From generative writing tools to augmented publishing processes, artificial intelligence is rapidly changing and challenging the landscape of creative writing and publishing. To respond, MyWorld and Bath Spa University’s Centre for Cultural and Creative Industries (CCCI) and Narrative and Emerging Technologies (NET) Lab have developed a series of free webinars, Writing with Technologies, to offers an in-depth look at AI’s emerging influence across writing and publishing in multiple fields. 

Our fourth webinar of the series featured Guy Gadney (Charisma.ai), Sarah Gibson-Yates (Anglia Ruskin University) and Doug Specht (University of Westminster) and Robyn Winfield-Smith to explore the use of artificial intelligence in the art of screenwriting alongside screenwriters, researchers and other industry professionals. We will examine how AI tools have the potential to help create complex characters, develop dialogue and identify structural issues. 

From generative writing tools to augmented publishing processes, artificial intelligence is rapidly changing and challenging the landscape of creative writing and publishing. To respond, MyWorld and Bath Spa University’s Centre for Cultural and Creative Industries (CCCI) and Narrative and Emerging Technologies (NET) Lab have developed a series of free webinars, Writing with Technologies, to offers an in-depth look at AI’s emerging influence across writing and publishing in multiple fields. 

Our third webinar of the series brought Imwen Eke, Joseph Wilks and Richard A Coles together to explore the cutting-edge intersection of artificial intelligence and the gaming industry to discuss how AI is transforming both game development and player experiences with a focus on accessibility and inclusion. 

Speaker Bios

Imwen Eke

Imwen (She/Her) is a play alchemist, creative technologist, facilitator, educator, and TEDx speaker, specialising in play as a powerful tool for exploration and transformation. 

With nearly two decades in immersive entertainment and digital transformation, her expertise spans interactive design, game mechanics, workshop facilitation, and creative technology, making complex transitions accessible through playful methodologies. She focuses on play in adulthood to address social, political, and environmental challenges. 

She is the Founder of New Party Rules Labs, Chair of MyWorld’s Advisory Board (£30M creative technology initiative), and co-organizer of BXRN (Black in Xtended Reality Network). In 2024, she spoke at the UN Geneva Permanent Forum and G20 Rio, advocating for the transformative power of play in governance and society. 

Previously, she worked with SHUNT, Punchdrunk, taught at ISCOM Paris, University of the Underground, and Bristol University. Rooted in London and Bristol, Imwen continues expanding approaches to cultural play and technology. 

Joseph Wilk 

Jospeh is an artist and programmer who uses the digital to explore disability and disability to explore the digital. He deconstructs, misuses and repurposes software and hardware to challenge notions of ownership, narrative and visibility. 

Richard A Cole

Richard Lecturer in Digital Classics at the University of Bristol and co-Director of the Bristol Digital Game Lab. His research focuses on how the history and culture of antiquity intersects with new media, in particular video games, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence. From 2020-2023, he worked on the multidisciplinary Virtual Reality Oracle project, which created a ground-breaking VR experience of ancient divination that is improving educational outcomes in schools. He has published leading research on Classics in video games, while his latest work looks at how questions around the authorship of the Iliad and Odyssey can help us better understand AI generated texts today. Through the Game Lab, he is leading the research component of a collaborative R&D project with industry partner Meaning Machine on generative AI systems for video game dialogue. The aim? To understand how players respond to conversing with AI-powered characters. 

From generative writing tools to augmented publishing processes, artificial intelligence is rapidly changing and challenging the landscape of creative writing and publishing. To respond, MyWorld and Bath Spa University’s Centre for Cultural and Creative Industries (CCCI) and Narrative and Emerging Technologies (NET) Lab have developed a series of free webinars, Writing with Technologies, to offers an in-depth look at AI’s emerging influence across writing and publishing in multiple fields. 

For our second webinar of this series, artist Janet Biggs and Nadim Sadek, founder & CEO of Shimmr AI, explored how AI is reshaping the landscape of creativity. We shared experiences, explored diverging attitudes, showcased innovative projects and discussed the role of AI in augmenting human creativity. 

