voices

Every writing addresses someone; this someone is often said to be the author's Ideal Reader. But "ideal" connotes a conceptualized, even perpetrated entity that is an entirely different creature from the real person one addresses when speaking. Now it may be useful to make this distinction in order to discuss, in the abstract, the *process* of writing, but the *practice* is wholly different: in writing anything, you address a real person, and, by addressing, conjure that person into your presence — the "materiality" of this being is, well, immaterial. When a real reader (in contrast to an ideal one) takes up an author's writing, she encounters not a voice speaking to *her*, or not to her directly: she comes in on a conversation already in progress, between the author and the person he is addressing in the writing. Given a sense of the occasion she has just joined, she will wisely keep still at first and pay attention, not just to the author's voice, but also to the silence of the other person listening to him at that moment. Thus she comes to know them both. The Authors who speak in _We Descend_ emerge from a span of many generations; what they have most in common is that their Writings have captured the imagination of one Curator after another, each of whom came to feel urgently that "the archives" must be preserved for, and thereby transmitted to, the generations to come. In addition, each Curator has imprinted the archives with the forethought and care he or she took in provisioning them for this further journey — hence the Apparati built into the structure of the Writings' presentation, which then become part of the story. The present Curator feels strongly that this story is best told in hypertext form, which enables its many voices to resonate with one another in many ways. The Reader herself will judge the strength or fault of this approach, of course, but, throughout, it has been this Curator's earnest intention, in every contrivance, to prepare her way into this ongoing colloquy of persons, which now includes her. As work proceeds upon the remaining fragments in the archives, the sequence, structure, and interface of their presentation are all certain to change, and even when that work is finished, it is likely that some disagreement will remain as to what belongs where or came from whom. Be that as it may, it is hoped that this provisional offering will find favor not only with new readers, but with the patient friends and colleagues whose unfailing encouragement has been necessary as breathing to me. Thank you, my patrons. Bill Bly Bethlehem PA US New Year's Eve 2014 (Foreword, We Descend Volume Two)

Underbelly is a playable media fiction about a woman sculptor, carving on the site of a former colliery in the north of England, now landscaped into a country park. As she carves, she is disturbed by a medley of voices and the player/reader is plunged into an underworld of repressed fears and desires about the artist’s sexuality, potential maternity and worldly ambitions, mashed up with the disregarded histories of the 19th Century women who once worked underground mining coal. 

Created in Flash for the web, Underbelly incorporates a rich and often grotesque mix of imagery, spoken word, video, animation, text, interactivity and random programming within a traversable map-like narrative terrain. Its design is based on the remarkable uterine qualities of the Hereford Mappa Mundi combined with diagrams of female reproductive organs and 19th Century illustrations of mines and pit workers. Video, shot in  point-of-view close-ups, represents the woman’s above-ground activity and conscious concerns, but it’s persistently undermined by visual, vocal and kinetic elements generated by the ‘subconscious realm’.

Winner of the New Media Writing Prize 2010

Winner of the MaMSIE Digital Media Competiton 2010/11

about nothing, places, memories, and thoughts: robert creeley (1926-2005) and patricia tomaszek in a cut and mixed poem-dialogue

This work leverages the unique potential of digital media to bring together a death-voice (Robert Creeley) and a life-voice (Patricia Tomaszek). Each time the user clicks the mouse, both poets create - reading back and forth - a computer-generated poem that blends surprise and repetition to create a range of unique (dis)harmonies. In total, 98 selected lines from the authors recordings serve as the raw material from which vast a # of 8-10 line poems - the average length of both poets' works - are created. Simple algorithmic rules determine each outcome; a number of openings and closings are pre-selected while the body of each composition is generated computationally via a probabilistic grammar. The work began with a series of response poems, penned by the author, to the poems of Robert Creeley. These poems where then recorded with each line as a separate sound sample. Crucial lines from Creeley that inspired the responsive writing process were then subjected to the same 'cut-up' procedure. The final set of lines, restricted by the availability of Creeley's audio recordings, were selected on the basis of their cohesion with the selected themes: places, memories, thoughts, identity, loss, absence, and nothingness.