Chris Joseph

As we left Moscow on that plane I had no idea where we were going. It turns out my Mum and Dad had no idea either. We moved around. We stayed with friends. It took a while but finally we landed on our feet.

Sort of.

“And now I am going to die!” Attempting to impress my friends on the way home from school, I climb a rickety staircase outside an abandoned factory.

When it collapses beneath me, I hang on by my fingernails and haul myself up onto a ledge. But then I get stuck. There’s no way down. And I can’t go up. The only way out is through the scary factory, half-demolished and very dangerous. Can you help me? Can you find the way out?

My friends (I have friends now - yeah!!)love the stories I create; they want to tell their own, so I came up with a simple little tool to help them. It’s called iStori.es - all you have to do is load up your photos, add some words, music and sound effects and BOOM! you have your own interactive story….in minutes.

If you’re a student, go tell your teacher to check out http://www.iStori.es - it’s very educational! Hehe…

See you in Hometown, Episode 4 on http://www.inanimatealice.com .

Yours - Alice

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First reviews:

“Inanimate Alice serves as both entertainment and a peek into the future of literature as a fusion of multimedia technologies. The haunting images and accompanying music and text weave a remarkably gripping tale that must be experienced to be believed… Get ready for thirty minutes of multimedia bliss.” ( Jay is Games )

“Episode 4 of the super-stylish interactive story Inanimate Alice is out now. If you’ve never experienced it, interactive fiction is part story, part game. I’ve reported on Alice before because I think it’s unique and really beautiful. (Wait till you hear the music. I’m so into it. It’s like the soundtrack for a spooky-cool movie…)” ( Books, Inq. )

“Alice tells her story through moving snapshots, journaled words and haunting music… Alice is beautiful in that we start to forget that it’s a just a game and we began to connect with her, all her fears and hopes, and her joy too.” ( The Cafe in the Woods )

“I’ve just experienced the just-released “Episode 4: Hometown” of the haunting multimedia-interactive story, Inanimate Alice and can say that it is just as enjoyable and unique as the previous three.” ( educating alice )

“Inanimate Alice is a Learning Gem… With the release of Inanimate Alice Episode 4 ‘Hometown’ I am even more convinced that this type of multimedia story is the future of e-reading.” ( Learning Gems )

“Have you caught up with Inanimate Alice yet? It is digital storytelling at its most delicious.” ( CMIS Evaluation Fiction Focus )

Journal of Media Practice Call for Papers

Special Issue: A Decade of Media Practice: Changes, Challenges and Choices

The Journal of Media Practice is celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2009!

To mark this anniversary, the Journal is looking for contributions from colleagues involved in media practice around the world, whether as teachers or practitioners.

The current decade is witnessing vast changes in the production, consumption and forms of media. With digital technology, video art, documentary, film and other visual media are all going through interesting changes at the institutional, artistic and audience levels. Web 2.0 is blurring the lines between the production and consumption of media, and is opening up new spaces of expression in societies where state censorship hinders freedom of speech in traditional media. It is also instigating changes in web design. Satellite television is consolidating itself as the primary medium in places like the Middle East. Digital radio is opening up new possibilities for broadcasting. More synergies are being created between different media forms, whether between the internet and television, the internet and documentary, or any number of other possibilities.

The Journal invites international contributions responding to the changes and challenges in the media practice landscape over the last decade, be it television, radio, video art, documentary, film, screenwriting, the internet, the press, or any other form of print, audio, visual or audiovisual media, and the choices that those changes and challenges have created for media practitioners, institutions and audiences.

In addition to academic articles, the Journal encourages the submission of:

- Interviews with key media personnel and artists

- Reflections by media practitioners on their own practice (whether within institutions or as independent practitioners)

- Reviews of exhibitions and other media events

- Critical pieces about changes in technology, content and delivery of media products and tools, or the work of media institutions around the world

Articles should be 5000 words, reviews 500-1000 words, and critical pieces and reflections between 1000-3000 words. The Editor is happy to discuss other possibilities with potential contributors.

All submissions are subject to peer review. Please send all submissions to jmp [at] rhul.ac.uk.

Informal queries can be sent to the Editor Lina Khatib: lina.khatib [at] rhul.ac.uk

The deadline to receive all material is October 17, 2008.

Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing (0.5 FTE)

£29,138 - £41,545 pa (pro rata)

Humanities

Department of English & Creative Writing

You should be a published creative writer with teaching experience, who can contribute to the development and teaching of our lively and innovative creative writing programmes, particularly at undergraduate level. Interested in a range of forms and genres, you will be sympathetic to experimentation and be able to help students acquire a range of craft and practical skills. Expertise in prose fiction and familiarity with digital/new media writing would be an advantage, as would an ability to contribute to teaching in genres not currently covered by the teaching team. It is anticipated you will start in September 2008.

http://www.jobs-dmu.co.uk/academicmoreinfo.asp?JID=1849

Come along to hear about practical interventions to support UK games developers innovate and grow through funding of specific business development initiatives, the creation of an industry wide database to facilitate recruitment, cooperation and job swapping, funded internships, and public service commissioning of content.

