Hosted by the 91��ɫ Libraries, interPLAY will take place Monday, March 26, from 9am to 7pm, in��the Senate Chamber, 940 South Ross Building, and the Scott Library on the Keele campus.��

The symposium is informed by the ongoing publication of the , an experimental online catalogue raisonné (or complete list) currently being developed at the 91��ɫ Libraries by Adam Lauder��(left), the University's inaugural��W.P. Scott Chair for Research in e-Librarianship.

Lauder is working to develop the catalogue raisonné with��Canadian Conceptual artist (the artist recently added the ampersand to his name),��and an international team of collaborators.��The development of the catalogue offers an ideal��opportunity to respond to the visionary information art of IAIN BAXTER& with fresh approaches to information, information technology, and library and information science from across the disciplinary spectrum.

Inspired by Canadian scholar and philosopher Marshall McLuhan’s transformation of information theory, from a “matching” model of communication to one of active “making”, IAIN BAXTER& began in 1966 to explore the creative possibilities of “information” as a medium.��The 45-year process of exploration that followed has led��the��conceptual artist��to engage with, and creatively reinterpret, information concepts across a range of disciplines, including business, computing, and linguistics.

Marshall McLuhan

University��of British Columbia English Professor��Richard Cavell, author of McLuhan in Space: A Cultural Geography (University of Toronto Press, 2003) will present the symposium's keynote address. Cavell's book was the first to��propose that Marshall McLuhan be read as a spatial theorist.

To learn more about other presenters and symposium proceedings and to register, visit the website.����

More about Adam Lauder

Lauder has joined the Libraries for a two-year term as the first W.P. Scott Chair for Research in e-Librarianship. He holds a master in information studies��from the University of Toronto and a masters in��art history��from Concordia University.

His research project encompasses many areas of e-librarianship including critical information studies, digital archives, scholarly communication and metadata standards. Lauder is applying��the catalogue raisonné publication model in an online environment, with a focus��on IAIN BAXTER&.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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By far, the most consuming for Powe are McLuhan 100 activities.��The 91��ɫ English professor��was a student of the communications��visionary, wrote his dissertation on McLuhan and Northrop Frye��and continues to be inspired by these two giants of Canadian literary cultural theory.��He helped��plan Toronto’s celebration of McLuhan’s centenary and kicked it off in January with an on-stage conversation with Douglas Coupland�� at 91��ɫ’s Founders College about the Gen X author’s new biography of McLuhan.

Right: B.W. Powe. Photo by Patrick Vannen

Since then, Powe has spoken to audiences in Barcelona, Naples and Bologna and has been interviewed for stories in The New 91��ɫ Times and the Toronto Star.��In April, he gave the keynote address on McLuhan and Frye at the international Frye Festival in Moncton.��In June, he talked about McLuhan at Moses Znaimer's ideacity. This November, he will be speaking at the McLuhan 100 conference at the University of Toronto.

“McLuhan 100 extends through Europe to a remarkable degree,” says Powe. McLuhan famously coined “the medium is the message” and “global village” and his speculations about the impact of television and electronic media still resonate today. “European intellectuals regard his communications theory as just as revolutionary as deconstructionism and postmodernism were in the sixties, seventies and eighties.”

(BA '77, PhD '09), a poet, novelist and essayist based in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies,��has written extensively about McLuhan and is currently at work on another book, Apocalypse and Alchemy: Visions of Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye, distilling his dissertation for a broader audience.����

Those who invite him to give talks do it as much for his scholarship as for his��insider's perspective. As��a master’s student in English at the University of Toronto in the early 1980s, Powe��was one of only six members in the last class McLuhan ever gave. He went on to write his dissertation on McLuhan and Frye, and his pursuits as novelist, poet, essayist and lecturer remain deeply influenced by the media visionary. “I have a witnessing aspect to my work,” says Powe, who is also a friend of the McLuhan family. “It’s part of why people ask me to talk.”��

Meanwhile, he has��been promoting , his 11th book, released this spring by Guernica Editions. A fable about cartoon characters who want to step off the screen into the real world, it hints at McLuhanesque themes.

In a promo blurb, Marshall Soules, a former English and media studies professor at Vancouver Island University, called it “a caring and inspiring story that reflects directly on our confusion over fantasy and reality.”����Author Charles Foran said he is��haunted by the book. Its form is fascinating��and "likewise, its themes, or preoccupations, with how we've been so altered, chemically, spiritually, by those toons, those simulations.... An enigmatic, striking piece of writing, one I shall return to."

On��sabbatical this year,��poet Powe – whose The Unsaid Passing was shortlisted for the Relit prize –��also plans to complete another collection of poems.��And he has started writing Opening Time, a book of nonfiction in which he explores neuroromanticism and speculates about a new kind of consciousness emerging in the 21st century.����

“I would regard all of my work as a footnote to McLuhan,” admits Powe. “He has brought a source of energy and inspiration to my life.”

By Martha Tancock, YFile contributing writer, Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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