future

Encyclopedia is an ecological work featuring digital and physical content. The core of the work is a text generator that creates encyclopedic entries for extinct fictive animal species. These unique entries are given away as one-off printed index cards to visitors of the exhibition. Encyclopedia aims to put a gentle focus on the state of the planet, meanwhile exploring the possibilites of digital literature and art. The textual presentations of each animal shift between matter-of-fact descriptions of habitat and feeding habits, and more poetic sentences on the characteristics of the species and its surroundings. The generator analyzes text content and additional data from EoL.org (Encyclopedia of Life), which has comprehensive information on a huge amount of species, extinct and still living. It then outputs an encyclopedic entry derived from the data, creating a fictive animal species, starting (and simultaneously ending) a new track in evolution. Each entry is unique, never to be repeated. One of the key parameters in the generator is Conservation status (as of the IUCN red list): in each micro-narrative every species is already extinct at the moment of creation – every entry ends with a description on how the animal was driven to extinction by humanity, through varying factors such as pollution, poaching, deforestation, climate change and more. This theme is mirrored in the presentation of the work, in its temporal representation: the text presentation of the generated animal is impossible to replicate. It becomes a personal, intimate message to the person on the receiving end – this species is now yours to keep, only ever existing in these few lines of text. Hopefully this will also make an ecological statement on how we view and treat this planet.

(Re)Playing The Lottery is a dynamic reinterpretation of Shirley Jackson's famous short story, "The Lottery." It presents a scenario in which the interactor is a a citizen of the small town on the day of the fateful lottery, and must move through the story by making various choices which result in random outcomes - no matter how many times the story is played, past results are no guide to future outcome. Just as the story hinges on the chance selection of a marked ballot from a box, this piece employs chance selection as its central mechanic, demonstrating one way in which interactive media can help readers inhabit and interrogate existing texts from multiple perspectives. (Source: ELO Conference 2014)

The post-apocalypse is a uniquely queer setting: a future where the institutions that keep queer banditas from screaming across the desert with their rayguns drawn and robot horses vibrating between their legs are ash and dust. And the Robot Horse You Rode In On is a breakup story set in the Old West of the Far Future.

(Source: ELO Conference 2014)

Tales from the Towpath is an immersive story inspired by Manchester’s waterways and their ecological fate. It spans the Victorian city to an uncertain future 50 years from now. Three characters circle one another across time, with fragments of their stories found in geocaches (past), live performance (present) and augmented reality Zappar codes (future). (Source: http://talesfromthetowpath.net/)

Multiplicity
1. A large number or great variety
2. The state of being multiple

Complicity
1. The fact or condition of being an accomplice, esp in a criminal act

multi.com.plicity is a twenty-first century translation of Guy de Maupassant's short story Mes vingt-cinq jours (My Twenty-Five Days), originally published in 1885, and translated into English by Albert M.C. McMaster, A.E. Henderson, Mme. Quesada et al.

multi.com.plicity takes de Maupassant's story and reimagines it, changing a health resort in 19th century France to a laboratory complex in an unspecified future, and inhabiting the story with nameless clones and technology. In this way the story eschews the notion of a literal translation in favour of a temporal and situational carrying across of de Maupassant's tale, with multiple layers of perception as realised through randomised image and video layers.

“En Réponse à la lampe” was published in the journal "alire n°6" for the first time in 1992. In 1996, it was ported. This animated poem gives an important amount of possibilities for reading thanks to the apparition and the disappearance of the various bribes. The poem moves on a black screen and the text is mostly printed in white. The text is made of some stable elements in time, which allows the reader to memorize a small amount of verses at a time. Some other verses on the other hand, appear and disappear as they please anywhere on the screen, making it difficult to construct a meaning, because of the transitory aspect of the poem. An esthetic of frustration appears, because when verses appear, they fade right away. However, the transitory aspect of the text allows a temporal reading, based on the reader’s memory. The printed text seems to be the following: « Des étoiles réduire l’infini à la taille du nôtre rendre sécable la lumière elle prolonge le geste /leur passé notre présent sur la terre comme au ciel un futur pas un présent » The word that is mobile and appears furtively is “le futur” (“the future”), which appears as though it was blinking, as though it was passing on the screen. Several words and expressions are also chromatically accented (words become red), or blurry. These words have a temporal connotation, “leur passé” (“their past”), “redonne un futur à la mort” (“give another meaning to death”), “pas un présent” (“not a present”) and “un futur” (“a future”). Once all the verses are on the screen, and that we try to reconstitute a meaning, the words fade away and several beams burst on the screen, like light beams, like a white, monochrome prism of light. Then, the text “pas un présent” appears on top of these beams. The end of the poem seems to be a dedication and the signature of the author. The poem was dedicated to Patrick Burgaud, who also is an author of digital literature and kinetic poetry. Finally, the date, the title and the name of the author appear and the poem ends. Meditating on the nature of the animated poem, the speed of the transitory poem, of the temporal theme suggested by the bribes and the light suggested by the title, one could easily deduct that the poem is a reflection and an illustration of time passing, the brevity of time but also on the fact that we cannot grasp our future the word “futur” fades away and passes several times). This theme goes hand in hand with animated poetry, because the furtive aspect of the verses echoes the furtive aspect of life.

