Latest Entry

19 August, 2004

Orders for The Breathing Wall keep coming in, which is great. We've sold out now, and are working on Version 2. Chris and Stefan and I have agreed to get the second version out in September, so anyone interested in buying a copy should hold off until then.

Chris (babel) has written an interesting piece about his experience of working on the project for me to hand in with my report to the Arts Council: you can read the text here.

My first experience of this project was seeing Branded, Kate's collaboration with Talan Memmot, on frAme. I remember being particularly struck by the story of Branded, and the sparse, dark visuals and sounds that perfectly conveyed the mood of the piece.

I first met Kate in November 2003 at TEXTLAB, where she was working on an early version of The Breathing Wall using Stefan's breathing software. I think all the TEXTLABbers, myself included, were inspired by the potential of this new type of interaction for digital work. So when Kate invited me to become the third collaborator, I was thrilled to get the chance to work with both her and Stefan in creating this unique piece.

My role was to design the 'hypertext' section of the piece. Hypertext is a very contestable term - no room for the debate here. For this project it meant, very loosely, moving from one chapter to another, or from one passage of text to the next, through (clickable) links or mouse movements - as in Branded. However it was clear from early on in our collaboration that hypertext-type interaction would have been a little superfluous - there was no real benefit for the reader to have to perform an action (click or move) to proceed through the story. A cinematic (sit and watch) approach also contrasted well with Stefan's software, and the unique physical interaction it requires. So the term hypertext was superseded by 'daydreams' - as opposed to Stefan's 'nightdreams'.

The first design decision was whether to continue Talan's visual style from Branded. The Breathing Wall was to be distributed by CD rather than online: this meant fewer limitations regarding file sizes and download times, so we decided instead to try a photographic style. This had its own challenges: for example, finding enough usable photographs, particularly of jail interiors, where taking our own photos would have been very difficult. Suitable (found) images also had to be non-copyrighted, and they needed to be able to work with varying amounts of text placed on them. I looked at several thousand images to find 500 or so possibles; with Kate these were whittled down to around 150 which were worked on for the final piece.

This was a fascinating process, as I got to talk more with Kate about how she perceived the story visually, in her mind's eye. These conversations spurred a number of design choices, such as the slightly dreamlike quality of the images, the particular use of colour in each scene, placing of text, and more intangibly, the overall 'feel' of the piece, which is for the most part dark, and slightly claustrophobic.

Kate's script documents provided clear directions for text, sound and links, which made the actual process of programming the daydreams much easier. She also sent me the actor's sound files on a CD, already chopped and named, which allowed me to concentrate on the other sound elements - background noises, musical themes and sound montages. Many of these were based on Kate's initial ideas, and reworked throughout our collaboration.

As each new version of a daydream was created, we sent notes back and forth by email with discussions of the font, timing and placement of texts, sounds etc. Most of the work to finalise the overall style was completed on the second daydream, along with the work to develop the Wall itself, who is an important character in the story.

The third daydream introduced Florence, who is seen talking, but not heard (unlike Michael and Lana), which required her to be distinguished in other ways, such as the placement and timing of her text. The third daydream also has one of the most difficult scenes, in terms of timing text, visuals and sounds - Lana's flashback (the other is the long sequence in Dr Doyle's house in daydream 4).

The final daydream is very different in style, in keeping with the location of the scene and the emotions of the characters. The use of video echoes the nightdreams, and together with the lighting hopefully works as a pleasing visual way to end the story, as a contrast to the dark claustrophobia of the previous parts.

Version 1 was premiered at Incubation [http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/incubation] in July 2004. Based on feedback received there, and by our much appreciated testers, it was clear that some of the problems should be corrected quite quickly for the upcoming version 2: for example, moving from daydreams to nightdreams (which horrifically crashed most systems); and making the daydreams flash executables (.exe 'projector' files), rather than .swfs, to avoid the need to view in a browser, and so increase general compatibility and stability.

