tim wright: digital writer

Everything you ever wanted to know about Oldton (but were too bored to ask)

I'm really happy to see that a meeting in Norwich about digital writing, organised by New Writing Partnership, has been well documented on YouTube.

The talks by Naomi Alderman and Alison Norrington are particularly interesting.

For my own part I am relieved to see that my spiel about Oldton that I have been repeating over and over again at various conferences and seminars over the years has finally been filmed. This means that I never have to give it again - and you don't have to hear it (unless you want to).

Here's the summary points bit:

Conversation with Christy Dena

A wide-ranging (and sometimes rambling - sorry) discussion:

Lots of other good stuff about current cross-media thinking from Christy at http://www.universecreation101.com/

robert coover keynote

A History of the Future of Narrative: Robert Coover from Scott Rettberg on Vimeo.

Searching for Sebald

Quite some time ago, I was invited by a curious and quirky outfit called The Institute of Cultural Enquiry to contribute to book about W.G. Sebald. 

Finally that book has appeared. It's called 'Searching for Sebald' and is packed full of really interesting articles about Sebald by a broad range of academics and artists. My chapter rather sticks out at an odd angle - not art, not academic - since it tries to explain how my web project 'In Search of Oldton' was in part inspired by 'The Emigrants' and 'The Rings of Saturn'.

Intriguingly, the ICE has announced that it's planning a special 'suitcase' version of the book with contributors adding their own objects/artworks to the case. I'm hoping to throw in a pack of Oldton playing cards.

Buying haunted items

Did a little seminar for Mike Williams recently, the theme of which was ‘eBay’. My angle was that storytelling might ‘add value’ to objects that otherwise seemed fairly valueless. In ‘Oldton’, for example, there was the crappy tobacco jar - bought for $80 from an online antique store – that became (for me) a spooky/prized item conjured out of a fictional online town and made real. A piece of pottery ‘haunted’ by the spirit of my dad.

Sounds a bit hokey I know, but it turns out that eBay actually has a guide to buying haunted items with some great photos of how to fake up a ‘haunted’ toilet roll.

Who needs a Public Service Publisher?

The papers and 'visions' that came out of the Public Sector Publisher Forum I contributed to last year are now online at www.openmedianetwork.org.uk.

There's also an Ofcom discussion document available at http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/pspnewapproach/

The big questions being asked here are  - do we need a new approach to public service in a digital age? And if so, what issues of policy and creative vision do we need to address in the context of a new Public Service Publisher (PSP).

And what new forms of content and public value could a PSP produce? Stuff like Oldton, maybe? Heh, heh.

Oldton as Radio 4 Afternoon Play

I'm pleased to announce that the radio play 'In Search of Oldton', inspired by the web site http://www.oldton.com, has a confirmed broadcast date on Radio 4 of 2.15pm, Monday 24th July 2006.

It's being featured as part of a major BBC season abount memory - see http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/memory - and should also be available online for seven days after broadcast.

I continue to accept further contributions to the site, and packs of playing cards are still for sale! Thanks to everyone who has supported this project.

ContentLab

... and so to Birmingham for the Contentlab conference (pic 1). I gave a short presentation of Oldton alongside Matt Berardo of Yahoo/Flickr (pic2) as part of a general discussion about trends in user generated content.

Other sessions focussed in Channel 4's 4Docs.com, the future of mobile content (see pic of Endemol's mobile mission statement - as if...), imaginative scenarios of what the interactive content landscape might look like in ten or twenty years time (Google provides 'safe' search buildings that operate not unlike a church - church, surch, geddit?) - and the possibilities for the creation of a Public Service Publisher (again, as if...)

Evening entertainment was provided by the Modified Toy Orchestra (pic 4)

off-shore sculpture

"...recreating as sculptures in the North Sea the vanished churches of Dunwich, a medieval Suffolk port that was almost entirely destroyed by coastal erosion."

http://society.guardian.co.uk/urbandesign/story/0,11200,1507894,00.html

Dunwich is featured in Sebald's Rings of Saturn which was a major source of inspiration for Oldton. So now we have a sculpture that will never exist to commemorate a town that disappeared.

Oldton Playing Cards

At last. The playing card designs that arose out of the In Search of Oldton site have finally gone to the printers. The pdf proof is here.

It's been a slow and tortuous experience and rather typical of the way my work is going at the moment. Cause for delays have been:

• Lack of funds. I've had to raise all the money myself to pay the printers.

• The pull of paying jobs, preventing me from giving up the time needed to get the designs sorted properly.

• The need for more disk space and pro versions of my software (thanks to Rob B for help in this regard)

• And then there's my lack of experience and knowledge. I've had to learn how to prepare artwork for playing cards pretty much on my tod with no tuition.

So - the usual XPT/new media cocktail: no financial support, no training, inadequate tech, and umpteen other projects pressing for attention. Oh, and no firm clue as to whether the world needs this stuff.

Buy a pack today!