tim wright: digital writer

The Haunter Field Day: Tuesday 19th June 2012 - Join Us!

A DAY FOR RECORDING, BETA TESTING, WALKING & TALKING

Both Joe and Tim are going to be contributing to the Location-Based Storytelling Symposium at Bournemouth University on Monday 18th June. See http://symposium.bujournalism.info

The next day – Tuesday 19th June – we’ll be going to Dorchester to do some work out in the field. We’d love people to join us.

Our intention is to:

• record as much Hardy material as possible out in the field – and capture ambient sound from the route of the walk, snippets of conversation, natural sounds etc.

• work with Proboscis to create a Haunter booklet (or perhaps more than one!?), and simultaneously contribute to the very exciting ongoing series of collaborative urban explorations, City As Material: http://proboscis.org.uk/projects/ongoing/city-as-material/

• walk and talk with people from various backgrounds and disciplines in order to understand how The Haunter project can be developed to appeal to the broadest range of user groups and local service providers

People can walk with us, try out Joe’s beta version ‘haunted’ box, help us record audio, create booklet material or simply join the conversation about what we’re trying to do with this project.

It may be also useful for Joe and I to give a short talk at some point on the walk, and perhaps others would like to do the same. If you have some thoughts or a story you’d like to share with the group at some point during the day, do let Tim know in advance, so we can plan it into the schedule.

The Plan for the Day

Here's a GoogleMap of where we’re proposing to walk at. You can join us at any point during the day. To track us down follow @moongolfer on Twitter.

View Where The Night Rooks Go in a larger map

10:30

Coffee at the Dorset County Museum

11:00 

Start the walk proper at the Hardy statue at the top of High W Street, following the Yellow Route. Joe & Tim to introduce the project.

12:15 

Arrive at Gray’s Bridge on the London Road. Here, we may split into two groups, one walking on the Red Route, the other on the Blue Route.

13:30 

Arrive at Stinsford Graveyard.

13:45

Late lunch break – you’ll need to bring your own food & drink or we can repair to the  Kingston Maurward Gardens, which has a cafe

14:45 

We’ll take the Black Route on the map via Lower Bockhampton, up to the Heath and on to Hardy’s Birthplace (sadly closed on Tuesdays).

16:15 

Back to Stinsford via the Green Route and on to Max Gate (also closed on Tuesdays) via the Blue Route. A chance for final audio recordings.

17:45 

Finish at the Thomas Hardy Pub: DT1 2AB. Disperse at leisure.

Sorry I missed your birthday Shakespeare

I really liked the idea of contributing to http://birthday2012.bloggingshakespeare.com/, but failed to get my act together last week. So here’s a belated post.

Shakespeare has been looming quite large for me in recent weeks. I’ve been re-reading 'The Tempest' as homework for an AHRC research project I’ve been contributing to (http://digitalcopsandrobbers.wordpress.com/). I was invited to the energy-fuelled version of Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Lyric Hammersmith. *And* I chanced upon a Globe Theatre production of Othello on Sky Arts with a mesmerising performance by Tim McInnerny as Iago.

This isn’t that unusual actually. Every few weeks or months, something about Shakespeare tends to intrude into my life (and yes, I know how wanky that sounds). In the last few years he’s cropped up in a Twitterplay I helped write, a really good film I saw, a really good book I read, a place I visited...

This is rather the point about Shakespeare. If you’re someone who’s trying to make a living from any kind of writing and/or performing, he looms large. Sometimes he looms in a threatening way – (thinks: I will simply never be as good as him at what I do).  On good days, perhaps, it feels more like a steadyand reliable pulse that beats on in the background of a writer’s life. He’s always there. There’s always another one of his works that is relevant to what’s happening to you right now.

And yet the most striking thing about Shakespeare for me is how bloody surprising he is whenever you do go back to him. He’s just so damn fresh and experimental; he’s so quick to set up really interesting situations and dilemmas for people who have character traits and personalities that you instantly recognise; so good at using language to create a mood, set a scene or match the action.

And then he’s prepared to take scenes and plotlines and whole plays off into crazy places that somehow seem acceptable and *real*, and that offer the potential for all kinds of endings, happy or sad. Quite often I finish reading or watching a play and think: 'I wonder what could have happened to that character?' - even though I *know* what happened to that character because Shakespeare told me.