Beyond version 2, I hope that the future of the piece will be influenced by feedback from readers (viewers/listeners). Although I am interested in how the piece works as a whole, I am also excited to find out how the nightdreams work for readers: at home, but also in public spaces such as galleries, or perhaps libraries and other places that are not traditional outlets for digital literature and art.

babel, August 2004

21 July, 2004

The Breathing Wall had its first outing into the world last Wednesday, on day 3 of Incubation. It went down really well!! People seemed genuinely interested and intrigued, and Chris and I sold all the bundled copies of cd+headset that we had brought with us. Now I have to figure out what next for this project.

Stefan and Dominica had their baby on Monday the 12th, a much more important world premiere than anything The Breathing Wall could muster. Sounds as though all is well on that front. Konstantin has arrived.

I gave out six copies to testers, people who know a bit about the work and have expressed interest in it over the last year. Now I'm waiting to hear back from them; I imagine comments will trickle in over the summer. Tim Wright promised to test it on his dog.

7 July, 2004

The Breathing Wall: web taster is online now, there for everyone to view. Have had some interesting feedback on it already, so this may well be Version 1, with Version 2 around the corner. If you want to comment, contact me.

The cd - which contains both the hypertext and the HTF dreams - is off at the printers now; they are also doing some packaging which we'll be able to stick in with the headsets, making the whole thing into a presentable bundle. We'll give a few to testers, and sell a few to interested parties at Incubation next week, where we'll also be showing it for the first time ever. People can also order it online.

The three-way collaboration has been odd; really, it's been more like two two-way collaborations for me, with Stefan and I working on the HTF dreams, and Chris and I working on the hypertext. But both two-way collaborations have been really interesting. I can see a future for the project now, and I've got a few ideas about potential audiences for it as well. And I'm hoping to have some money in the pot left to promote the piece later this year. But for now, am concentrating on getting the package together to take to Incubation. Can't wait to show it to people and hear what they think.

17 June, 2004

Things have moved on considerably since my last entry. The hypertext is almost finished, just putting finishing touches to the web taster and the piece overall. Nearly done. The cds finally arrived from Berlin and Chris and I were able to view the dreams (Chris had never viewed anything in HTF before) and give some responses to Stefan. The dreams are great - really extraordinary. Can't wait to hear what people think. Stefan has continued to work on both the aesthetics of the dreams, and the user interface. He's coming next week for a few days; we'll spend that time going over the dreams and talking through the many issues to do with how to develop the piece. Chris and I are putting together packaging for the prototype which we'll have ready to sell in time for the premiere of the piece at Incubation, 12-14 July. It will be a prototype, not the finished product, because time is so short; we won't have enough time to do as much testing as we should. But it will be done.

So as soon as the web taster is ready I'll put the link up here in my studio. There will be an order form for people who want to order the piece online.

5 May, 2004

Stefan has finished the rough draft of the four Breathing Wall HTF dreams - he put the cds in the post on Friday. However, the postal delivery service in West London has completely collapsed. I had to go to the sorting office today to pick up a special delivery item, and the frightened man behind the desk stood well back before telling everyone that there is a SEVEN week back-log of post. So the cds which, ordinarily, would have been here by now, have not arrived, and probably will not arrive for at least another couple of weeks. So Stefan will have to re-send them, this time special delivery. In the meantime, the wait is driving me crazy, I so want to get my hands on these dreams.

Chris, otherwise known as babel, has made great progress with the hypertext and completed rough drafts of four out of five parts before going on holiday this week. He'll be back in London from next week, so we can meet to talk about the piece face to face, which will be great. These rough drafts are looking great - all the images we are using are photographic stills and he has found many shots that are uncannily like what I had in my mind's eye while writing. The soundtrack for the piece overall is also beginning to come together.

I've got involved in another digital project recently - an installation piece for the Storey Institute in Lancaster and the Lancaster Litfest. I'm working with an artist called James Coupe; he works with artificial intelligence and narrative generating systems. It's a piece based on automated call centres. I've just spent five minutes trying to write a description of the piece for this journal, and have failed completely - more on this later!