Speaker Bios

Janet Biggs  

Janet is a research-based interdisciplinary artist known for immersive work in video, film and performance whose work focuses on individuals in extreme landscapes and situations. Navigating the territory between art, science and technology, Biggs has worked with institutions including NOAA, NASA, and CERN. Her work has garnered support from organizations such as the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and recognition from The New York Times, ArtForum, and ARTNews. Her work has been exhibited and collected at museums and institutions worldwide. Biggs is a member of the New Museum’s cultural incubator, NEW INC, and of The Explorers Club.  
 
Nadim Sadek 

Nadim is Founder & CEO of Shimmr AI, which is revolutionising book sales by generating and deploying automated, self-optimising advertising for titles. He is also the author of ‘Shimmer, don’t Shake – how Publishing can embrace AI’, globally published by Forbes and in all other languages by Mensch. Trained as a psychologist, Nadim founded and led global market research agencies, a whiskey, food and music brand from an island off the west coast of Ireland, and an AI-driven brand management platform.  

Our third webinar, AI and Writing for Games: Revolutionising Play and Design, will be on 19th February 2025. Book now.

Regardless of whether you’re an emerging or established writer, it’s no secret how frustrating the writing process can be. Taika Waititi aptly sums it up in my favourite way, “What does writing actually mean? Sometimes writing is opening up your laptop, looking at a blank page for about eight hours, feeling sad, and closing it…”  

If someone approached me during my time as a writing student and offered a tool to alleviate the experience of staring at a blank page, desperately coaxing words from my mind, I would have cried with relief. Enter – generative AI tools. 

Once viewed as a distant realm of science fiction, AI now has the capacity to become an integral part of the writing process. As someone who has studied creative writing for most of their adult life, this new technology excites and terrifies me. 

Over the past year, rapid advancements in generative AI technology have raised many questions: ‘Do we need to be worried about our jobs?’ (The Guardian, 2023) ‘Where does it get its information from?’ (Leffer, 2023) and ‘Will AI destroy great writing?’ (2024) 

As AI continues to become adept at mimicking human artistry, these conversations are critical – especially for new and emerging writers. For now, though, I’m interested in choosing to see generative AI, not with fear, but with curiosity.  

Keeping in mind the budget and time constraints of emerging writers, I’ve been experimenting with the most accessible, free tools available to see how AI could amplify my creativity.  

ThisPersonDoesNotExist.Com 

Generative AI has proven to be a versatile tool for character inspiration as well as text generation. ThisPersonDoesNotExist is one of the simplest tools out there. The website randomly generates faces, allowing users to select basic prompts such as age and ethnicity, creating composite images of people who don’t exist from an online database.  

I’ve used this tool in both writing workshops and my own practice and have found it useful for creating quick character descriptions. However, like most AI tools, the database lacks diversity and most of the people generated are in want of distinguishing features. You can choose to see this as a limitation or a creative challenge. I’m still astounded at the quantity of ideas cultivated by a room full of writers in response to the same image. 

Generate a face and ask yourself…  

What was this person doing just before this picture was taken? 

What does this person do/want to be doing for a living? 

What is this person thinking right now?  

If, like me, you feel overwhelmed when it comes to AI, using a familiar format for generating characters can help make this new technology more accessible.  

Artflow AI 

I was hesitant to utilise AI generated art because of the heated ethical debates (2022) surrounding it, but the consensus seems to be that if it’s for low stakes, and personal use, go ahead. 

Artflow AI requires more input from the writer, generating images from written prompts. I found it to be most useful when bringing characters to life and decided to see if it could generate a character from my current work in progress, a middle grade novel. 

Prompt: ‘eleven-year-old ghost girl with short brown curly hair, green eyes, freckles, glasses, wearing dungarees and a sparkle of mischief in her eyes.’

The tool offers a variety of art styles, and I found the ‘fantasy’ filter most effective. It really took the colour green and ran with it, but this works within the context of the novel. Although there are limitations based on the database, and it implements its own ideas no matter how specific you are, seeing a visual representation of a character you imagined in your head – within minutes – feels magical.  

Claude AI 

Claude AI was created as an ethical alternative (Toolify n.d.) to ChatGPT, designed as a ‘conversational assistant’ that can respond to prompts and have intelligent conversations. I left it open on my desktop as a workshop partner, checking in when I needed quick information about an Irish myth, a list of names based on a character’s personality, or simply ‘what should happen next?’ 