I guess that’s why I keep returning, and why I keep getting surprised. And in that way he sets the bar so very high. It spurs me on. Happy (Belated) Birthday.

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,

Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend

More than cool reason ever comprehends.

The lunatic, the lover and the poet

Are of imagination all compact:

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,

That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,

Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:

The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen

Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name.

Such tricks hath strong imagination,

That if it would but apprehend some joy,

It comprehends some bringer of that joy;

Or in the night, imagining some fear,

How easy is a bush supposed a bear!

BlakeWalking and the Makerbot

One of the main things that made me want to join Fiddian Warman’s Makerbot group is the address where the group gathers on Lower Marsh in Lambeth. It’s just a stone’s throw away from where William Blake and his wife started their own peculiar printing revolution in Hercules Road. What better place to think about how to add a 3D printed element to my own work?

Here’s the first disastrous output from my first session with Fiddian and others on Monday. It’s meant to be a letter A:

Here, though, is the second attempt (not really mine, btw, but created by Fiddian based on my 'holding forth'):

This looks much more exciting. Imagine if I could produce a full alphabet of letters. I could end up printing a physical alpahabet that could be used for... printing!

Imagine if I could produce a set of letters and blocks in Blake’s original handwriting. We could create a set of 3D models that would allow anyone to block print their own hokey versions of Blake’s illuminated texts. We could all become makers of our own Blake books!

Now I’ve been somewhat obsessed with Blake for some time now and, in particular, in a time in his life (specifically 1794) when he was living and walking around North Lambeth dreaming up & making The [First] Book of Urizen and also Songs of Experience.

These are both extraordinary things to be making at any time, but what was going on in Blake’s life (and in his mind) to want to produce them right there and then?

I’m *still* researching & developing a geolocated audiowalk that guides people around this area whilst telling an imagined story about Blake and his wife attempting to make a living from ‘illuminated print’ - and also unlocking a new recitation of the Song of Urizen accompanied by (and inspired by?) sounds of both then and now.

Fairly regularly I like to walk the route of my Blakewalk and capture sounds that might be useful for the final production. For example, here’s the sounds of trains going overhead in the tunnel on Carlisle Lane:

Carlisle Lane by moongolfer

I’m imagining mixing these sounds with imagined sounds from 1794 as well as with music from that time such as this:

Marc Minkowski – Symphony drumroll in E flat major, hob. I:103 - Adagio - Allegro con spirito

Or this:

Frances Kelly – Musical Relicks of the Welsh Bards

It feels right too, though, to think that by walking this route, channelling Blake’s work and almost divining a story out of the ground upon which those feet must have walked (in ancient time etc), it might also be possible to make or print a little something. And Fiddian’s Makerbot is in just the right place to do that. Perhaps each person who takes the walk and listens to the audio is also triggering the Makerbot to pop out one extra letter or printing block, so that over time, the more people who walk, the more blocks there are from which to print new Blakean works on paper.

Ok, so I’ve got a long way to go and a lot to learn (downloading autocad 1-2-3D as we speak). But huzzah for Fiddian and his forward thinking idea of sharing a Makerbot and building up a community of Makers. I’m already looking forward to the next session.

P.S. check out the Makers Guild site and, in particular, forthcoming events at the V&A.

The Haunter

   Yes, I accompany him to places

   Only dreamers know,

   Where the shy hares show their faces,

   Where the night rooks go;

   Into old aisles where the past is all to him, 

   Close as his shade can do, 

   Always lacking the power to call to him,

   Near as I reach thereto!

Joe Flintham and I have been thinking about haunted objects for a while now. Or rather we both like the idea of somehow stuffing digital sounds, images & stories into old analogue bric-a brac.

Joe puts it well in this pdf about his experiment with a photo frame, a chest of drawers and a casket:

“I combine everyday things – furniture, knick-knacks, antiques – with sensors and microchips, and am able to take the movements and actions of people in spaces and the way they interact with objects to generate digital interactive narratives.”

Since then we’ve been getting more ambitious about how this combination of digital story and old-but-smart object could be applied ‘out in the field’ rather than confined to a controlled gallery space. We’re now thinking of the possibilities for taking a small ‘haunted’ box for a walk (yes, it’s walking again, sorry) and I think I may have found the perfect landscape to walk through.

