Hello World

Eadweard Muybridge and Virtual Reality

On Wednesday i finished reading Rebecca Solnit's excellent and insightful  River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West which I picked up very cheaply at the MIT Bookstore sale in Boston some months ago (what fantastic sales they have there!). It was intriguing to read so much detail about the 1870s experiments of Muybridge and his colleagues as they struggled to develop a photographic method that would capture an instant of motion. Eventually, all of these fragments would be joined together and cinema would be born, but  in 1872 when Muybridge photographed a horse in motion at Stanford's Palo Alto estate in California, nobody had any idea what the future held.

On Thursday I visited the Reality Centre at my university, De Montfort, in Leicester where we tested the Collaborative Stereoscopic Access Grid Environment devised by Martin Turner and his team at the University of Manchester, and which we hope to install in the new DMU Centre for Creative Technologies when it is completed next year. As we put on and took off our special viewing glasses to watch Martin 'fly' through the virtual reality landscapes created by Howell Istance and his team, I had a powerful sense of deja vu, a kinship with Muybridge and his fellows as they fiddled and adjusted and tried out new ideas, never taking their eyes off the subject, staring at the images they produced, trying to achieve what seemed sometimes way out of reach but which, with just one final adjustment, would hit the mark. We strained to see what we wanted to be there, what we knew would be there, and sometimes it came into view, and sometimes it shimmered away again.

As I walked home in the rain, experiencing wetness in a definitely very real way, I thought of Muybridge and Stanford 133 years ago. Imagine virtual reality in 133 years from now. But maybe it will not be  the machines that will have evolved, perhaps it is more likely to be the body itself. It is very noticeable that the human body and the horse body have not altered at all since Muybridge's experiments, but in 2138 they may actually have changed more than the technologies we're currently developing to view them. Perhaps even as a result of them.

 

Online MA in Creative Writing & Technology

Kate Pullinger and I are devising a new Online MA in Creative Writing & Technology, due to start at De Montfort University in Autumn 2006, (subject to validation).

About 80% of the course takes place online, making it very suitable for those wishing to obtain an MA in Creative Writing by distance learning.

It is designed for writers interested in exploring the potential of new technologies in their writing via a combination of online study with a short compulsory Summer School in the UK. There is also an optional residential weekend in Semester 1.

More information.

5 Blogs for BlogDay

Space and Culture
Weblog for the International Journal of Social Space. I love this blog because it regularly shows me something new about the physical world. Edited by Rob Shields and Anne Galloway, beautifully presented with wonderful images.

if:book
A project of The Institute for the Future of the Book founded by Bob Stein, of that early pioneer company Voyager. Remember it? if:book is inspiring, providing informative and intelligent news and views about 21st century publishing.

Tipmonkies
Tips for better, more productive computing. Ok, I admit it, I am addicted. So many tips and so little time. My bulging downloads folder is the result of taking too much notice of Tipmonkies' ever-flowing stream of new applications and things to do with them.

BBC Radio 
Not really a blog, but certainly RSS from top to toe. I am so proud of the BBC for grasping the internet in the early days when it could just have easily have run scared. And now look at it! Podcasts, Listen Again, programme downloads - and soon, they say, streaming TV. Fantastic, and free to the entire world!

Writing and the Digital Life
Cheating, I know, since I originated this site, but we have launched today for BlogDay, and our 25 international writers are limbering up and ready to go.  This is a collaborative transdisciplinary blog about the impact of digital technologies upon writing and lived experience. We talk about writing and reading in the context of 'new and old' media, transliteracy, craft, art, process and practice, social networks, cooperation and collaboration, narrative and memory, human computer interaction, imagination, nature, mind, body, and spirit. Read us!

technorati tag: BlogDay2005
also posted at Writing and the Digital Life

BlogDay: new blog Writing and the Digital Life

Today, for BlogDay 31 August 2005, I am launching a new blog for Writing and the Digital Life. This is the introductory post:

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Writing and the Digital Life began as an email list earlier this year, and quickly acquired a critical mass of around 250 users in many countries - currently Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, Greece, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Niue, Spain, Sweden, UK, USA, United Kingdom & Zimbabwe.