Like ChatGPT, you can ask Claude AI to write a scene for you, but it doesn’t mimic your writing style (some AI tools are almost capable of doing this) meaning any passages borrowed directly felt out of place.  

So, while it can’t write my novel for me, Claude AI has proven useful for time-saving research, inspiration and brainstorming ideas.  

SUDOWRITE 

I can imagine keeping Sudowrite in my back pocket for those days when getting any words down on the page feels like a slog. You can simply type in a prompt and watch it go, wishing your own writing sessions looked that easy. 

Is the prose any good? Not exactly. It’s an average response at best. But if you’re open to exploring, and playing with ideas, it might spark a phrase, sentence or concept to help get you started.  

TEXTFX 

One of the more user-friendly and sleekly designed tools out there, TEXTFX serves specific creative needs. Perhaps you’re struggling to connect two ideas, need alliteration to liven up your poem, or help finding the perfect simile. In those moments when you know it just needs a little more, but you’re not sure what that is, TEXTFX can identify new connections and direction.  

Will it give you the perfectly formed edit? No. But like all generative tools, it might give you the starting point from which to jump off into your creative flow.  

Embracing AI 

The conversations around AI can feel overwhelming. There are serious concerns as seen in the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strikes (The Guardian, 2023) about a future where AI could replace writers. As an emerging author, it can feel safer to avoid it altogether, but companies will continue investing in AI whether we like it or not.  

As writers and artists, we need to join these conversations to ensure our rights are protected, that AI tools remain accessible, and that they’re trained on diverse, accurate databases. We need to understand where our data is stored, when a piece of AI-influenced writing is no longer fully ours, and much more. Instead of avoiding AI out of fear, we need to grow alongside it. Otherwise, it will leave us behind.  

On a lighter note, it’s important to remember that art and writing are inherently playful – and generative AI tools offer a chance to play. As a writer, who is still finding their voice, these new tools can exist to inspire and create. Can we experiment with them while being cautious? Absolutely! 

As a Creative Writing graduate, the application of generative AI tools within the writing process fascinates me. With an ever-expanding list of tools from image to text generation, the possibilities are vast, and I’m keen to embrace AI as a creative collaborator rather than a competitor.  

Reference List:  

Toolify (n.d.) Discover Claude AI: Free alternative to chatgpt with document upload. Available at: https://www.toolify.ai/gpts/discover-claude-ai-free-alternative-to-chatgpt-with-document-upload126502#:~:text=Claude%20was%20developed%20by%20anthropic,%2C%20nuance%2C%20and%20ethical%20responses. (Accessed: 04 November 2024).  

How Hollywood writers triumphed over AI – and why it matters (2023) The Gaurdian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/oct/01/hollywood-writers-strike-artificial-intelligence (Accessed: 04 November 2024).  

Incoherent, creepy and deceptively gorgeous: Six leading British artists making art with AI (2022) The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/dec/01/six-leading-british-artists-making-art-with-ai (Accessed: 04 November 2024).  

Leffer, L. (2023) Your Personal Information Is Probably Being Used to Train Generative AI Models, Scientific American. Available at: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/your-personal-information-is-probably-being-used-to-train-generative-ai-models/ (Accessed: November 2024).  

SAG-Aftra Union ratifies strike-ending contract with Hollywood Studios (2023) The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/dec/05/sag-aftra-union-ratifies-contract-hollywood-studios (Accessed: 04 November 2024).  

Will AI Destroy Great Writing? (2024) thewritingplatform.com. Available at: https://thewritingplatform.com/2024/01/will-ai-destroy-great-writing/ (Accessed: 04 November 2024). 

From generative writing tools to augmented publishing processes, artificial intelligence is rapidly changing and challenging the landscape of creative writing and publishing. To respond, MyWorld and Bath Spa University’s Centre for Cultural and Creative Industries (CCCI) and Narrative and Emerging Technologies (NET) Lab have developed a series of free webinars, Writing with Technologies, to offers an in-depth look at AI’s emerging influence across writing and publishing in multiple fields. 

