Project Title: sorry that you were not moved
Funding strand: Arts Council Literature Project Award (2020)
Project Description:
sorry that you were not
moved is an interactive collaborative digital poetry publication by Kimberly Campanello and Christodoulos (Chris) Makris. It explores space-time dimensions of travel through experimental-appropriative writing strategies
and audiovisual interventions. It was created in collaboration with Ian Maleney of Fallow Media, inspired by Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. It builds on Calvino’s novel, exploring travel and digital space-time. The digital publication
is accessible online and invites audiences to travel across the world to experience poetic encounters.
Photo: Ian Maleney
Aims of the project/ work
The aim of the project was to ‘create a discrete digital publication’ that was intended for the digital space. Exploring literature made for the digital space and creating engaging and meaningful engagement for audiences was at the heart of the
collaboration. In this context, the artists worked very closely with Fallow Media, publishing the digital literature ‘journey’ in February 2022. An element of the publication changes over
time, depending on the visitor’s time/ usage throughout the publication, altering the publication over a period of time. Chris explains:
"The project is only speaking for literature that it specifically engages with digital space as a publication medium [...] it could not exist outside of the digital space as a publication. And for literature that's interesting, because [...] we talk about
ebooks and we talk about other online journals and [...] online publications. Generally, what has been happening so far is that it is the text that could just as well have gone on the page, but then it gets kind of transferred into an online space
and it's a digital publication. But what we were interested in is [...] to look at the project that could only exist digitally, but therefore, it kind of makes use of a moving image or kind of sound and all those things. So that is embedded in the
actual making of the work."
Due to COVID-19 restrictions, the need for digital publications and engagement exacerbated. In the past, Chris worked on a number of collaborations in exploring new approaches to engage with literature differently. He was primarily interested in different
ways of disseminating literature, specifically poetry and how it was made to read aloud to audiences. The Literature Project Award gave him an opportunity to push this idea forward: “The way you present it kind of embeds how it was made and embeds
the medium of it. So this was one of the driving impulses for this project
<note: sorry that you were not
moved> specifically.”
Development of work/ project
sorry that you were not
moved was a collaboration from the start – from application to delivery. Chris was the lead director/artist and he worked collaboratively with Kimberly Campanello (based in the UK) on the project idea.
"In the age of digital where you scroll and everything is flattened, time is flattened, and space is flattened. So that was the original idea [...] how to present it in a way that is enlivened by the medium of presenting it so we were looking for producers
of publishers or digital publishers, obviously, who are working with digital specifically."
The collaboration with Fallow Media came about through the research phase for the application and the desire to connect with a strong Irish partner. Fallow Media is an expert in digital publishing where digital is part of the writing process from the
outset. Together, the artists and publishers mapped out four stages of the project:
- Project Format – discussion between the three collaborators on what format the final publication would take.
- Curating text – the decisions on the format gave Kimerbly and Chris a starting point for selecting texts and ‘travelling’ digitally to a geographical space to construct texts and content.
- Design process – Discussion with Fallow Media on how to render text and content into the website and make it interactive.
“There are parts of the project that have a hidden element. After a certain number of hits, certain
things start happening, for example, if you visit the site at certain times of the day, it would change to reflect traffic congestion in different cities. [...] after a certain number of hits certain parts of the website close so you can't go
to the end [...] maybe saying that there's too much tourism. Ian's idea was also to embed the internet time into the project, it does exist, and it moves. So it’s this retro internet moment.” The project invites ‘reviews’ from users - similar
to ‘tripadvisor’ reviews online. The text of these reviews is then embedded into the architecture of the project.
- Promotion – sorry that you were not
moved launched on 10 February 2022 with a successful online event on zoom, featuring performances from the work and discussion with the poets and publisher, chaired by Colin Herd, poet and lecturer
in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow.
Learnings
Collaboration
The collaboration between the artists, Chris and Kimberly and the publishing agency, Fallow Media, were the most interesting parts of the project. It was a true collaboration from the start and the exchange between all three moved the project forward
tremendously. From discussing formats and what is possible to how audiences engage with the work.
Digital Publishing
The discussion in the literary space about digital spaces and innovation with the existing digital tools has not gone very far, even with COVID-19 pushing many to explore the digital space further.
"How do you use digital tools to present something rather than, or in addition to being on screen and say reading from a text or having a conversation?” Chris is interested in the developments as society has stepped back into physical spaces“[...] we
have been presented with all these tools, the digital tools in the meantime. So how do we make use of them going forward and expand the way we can speak about language and speak about texts and all that stuff? So that was interesting to me."
Impact
sorry that you were not moved raised some interesting questions about digital literature and presenting this throughout literature festivals for instance. There was some resistance to engaging in these ideas of digital text as there are no books
to sell for instance.
The aim of sorry that you were not
moved was to engage visitors to the site and ask questions about what a digital text is and can do.
When COVID-19 hit there was a rush of artists and organisations to bring their work online.
"[...] at the very beginning it was fine to approximate the live experience through the screen. But very quickly, that became inadequate, and it became false, [...] you can approximate it, but it's not the same. So how do you use digital tools to present
something rather than, or in addition to being on screen and say reading from a text or having a conversation? How else is it a digital space? What innovations can you bring in with those tools? In literary spaces, it hasn't really gone very far."
What’s Next?
Future iterations and development of the project depend on the capacity of the creative team and collaborations. There have been first discussions with other spaces to work collaboratively. These spaces are mainly outside of the literature sector such
as visual art spaces. Even travel organisations raised an interest in the project in terms of exploring digital travel and tourism in this way. Since COVID-19, literature organisations have embraced digital but have mainly focused on delivering in
digital formats, not focusing on the digital means for creating literary work.
Further links