Christine Wilks – a.k.a. crissxross
I’m a British writer and artist who has been creating electronic literature and digital art for the web since 2004. I mainly work in Flash, but not exclusively. I like to create stories and playable media that the reader can interact with, such as Underbelly, which won the New Media Writing Prize 2010. I have two works, Tailspin and Fitting the Pattern, published in the Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 2. I also make short pieces that simply play, sometimes randomly. Most of the latter I make for R3/\/\1X\/\/0RX, a collaborative digital remixing community, to which I’ve contributed over 80 remixes since January 2007. I have presented my personal creative works, as well as collaborative projects, at festivals, conferences and live events in the UK and abroad, including Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2010, e-Poetry 2009, Electronic Literature in Europe 2008 and Interactive Futures 2007. I have an MA in Creative Writing and New Media from De Montfort University. Before becoming engrossed in the web, I made short films, videos, animations, installations and wrote fiction and screenplays.On 31 October 2010, Underbelly, was awarded the New Media Writing Prize at the Poole Literary Festival 2010. Here’s how Michael Bhaskar, one of the judges, described it in his article for The Literary Platform:
Underbelly is an intense, educational, visceral experience, that delves deep into new media territory and transforms our expectations of what could be called literature. Exploring the experience of women miners in the nineteenth century the look, sound and writing of the piece are all magnificently distinctive and skilfully designed. I learned a lot “reading” and it hung around for days. This is powerful stuff.
November 2011: as winner of the New Media Writing Prize 2010, I have been invited to be one of the judges for the New Media Writing Prize 2011.
January 2012: Underbelly is one of the Featured Works at the ‘Electronic Literature’ Exhibit at 127th Modern Language Association (MLA) 2012 convention in Seattle, WA, USA. Also see the scholarly archival website: The Electronic Literature Exhibit: Literary Works for Desktop, Mobile Devices, and Performance
Places where my creative projects are published or currently exhibited:
Out of Touch is published in Third Hand Plays, a series curated by Brian Stefans about electronic literature, commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Aug 2011.
Underbelly is published in Hyperrhiz, Issue 8, Spring 2011.
Tailspin and Fitting the Pattern are published in the Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 2, on the web and DVD-ROM, Feb 2011.
Fitting the Pattern and my parallel lecture about the work, Being Creatively Autobiographical in New Media, published in issue two of Studies in the Maternal, Dec 2009
Fitting the Pattern is exhibited as part of the Kate Pullinger Line of Influence at the online gallery binaryKatwalk:v.02b, from July 2009.
IntraVenus has been on view as part of De Geuzen’s online Female Icons project since 2007.
Alice and the Digital Dump, an article published by trAce Online Writing Centre, 2005.
Dragon, a short story published by Yorkshire Art Circus in the literary magazine, YAC YAC, 2005.
Some of the places where I’ve presented or performed my work in recent years:
Underbelly presented at the Motherhood, Servitude and the Delegation of Care Conference, a MaMSIE event at Birkbeck, University of London, May 2011 (UK)
I performed Underbelly at The Shoebox Experiment, a series of live literature events at The Riverside Pub in Sheffield, May 2011 (UK)
I performed and gave a talk about Underbelly at the Neo-Victorian Art and Aestheticism Conference at Hull University, March 2011 (UK)
On Halloween 2010 I performed Underbelly at Inspace no one can hear you scream, a Language in Digital Performance event which was part of the International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling 2010 (Edinburgh, UK)
I performed Fitting the Pattern at Ilkley Literature Fringe Festival as part of ‘The Writers’ Group Exposed!!!’, October 2010 (Ilkley, UK)
Underbelly exhibited in the Arts Program of ARCHIVE & INNOVATE: The 4th International Conference & Festival of the Electronic Literature Organization, June 2010 (Providence, Rhode Island, USA)
Underbelly at PW10 Performance Writing 2010 at Arnolfini Gallery, May 2010 (Bristol, UK)
Underbelly at Transliteracy Conference, Feb 2010 (Leicester, UK)
As a featured author, I presented Underbelly at Writing Bodies/Reading Bodies in Contemporary Women’s Writing, PG CWWN conference, Sept 2009 (Oxford, UK).
Fitting the Pattern and Underbelly (as a work in progress) at Mum’s the Word: The maternal in contemporary literature, Jan 2009 (Leicester, UK).
Fitting the Pattern at Electronic Literature in Europe 2008 (Bergen, Norway).
Fitting the Pattern at IOCT Salon: Creative Writing and New Media MA Showcase 2008 (Leicester, UK).
I took part in Multiversity, a Yorkshire tour of live literature events in Autumn 2005, during which I gave performances of IntraVenus and other works at Ilkley Literature Festival, Sheffield’s Off the Shelf Festival, and Theatre In The Mill, Bradford.
R3/\/\1X\/\/0RX is a flexible community and an adaptable entity that can be shown in a variety of ways. I personally have presented or performed R3/\/\1X\/\/0RX at e-Poetry 2009 (Barcelona, Spain); Digital Resources for Humanities and the Arts 2008 (Cambridge, UK); with Randy Adams and Chris Joseph at Interactive Futures 2007: The New Screen (Victoria, BC, Canada); and in the form of an artist’s talk at CWNM Creative Retreat 2007 (Leicester, UK).
On the web, R3/\/\1X\/\/0RX can be viewed as an online journal of digital art and writing. It is often performed and remixed live as part of VJ events (e.g. Exploding, Plastic & Inevitable), it has been featured in online festivals (e.g. a+b=ba?), and elements from it have been developed into a standalone flash movie Devil’s Rope Journal. There is also a R3/\/\1X\/\/0RX Flickr group.
I design, co-author and create e-learning experiences, using the Moodle open-source platform, with Make It Happen. Our clients are mainly national and regional non-profit organisations.
During Spring and Summer 2010 I was a Dissertation Mentor for one of the students on the MA in Creative Writing and New Media at De Montfort University, and in March 2009 I delivered a guest lecture for the course. Also, in 2009, I designed and built (in Joomla) the Creative Writing and New Media Archive, containing over 30 online lectures delivered as part of this ground-breaking MA led by Sue Thomas and Kate Pullinger.
For the past 15 years or more, I’ve worked freelance as a teacher and facilitator of creative media workshops, as an arts project manager, for various arts/media festivals, as a film/video-maker, as an artist and as a writer, including a commission to develop an original comedy-drama series for BBC television. Going back to the pre-digital era, I spent 10 youthful years learning, creating and working at Chapter Arts Centre (Cardiff) where I ran the Film and Animation Workshop.
Some highlights:
In 2008 I graduated with distinction from the online MA in Creative Writing and New Media at De Montfort University, UK. My creative life online all started in Spring 2004, thanks to an inspiring Digital Writing course at the trAce Online Writing Centre (now archived). I achieved a LeTTOL (Learning To Teach OnLine) qualification accredited by the Open College Network, UK. I also have a BA Hons and MA in Fine Art from what is now the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff.
I have a wide variety of media skills, from analogue to digital, mostly self-taught, and I’m continually learning new stuff.
To contact me email: crissxross AT crissxross DOT net