Watch the first of our new series of webinars, writers James Bradley, Yudhanjaya Wijeratne and Mujie Li explore the impact of artificial intelligence on the craft of writing. We discuss how AI tools can enhance the creative process through the practical applications of AI in research, editing and idea generation. We explore ethical considerations, copyright issues and the environmental impact of AI tools as well as the limitations of AI for capturing human emotion and nuance and the risk of losing our unique voices. Presented in collaboration with the University of Adelaide and chaired by Professor Patrick Flanery.   

Speaker Bios

Dr James Bradley OAM is a writer and critic. His books include the novels Wrack, The Deep Field, The Resurrectionist, Clade and Ghost Species, a book of poetry, Paper Nautilus, and a work of non-fiction, Deep Water: The World in the Ocean. He is currently an Honorary Associate at the Sydney Environment Institute at the University of Sydney, and his new novel, Landfall, will be published in 2025.   

Yudhanjaya Wijeratne is an author, data scientist and journalist from Sri Lanka. He is also the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Watchdog Sri Lanka, a factchecker, investigative journalism hub and community tech builder. His fiction includes novels like Numbercaste, the Wretched and the Damned, and The Salvage Crew, as well as short stories and the occasional bit of game design. His work has won the Gratiean Prize, been nominated for the Nebula and Independent Games Festival awards, appeared in venues like Wired, ForeignPolicy and Slate, and been Washington Post and Audible bestsellers. He has also shown up on Forbes’ 30 Under 30, been a Dangerous Speech fellow, and spoken at TEDx. He has several cats who care about none of these things and spends most of his time on his homestead in the mountains, learning the care and feeding of potato plants. 

Mujie Li is an experimental writer and a researcher of digital media and culture. Her research explores how literary aspects (such as writing, reading, text and language) in digital and computational technological conditions work together to shape digital aesthetics. She is the author of the novella Mirage Time (2017, published by Dostoyevsky Wannabe). Recent article: ‘Media Language and the Technological Imaginary’ (2024).   

Chair: 

Dr Patrick Flanery is Chair and Professor in Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide. He is the author of the novels Night for Day, I Am No One, Fallen Land, and Absolution, which was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize. His short fiction has appeared in Granta and Zoetrope: All Story. His work has been supported by fellowships at MacDowell, the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, the Santa Maddalena Foundation, and the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study.

I love location-based promenade theatre. I feel immersed in the narrative, surrounded by actors, music and lights. One of my favourite things to do is see if I can break my own suspension of disbelief. When I am aware that I’m not fully engaged with the theatre, and I am in that state of 4th wall curiosity, I actively explore the space and look for the cracks in the set and the gaps in the telling.

The best performances I’ve experienced have rewarded that exploration with small treasures for my wandering eyes. Well placed props, lighting and narrative hooks from eagle-eyed actors catch me exploring and successfully reel me back into the story.

VR Live performance: Tender Claws’ ‘The Under Presents Tempest’

Writing for XR requires writing a detail for every moment the audience exists within the narrative. It’s world-building for people like me who are always looking around, actively discovering their place in a story, instead of just watching it unfold. 

XR means ‘Extended Realities’. It’s a catch-all term that can describe experiences that use virtual or augmented technologies to extend our reality. It can also encompass experiences such as promenade theatre, which use various technologies and techniques to deepen our immersion. Writing for XR is still an experimental endeavour, rules are grafted from other industries and new lessons emerge with each new project.  

Here are 5 tips that may help you write stories for experiences where the audience is always present.

1. Build what feels like an entire world

Build a whole world, not necessarily in minute detail but in the sense of the audience’s perspective, their relationship to the space and characters around them and the wider contexts or laws of the world. The core narrative you’re writing for the experience is just a pathway into the story world for the audience and needs to feel like a living thing.

Ask yourself as many questions as you can about the world you’re building to help you.

For example; When the audience turns their head and they see a fridge behind them, are there any post-it notes on it? Can they open the fridge? Can they open it easily? How can you make the character and contents of the fridge a part of the narrative for the audience? Is there food in there or a penguin dimension? What does the penguin say if the audience prods him? 

2. Be present in the process

Just as your audience, who will be actively present in your story, you also need to be actively present in its creation. 