2 April, 2004

Lots has happened in the last couple of months. Stefan came from Berlin and we had a great day recording the voice files for the entire piece using two actors. We had a good time, and the results were excellent, and felt like a big step in the making of this piece.

The designer I'd been working with, Talan Memmott, had to step down from the piece due to other commitments and time. Very sad about that. However, I found a great designer and web artist to work with, babel. He's currently making great process with the hypertext and we are having an interesting time making decisions and watching as the first part of the piece emerges.

Stefan is in Berlin, working on another HTF and GPS project, and his plan is to start editing our dreams for the piece later this month. So, at the moment, everything seems to be on target, and we are having a good time.

Publication of my novel due to go ahead in Canada in the autumn; haven't sorted out any other territories yet...

A book of short stories I edited, 'Shoe Fly Baby', has just come out, published by Bloomsbury. Check out the link on the Books page of my main website.

17 February, 2004

Have had some great feedback on the script from my friend, the poet Catherine Byron. She was with me at TEXTLAB in November, and has kept up with the project from the beginning. I sent her the latest draft of the script last week, and she got back to me with some very useful insights and thoughts. Mainly to do with one of the main characters, Florence, who, unlike Michael and Lana, does not have a voice in the piece. When I say 'voice', I mean it quite literally - Michael and Lana's voices will be represented in the piece by recordings of actors, while Florence (and all the other characters) is represented by text only. So there is a potential imbalance there. But now that Catherine has pointed that out to me, I can sort it out.

Sounds like Stefan will be here to do the recordings sometime in the next month, which is great. So that steps up the pressure on getting the script done. His GPS piece, 'Souvenir', that he created for a new media exhibition in Berlin (at the glorious Mies Van der Rohe gallery) has gone down well, freeing him up to come here earlier than anticipated.

13 February, 2004

This is terrible. I'm such a crap journal keeper. I can't do it on paper, so no wonder I can't do it online either. I managed well during the year I spent as Research Fellow at trAce, but that's because it was part of my duties, something I had to do. As well as that, it was something that people I was working with actually read (that was a surprise!).

'The Breathing Wall' is coming along. I was in Berlin again in January, working with Stefan on getting the scripts for the HTF dream sequences right. We wrote together to create a couple of HTF demos, and that was very instructive. The bad news was that the scripts I'd been working on all autumn were fundamentally useless - I'd managed to get the structure all wrong and I'd also got completely confused about how the HTF would work alongside the hypertext sections of the story. My first night in Berlin, when it became clear to me that I had got it all horribly wrong, was not good. But then Stefan and I spent the next three days talking it through, and working together, and, in the end, I felt like it was going to work after all. The good news was that I had done a massive amount of over-writing so my task since then has been giving the script a sharp editing, slash, slash, chop, chop, cut, cut, delete, delete. Always satisfying. Much easier than writing anything new. Sometimes I think everything I write would be better if it was reduced to a single sentence. I'm sure there are people out there who agree.

The rewrite has reached first draft stage, so I've sent it off to my two collaborators as well as my friend, the poet and writer Catherine Byron, to see what they think. Designs for the hypertext next, and then recording the spoken voice sound files. Hopefully Stefan will come to London for this later this month and we'll use two actors to do the speaking.

In Berlin Stefan and I also clarified some issues around how the story will be delivered. The hypertext will reside on the web where anyone who can access it can read it (although as a piece it will be heavily reliant on sound). In addition to this, there will be four HTF sequences, HTF dreams. These will reside on CD-rom as the HTF software is not intended for the web. So, the ideal reading experience will be this: one person, alone in front of their computer, wearing a headset with a microphone (you'll be able to buy this with the CD if you don't have one), with the CD-rom inserted in the computer. The reader reads part one of the hypertext on the web, then, perhaps, clicks a button on the screen that launches the HTF application on the CD. When that sequence finishes, the reader moves on to the next part of the hypertext on the web, and at the end of that launches the next dream on the cd, and so on. It should work. We think.