View Where The Night Rooks Go in a larger map

This map shows not only the place where Thomas Hardy was born and where he died, but also the place where his heart is buried (albeit a heart inside a cat inside a biscuit tin, allegedly).

The haunting element is that Hardy wrote a great deal of poetry in 1912-13 just after the death of his first wife; they are poems full of remorse, regret, haunting memories set into landscape and a beautiful ghostly presence just out of reach (Hardy’s second wife must have been thrilled).

Why do you make me leave the house

And think for a breath it is you I see 

At the end of the alley of bending boughs

Where so often at dusk you used to be;

Till in darkening dankness

The yawning blankness

Of the perspective sickens me!

What might it be like to be the carrier of a ‘heart in a box’, an object that might release poetry and sound effects as you walked - and which allowed you to ‘charge’ it with your own emotions and memories and images, depending on what route you took, on where & when you chose to stop for a while – or even on where & when you chose to leave the box or pass it on to another walker/carrier?

Joe has now listed the different kinds of affordance that could be offered by a haunted ‘box’. I have mapped out some routes across the landscape that could be used to take a box from place to place, from cradle to grave.

I imagine us using recitations of 1912-13 poems as the core assets to be ‘unlocked’, as well as sourcing the sounds of his wife's (Emma) Cornwall that Hardy keeps referring to as he mourns in the Dorset landscape.

I see what you are doing: you are leading me on

To the spots we knew when we haunted here together,

The waterfall, above which the mist-bow shone

At the then fair hour in the then fair weather,

And the cave just under, with a voice still so hollow

That it seems to call out to me from forty years ago,

When you were all aglow,

And not the thin ghost that I now frailly follow!

What we need to do now is map out the different ways people might ‘play’ with this idea. Here’s some possible models:

1. Walkers carry one box from a single start point to a single end point. Poetry, sounds and story released along the way with a possibility to record reactions & thoughts.


2. Walkers carry one box stopping with it at various locations along various routes. The box releases assets according to how it is manipulated (and perhaps ‘charged’ via USB?) at each waypoint. Opportunities to record reactions and thoughts at various points.


3. Walkers start with one box, swap it for another at a waypoint, carry the new box to a second waypoint, swap for a third box and so on along various routes. The choice of route and waypoint and sequence of boxes changes release of assets and recording options.


4. Two or more walkers each take a box on different route to the same end point. The choices of route (and waypoint in terms of listening & recording?) alters each other’s final listening experience – i.e. one walker can ‘influence’ the other walker’s box attributes (both consciously & unconsciously).
   
   
5. Walkers carry a box along a predefined route, appearing to give the walkers some means of communication with and/or control of a distant figure (an actor) walking another route. The box is perhaps housing the 'soul' of the distant 'ghost' and the walker has to both 'steer' and 'commune'.


6. Walkers actually encounter actors with boxes at points along various routes, engage in a (forked?) dialogue and choose whether to carry a box on to the next encounter, swap boxes, refuse a box etc. A more complex branching narrative and/or game mechanic required here. (And potential cheese factor of street actors needs to be accounted for)

Although I rather like option 5 for its idea of spooky interaction at a distance, we probably should try and keep things simple. Essentially, we need to give the walker a feeling of intimacy with the box and pack the walk itself with poetry and emotion, seemingly embedded both in the carried object and in the landscape that is being passed through. 

By tracking the walkers’ choices of route and encouraging recordings of their thoughts & feelings, it should be possible to ‘charge’ the box with a range of human emotions – to give the box a ‘heart’ and a chance to find its natural resting place. 

The Second Book of Urizen

As part of the very wonderful City As Material series of workshops & booklets organised and funded by Proboscis, I have contributed a short work in progress - or rather a 'walk' in progress - called The Second Book of Urizen. This continues my developing obsession with 'blakewalking', and it's designed as something you can take out for a walk, starting at Waterloo. The QR codes on each page should allow you to listen to Blake's epic poem on your phone whilst wandering around the area where the poem was composed.

I've only done the first few sections in this booklet, and all the audio was recorded using Audioboo as I walked along the designated path. So this is very much a first stab at developing a format.

