Think of a song or piece of music that is important to you. What happens when you hear it? Does it take you somewhere else and bring you back? Are you saddened by it? Does it transport you away from the everyday? What is it about this song that is important? 

This last question lies at the heart of a project called Mapping the Music of Migration (MaMuMi), a two-year pan-European collaboration focused on music and the migration experience. Across Europe, migrants have been vilified and we wanted to combat this issue by finding a shared language, i.e. music.

Mobility and movement have long been central aspects of human life. People traverse national borders for complex and varied reasons, out of choice or necessity. War, poverty, economic downturns, love and retirement can all prompt displacement. There is no universal migration story, but the word ‘migrant’ narrows the narrative lens; it cuts out the lives prior to and after those journeys. It forces them into one, repeated across media platforms.

In the UK and abroad, we see tabloid media images of migrants in camps. We have seen footage of dead toddlers on Greek beaches. We hear stories about boats capsizing and people drowning in the Mediterranean. We know the numbers: 41 here, 43 there, more than 17,000 since 2015. UK politicians openly equate ‘illegal immigrants’ with terrorists. Those migrating to the UK face a hostile environment, their very status ‘as’ migrants denigrated. The constant reduction of their humanity to migrants results in racism, xenophobia, and segregation.

How do we change this narrative? How can we open up spaces where commonalities can be explored? We did this by using everyday technologies, in the form of mobile phones, to interview and record  participants talking about pieces of music. Using something so integral to people’s daily lives in this way engineered spaces that allowed people to speak about anything that the piece of music triggered in them. Putting them on a mobile app made them visible and audible to others.

At MaMuMi, we wanted to offer such spaces where we might share and discover those common stories. We knew from our previous research with NGOs across Europe that no one was using the method of talking about music to open up such a space. Trivial though that may seem, it is in fact hugely valuable. This is because two people may enjoy the same song, but have differing memories attached. This point of connection facilitates open discussion on grounds that are non-political / neutral. This is where we began to develop our app, which made these stories accessible to a wider audience.

The project’s seven partners are universities and NGOs working with migrants in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Norway, Spain and the UK. Between them, the project team have collected thirty anonymous stories recorded in refugee camps, offices, and over Zoom, in which migrants discuss a piece of music or song that they deeply associate with their journey. This track is then edited and interweaved with the music itself, into what the project call a ‘Song Story.’ These are then uploaded to the MaMuMi app, where they are represented by a pin placed on a map that spans the globe. It might be Iraq, Gambia or Italy. 

Selecting a pin will play a song-story, where users will begin tracing the speaker from origin to their journey into and/or across Europe, until at last they come to where they currently reside.  Their journeys see them from West Africa, overland to Libya, to Cyprus by boat. They move from Syria to a holding camp in Kos, they relocate from the North of England to Spain to retire and travel from Austria to Spain, for work, and from Greece to Cyprus for the same reason. 

A myriad of narratives are represented here, some of which may relate a song with certain memories, others which remind the speaker of traditions lost. One participant who grew up in Morocco chose Bonnie Tyler’s Holding Out for a Hero, for example, which he listened to on repeat before taking and passing his UK driving test. Another participant, now working in Bulgaria, chose his own song, sung in his native Breton tongue. One young Syrian boy from a refugee camp in Kos described a song that exemplified the brutality he had been witness to, saying ‘I have sad and bad memories from this song, because when the youth of our area went out to protest, they thought that the policemen would not attack them, but they hung them and they killed them.’ Poignantly, the song named ‘Ya Hef’ (translation: ‘Shame on You’) is a baleful ballad about the Syrian civil war by Samih Choukeir, a renowned Syrian musician now living in exile in Paris. Likewise, another participant described the meeting of their Senegalese Griot musical heritage with the Norwegian educational system, where they now teach. Their song is about pancakes, a catchy pop tune that they have composed for the children they instruct. They tell us that ‘If you build a country, you have to [focus?] it to the young people. That’s why my focus, my music usually is for the young people, that’s why I make this song, Pannekake’. 