We are interested in the impact of digital technologies upon writing and lived experience within an interdisciplinary context. We talk about the relationship of writing and reading in the context of many subjects including 'new and old' media; craft, art, process and practice; social networks; cooperation and collaboration; narrative and memory; human computer interaction; imagination; nature; mind; body, and spirit. Contributions related to research, writing and teaching in the arts, sciences, and humanities are all welcome. The list is managed by Sue Thomas, Professor of New Media at De Montfort University, England.

This blog is an experiment. We discussed long and hard whether to switch to a blog, or stay as an email list, but when we voted on it the result was pretty well 50-50 so we have decided to try both at the same time. Some of us are old hands at blogging and some of us are completely new to it, so bear with us - there may be some small glitches as everyone gets up to speed. The luxurious Typepad software upon which we reside has been made available to us gratis by Alistair Shrimpton, the friendly UK Business Development Manager for Six Apart (thank you Alistair!).

Anyone is free to join us - just go to Participate at the top of the right-hand panel.

If you join, you get to discuss issues, share news and information, and vote each month to choose a discussion topic. But you don't need to join to read the list archives or this blog - although if you do join we guarantee a warm sense of togetherness and companionship ;)

Text, in whatever language or script, is the passport to digital life. Without it we cannot use email, web content, chat, discussion boards, or instant messaging. In the ecology of global connectedness it is vital we understand how writing and reading are being used, extended and changed.

We are 25 writers from several different countries including India, Africa, and South America - see the left-hand panel for details. We are interested in anything that addresses the impact of digital technologies upon writing and lived experience, from vague, barely expressible notions to passionate manifestos. This is the place for conjecture, imaginings, mappings and propositions. With luck we will birth some inventive projects, successful collaborations, and unusual networks. We hope you enjoy what you find here.

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For more, visit Writing and the Digital Life

In the morning I will post here links to 5 blogs I want to recommend.

Technorati tag: BlogDay2005

post-mortem on Kill Me If You Can

I thought the programme was very good. I had been concerned it would sensationalise the story but instead it concentrated simply on relating the events, which in themselves are so strange as to be sufficient. It was a good move, I think, to allow the barristers to unfold the tale, and I was impressed by their humane and kindly attitudes to the two boys - although one wonders whether they would have been so gentle if the boys had come from deprived homes rather than the leafy suburbs.

Sophie asks 'what is reality?' - I would really like to hear John and Mark answer that question!

(btw I am told by my brother-in-law that it was Bobby who came back from the dead, not JR. Ah well, sorry about that error.)

'Kill Me If You Can' Channel 4, 23rd August 2005

Earlier this year I was interviewed for Kill Me If You Can, a TV documentary to be shown on Channel 4 on Tuesday 23rd August 2005. At first I was reluctant to appear since I wasn't sure how the producers intended to portray the story, but after long discussions with them I decided to go ahead. The evidence of whether this decision was the correct one will be seen next week.

The production company's website summarises the subject of the programme as follows:

The story of a 14-year-old Manchester boy who tried to arrange his own death by manipulating his 16-year-old friend into murder.

Known only as “John” when he appeared in court in 2004, the boy created eight fictitious characters from his bedroom using a laptop and an over-active imagination.

With these characters, including an MI6 spy-mistress, he snared “Mark” into an attempt on his own life.

Here is some of the  press coverage of what took place:
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/05/29/1085641761298.html?oneclick=true
*http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/3758209.stm
http://www.manchesteronline.co.uk/news/s/118/118226_internet_murder_boys_told_never_see_each_other_again.html

I find the story interesting because in many senses the behaviour of the boys was very typical of the kind of thing that happens online all the time. What made it different was that the overspill into the physical became dangerous. I was especially drawn to the comments of the judge as reported in the Manchester News:

When the case came to Manchester Crown Court yesterday, Judge David Maddison said: "Skilled writers of fiction would struggle to conjure up a plot such as this. What is staggering is that this has arisen out of the activities of a 14-year-old boy."