In my head I'm imagining a larger, richer work which will take the reader along the south London stretch of a longer L-shaped walk (see http://goo.gl/VQeYe), with a full ‘broadcast quality’ geolocated rendition of the Blake’s Book of Urizen as accompaniment – peppered with the imagined sounds of Lambeth in 1794 with music provided by Haydn, who was composing & performing in London at the time.

(*Looks sternly at radio producers out there who'd like to commission this*)

Going one step further, I'd really like to provide the means for people to contribute their own images, texts and audio as they walk round: fresh material that could be incorporated in a 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th...etc. Book of Urizen.

If enough people wanted to walk together at an appointed time, we might even be able to add a theatrical element at certain points of the walk and somehow 're-enact' or at least 're-pose' some of the figures in Blake's original work.

(*Looks sternly at theatre people who might want to help develop this bit*)

The ultimate aim is to conjure up a sense of Blake striding around his home patch, composing and declaiming – perhaps even singing – one of his great ‘prophetic’ works. Meanwhile the reader/listener/walker gets an idea of what it might be like to walk around London alone with one’s thoughts and ideas; to be considered different, or perhaps even mad.

I also want to explore a pet theory of mine that birth, miscarriage, childlessness and the pain of children growing up and apart from their parents were all things on William’s mind at that time – if even he didn’t quite know it.

By focussing on this theme it may also be possible to develop the voice of Blake’s wife, Catherine, who never had children, but instead dedicated herself to Blake, working ceaselessly as his creative partner to help produce great works such as The Book of Urizen.

What was life like for her? And what discussions took place between William and Catherine about the prospect of never having a family?

 

#rots: what is it good for?

The good news is that The Riddle of the Sands is - like Kidnapped - both mappable *and* ‘re-playable’, so you can travel along with the book pretty much in real time. And this is a FANTASTIC landscape to travel through – scenic, challenging, strange; full of history, some troubled; full of people, mostly friendly.

I’ve decided, though, after some brief discussions with local sailors (in my terrible broken German – another issue in itself) that doing the whole trip by sail is fraught with difficulties. Yes, there’s the obvious obstacle of me not really being a sailor and not having a boat. These minor issues could be overcome.( I could buddy up with proper sailors out there and borrow or hire a boat, no problem.)

No, the bigger issue is the *weather*. If you don’t believe me, check out my Nordeney video:

Sometimes it’ll just not be possible or wise to set out just because the book says it’s time to go. Sometimes we won’t have the wind that Carruthers & Davies have. There may be occasions where we can’t moor exactly where we want to. I feel stupid for not having thought of these things before. It shows what a landlubber I am.

On the other hand, I do now feel very confident that there is a *fantastic* cycling & hiking holiday to be had following the RotS route from the coast, so I think for next year I might be on safer ground to simply buy a bike, name her Dulcibella and get going that way (subject to offers from sailors...)

Certainly, this trip has brought into focus something I kind of ignored with Kidmapped when I set out, but which has been itching away at me increasingly since then; chiefly, what am I expecting other people to do once a trail is blazed? Thanks to this trip I’m starting to think a lot more practically about the different kinds of tourist or ‘bookmappers’ I’d like to design my journeys for.

At the moment I think there are at least five categories:

• Real time full route bookmappers: these are people who want to travel exactly on the date as mentioned in a book, for the duration of the book, and travel in pretty much the same way as the characters in the book. (er... that’s just me then)
• Fair-weather/year round full route bookmappers: these are people who might want to travel the full route the book defines, but can’t do it on the precise dates mentioned in the book and might want to travel in a way that’s a bit more comfortable than described in the book.
• Part-time bookmappers (real time & fair-weather): these are people who can’t take the time out to do the whole trip but might quite like to do one bit of it – either as the book describes or in a more comfortable/practical mode.
• One day bookmappers (real time & fair-weather): these are people who are already planning or have a trip to a region covered in a book and fancy spending a day or two following a trail. Maybe it’s a family outing or something for a couple to do together.
• Armchair or bus-seat bookmappers (print & online): these are people who aren’t so interested in walking, cycling or sailing but just want to get into the book in a way that’s different - more digital, lively & shared. Maybe they’ve got the book on their smartphone and don’t want to just read it, but want to look at vids, listen to audio, check out maps, share comments, link to pics, location info, local history etc. Perhaps the smartphone app could inspire a trip, converting armchair bookmappers into part-time or one-day bookmappers.