The range of narratives from our participants revealed stories that were both specific and common to many, and hearing them has facilitated conversations across cultures and borders. The pan-European team reported that the project had enhanced understanding of cultural diversity and awareness, and a sustainable set of resources (manual for NGO staff and migration app), which can be used for education and training. The project was also innovative in the sense that it gave the floor to migrants, refugees and asylum seekers (without a musical background) to make their stories visible to the public and their local community and raise multicultural awareness, fulfilling the MaMuMi mission. All of us on the project believed that engineering such a new space was necessary, and we hope it has gone some way to combating the harmful narratives surrounding migrants.

These participants have shared their stories of success, loss, frustration, memory and hope with us. We are not therapists, we cannot offer therapeutic spaces, but, using technology, we have opened up a place where stories can be told, heard and shared. And as these song stories get mapped onto our app, we offer alternative narratives of migration to those that dominate our news media. 

More information and workshop methods can be found on our website: www.mamumi.eu

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

A Modern Ghost
By Stef Orzech

My writer-bias is showing in the byline above since this app’s creators take great pains to attribute it collectively to AltSalt, the ‘digital literature studio’ from which it emerged. Indeed, the drive of this short and somewhat tentative story of love and memory comes from the interactions between its text by Orzech, images and animation by Ricardo Morales, and soundtrack by Ethan Steigerwald. A Modern Ghost is at its best in its use of space on the screen, frequently changing its scrolling direction (with cues) and using layering and textures to suggest a three-dimensional space under the glass.

Described as a protoype, A Modern Ghost is as much an exploration of form and technology as it is a narrative and refinements to the platform (especially its overly touch-sensitive scrolling) are likely over time. But it is also a compelling vision for storytelling on a phone and it will be exciting to see where AltSalt takes these ideas next.

A Modern Ghost is available for iOSand Android.

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

The Cartographer’s Confession
By James Attlee

The Cartographer’s Confession is the story of Thomas Andersen, who, as a child, migrates to London with his mother during the second world war and the fallout from that event in the decades that follow. Presented as a series of source documents—tapes, letters, and photographs—collected by the present-day researcher and screenwriter, Catriona Schilling, the app reveals its story through layers of fiction and non-fiction, timeframes, and locations.

Commissioned by the Ambient Literature project, The Cartographer’s Confession is designed to be experienced on location, appropriately using a map as its primary navigation. It’s not hard to imagine the power of walking through the streets of London as the story unfolds on in your ears and your phone. Though it does offer a chronological ‘armchair mode’, the app’s dreamy soundscapes and contrast of present and past lose some of their impact 16,000km away.

But even with a diminished experience, Attlee’s writing is concise and emotive, the performances are solid, and the app’s design, especially its sound, shows beautiful attention to detail. The soundtrack by The Night Sky is also very cool, if sometimes distracting. Given the quality of its writing and production values, it’s easy to see how The Cartographer’s Confession won over the judges of the 2017 New Media Writing Prize.

The Cartographer’s Confession is available to download from the App Store and Google Play.

Imagine a narrative woven through a city street. As a reader you can access fragments of story by navigating a physical space using a digital device such as a smartphone or tablet.  As you walk past a library, you might be told about the history of the books inside. Walking part a church might trigger the sound of a congregation singing together. An abandoned building might tell you about all the generations of people who have lived and worked inside. You might even be encouraged to contribute something in response to what you experience.

Location-based or geo-locative writing connects a reader directly to a story as their movements through a physical space allow them to access pieces of narrative. These don’t have to be read as words on a screen. They can be audio, visual or take the form of interactive games. The possibilities of this site-specific digital form are endless. Stories can be created, worlds can be built and we can be encouraged to look at the world around us in new ways.

