Simon Groth's Blog, page 5
November 6, 2014
Illustrated
Books in Browsers conference participant @ePubPupil made iPad sketches of every speaker, which happens to also act as a presentation at a glance. This one's mine.
November 3, 2014
Memory Makes Us at Books in Browsers
A few days ago, I was invited to talk at the Books in Browsers conference in San Francisco.
Produced and sponsored by the New York Public Library and the Frankfurt Book Fair, Books in Browsers is a small summit for the new generation of internet publishing companies, focusing on developers and designers who are building and launching tools for online storytelling, expression, and art.
My talk was about the if:book project I've been running all this year called Memory Makes Us.
Memory Makes Us creates an interface between writers and readers and blurs the boundaries of each throughout the creative process. The project gathers a group of authors to write live in a public space using as their inspiration memories contributed by the audience to a theme chosen by the authors.
This presentation explores the project in detail and challenges assumptions about the book’s place within a wider body of text, the nature of collaborative writing, and the permanence of physical and digital media.
Memory Makes Us takes place simultaneously online and in a physical space. Online, readers contribute memories via a dedicated project web site or using a social media hashtag. The authors write to a publicly accessible document embedded in the project site. The live event sees the authors working in an open location within a literary festival. The audience records their memories using typewriters and notepads, hand-delivering them to the authors at work. However, the complete body of work in Memory Makes Us is the web site where writers’ and readers’ contributions are of equal significance.
Standard online collaborative writing tools define access by editing rights. Instead this project creates a role for readers as influencers and inspiration, while recognising and honouring a singular author’s vision.
All work produced for Memory Makes Us, both physical and digital, is ephemeral, with a deliberately limited lifespan. The project’s legacy will rely on the memories of its participants and readers.
November 2, 2014
Mission Mural
Old school locative storytelling on the corner of Valencia and Cunningham.
October 27, 2014
Poet's chair
I didn't sit just in case the poet came back.
October 26, 2014
Pyramid
It is an impressively awkward building.
October 25, 2014
The Mission
A panorama from the back deck.
October 8, 2014
September 21, 2014
The N00bz: Canberra Launch
This Saturday I'll be in Canberra to launch The N00bz, capital style. If you're in town, drop in and say hello.
The Noobz: New Adventures in Literature
Saturday, 27 September 2014
6:00pm
Ainslie + Gorman Arts Centres: Bogong Theatre
Bookings not required.
Join Gorman Arts Centre resident Editia Press and literary agent Alex Adsett in a panel discussion on writerly experiments at the official launch of The N00bz: New adventures in literature on Saturday 27 September at 6.00pm in the Bogong Theatre, Gorman Arts Centre. The N00bz is a collection of writing in which authors experiment with their craft and document the quest to continually improve in a rapidly changing industry. The panel features editor Duncan Felton, publisher Charlotte Harper and Manager of if:book Australia Simon Groth.
This is a free event and a cash bar will be available.
September 17, 2014
Thoughts on Memory Makes Us
I'm three quarters through a project for if:book called Memory Makes Us and the good people over at Writers Bloc asked me to pen some thoughts on it for their blog.
The experience of Memory Makes Us is always personal.
It wasn’t that great a memory, just something that occurred to me when I thought about ‘The Body’. My mind was drawn back to the 1980s and to Coolangatta, to the laughable excuse for sunscreen we used at the time, and to our remarkable lack of concern when, inevitably, our skin would begin peeling. Now, in 2014, here I was in the atrium at Federation Square, staring up at a giant screen which suddenly displayed my words to the hundreds of people milling through the Melbourne Writers Festival site. Without my knowledge, Paddy O’Reilly had at some point in the day taken my words and dropped them into the work she was writing before a live audience. I looked up, recognised my words, then watched on in horror as Paddy highlighted the entire passage and hit delete.
Well, not the entire passage. Just one word remained: sunscreen. Paddy wrote a few more words around mine, taking it in a new direction, but I was comforted by that one word’s presence. That word right there, that one was mine, even if I was the only person who knew it.
September 3, 2014
Willow Patterns at STORY+
The gargantuan complete 24-hour book, Willow Patterns, will be on display from tomorrow at the STORY+ conference, part of the Brisbane Writers Festival.
Willow Patterns presents an entire book’s database in chronological order across 28 volumes with a continuous spine design.
4–5 September
9AM–4PM
Gardens Theatre, QUT
FREE Bookings essential
An intensive two-day event exploring the future of writing and storytelling shaped by technology, design and data. STORY+ features writers, transmedia producers, interaction designers, games developers and publishers.