Narrative isn’t a silo in this production process and you shouldn’t expect the story you’re writing to be the only source material. XR is sometimes a full-body, multi-sensory experience where narrative will be processed by more than the audience’s eyes and ears.

Familiarise yourself with the delivery medium and the technology. Communicate with those in the project who are responsible for the UX or ‘user experience’; they’re the ones who will wrestle the technology to the will and whims of your narrative. Through their work, you’ll be able to understand the nuances of interactivity that will enable your story to be experienced. 

Make time to share perspectives and interpretations and decide how those experiences might influence the project. (Photo by Scott Graham)

3. Treat the interactivity as a scaffold for the narrative.

Once you understand how the audience will be encouraged to experience your story, then you can construct an effective narrative within that scaffold of interactivity. 

Be careful not to do the opposite and build the narrative around the interactivity as the best XR experiences have narrative at the core. Some XR experiences lean on interactivity to drive engagement but don’t allow it to lead the experience. Remember to keep the interactivity as the support.

A good way to make sure you’re keeping the narrative at the core is to always ensure that everyone (audience and makers) are approaching a ‘problem’ of interactivity from a narrative context and that the solution makes narrative sense. Back to the penguin in the fridge. I would try to interact with in by prodding it with my controller, which starts to eject me from the experience. If, however, the narrative asks how I would try to communicate with the penguin and the answer is that I ‘flap’ at him, moving my arms up and down, my controller would become invisible to me and the reward would be the penguin leading me into his cool ice cave. 

4. States of play

XR experiences are unlike games. In games, people are almost always interacting and their experience is almost always active. XR is more nuanced and audiences can sometimes switch, mid experience, between active and passive states of play. 

Depending on the kind of experience your team is building, the core ‘intended’ state of play for the audience can be defined in a way that denotes their active or passivity by describing them as ‘users’, ‘participants’, ‘witnesses’, ‘agents’ or ‘guests’ etc. 

Knowing this core tenant of interactivity is a useful tool for you to help structure your story amongst the interactivity. As a ‘guest’ in the penguins ice cave, an audience will have different narrative contexts for their engagement than an audience who might be described as ‘explorers’. 

Despite  a core tenant for us makers, the audience may not be privy to this but, even if they are, people will switch their state of play. Inexplicably, a person might become passive in an experience where the story is structured around them being active and vice versa. My advice for this phenomenon is to try and write in moments of reprieve for those people who might switch but, when in doubt, just write the fullest experience you can.

There is, at present, no standardised system of planning for XR experiences and many projects reinvent the wheel. You should seek advice from those who have gone before. (Photo by Startaê Team)

Understanding at which points people in an experience will likely switch from passive to active states of play is hard but it usually coincides with the level of intended immersion. 

You can try and force a switch of states. Games do this all the time by inserting cinematic sequences in between periods of gameplay but it’s hard to get right in XR experiences.

5. Levels of immersion

Many XR experiences involve multiple senses and need a certain level of immersion for people to feel the most engaged and allow themselves to solely focus on the story rather than the fact they’re wearing a VR headset, for example. We are always looking to create artificial flow states for those present in our experiences.

A tool to help you distil your XR writing into a flow state guide is a simple visualisation to map out the main beats or acts of the narrative onto a line that ramps, plateaus and slopes down again. The line represents the ideal immersion level for an audience throughout an experience.

The Ramp & Slope of the immersive experience
(Harrison Willmott)

People may always be in states of flow and so, when we want them to engage in XR experiences, we can guide their transition by gradually easing them into it. It’s a tough, careful and controlled process, which is why pushing them up a ramp seems like a fitting metaphor.

Once they’re in immersive flow, it’s relatively easy to keep them there until we want them to stop but we can’t just eject them from the experience as that can ruin the whole thing. The slope is a gradual, careful and considerate exit from immersive flow that enables the audience to properly process and appreciate what they’ve just been a part of.

You can assign the beats or acts of your narrative to any point on the immersive ramp and slope as though you were chronologically planning out a traditional story. The difference with this is that you can use the level of the line to help you determine the narrative’s immersiveness and from there you can extract more details about how your narrative may be experienced at each stage or act. 