In my other life, my print-based fictional life, so to speak, I finished my new novel, 'A Little Stranger' that I've been working on since Jan 2001. My agent is currently attempting to sell it. Watch this space. If nothing appears within, say, the next two years, don't ever mention it to me ever again.

In my other, other life, a feature film screenplay I co-wrote with the director Bill Anderson, 'Lily', is currently having a new lease of life at BBC Films. It's now called 'Violet' and instead of the main character killing himself, it now has a happy ending. It was my idea to give it a happy ending, I wasn't offered the opportunity to sell out to the producers for the cash. Sigh. Watch this space. If nothing appears within, say, the next five years, don't ever mention it to me ever again.

28 October, 2003

Currently spending time getting the structure of The Breathing Wall working, e-mailing back and forth with Stefan in Berlin. Lots of issues coming up all the time, but the story gets more and more interesting as we develop it. Also beginning to think through how much of it can reside on the web and whether or not we'll have to publish a CD-Rom (I think we will have to, the HTF files are too large for the web). Still nothing to show though. Won't be for some time.

Am now worried that this journal is just too boring-looking for words (never mind the content!) and am tempted to spend some time brushing up my html skills a little bit. Blogs these days can be so lovely looking - people make all those lists of their current reading, etc etc, favourite things, links to articles and reviews, etc etc. Two things work against me in this regard - I don't have much spare time these days and, also, part of me thinks, who could care less about what I think about anything? I don't mean that disingenuously, but I guess it shows how much I've failed to engage with blog culture. Hmm.

13 October, 2003

Well, this morning I sent off a new draft of my novel, A Little Stranger, to my agent. So now I have to wait for her verdict. I've been working on this book for nearly three years, so I'm keen to be finished. However, it's a tricky one (aren't they always?) and I've lost all objectivity, so I won't be entirely surprised if she tells me I need to go back to the drawing board with it once again. Unsurprised, but a little weary.

It's time to get moving with 'The Breathing Wall'. In mid-November I'm off to a week-long residential course with a group of other people who are developing digital and electronic projects, so I've got that in mind as a first deadline of sorts. I'd like to have the structure of the piece mapped out by then, as well as a clear idea of how the piece will work across the two platforms - web and CD. I've started up an e-mail dialogue with Talan and Stefan regarding this particular issue, and will now concentrate on trying to get the story itself off the ground.

22 September, 2003

First entry of a new journal, charting a new project. Arts Council England have given me a grant to collaborate with Stefan Schemat and Talan Memmott on a full-length version of 'The Breathing Wall'. Working on the story ideas developed for Branded, we will produce a piece for the web using a downloadable version of Stefan Schemat's breathing book software. We have just under a year to make the work, me in London, Stefan in Berlin, Talan in Rhode Island.

The project started at the beginning of September, although I had the opportunity to meet with Talan here in London toward the end of August. We discussed timetables, etc., and I had the opportunity to show Talan the breathing book software I have installed on my laptop. He was intrigued.

Week before last, I was in Berlin for 3 days; Stefan and I presented our work at an event during the British Council Festival, 'The House of Science and Fiction'. The rest of the time we spent driving around Berlin in Stefan's special tiny car that uses virtually no petrol, seeing the sights while talking about our project. Stefan claims he likes to work while driving, because when he's not driving he has too many ideas all at the same time, and when he is driving he has to use at least some of his brain power to navigate the roads, so he finds that makes it easier to concentrate on one work-related idea at a time. An alarming thought in itself, although his driving seemed perfectly fine to me, despite the fact that he kept proclaiming that he is a terrible driver.

So, despite this attempt at idea-overload-reduction, I came away from Berlin with my mind flooded with ideas. Have yet to have a chance to really go through everything we discussed and make a plan. The first thing I need to do is fill Talan in on what Stefan and I discussed about how to make the Breathing Wall come to life. So that will come next. As part of my funding application I boldly declared I would keep a public journal recording the progress of the work, so that's what this is. I kept a journal during my time as Research Fellow working on Mapping the Transition and was amazed by the interesting responses that journal generated. So please, by all means, if you are interested in this project and want to make comments, etc.,contact me.