The Narrative Escape

An eBook on the psychological significance of narrative…

Mind Hacks

Please excuse me if I interrupt Vaughan’s normal programming to blow my own trumpet: My ebook “ The Narrative Escape ” was published yesterday by 40k books . ‘The Narrative Escape’ is a long essay about morality, psychology and stories and is availble in Kindle format. From the ebook blurb:

We instinctively tell stories about our experiences, and get lost in stories told by other people. This is an essay about our story-telling minds. It is about the psychological power of stories, and about what the ability to enjoy stories tells us about the fundamental nature of mind.

My argument in ‘The Narrative Escape’ begins by exploring Stanley Milgram’s famous experiments on obedience, looking at them as an example of moral decision making – particularly for that minority that choose to disobey in the experiment. A fascinating thing about these experiments is that although they tell us a lot…

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on the margin…

I call this an eyePoem, combining a digital photo with words, in this case using Photoshop Elements 11…

Pàdruig's Woven Words

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Listening For The Past

A piece from my historical blog that is, I think, relevant …

Wandering & Wondering

Shima, The International Journal of Research into Island Cultures, Volume 5 Number 1 2011 contains an essay by Cathy Lane with links to the audio pieces she composed as a result of the research she undertook:

Essay: http://www.shimajournal.org/issues/v5n1/h.%20Lane%20Shima%20v5n1%20114-127.pdf

Audio: http://www.gruenrekorder.de/?page_id=2325

“I like to think of what I am trying to do as ‘docu-music’…(which) can be defined as works using sound materials which have recognisable real world associations and roots…

The intention of docu-music is to build up a sense of meaning, history and place through sonic association in order to relate to the world outside the composition.”

Cathy’s essay and accompanying compositions, ‘Tweed’ and ‘On the Machair’, provide an interesting read about (and artistic interpretation of) island culture.

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SATSYMPH

For some time now I have been seeking art-focussed GPS-triggered apps for smartphones and am particularly enamoured by SATSYMPH:

“SATSYMPH LLP is composer and visual artist Marc Yeats; poet, writer and context-aware media director and producer, Ralph Hoyte; and coder, composer and audio engineer Phill Phelps.”

The trio create ‘context-aware soundworlds’ i.e.

“…high quality contemporary soundscape experiences…triggered by GPS...”

 

Their elegant and adaptable creation has massive potential and what I particularly like about it is that downloaded content functions completely independently of the availability of a phone signal, rendering it especially useful in rural regions.

Full details can be found on the website, facebook and twitter:

http://satsymph.co.uk/

https://www.facebook.com/satsymph

https://twitter.com/satsymph

Music…

Here’s a link to an interesting infographic showing how the means by which we access recorded music has changed during the past three decades.

I wonder how the consumption of literature compares, and where we are heading?

https://indigoboom.com/the-history-of-selling-music/

Appoet

More on Appoet…

.: Poetry in Chicago

Josh Fisher, CEO of Appoet, plays a commercial for one of Appoet’s forthcoming apps in DePaul’s “Poetry East” production studio. The app, called “Poet’s Almanac,” was commissioned by DePaul and shares a poem with users based on the day weather’s. Fisher explained that the behind-the-scenes work involved categorizing poems from past issues of “Poetry East” into different temperatures and weather conditions.

Josh Fisher began working on his first poetry application after his grandparents passed away, leaving him a box of their WWII-era love letters. He wanted to create something beautiful from the letters, that was faithful to their memories but that also embraced new storytelling methods. This resulted in “What We Mean,” an interactive app that allows users to read the original letters, to see Fisher’s process of creating the poems through erasure and that encourages users to develop and share their own erasure poetry.

The success of “What We Mean,” accepted into the App Store…

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Appoet & Infused

“Appoet was founded on the belief that ebooks are an intermediary media between physical literature and mobile applications for storytelling. By focusing on the multidimensional capacity of mobile technologies, traditional humanities become immersive experiences that no longer lend themselves to introspection, but community engagement.”

The full story is to be found at http://www.appoet.org/ as well as on facebook  and twitter.

One of the main outcomes has been the development of an exciting app, Infused:

“Infused is a user curated GPS-enabled magazine.”

Access this digital humanities project at http://infused-gpsmag.com/ and keep up to date via facebook and twitter. 

A couple of my own submissions are here: http://infused-gpsmag.com/Berneray,%20United%20Kingdom.html

Infused will be released this spring on Apple, Android, and Windows devices

 

The Machine Stops…

The writer and broadcaster EM Forster (1879-1970) had this short story published in 1909.

He is not thought of as a sci-fi author, but these two sentences illustrate the prescience of the piece.

“There was the button that produced literature. and there were of course the buttons by which she communicated with her friends. The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world.”

It is certainly an interesting read…

I ♥ E-Poetry…

“I ♥ E-Poetry is largely an educational project, developing into a reference of electronic literature that aims for encyclopedic scope of its coverage.

It is designed for newcomers to these genres, scholars who need a quick reference, and educators interested in teaching e-lit in their courses. “

 

The project has a blog, from which came the above quote, and also a facebook page.

 

It is a fabulous, expanding, resource.

Auto-generated weekly updates…

The ELO  provide this via the paper.li publishing site at:

http://paper.li/eliterature

Definitely one to bookmark/favo(u)rite/evernote…