tim wright: digital writer

Mount Kristos: Story versus Play

Having been invited to write an essay about an old, old project called Mount Kristos, I caught myself writing about story and play. Funny how writing stuff down can actually commit you to an opinion you didn't even know you had (or is that just the first step down the slippery slope towards becoming Toby Young/Tim Dowling/Jan Moir* et al?!):

"Even to this day, it doesn’t feel like we’ve solved the basic tension between story and play. For the most part, people are still treating online ‘theatrical’ events and interactive story projects as an excuse to party on noisily, ignoring all the wonderful trinkety things ‘creatives’ sweat blood to make for the audience’s entertainment.

Many times whilst rolling out MK, I definitely felt like an actor on stage desperately trying to be heard above the hubbub of a quite rowdy drinks party going on in the auditorium.

True, there’s a new generation of ‘digital play’ studios emerging that are clever at developing light-weight sets of tools, kits and/or basic rules rather than multimedia-rich ‘content’ – with the aim perhaps of allowing players to define their own play & story worlds, handing over control of where and when both story and game starts and ends – and defining who you get to play with and even what kind of story gets told.

It’s unclear to me as yet, though, that this DIY kit approach to interactive storytelling and play actually ends up supporting (or generating?) stories that have any serious impact or interest beyond a short period of intense play between a small group of people.

We all know the joy of banter around a card table (real or virtual) and have fond memories of goofy playground games, dressing up parties, unusual outings with friends and so on. But is this really the breeding ground for new *meaningful* forms of digital entertainment with broad appeal and longer term socio-cultural significance? For me, the jury’s still out on that one.

*Yes I did deliberately put Tim Dowling in that group. Sorry.

Save the Tyger

As part of the rather lovely Songs of Imagination and Digitisation project, XPT is working with John Morgan to produce a website where we preserve an electronic version of Blake’s famous poem 'The Tyger'.

When I first got involved with the SID project, I was asked if I had a story to tell about my personal relationship with William Blake. I was instantly taken back to a very early school memory of having to write out 'The Tyger' neatly in my exercise book and draw a picture to go with it.

I still think of copying and drawing as a fundamental part writing thanks to that poem. Indeed, it’s Blake's production process that always draws me in: the engraving of his texts and drawing *backwards* on to soft metal plates, and then the associated danger of seeing his plates blunt and smudge and break, perhaps after as little as 50 impressions.

It makes the remaining original prints and pages that still exist in the world feel very personal, fragile, delicate and *endangered*. And it made me wonder what if we could make a digital version of 'The Tyger' that felt the same way? Each time we conjured it up on the screen we were in some way helping to wear it out?

At savethetyger.org we’re developing this concept. Each time you look at the poem it will degrade and die a little bit. The more people look at it, the more it will fade and distort until it entirely disappears.

 There will be, though, ways of saving the Tyger too. We’ll be making a direct plea to the public to copy and draw or ‘redesign’ key elements of the poem that we can use to refresh the work and combat the degrading process.

We’ll be looking, therefore, for Designers to contribute a new Title section, Writers to submit refreshed Text and Artists to draw us a new Tyger. Each time one of these three elements looks like it's about to disappear into nothingness, we’ll replace it with something you send in. In this way, the Tyger will live on, albeit that it will morph and ‘evolve’ over time based on your contributions.

We’re aleady taking submissions of Titles, Texts and Tygers, so feel free to send us something. Full details of how to join in are in the videos.

kidnappedtrail.com

I am really pleased to say that XPT Kidnapped is finally online.

It’s in a pretty basic form, simply outlining where we’re going, where we’ll be each day and explaining the various ways you might want to join in.

View Larger Map

For those who haven’t been following, the basic proposition is this:

From 30th June to 25th August 2009, Rob and Tim of XPT will be following a route across Scotland from the south western tip of Mull to the outskirts of Edinburgh, as charted in Chapters 14–27 of ‘Kidnapped’.

We aim to meet people from all walks of life who have something to say, or something to play or perform, that is relevant to the story of ‘Kidnapped’ and to the land we are travelling through. And we'll publish all our encounters and all your performances & contributions online as we go.

It could be just one word, or a whole chapter that inspires you, or perhaps there’s a big issue that arises out of the story that you really want us all to address. Whatever it is, we want to say it, play it, perform it or *re-play* it somewhere on the Kidnapped Trail.

You can contact us here and let us know exactly where on the route you’d like to join us—or, if you can’t make it up to Scotland, you can submit your contributions via the web site and we’ll read them out—or even perform them for you.

We promise to highlight all the stories and pictures you send us, and discuss all the issues you raise, even as we tramp along the Kidnapped Trail from day to day, marking out the flight of David Balfour and Alan Breck across the Highlands.