Such location-based narratives, which are born from experiences of physical spaces, can be participatory. Using GPS technologies, a reader’s movements can be mapped. The story they are told can be influenced by the direction they take. The reader can be invited to take part by interacting creatively with a story. They might be prompted to contribute a piece of text, a memory, a snapshot. The experience is typically non-linear as this is an experience across real-world locations.

By setting a narrative in the physical world, a reader pulled in two directions. What they see in front of they and the story they are told brings a rich new perspective to navigating space. The real and imagined are brought together and begin to overlap and blur. This adds a new element to storytelling, which writers have begun to explore. Several projects have been developed over the past ten years to experiment with the potential of this digital-born form;

34 North, 118 West

34 North 118 West was created by Los Angeles artists in 2003. They took users on tours of areas of Los Angeles, focusing on the fringes of the city. As abandoned areas were explored, users received fragments of audio to their headphones via GPS.

[Murmur]

Launched in 2003, [Murmur], is a location-based audio project, was developed by a Toronto based collective. A person’s location triggers stories collected from other users and residents. The experience is one of accessing multiple layers of stories embedded in the city streets.

Urban Tapestries

Urban Tapestries was designed to help people to create their own annotations of a city. Social knowledge is shared, stories are told and an archive of collective memory is built. These fragments can be accessed while walking through a city’s streets using hand-held devices.

The Silent History

Launched in 2012, this novel, written for the iPad and iPhone, offers readers a chance to immerse themselves in a story. It includes hundreds of location-based stories, which can only be accessed when a device’s GPS matches the coordinates of a specified location.

My Story

Launched in 2013, MyStory takes users on a self-guided literary tour of Melbourne. Stories are experienced in the locations where they were set, building a literary map of the city.

These Pages Fall Like Ash

This project, launched in 2013, invited an audience to participate in a narrative experience by accessing, altering and writing a locative story.

Adelaide Road

Using Shakespeare’s As You Like It as inspiration, the Royal Shakespeare Company created a journey along Adelaide Road in London in 2013, which explored the themes of love, betrayal, exile and home in the 21st century. Users could interact with the project through an iPhone app and a web map.

Writer on the Train

This project, launched in 2013, explores the potential of using a train journey to tell location-based stories. An app responded to the readers’ train journey in real time, delivering elastic pacing, video, audio and new writing relevant to the train’s location.

Missorts

Missorts is an urban soundwork delivered directly to a smartphone as a mobile app as a user walks though Bristol, UK. It combines ten location-triggered stories with a newly composed soundtrack.

Zombies, Run!

Launched in 2012, this app combines elements of game and storytelling to create an epic zombie adventure.

A second diary entry from 2013 Writing Platform bursary winners actor and writer Ben Gwalchmai and James Wheale; this team used the bursary to build on their existing work on story and movement and build a prototype of a mobile app called Fabler. Fabler enables users to experience story through movement: stories will play when the user is moving and stop when the user is still, with bonus content being revealed as the user progresses through the story. 

Read their first diary entry here and their project wrap interview here.

Hear about creative matchmaking from the second team, Caden Lovelace and Laura Grace, here and here and read their wrap interview here.

—

Well we’ve gone and done it now – we’ve got ourselves a prototype.

It’s not yet as fully functional as we’d like but it certainly works.

If you’d like to try it out too, you just need to download the AppFurnace app from your App Store and add an app to AppFurnace with this URL: http://the.appfurnace.com/test/K25Nr/

Once you’ve loaded Fabler, select your activity [walking, running, cycling] in the settings then select your story in the content. Walk. Done.

In the coming months we’ll be adding more to it. You’ll be able to unlock more the more you come back.

We had a great day at the Mix 2 Digital conference presenting Fabler and talking with a great many fascinating people.

In many ways, we’re still analysing and working with the contacts we’ve made over the past 2 months to see what else Fabler can do.

As discussed at the conference, we’ve big plans for Fabler:

• Fabler: Still
• Fabler: Sports
• Fabler: …

That last isn’t a plan so much as a project plan – ‘Let’s see what else Fabler can do.’

