Transmission 29: R&D 2024: Electronic literature & accessibility
Here come insights and behind-the-scenes from our futures practice! A glimpse into our uncommon approach, to keep updated or to know what to expect when time traveling with us.
This is a transmission ruled by the Eta Aquarid meteor shower caused by Earth passing through debris from the Comet Halley.
Happy meteor shower!
Welcome back to The Time Travel Transmissions.
Spring and Summer are R&D seasons at The Time Travel Agency.
And transmissions during this time will be ruled by celestial events!
Each transmission will broadcast one line of investigation and research.
Today: Electronic literature (e-lit), computational poetry, and accessibility.
We’ve written about e-lit, and about our choice to encode Futures invented by our travelers in e-lit. This digital-born literature also seems especially fitting when Futures have been born in online time travel experiences.
Here’s the bit on accessibility: when experimenting with Futures, can we experiment with how they’re produced and how they can be more easily shared?
Electronic literature makes excellent Futures artifacts
A classic piece of e-lit, The Algorithm of Donated Dreams, came to be after gathering dreams as outcomes of a 20-minute multisensory intervention in Barcelona. These sentences were fed to a piece of code that edited them and placed them in a greater context: phrases that citizens say in the future; phrases that started as dreams that were donated in Barcelona sometime back.
Beyond how to read or play with the content, what about when folks make the content? What about futuremakers who only have a mobile phone? What if they’re mostly offline? What if it’s easier for some to start making Futures with images?
… what about audio poems-Futures?
… what about Futures with flavor and layers?
… and what about Futures in gifs?
Would e-lit work for group futuremaking, for polyphonic futuremaking, and/or for futuremaking that uses imagination time differently when it comes to how futures should be structured?
xo
Those other news:
DATTOPIAS is again a work in progress, turning into a new, original game of futures based in last year's intervention at Foresight Europe Network. DATTOPIAS have been selected to be played during NarraScope 2024!
𝘕𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘢𝘚𝘤𝘰𝘱𝘦, 𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘐𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘍𝘪𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘛𝘦𝘤𝘩𝘯𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘺 𝘍𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, 𝘤𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘣𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘦 𝘷𝘰𝘪𝘤𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘨𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘨𝘯. 𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘺𝘦𝘢𝘳, 𝘕𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘢𝘚𝘤𝘰𝘱𝘦 2024 𝘪𝘴 𝘤𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘣𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘯𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘨𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘴 𝘑𝘶𝘯𝘦 21 – 23 𝘢𝘵 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘕𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘔𝘶𝘴𝘦𝘶𝘮 𝘰𝘧 𝘗𝘭𝘢𝘺 𝘙𝘰𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳, 𝘕𝘠.
The Time Travel Agency has been honored to receive the August Wilson Archive Artist-Scholar Grant from the University of Pittsburgh this spring!
The studio was chosen among a group of scholars, artists, and educators to receive funding to explore the archive and deliver a creation to share with the Pittsburgh community. Our framework will be to see the archive as a future place where his legacy has something to tell us in 2024-25.
We will begin work this autumn, and our piece(s) will be released in November and then throughout winter and spring 2025.