THURSDAY CLUB – supported by the Goldsmiths DIGITAL STUDIOS and the Goldsmiths GRADUATE SCHOOL
6pm until 8pm, Seminar Rooms at Ben Pimlott Building (Ground Floor, right), Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, SE14 6NW
FREE, ALL ARE WELCOME
For more information check http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/gds/events.php or email Maria X at drp01mc[at]gold.ac.uk
To find Goldsmiths check http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/find-us/
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24 APRIL with KATE PULLINGER & CHRIS JOSEPH
Flight Paths: a networked book
“I have finished my weekly supermarket shop, stocking up on provisions for my three kids, my husband, our dog and our cat. I push the loaded trolley across the car park, battling to keep its wonky wheels on track. I pop open the boot of my car and then for some reason, I have no idea why, I look up, into the clear blue autumnal sky. And I see him. It takes me a long moment to figure out what I am looking at. He is falling from the sky. A dark mass, growing larger quickly. I let go of the trolley and am dimly aware that it is getting away from me but I can’t move, I am stuck there in the middle of the supermarket car park, watching, as he hurtles toward the earth. I have no idea how long it takes – a few seconds, an entire lifetime – but I stand there holding my breath as the city goes about its business around me until…
He crashes into the roof of my car.”
The car park of Sainsbury’s supermarket in Richmond, southwest London, lies directly beneath one of the main flight paths into Heathrow Airport. Over the last decade, on at least five separate occasions, the bodies of young men have fallen from the sky and landed on or near this car park. All these men were stowaways on flights from the Indian subcontinent who had believed that they could find a way into the cargo hold of an airplane by climbing up into the airplane wheel shaft. No one can survive this journey. “Flight Paths” seeks to explore what happens when lives collide – the airplane stowaway and the fictional suburban London housewife, quoted above. This project will tell their stories; it will be a work of digital fiction, a networked book, created on and through the internet. The project will include a web iteration that opens up the research process to the outside world, inviting discussion of the large array of issues the project touches on.
Questions raised by this project include: what are the possibilities for new narrative forms? How do we “write to be seen” or “write to be heard” when creating multimedia narratives, and can we imagine writing to be smelled, tasted, felt? What are the effects of collective authorship across multiple forms?
KATE PULLINGER [www.katepullinger.com] works both in print and new media. Her most recent novels include A Little Stranger (2006) and Weird Sister (1999). Her current digital fiction projects include her collaboration with Chris Joseph on ‘Inanimate Alice’ [www.inanimatealice.com], a multimedia episodic digital fiction; and ‘Venus Redemption’, a game for female casual gamers. Pullinger is Reader in Creative Writing and New Media at De Montfort University [www.creativewritingandnewmedia.com].
CHRIS JOSEPH [chrisjoseph.org] is a digital writer and artist who has created solo and collaborative work as babel [www.babel.ca]. His past projects include ‘Inanimate Alice’ (with Kate Pullinger), an award-winning series of multimedia stories; ‘The Breathing Wall’ [www.thebreathingwall.com, with Kate Pullinger and Stefan Schemat], a digital novel that responds to the reader’s rate of breathing; and ‘Animalamina’ [www.animalamina.com], a collection of interactive multimedia poetry for children. He is editor of the post-dada magazine and network 391.org, and is currently Digital Writer in Residence at the Institute of Creative Technologies [www.ioct.dmu.ac.uk], De Montfort University, Leicester.
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THE THURSDAY CLUB is an open forum discussion group for anyone interested in the theories and practices of cross-disciplinarity, interactivity, technologies and philosophies of the state-of-the-art in today’s (and tomorrow’s) cultural landscape(s).
THURSDAY CLUB BOARD
MIGUEL ANDRES-CLAVERA
PhD Candidate Goldsmiths Digital Studios; Member of Social Technology and Cultural Interfaces Research Group.
MARIA CHATZICHRISTODOULOU [aka MARIA X], Thursday Club Programme Manager PhD Candidate Goldsmiths Digital Studios; Sessional Lecturer Birkbeck FCE; Curator; Producer.
BRONAC FERRAN
Director of boundaryobject.org; Member of DCMS Research and KT taskgroup; Director of Interdisciplinary Arts at Arts Council England until March 2007.
JANIS JEFFERIES, Thursday Club Convener
Professor of Visual Arts, Department of Computing, Goldsmiths; Co-director Goldsmiths Digital Studios; Director Constance Howard Resource and Research Centre in Textiles; Curator; Artist.
SARAH KEMBER
Dr.; Reader in New Technologies of Communication, Department of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths College; Writer.
MICHELA MAGAS
PhD Candidate Goldsmiths Digital Studios; Co-director Stromatolite Design Studio.
CARRIE PAECHTER
Professor of Educational Studies, Goldsmiths College; Dean of the Goldsmiths Graduate School.
ROBERT ZIMMER
Professor of Computing, Goldsmiths College; Co-director Goldsmiths Digital Studios.