We’re applying for Arts Council funding to further our research and we’ll be applying for a fund together with the Mixed Reality Lab from the University of Nottingham to see just how much Fabler can do.

The prototype isn’t the end of Fabler but, rather, just the beginning.

The first of two teams awarded The Writing Platform bursary fill us in on their progress: Actor and writer Ben Gwalchmai and poet and developer James Wheale used the bursary to build on their existing work on story and movement and build a prototype of a mobile app called Fabler. Fabler enables users to experience story through movement: stories will play when the user is moving and stop when the user is still, with bonus content being revealed as the user progresses through the story. 

Read their second diary entry here and their project wrap interview here.

Hear about creative matchmaking from the second team, Caden Lovelace and Laura Grace, here and here, and read their wrap interview here.

—

Understanding the benefits and limitations of what we’ve created has taken up most of our time.

We’ve written test stories – a tapas of tales – and plotted our future schedule. We’ve stayed up late into the night writing and recording, tinkering and testing. We know, for sure, that it won’t play in your pocket when you’re on a train. We also know that disco dance powered stories are a-go-go. We now understand our platform better which has honed our palette for creating content.

The visceral engagement with stories that we were after is already evident in our beta versions 0.1 and 0.2. Although it feels somewhat of a Pandora’s Box, we expected limitations.

We’ve recorded two test stories: one has a soundtrack, the other doesn’t. We’ve got technical specifications to figure out yet and continue to test. We’ve sent the beta out to some testers and we’re looking forward to the feedback. One of them is currently in Spain and testing how transposed the story makes you feel, even when surrounded by another language. One of them is fellow bursary winner Caden Lovelace and he has been instructed to find ways to kill it as efficiently as is possible and return it to us in several million pieces so we may figure out: one, how he was able to do so; and two, how we can ensure no one can do it again.

We’re meeting with sonic ethnographers, User Experience designers, and User Interface designers before we make 0.3.

James is cracking on with how best to integrate soundscapes, sound effects, and drafting music to match the form. Ben’s been recording his dulcet tones and honing story extracts to test out.

We’ve found the more you walk with someone whispering, bellowing, or laughing a story at you – a story that’s directly in your ear and responds to your movement – the nature of the stories we can use is affected. This is far more than an audiobook: your attention is piqued by these stories written specifically for this moving form.

You don’t want to stop moving. You want to finish the story.

Ah, tools. Such a seductive word, with that tactile, workmanlike ring. And such seductive implications. Accumulating tools feels like the very opposite of time wasting. Tools promise to transform us into humble, brine-browed word-carpenters, conscientiously whittling our masterpieces in brain-workshops full of sunshine and space, while topless, and grunting. In short, tools rule.

Of course, as a writer, any tools other than your mind, your fingers or voice, and a basic recording device, are entirely superfluous. Browsing the app store, watching little download circles rotate and fiddling with complicated settings are all byways, not highways, to becoming a laser-focused sentence-whore. In fact, reading articles about good online productivity tools for writers is one of the best ways to feel productive without achieving a damn thing. Close this tab! Go! Write!

Still here? Okay, I have to admit that from deep within the towering dung-heap of procrastination-friendly digital shiny things, I have managed to uncover a few gems that consistently make me write more, and very possibly better. Enjoy, argue, pass them on, and don’t be shy about suggesting a few of your own.

Scrivener

From the first day I tried Scrivener, “the first and only word processing program designed specifically for the messy, non-linear way writers really work”, I knew I could never go back to the plodding constraints of Word or even the sensual pleasures of paper and pen. Like many who grew up with screens, I write in a highly architectural way, and Scrivener brilliantly anticipates exactly what my chaotic brain needs.