A science fiction story set in the town Derby in the year 2061, told through Foursquare. Fictional venues were created in the same geographical location as existing places, and the story's protagonist, "Girl X", left tips in the places, which read together tell a story of the future world. For instance, the university student centre has a double called the [2061] Pre-Freedom Public Service Centre, where Girl X's tip explains: "Before you're a free citizen you have to go here. It's kind of like school, but since knowledge is now installed rather than learned, it's more like medical and social public service..."

Evolution is a online artwork that emulates the writing and compositions of poet and artist Johannes Heldén. The application analyzes a set of all published text- and sound-work by the artist and generates a continuously evolving poem that simulates Heldéns style : in vocabulary, the spacing in-between words, syntax. In this performance, the digital version of artist meets the original. The aim is to raise questions about authenticity, about the future, about physics and science fiction.

(Source: http://chercherletexte.org/en/performance/evo-lution/)

Taking the concept of identity theft to its logical conclusion, DNA is an interactive, Web-based novel set in the year 2075, in a future where genetic clones are commonplace and the unique identity of any individual is protected only by tacit consent. Detailing a year in the life of a clone who begins plotting to take on the identity of one of his "code partners," the novel includes a series of hyperlinks to real and fictional Wikipedia entries that provide a peek into the dystopic future of economic, agricultural, cultural, social, and political systems. Influenced by a range of electronic and experimental literary works published over the last fifteen years, DNA presents a non-linear narrative that allows each reader to select his or her own narrative path though the novel and to explore the text's connection to other fictional and non-fictional texts published on the Web. The networked architecture of the project enables the reader to not only construct and engage with the narrative world of the novel itself but with other narrative worlds that exist outside of the novel. Overlapping, relating to, and informing one another, the various narrative worlds created inside and outside of the novel draw attention to the dynamic and generative nature of digital narratives, as well as to their ability to challenge traditional notions and definitions of authorial intention, the role of the reader, and narrative point of view. Additional interactive features enabling readers to contribute their own texts and links to the novel are currently being developed. Conceived as a novel that will appeal to readers of literary and dystopic fiction, as well as to a new generation of readers who access texts exclusively via the World Wide Web, DNA is informed by various electronic literature projects, as well as by several important dystopic novels, including Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, George Orwell’s 1984, Yevgeny Zemyatin’s We, and William Gibson’s Neuromancer. Fiction writers have been experimenting with digital hypertext and multimedia projects since the late-1980s, and several important works were published in the 1990s, including afternoon, a story (1990) by Michael Joyce, Victory Garden (1991) by Stuart Moulthrop, Patchwork Girl (1995) by Shelley Jackson, and 253 or tube theater by Geoff Ryman (1996). More recent hypertext and multimedia projects have been collected in the Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 1 (2006) and Volume 2 (2011). Combining my interests in creative writing, narrative studies and the history of the novel, the sociology of literacy, and digital Humanities, DNA is both a digital novel and part of an ongoing narrative-studies project that considers what effects digital authoring tools and reading platforms are having on fiction in general, and the novel in particular. Based on my own experience composing a Web-based novel, as well as on the analysis of other digital literary projects published in the last two years, and a review of digital literary projects published over the last fifteen years, I am studying how various elements of the novel as genre are being translated and/or re-conceived given the new possibilities and constraints created by multimedia tools for writing and reading. (Source: Author's Project Overview)

A collaborative fictional description of a future Copenhagen told in descriptions of places on a satellite map of Copenhagen. The title is a play upon the PR organisation Wonderful Copenhagen. A bus tour of Copenhagen with readings from the work was organised in March 2009.