And when we finally arrive in Edinburgh on 25th August, we’ll have a party and then start work on a new version of the book itself—a re-printing of Stevenson’s story with a whole load of new photos, texts, performances and papers, generated by all of us as we moved through the landscape.

This year is very much a proof of concept or working prototype for something we’d like to ‘go large’ on next year (and the year after).

In a very strong sense, we want the trail to become 'open environment' where people each year can express themselves and contextualise their thinking about this fantastic story, both out in a landscape and online; by which I mean XPT Kidnapped can become a place where you  can play and talk, walk and create, learn and *have fun*.

So in 2009 the aim is:

1. to prove the journey can be done (we're not aware of anyone ever having completed the Kidnapped Trail in 'real' time)
2. to talk to and film people on the way, blogging and vlogging and generally documenting the whole experience online
3. to develop the basic software that will allow people online both to track our progress and post their own thoughts and contributions for us to take down into the landscape
4. to work how we might all end up making of a book that combines Stevenson's original text with the best of the content we generate along the way 

I know have a number of rather large production tasks ahead of me. Some I'm further down the line with than others - and all help welcome:

• confirm the basic logisitics of travel, accommodation, food – and alert as many people as possible who live and work en route about what we’re doing
• sort out the technology and kit we’ll need in order to generate and publish meaningful geolocated content from out in the field.
•  develop the online presence to support mapped submissions and creative input from anyone who wants to join in – as well as develop the means for people to adapt, annotate and generally play with Robert Louis Stevenson’s original text.
• seek out serious partnerships for possible funding, sponsorship and production resource
• persuade as many people as possible to join us out in the landscape and respond in some way to the story.

The XPT 10th birthday dream would be to use this project to meet up with all the talented, crunchy, interesting people Rob & I have encountered and/or worked with over the last ten years and see how each of them might respond creatively to reading a book and coming out into the wilds with us. So if you are reading this, don't just sit there, come and join us!

The more, the merrier.

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/

sample swywths

Alice didn’t love you. She never loved you. Every morning, listen to this and remember how lucky you are...

Mike is an idiot. Mike is an idiot. Mike is an idiot...

Flan. It’s such a sexy word. Just say it. Flan.

Interview with/for Gavin Stewart

Recently completed an email conversation with Gavin as part of his work at the Research Institute for Media, Art and Design. Here's an extract:

For writers and artists generally - or anyone involved in cultural content - the big issue seems to me to be the ever-increasing divide that the web has brought so much into focus between monolithic professional producers of nationally or internationally branded content and small-scale local amateur DIY makers of content-making platforms, tool and services. These two groups of people offer very different and partially conflicting views of what the web is for, who’s in charge of it and what kind of content should be distributed on it.

Really?! Did I say that?. Hmmm. You find the rest of the interview here.

We're in this together

Congratulations to Rob for getting the We’re In This Together campaign web site launched. He’s built and deployed a robust web 2.0 community & content application in an incredibly short period of time and to a very tight brief. An amazing achievement.

Be incredibly creative

New mini-book call ‘Be incredibly creative’ has several chapters written by me and Rob. Not sure about the title, but some of the chapter headings seem pretty good: – start now… smash it up… don’t do lunch… laugh a lot… make decisions… cut the crap… lie back & listen…

BBC Castaway Remote Control

The BBC reality series Castaway finally got under way at the week-end. I have been working on some of the interactive elements for a few months now.

Chiefly, I helped to devise the 'Remote Control' feature that allows people to unleash some 'unexpected events' on the Castaway island directly from the web. Right now you can choose to remove half the chickens in the island coop, or hatch out a few extra chicks overnight. Will the audience be nasty or nice? Er...

Alongside this, I also helped to devise a treasure hunt game that involves spotting odd symbols and signs in the BBC1 Sunday shows, collecting them on the web and then using them to identify a secret location. The ultimate prize is a holiday for two in New Zealand that I wouldn't mind winning myself. It's one of the drawbacks of devising this kind of thing that it's always someone else who gets to keep the cool prizes.

It has, though, been very interesting to work on such a massive TV beast that is operating across both BBC1 and BBC3, with live and pre-recorded elements plus a lot of online and red button content. It's great too that we came up with something that's a bit more sophisticated than straight voting, and ties TV and online together in a tighter way than I've seen in previous shows of this ilk.

MaliceBoxQuest Update

MaliceBoxQuest is now in its final phase, and I'm pleased to say that it's generally been received positively (see forums). Here are some links to the blogs of the other people who worked on the project: Tom, Iain, Cookie, Paul.

"I'm not on the top 20 leader board; I'm probably not in the top 20%, but I've finished the quest! I'm probably miles out but I don't care. The idea of the quest was fantastic, so more please, with some genuine mind-benders to solve!"