www.flightpaths.net

"I have finished my weekly supermarket shop, stocking up on provisions for my three kids, my husband, our dog and our cat. I push the loaded trolley across the car park, battling to keep its wonky wheels on track. I pop open the boot of my car and then for some reason, I have no idea why, I look up, into the clear blue autumnal sky. And I see him. It takes me a long moment to figure out what I am looking at. He is falling from the sky. A dark mass, growing larger quickly. I let go of the trolley and am dimly aware that it is getting away from me but I can't move, I am stuck there in the middle of the supermarket car park, watching, as he hurtles toward the earth. I have no idea how long it takes - a few seconds, an entire lifetime - but I stand there holding my breath as the city goes about its business around me until...

He crashes into the roof of my car."

The car park of Sainsbury's supermarket in Richmond, southwest London, lies directly beneath one of the main flight paths into Heathrow Airport. Over the last decade, on at least five separate occasions, the bodies of young men have fallen from the sky and landed on or near this car park. All these men were stowaways on flights from the Indian subcontinent who had believed that they could find a way into the cargo hold of an airplane by climbing up into the airplane wheel shaft. It is thought that none could have survived the journey, killed by either the tremendous heat generated by the airplane wheels on the runway, crushed when the landing gear retracts into the plane after take off, or frozen to death once the airplane reaches altitude.

'Flight Paths' seeks to explore what happens when lives collide - an airplane stowaway and the fictional suburban London housewife, quoted above. With your help, this project will tell their stories.

IOCT LED I've been commissioned to write text for the LED display unit that resides above the entrance to the brand-new IOCT (Institute of Creative Technologies) at De Montfort University. The Director of the IOCT, Andrew Hugill, gave me the briefest of briefs for this commission: the LED must not display any information, which is, of course, the very thing that LEDs are usually used for. From this brief I took the theme of my text: 'information'.

The virtual LED here displays the text as and when it is added to the actual LED at De Montfort.

My commission started in the summer of 2006; the first phase, up to Feb 2007, was be non-interactive. During the Cultural eXchanges Festival at DMU, 26 Feb to 2 March 2007, the scientist Steve Grand and I created Sibyl, the IOCT Oracle, an oracle powered by artificial intelligence.  Currently, I am working on a project with roboticist Mario Gongora to link his animatron with the LED. 

As well as this, a new project, 'First Lines', is collecting favourite first lines for the LED.  I am collecting first lines from favourite books, songs, and movies, as well as unpublished or unwritten books, songs, and movies.  As they come in, I'll add them to the LED at the IOCT, and also the virtual LED you see on this page. Send your favourite first lines to me at firstlines08(at)yahoo.co.uk or use this e-mail link: First Lines

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Click here to see a photo of the real IOCT LED.

Also at DMU, I've joined the new research group, PARTl, (Production and Research into Transliteracy).

Inanimate Alice Multimedia online novel by Kate Pullinger and Chris Joseph.  'Episode 1:  China', and 'Episode 2: Italy' and 'Episode 3:  Russia' and 'Episode 4: Hometown' are available to view online.  'Episode 1: China' won the first ever prize for Digital Art awarded by MAXXI - the Museum for the Twenty-First Century - DARC, and the Fondazione Rosselli. It also won the IBM Prize for New Media (second prize, 1000 Euros) at Stuttgarter Filmwinter Festival for Expanded Media 'Episode 3:  Russia' premiered at EIEF, Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival in 2006 and is hosted by Guardian Unlimited where you can also find an interview with me.   Check out the pedagogical project that now builds on Alice as a resource for teachers and academics.

The Breathing Wall: web taster.  For more information, view the press release

Branded: a collaboration with Talan Memmott

The Sticker King: short story published exclusively by pulp.net

Kate Pullinger was Visiting Writing Fellow at The Women's Library from October 2001 until June 2003. Projects from that residency include the web projects clean and Read This!

Kate Pullinger was Research Fellow at the trAce Online Writing Centre, 2002/03. You can view the archive of the year-long research project, Mapping the Transition from Page to Screen. You can read the journal Kate kept during that year.