Typically, at the start, the narrative may begin at the first moment an audience hears about an experience, where the immersive level is at the lowest. As you begin to guide the audience up the ramp, either through marketing of the experience or perhaps this is during a tutorial or loading screen, the immersiveness is still slowly rising and your writing will need to be delicate and intriguing, designed to entice and convert a person from curious to engaged. 

As you ascend the audience over the precipice and into the plateau of full immersion, you can really begin to flex your writing, surrounding them in a rich world of wonder and brilliance. As you prepare them for the gradual and controlled descent down the slope and out of immersion, perhaps this is an excellent time for an epilogue or fun little extras. This kind of thinking when it comes to writing feels as though you are writing the whole campaign for an experience but the experience for the audience isn’t just the bit where they’re in the headset or in the theatre. An XR audience begins their immersive journey for an experience from the moment they hear about it all the way to when they’re sharing their experience with friends and family afterwards. You should try to extend your writing to be alongside them for their whole immersive journey.

Even if you just take on one of the five tips I’ve written above, you will be well on your way to writing an exceptional XR experience. 

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The Writing Platform will feature a series of articles on virtual, augmented and mixed reality between July and September 2021. Get in touch if you’d like to propose an article. 

Timothy West’s satirical radio play “This gun in my right hand is loaded” is a wonderful demonstration of what happens when writers who are used to one particular medium (in this case the screen) adapt their idea for another (in this case radio) and fail to account for the affordances and limitations of the form.

At one point early on, the protagonist says (adopt posh 1960s BBC radio voice) “Whiskey eh? That’s a strange drink for an attractive, auburn-haired girl of 29”, hilariously exposing one of the singularities of radio, which might be more subtly manoeuvred by a writer with the right expertise. 

Every medium requires a different approach and set of skills in order to really make it sing and virtual reality is no different. But VR is still evolving its form and even its terminology. What one person means by virtual reality may not correspond to what another does, so let’s start by trying to pin down what we mean by VR. 

For many, VR is any computer-simulated environment that you can access via a VR headset. However, purists say that 360 video, though it conforms to this definition, is not ‘true’ VR. If you try to move forward inside a 360 video, the world’s edges move with you. It’s a bit like having a fishbowl on your head (stay with me).You can look at the fish to the left or the right, up and down, or behind you, but if you try to get a closer look and take a step forward, the whole bowl comes with you – a very disorientating feeling when you first experience it.

 VR that uses a gaming engine like Unity or Unreal, whether that world is created using CGI, photogrammetry, volumetric capture or a combination of all three, does not have this ‘depth’ problem and is generally more interactive. You can choose whether to approach certain things or move away from them just as you can in the real world.

Writing for so-called ‘true’ VR is different from writing for 360 video because the former generally entails branching narratives and interactions and is a more complex process. Writing for 360 video tends to involve a straightforward linear narrative, but whether you are writing for one or the other there is something very important to bear in mind with both – the non-traditional point of view of the user. 

Again, terminology is tricksy here. ‘User’ is a gaming term and for less gamesy experiences, many still use the word ‘audience’ (originally from latin meaning listening or hearing). Others talk about ‘participants’ or ‘viewers’ or even ‘viewsers’ – a useful hybrid coined by media theorist Dan Harries.

When writing for VR, it’s important to realise that the viewser’s POV is self-directed, omnidirectional and present. The viewser is not being told where to look and what to concentrate on by the framing of a shot. There are no shots or cuts and they can (and will) look in any direction around them. This needs to be accounted for by the writer.

It’s wonderful that in VR the viewser has such freedom to choose where to focus her attention. Gone are the slow from-the-legs-up lingering shots on women’s bodies, for example. If you want to, you can turn your back on the leading lady and just take in the sky or the floor. But it’s very likely that some of your viewsers will completely miss something important that is unfolding in ‘front’ of them and check out the skirting boards at precisely the wrong time. If something in the story is crucial and should not be missed, it needs to be signposted with sound design or some other sleight of hand, for example with a “Coooey! Over here!”, just before it happens.