What’s emerging for me by researching a second bookmapping project then is that instead of getting my rocks off thinking about type 1 & 2 people, I should really be sorting out what tools & materials (and ‘experiences’) I could be providing for the type 3, 4 & 5 people. So instead of being a digital storyteller, I’m becoming a package holiday designer and bespoke travel book publisher? Plus ca change – as the creative thinking evolves and the technology changes, so the business models shift. Like the sands.

The Return of the Kidmapper: Next Week's Scouting Mission for ‘The Riddle of the Sands’

Having proved the point with Kidmapped! that some novels really can be played out in real time & ‘geolocated’, I’ve been on the lookout for other titles that can be ‘bookmapped’. 

Next week I’m off to Holland & Northern Germany to scope out the landscape described in Erskine Childers’ classic 1903 spy thriller ‘The Riddle of the Sands’.

View Riddle of the Sands in a larger map

I’ve already put together a rudimentary map and bashed the text into a wiki (feel free to sign up and edit/comment etc). I’m now going to spend a week trundling around seeing what the possibilities are for a full ‘bookmapper’ expedition next year.

If I were being completely faithful to the book I’d have to sail most of the way (there’s some lovely boats for hire out there btw – e.g the Vera Mary). But for now I’m thinking there is probably a fantastic series of coastal cycle rides plus ferry trips to be had.

Why this book? Well, a bit like Kidnapped, it’s the kind of classic boys own adventure that doesn’t really get on a 21st Century boy’s radar, and that seems like a shame to me. Also like Kidnapped, it’s extremely well written, involves a lot of action and movement, has a strong sense of place and packs in a whole load of history, geography, social comment, technical description etc. It means there’s always a *lot* to talk about and play around with as I/we travel – at least that’s my excuse for all the blogging, vlogging, audiobooing, tweeting etc that I plan to do.

On a personal level, this is a book my dad really loved since he, like Childers, was addicted to sailing in the North Sea. The book was always around in my childhood. And in a bit of spooky coincidence, not only did my dad go to the same school as Childers, but I went to the same school as Childer’s son. Perhaps my Dad knew this? In a funny kind of way I feel ‘destined’ to make this journey as something that Childers Sr & my dad silently cooked up for me years ago.

If anyone out there, by the way, wanted to join me at short notice (remembering this is just a scouting expedition rather than the full ‘experience’), here’s my itinerary:

19th October: Leeuwarden : near Ostmahorn where the book ends (see 26th October)

20-21st October : Flensburg: where Carruthers and Davies first meet (see 26th September)

22nd-24th October: Norden: from where Carruthers starts the final part of the adventure (see 23rd October)

25th October: Amsterdam: where Carruthers sojourns for one night on 23rd October and from where I will then head back to Blighty.

New Media Writing Prize 2010: The Shortlist

Phew! We looked at over 60 entrants and now there are 6:

Naomi Alderman – The Winter House

Jim Andrews – On Lionel Kearns

Alan Bigelow – My Summer Vacation

Katharine Norman -  Yes Really

Anna Pitt   - The O2 Tales

Christine Wilks – Underbelly

Full details can be found at http://www.newmediawritingprize.co.uk/?p=34. Also new on the blog is a thoughtful post by Jim Pope about the future of 'books'. 

 

LET’S MAKE STUFF TOGETHER AT PROBOSCIS ‘PITCH IN & PUBLISH’ ON 15th OCTOBER 2010.

I’m really looking forward to being a guest at the Proboscis ‘Pitch In & Publish’ event on Friday 15th October 2010. It’ll be a chance to get to grips with bookleteer once again and think about how this kind of personal printing might fit into some of the crossplatform ideas I’m currently working on. Join us if you can!

Details of how to book a place can be found here: http://cityasmaterial.eventbrite.com/. Just £10 to hang out and make interesting stuff together feels like a bargain to me.

What is bookleteer?

If you don’t know what bookleteer is, this is a great opportunity to find out and spend a day designing personal booklets (or ‘zines’) for the rest of the world to download, print and use.

