers can study
and workshop on the web, as well as learn how to create
new media writing themselves. If there really are two worlds
of literature out there – print and digital –
the School is the ideal place to bring them together. The
Nottingham Trent University and its Hive Business Incubator
Unit were keen to support the venture and in June the first
courses began. The team was also growing. Catherine Gillam
joined us as an administrator for the School, and in September
we advertised for an assistant Web editor for Helen Whitehead.
From 105 applications from around the world we were delighted
to appoint Claire Dinsmore, already well-respected as the
founding editor of the journal Cauldron and Net. That Autumn
Helen Whitehead launched her Year of the Artist project
Web Warp & Weft , and her site Kids on the Net was offered
continued sponsorship by Experian. We also created a website
for poet Alison Brackenbury and began work on a customised
site for novelist Kate Pullinger. In November we organised
Net.Work Day – a chance to meet and talk about the
issues facing writers working online – and these issues
were addressed in another way when Sue Thomas won an Arts
and Humanities Research Board award for Mapping the Transition
from Page to Screen, a project to examine the changes experienced
by print writers moving to the Web. Kate Pullinger, already
a tutor at the Online Writing School, was appointed as a
research fellow for the project and prepared herself to
start learning to read and write all over again.
2002
In January, after several years in the commercial sector
whilst working for trAce in his spare time, Simon Mills
was able to join us as our Web Developer. As a co-founder
of trAce and editor of the frAme journal, we are delighted
to have him with us full-time. Also early in the year, the
Literature Department of the British Council recognised
the value of trAce’s contribution to the use of the
Web as both a connective and creative international medium
and contracted us to provide a range of training services.
In April, Nesta invested in research and development with
us, arranging links with their Education Department to develop
and promote new media writing for all age groups. trAce
also continued to travel. In March w e co-organised a Colloquium
on Literature and the Internet in Paris at the invitation
of the University of the Sorbonne (Paris IV), and in April
Kate Pullinger, Helen Whitehead and Sue Thomas were invited
guests at the Electronic Literature Organisation’s
State of the Art Symposium at UCLA, California. Sue Thomas
will return to UCLA in Autumn 2002 as part of her research
for Mapping the Transition from Page to Screen. This Spring,
as part of the new trAce Web Studio, Simon Mills worked
on three projects – the
Great Cardiff Poem; Leicester City’s Everybody’s
Reading (including workshops led by Helen Whitehead),
and Clean,
for the Women's Library in Hackney. In June the Online Writing
School celebrated its first full year of teaching and we
counted up 200 students and 15 tutors who had worked with
us during that first twelve months. Most courses which ran
in 2001/2 continue to be offered, and we have also added
a permanent ongoing workshop, staffed by two tutors and
offering a range of support for both print-based and new
media writers. The trAce Writers’ Workshop is the writer’s
studio of the future – a blend of new and old technologies
with open exchange and discussion always happening.
In the 17/05/02 entry of his studio
journal Randy Adams asks “Who will claim the territory
called Hypermedia? There seems a storm of definitions: What
is it? What is it not? “ As I write this in June 2002,
it seems we are no nearer to answering this question than
we were seven years ago when trAce first began, but we are
nearer to understanding what the question is about, and
to possessing a vocabulary with which to discuss it. That
is the great pleasure of this medium – celebrating
its uncertainty and enjoying every moment of its flux and
growth.
Sue Thomas, June, 2002
________________________
It's a typo :) Sent in an email from Simon Mills
to Sue Thomas some time during Spring 1996
 back
Amongst them was Unholy Island, created in 1996/7 by Alan McDonald,
now a trAce Virtual Writer-in-Residence.
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