A collaboration for remixworx: concept and roadwork by runran, visualization and code by crissxross, based loosely on animations by babel.
Photograph of Ailsa Dyson by Gordie Agar (Winnipeg), texts adapted from One Million Footnotes by poet Geof Huth, music loop from Palais de Glace by media artist Talan Memmott.
Source files: notesnoir (CS5.5 + SWF) or Noir-10-CS4.fla
The prize encourages writers working with new media to showcase their skills, provoke discussion and raise awareness of new media writing, the future of the ‘written’ word and storytelling. The prize is split into two categories: student and professional. The winners in each category will receive a valuable bundle of new media hardware and software. The judging panel are looking for good storytelling (fiction or non-fiction) written specifically for delivery and reading/viewing on a PC or Mac, the web, or a hand-held device such as an iPad or mobile phone. It could be a short story, novel, documentary or poem using words, images, film or animation with audience interaction.
Anyone can apply! Whether you’re a student, a professional, an artist, a writer, a Flash designer or an enthusiast, the competition is open to all. It’s an international competition, open to all outside the UK. The deadline is midday on Monday 31 October 2011 and each entry should be submitted by email to submissions@newmediawritingprize.co.uk. Shortlisted entrants will be invited to the awards ceremony on the 23 November where the winner will be announced. There will be substantial media coverage for the Awards, and winners will be given full acknowledgement in all press releases and related material.
For further information please visit the New Media Writing Prize website.
A high profile Awards Ceremony will be staged at Bournemouth University on Wednesday 23 November. An esteemed panel of judges will select winning entries that will be published on high profile new media web-hub, The Literary Platform, the Bournemouth University website and will be showcased at the Awards Ceremony.
On a personal note, as last year’s winner of the New Media Writing Prize, I’m delighted to say that I’ve been invited to be one of the judges this year.
Out of Touch is my new work commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art for Third Hand Plays, a series about electronic literature curated and discussed by Brian Kim Stefans for the SFMOMA blog.
In his article, Stefans draws a comparison between Out of Touch and ”a very early piece of internet poetry by the graphic designer Juliet Martin called ‘oooxxxooo,’ …which took as its subject the apparently desperate need of the artist-protagonist for the computer to ameliorate her loneliness.” About my piece, he goes on to say:
Her use of video, particularly the manipulations that reduce reality to iconic or cartoon-like (which I read as linguistic) simplicity, accentuates some of the horror at the base of this piece, which has a quasi-Expressionist element — I can’t help but see echoes of “The Scream” in here, or perhaps, with a very different valence in relation to time and experience (it doesn’t happen in Wilks’s piece), the blurred faces in the work of Christian Boltanski.
Despite my background in film-making and scriptwriting, I rarely set out with a written script, storyboard or a wireframe design, a blueprint that I execute. I start with a collection (or network) of ideas that I want to explore. Then I experiment; manipulating text, code, images, sounds, video fx, animation, narrative elements… until something meaningful emerges. To me, it seems a very hands-on, even tactile approach, like that of a sculptor or collage artist – although what is there to actually touch? A keyboard, a mouse, a digital drawing tablet. It’s a far cry from handling messy art materials or tussling with camera, tripod, lights on location and reels of celluloid in the cutting room. And yet there’s a strong sense of the haptic in what I do. This preoccupation with touch and its absence is a recurring feature in my work – e.g. the handiwork of the dressmaker in Fitting the Pattern and the sculptor in Underbelly – so I find it interesting that, in relation to Out of Touch, Stefans describes Juliet Martin’s oooxxxooo piece as “linguistic sculpture.” It also highlights how digital synaesthesia is a key expressive quality of digital media arts. And while I’m on the subject of cross-wiring… from crissxross to R3/\/\1X\/\/0RX and more xxxooo…
See my last post for a list of the previously published works of e-literature in the Third Hand Plays series and Brian Stefan’s accompanying articles. Also keep checking the SFMOMA blog throughout August for more posts in the series.
Throughout July and August, e-lit author and poet, Brian Kim Stefans is guest-editing a column for the SFMOMA Blog, entitled Third Hand Plays, ”describing concepts that can be used to understand and appreciate the varied and inchoate meta-genre known as ‘digital literature.’” To accompany his series of articles, Brian has commissioned a suite of new works of e-literature fron nine digital artist/writers worldwide – Jason Nelson, David Clark, Erik Loyer, Alan Bigelow, Jhave, Alison Clifford, Christine Wilks, Benjamin Moreno Ortiz, and joerg piringer. Yes, I’m thrilled, that’s me included “among the best of the digital writers out there.” My new piece, Out Of Touch, will published by SFMOMA shortly.
Here are links to the articles by Brian Stefans and the splendid new works of e-lit that have been published so far:
Third Hand Plays: An Introduction to Electronic Literature
Third Hand Plays: “Scrape Scraperteeth” by Jason Nelson
Third Hand Plays: The Comedy of Subjection
Third Hand Plays: “Repeat After Me” by joerg piringer
Third Hand Plays: The Comedy of Dysfunction
Third Hand Plays: “Something” and “Telescopio” by Benjamin R. Moreno Ortiz
Third Hand Plays: The Comedy of Reduction
Birkbeck, University of London, 20 May 2011
My playable media fiction, Underbelly, will be exhibited throughout the Study Day, which concludes with the presentation of the winners of the Digital Media Competition 2011: Maternal Subjectivities, Care and Labour - and I’m delighted to announce that Underbelly is the overall winner!
The other winners are:
MaMSIE is an international network of scholars, artists and activists working in the emerging interdisciplinary field of maternal studies. Our 6th event focuses on the interrelations between labour, capital, care and the maternal. In particular, it will consider the diverse ways ‘maternal care’ has been, and continues to be delegated and shared, and the implications for our understandings of maternal subjectivities and the labour of care.
The study day will open up ‘maternity’ as a term that includes the paid and unpaid work of a diverse range of social actors. It aims at generating a dialogue between two rich and substantial bodies of feminist scholarship; work on the social histories of domestic labour, service and servitude and current debates about globalism, migration and the care industries, recasting existing scholarship through the lens of maternal studies.
The Keynote speaker is Stella Sandford. Other speakers include: Rosie Cox, Lucy Delap, Alison Light, Mirca Madianou,Daniel Miller, Jenny Mitchell, Kate Pullinger, Rachel Thomson, Imogen Tyler, and Helen Wood.
Many thanks to the MaMSIE network and the organisers of both the Study Day and the Digital Media Competition. For more information see MaMSIE events.
*Mapping Maternal Subjectivities, Identities and Ethics