I say ‘use’ rather than ‘read’ because the great thing about this kind of low-cost personalised publishing is that you don’t have to use it exclusively for getting other people to read your pearls of wisdom.

Bookleteer is just as effective as a way of publishing maps and local guides - or for distributing notebooks, sketchbooks or doodlepads that other people then fill in, annotate or generally deface (in an artistic way presumably).

*And* bookleteer is a very interesting way to capture and adapt digital assets such as Flickr pics, texts or tweets and quickly incorporate them into a printed work. It means you really can think seriously about mixing online and ‘offline’ experiences together in terms of photos, texts, sudden thoughs, map references, web links etc.

I’ve used bookleteer a couple of times as part of my ongoing BlakeWalks project where I walk prescribed routes around London with whoever cares to join me and we talk generally about issues and feelings that Blake’s life & work arouse in us.

So far I’ve been keen to arm fellow BlakeWalkers with booklets that they can use as notebooks or sketchpads, so we can add to the record of the walk something that isn’t just external pics and words and sounds but may be internal thoughts and more spontaneous artistic outpourings. Here's a booklet for S:BlakeWalk3.

Frankly, I haven’t come up with a form for this that I’m entirely happy with, so I’ll be keen to spend the Pitch In & Publish day thinking more deeply about how bookleteer could be used to create a more effective printed thing for BlakeWalkers to carry through the city on their appointed round.

I should add, though, that there is a set theme for this event - ‘The City As Material’ – and there is an intention to produce at least one collaborative work focussing on ‘Streetscape - the street level of the city, its routes and human interaction whilst travelling through them’.

I’m hoping my BlakeWalking experience (and to some extend my moongolfhole work) will be useful in this regard since both projects focus on walking though chiefly urban landscapes whilst mapping the route, recording what happens on the walk, and teasing out themes and impressions that arise out of impromptu gatherings and generally taking to the streets.

THE POOLE LITERARY FESTIVAL NEW MEDIA WRITING PRIZE: ENTER NOW!

Because I’m sitting on the judging panel for the New Media Writing Prize (established by the Poole Literary Festival in collaboration with Bournemouth University Media School) I thought I’d write a short piece encouraging more people to have a go at entering. 

I have always sensed that many traditional writers get put off working in new media by the thought of having to become a software geek or some kind of coder. Not so. The trick is – says I – collaboration. Now read on:

 “How much of this work can I do on my own?” 

I imagine this is not a question too many traditional writers have to confront when they sit down to write a book or a play or a poem. It’s *all* down to the writer, right? 

For a budding new media writer, though, it’s often not practical to think that you can arm yourself with all the technical skills needed to deliver a work. You may well need help.

For a start, there are choices to be made about tools. You can’t just pick up a pen. You may need to acquire licences for several different software packages. You may have to take time to learn how to use these packages. You may even need training.

The good news is that help is always at hand. I have found over the years, that if you have an idea for a piece of new media writing but don’t feel technically able to deliver it, there are always people to talk to and work with on the internet. Even if you are determined to go it alone there are libraries of open source code out there, design templates and tutorials galore that can make you look cleverer than you really are in terms of technical ability. 

And don’t forget that your audience is a resource also. Your readers may well be able to add elements to your work that you couldn’t do on your own - if you let them.

So if you’re a writer who at first feels a bit intimidated by new media, don’t be. If you can’t immediately build what you have in your mind’s eye, try to describe it on others ways – blog about it, write about it in a forum, sketch it out on paper, map it out in a time line or a storyboard. Do whatever it takes to show other people what you’re thinking about – and sooner or later through sharing and discussion, you’ll almost certainly find a co-conspirator, a collaborator, a creative partner. 

The closing date for submissions for the New Media Writing Prize is not ‘til September so you still have plenty of time to pull together resources and make something happen. 

Even if you don’t win the prize, there’s a great opportunity to get to grips with what kind of artist you can be in this emerging sphere of literary practice – and perhaps you’ll also discover some value in deliberately *not* doing everything yourself. 

• Can anyone out there give us some good examples of creative collaboration in a new media space? 
• Do add you comments below and share any links you think might be helpful in terms of open source libraries, freeware and forums.