nonlinear fiction

The Tunnel People project is a work originally created for the exhibition "Metropolis", which was developed in two platforms. On the one hand the hypertext is a story of multiple paths presenting the fiction of mysterious inhabitants living in the underground. On the other hand there were a series of performances played by three actors, two men and one woman inside of trains traveling from North to South in Brussels subway. The actions and dialogues written by Dora García and performed by the actors try to awaken on the user the need to decide if the situation created by the performances can be accepted as real or if he/she has been trapped in a representation which aim is unknown. The questions that this project wants to suggest are: What is the limit of the accepted behaviourby the audience? How a strange situation can be felt as familiar? When does a conversation becomes absurd? Is it true that thruth is under the earth?

Composition No. 1 is a re-imagining of the little known classic by French writer, Marc Saporta. Saporta writes about the interconnected stories of a group of Parisians, centred around the Sorbonne. Quite literally, Composition No. 1 is made up entirely of stand alone pages. Each has its own self-contained narrative, leaving it to you to shuffle through and decide which order to read the book, and how much or little you want to read before you begin again.Key features:> Randomly shuffled pages, allowing you to play and read however much or little you want.> Randomized, interactive cover; slide letters around like fridge magnets.> Explore a typographic artwork, using the book's entire text.

(Source: iTunes App store)

VE3 is a re-imagining of a book originally published in the 1960s. The book is the first ever “book in a box”, called Composition No. 1 by Marc Saporta. When we say book in a box we mean: quite literally a book that comes in a box with loose pages. Each page has a self-contained narrative, leaving it to the reader to decide the order they read the book, and how much or how little of the book they want to read before they begin again. In so many ways, Composition No.1 was published ahead of its time: the book raises all the questions we ask ourselves today about user-centric, non-linear screen driven ways of reading.With this in mind, we approached Tom Uglow of Creative Labs Google and Youtube to write an introduction for the book. This re-imagined edition also includes several of Salvador Plascencia’s (author of The People of Paper) drawings, looking at all the different components that make up a “typical” book. The book is designed by Universal Everything, UK-based design studio known for their interactive screen-based work.

(Source: Publisher's description)

"The reader is requested to shuffle these pages like a deck of cards; to cut, if he likes, with his left hand, as at a fortuneteller’s. The order the pages then assume will orient X’s fate.For the time and order of events control a man’s life more than the nature of such events. Certainly there is a framework which history imposes: the presence of a man in the resistance, his transfer to the Army of Occupation in Germany, relate to a specific period. Similarly, the events that marked his childhood cannot be presented in the same way as those which he experienced as an adult.Nor is it a matter of indifference to know if he met his mistress Dagmar before or after his marriage; if he took advantage of Helga at the time of her adolescence or her maturity; if the theft he has committed occurred under cover of the resistance or in less troubles times; if the automobile accident in which he has been hurt is unrelated to the theft — or the rape — or if it occurred during his getaway.Whether the story ends well or badly depends on the concatenation of circumstances. A life if composed of many elements. But the number of possible compositions is infinite."

(Source: Description of the work printed inside box cover of 1963 Simon & Schuster English translation)