By saying that the viewser’s POV is ‘present’, I’m referring to the immersive nature of VR. Writers who are used to writing for film or TV will need to take into consideration the fact that viewsers are not outside of a frame looking in. They are inhabiting the world – not necessarily acting or participating in it (though they may be), but always taking up space in that world and experiencing themselves as part of it, which entails a completely different mindset from traditional writing for frames. There is no hard and fast rule, but the viewser should probably be acknowledged in some way and it should make sense for her to be there. 

Story Studio, Oculus’ explorative VR studio, pinpointed this need to have the viewser’s presence acknowledged with what they called The ‘Swayze’ Effect (after Patrick Swayze’s character’s feeling of dislocation in the film Ghost). Viewsers are not just observers; they are experiencers, embodied in a world and they should be accounted for and considered as such throughout the writing process.

VR is a rapidly evolving art form that is still finding its feet so it’s pretty hard to predict exactly what kind of writing it might entail in a year or even a few months’ time. Until fairly recently, there were no consumer headsets, let alone hand tracking, haptics or wireless rigs. Things are shifting quickly, but we can hazard a guess that VR will become increasingly social and increasingly interactive with writers needing to be able to come up with complex branching narratives, which means a lot of writing!

With the pandemic leading to increased headset sales and with the market for VR growing, now may be the time to try out some VR for yourself, see what works and what doesn’t and to have a go thinking outside the frame. 

Screenshots is a regular feature by Simon Groth, highlighting a project, app, or other resource of interest.

Gothic Body
by Eda Gunaydin

Published to the web by Australian literary journal Voiceworks, Gothic Body is divided into two parts. The first concerns itself with guilt and the author’s relationship with her mother, as well as the impact of that relationship on her body. The second part takes a wider view of the casual racism that infects everyday interactions in Australian life.

The piece consists of a series of images—family snapshots and scraps of handwritten messages—with accompanying text appearing on mouse over. It’s a simple application of technology that nevertheless creates a powerful effect, linking text and images inextricably and demanding the reader engage with both.

And with these elements, Gunaydin constructs a remarkable work of memoir so honest and unflinching, it has moments of real discomfort. The effect is like being given access to an intimate family album, images and thoughts that weren’t meant to be made public.

https://www.voiceworksmag.com.au/all/gothic-body

Screenshots is a regular feature by Simon Groth, highlighting a project, app, or other resource of interest.

A Poem Floats
by Pascalle Burton

How much can you say using only thirteen words? What if you could animate those thirteen words across 793 frames? Contributing to the long tradition of works that blur the boundary between literary and visual art, the words that make up A Poem Floats do not move at random, but in patterns, combining and recombining.

Pascalle Burton’s poem-in-a-gif-file takes time to fully realise its texts and requires active engagement from the reader to make meaning from its playful approach to language. In its coiling and uncoiling spirals, A Poem Floats piece makes reference to 2005 work deadsee by Israeli artist Sigalit Landau, a work that suspended a spiral raft of watermelons in the Dead Sea.

It packs a lot into those thirteen words.

https://pascalleburton.wordpress.com/2019/04/03/gif-poem-a-poem-floats-published-in-photodust/

Screenshots is a regular feature by Simon Groth, highlighting a project, app, or other resource of interest.

The Book of Hours
by Lucy English

A book of hours describes an anthology of illustrated sacred and devotional texts, popular in the middle ages. Divided into the canonical hours, they contained psalms, prayers and gospel extracts and were designed not to be read in sequence, but rather to be consulted as per the calendar. These were books developed for lay people who wished to incorporate elements of monasticism into their devotional life.

The Book of Hours is an anthology of poetry films, collaborations between poet Lucy English and filmmakers from around the world. Thanks to handheld devices and the ubiquity of internet connectivity, it can be carried in a reader’s pocket and consulted at any time of the day. Divided (roughly) into the canonical hours, it serves the current film based on the time in the reader’s location. Though very much secular, the structure of The Book of Hours recalls the same contemplative mood that its sacred counterparts no doubt inspired.

Being film-based means that such contemplation can never be silent, though, and there is no option to read the texts, either independently of the films or inline as closed captions. However, this does not ultimately detract from The Book of Hours as a beautiful and reflective experience. Its navigation and design are never intrusive and the poems are well matched to the accompanying visuals.

https://thebookofhours.org