Register here

Speakers include:

* Rory Cellan-Jones, BBC Technology Correspondent - Key Note Address
* Richard Wilson, TIGA - a pilot in shared staff resourcing and job swaps
* Adam Gee, Channel 4 - as a public service commissioner of content
* Paul Durrant, Dare to be Digital - funded innovation internships
* Chaired by Charles Cecil, MD, Revolution Software

Date: Monday, 7 July 2008
Time: 11.30am-12.45pm
Registration from 11.00am; presentations at 11.30am followed by a networking lunch until 1.30pm

Venue: NESTA, 1 Plough Place, London, EC4A 1DE

FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology), Liverpool UK
From Friday 27 June - 31 August 2008

One of the world’s most celebrated artists, Pipilotti Rist, draws together a body of work that explores what it is to be human. In her trademark heady mix of bright light, lush colours and zany feminine energy, the work in this exhibition explores the loss of innocence. It challenges viewers to look at art differently: whether lying on the floor, peering into a small dark crack in the floor or perched on oversized furniture.

Exploring the third element of FACT’s 2008 Human Futures programme: my world, Pipilotti Rist examines our relationship with the natural environment. Often playing the lead within her films, she re-works the well-worn cliché of woman as a symbol of nature, andman as a symbol of culture.

Address: 88 Wood Street Liverpool L1 FDQ

Opening times: Mon - Fri: 10.00am - 6.00pm Sat & Sun: 11.00am - 6.00pm

For further details please visit: www.fact.co.uk

OPEN CALL FOR PROJECTS & PROPOSALS

The Thursday Club is an open forum discussion group for anyone interested in the theories and practices of cross-disciplinarity, interactivity, technologies and philosophies of the state-of-the-art in today’s (and tomorrow’s) cultural landscape(s). The Club is supported by the Goldsmiths Digital Studios (GDS) and the Goldsmiths Graduate School.

Originally set up in October 2005 by GDS as a more informal setting for research discussions, it has grown to include 193 members: artists, technologists, scientists – in fact, a growing diversity of people from different communities worldwide, that are connected via a mailing list and online forum.

Most importantly, there are regular meetings in ‘real’ space at the Ben Pimlott site of Goldsmiths, University of London. Anyone can attend these events. By keeping these meetings free, informal and open to all, we provide a platform for diverse and open ended discourse, for people who perhaps would not have the opportunity to discuss ideas outside of their chosen discipline.

The Thursday Club brings together people from diverse fields and degrees of expertise, aiming to initiate discussion and debates among postgraduate students, researchers, academics, artists, theorists, and other cultural practitioners.

Since it focuses on interdisciplinary practices, the Club is interested to experiment with innovative formats of presentation that are appropriate to the nature of the subject. We particularly welcome the proposal of round table discussions, panels, screenings, ‘hearings’, live gigs and performance lectures. We are also interested to platform experimental work-in-progress of both practical and theoretical nature.

Read more

Creative Writing and New Media MA showcase

The Online MA in Creative Writing and New Media at De Montfort University is designed for writers interested in experimenting with new formats and exploring the potential of new technologies in their writing. This first annual CWNM Salon is a unique opportunity to enjoy the best work from the first two years of the course with installations and talks from the following authors:

Read more

Interrupt 2008, to be held at Brown University from October 17-19, is a three-day festival of readings, performances, and symposia organized around the theme of “interruption” in digital art and programmable literary practices. Why “Interrupt”? In computing, a hardware interrupt request or IRQ is used to prioritize the execution of certain processes over others. It is a command sent to the processor to get its attention, signaling the need to initiate a new operation.

In the context of contemporary art, the act of interruption is a performance that redirects threads of process and lines of thought into fields of new expression. Interrupts trigger the moment when a process of creation yields a public manifestation. The cycle of ongoing work is paused by a challenge, calling for the attention of a provisional community: just as we read ICQ as “I seek you,” we can read IRQ as “I argue.” In this sense, interrupts articulate critical thresholds at which formal expressions are offered up to (or forced into) new circuits of communication, countering that which came before and making a case for new artistic and political futures.

We ask you to attend and participate.

Artists in Residence:
* Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries *

Confirmed Headliners:
* Alan Sondheim & Foofwa d’Imobilité *
* Laetitia Sonami *
* Eugenio Tisselli *
* Marko Niemi *

Details and arrangements to be confirmed:
* cris cheek *
* Abigail Child *
* Chris Funkhouser *
* Loss Peque?o Glazier *
* Talan Memmott *
* Bill Seaman and Penny Florence *
* Patricia Tomaszek *

Critics, theorists, artists and students who would like to attend are asked to contact John_Cayley (at) brown.edu. We will be organizing two or more round table sessions during the festival, and we invite brief presentations intended to spark critical discussions relating to the work of interruption within the context of digitally mediated language practices. Participants will also be invited to instigate discussion at these round tables.

If you would like to attend, and particularly if you have institutional backing, we ask you to consider supporting Interrupt with a registration contribution of $50 (checks only please) made out to ‘Brown University’ and sent to:

Interrupt 2008
Brown University
Literary Arts Program
Box 1923
Providence RI 02912

For letters of invitation, please contact John_Cayley (at) brown.edu. Register now.

To read more about what we mean by Interrupt and for other details about the festival – including the preliminary program, schedule, location, venues, and accommodation information – please refer to our website: http://interrupt2008.net

Organized and hosted at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design by graduates and undergraduates from Literary Arts, Modern Culture and Media, MEME, RISD D+M, and other departments.

Funding and support for Interrupt currently includes the following sources: Brown Creative Arts Council, the Literary Arts program, RISD Digital+Media, MEME, the Brown Graduate School, the Comparative Literature department.