It seemed to me that the 'writers of fiction' reference was spot on. This boy was (is) a consummate fiction writer. I know novelists who will type furiously all day to produce perfect first drafts, needing little revision, of complicated page-turners that readers consume as fast as the works themselves were written. This is a special skill, and I believe this boy probably has it.

The difference between him and a novelist however is that this boy was able to actually make his fiction come alive, something I am sure many print novelists would dearly love to happen.

And as for his 'reader' - he was fortunate to have an author writing and creating solely for him. No wonder he believed it all - it was tailored for his personal consumption, like children's books where you can have the names and preferences printed in. Although at first sight it might appear that he was an innocent victim, I find I rather doubt that, because the story of these two boys seems to me a good example of interactive fiction at its most effective.  It was, you might say, real interactive fiction.  The perfect author-reader relationship, perhaps....?

I don't know whether the programme will portray the situation sympathetically. Fingers crossed that it will. I'll report back in a week.

*thanks to Peter Harrison for correcting my link (see comments)

The possibility of marsupials

Phil Smith writes:

one pedantic point - you write that Derbyshire doesn't have the possibility  of marsupials - but my understanding is that there were quite a number  of  wallabies living in Derbyshire for some years, released (or escaped)  into  the wild by an aristocratic collector in the 1920s and survived until  quite recently. My understanding is that numbers have dwindled in the last few  decades, but there may still be some around in the county. In my latest  show  i mention ABC's - anomalous big cats - supposedly loose in the English  country - and a Midlander who came to see the show told me afterwards  that he had seen what he thought to be a wallaby in woods near his home

He is absolutely correct, and I knew that somewhere, but obviously forgot it when I was writing Hello World.

I met Phil at Altered States. He's a member of Wrights and Sites, a group of artist-researchers with a special relationship to place. Very interesting work, especially that related to walking. Well worth checking out. Take a look at the Exeter Mis-Guide.

wemadeit

David Lynch's weather report for LA

This is fast becoming a daily habit. I got the link from someone's blog and, shame on me, forgot to record whose, but thank you whoever you are.

Today's weather in LA, from David Lynch

if a backchannel exists in the woods....

This from the blog of danah boyd. It is worth following - idiosyncratic, sometimes too US-centric, but frequently original and insightful.

 

apophenia
:: making connections where none previously existed

 

if a backchannel exists in the woods....

I'm sitting in a cafe trying very hard to frame blogs in Ong's terms and ignore the conversation next to me but i can't.  A woman is loudly talking, using her hands for emphasis;  the man next to her is leaning in and nodding and uh-huhing, saying confirming statements every few minutes.  They've been talking this way for a long time.  She's analyzing another woman, critiquing her view of the world, her actions, her attitudes.  She's looking for validation, offering stories to keep this guy paying attention. Finally, wrapped up in their conversation, i IM to Barb about it; she's sitting right next to me, pretending to blog but mostly chewing on her pen.  I find myself analyzing her analyzing this other woman.  Barb notes "you realize - we're the backchannel for their conversation."  And we both laugh.  My conception of backchannels is so biased by the primary discussion around it, whereby backchannels are a second front channel, a known presence of people with computers.    Do they know that we are their backchannel, the meta on their meta?  What does it mean that a perspective on their conversation is being recorded for posterity, only they will never know it.  Or will they?  What happens when strangers recognize digital records of their physical traces?  Ah, secondary orality.  I'm fascinated by moments when people don't realize the bridge between the digital and the physical.  My techno world is far too always techno. You know anything can and will be blogged.  But the rest of the world doesn't. As Barb notes, "it's no different from any other meta-gossip."  So what does it mean to blog about it, to meta meta it, to meta it beyond any realization of gossip?  There's a koan in here somewhere.