An independent piece of software developed by an aspiring writer who couldn’t find a way to order his research and his notes, Scrivener has won numerous awards for its ingenious system of folders, corkboards, notes and composing windows, which allow you to keep all your references, drafts, notes and inspirations in one place and instantly navigate between them; tag, categorise and search for super-specific elements; track character arcs or themes; and eventually, download the whole manuscript in the auto-format of your choice, from Kindle eBook to screenplay. Normally a manual hater, I strongly recommend completing the on-screen walkthrough, which will help you understand all sorts of clever shortcuts, details and customisations to get the most from the software. In practice, I spend most of my time in the simple ‘blackout’ composing screen, which focuses your text in the middle of clean, distraction-free black page. But I would be lost without the ‘snapshot’ function, which allows you to capture and store the current version of your document at any time, and the synopsis panes, which force me to summarise each chapter succinctly as I go. A no-brainer. Download it now.

Evernote

Inspiration usually strikes in places where it is difficult to whip out a notebook – on the tube, on the toilet, in a work meeting, at the gym. I always loved the idea of carrying a beautiful personalised Moleskine and fountain pen wherever I went, but in practice I would forget, or spill coffee on it, or run out of ink, and when I returned to my scribblings they were not only illegible but impossible to organize into a coherent structure.

Evernote is the best digital note-taker I’ve come across. This free, simple app allows you to capture notes on your phone via text, audio, video and photo, then synchs them across all your devices, such as your laptop and tablet. You can search by tag, keyword or even text within an image, and easily transfer notes to another application such as Scrivener. Using your online Evernote account, you can also access them from anywhere in the world, safe in the knowledge that they are always floating in the cloud, and that you need never again lose that perfect opening sentence that you scribbled on a paper napkin with eyeliner. Oh, that sentence. You still mourn for that sentence, don’t you?

Shareist 

Fresh out of beta, Shareist is the quickest and easiest tool I’ve found for capturing and organising the research and inspiration I find on the web. An evolution of the old bookmarking platforms, Shareist provides you with a button for your browser which will capture any webpage, blog, video or image; allow you to title, tag and comment on it; and then turn it into an entry in a private ‘notebook’, which you can edit, format and even export as a book or a blog post.

The key feature here for me is the privacy. Online bookmarking has traditionally been seen as a social facilitator, whereby you display, share and discuss cool stuff you’ve found. Shareist, on the other hand, is geared towards helping you create and curate your own personal treasure trove. It allows you to move more quickly through the glittering mines of the web without getting distracted by individual nuggets; just chuck ‘em in your Shareist bucket, and return to them when you have more leisure for Gollum-like fingering. The free version only allows you to create one notebook, which can be a pain if you’re working with multiple projects or themes, but it’s definitely worth a try. 

Lulu 

You’ve finally finished your first draft. First, you need a drink or twenty; then, you need some perspective. After months spent nose to laptop, it’s hard to read your story with fresh eyes, so take a week off, sign up to Lulu.com and turn your draft into a proper book. I have heard more good word of mouth about Lulu than any other self-printing platform. It is clear, easy and quick to use, offers competitive pricing and allows you to order just one copy. A 300 page black and white paperback will set you back around eight quid, and will be shipped within 3-5 days from whichever global print operation is nearest your address, so with a good wind you could have your embryonic darling on your doormat within a week.

This is not an encouragement to consider your first slew of brain diarrhoea as a finished product – nor an excuse to spend hours mocking up cover art complete with ‘Booker Shortlist 2013’ sticker (don’t pretend you haven’t); but it will help to de-familiarise your work. Your Lulu book should be approached as a single working copy to scribble all over, not a mass order to share. Read it through once without making notes to experience the overall flow and only then pick up your red pen. You won’t want to print off a full new copy after every draft, but after the marathon of the first, it really helps.

Quit

We don’t need scientific research to know that the Internet is turning us into goldfish. When I finally, properly committed to writing my novel eighteen months ago, I found myself having to entirely rewire my behaviour. At first I could only manage a few sentences before I cast around for a link to click. I was sure that I could physically feel my brain fluttering like a moth trapped in a jar. With practice, it has calmed considerably, but a ‘quick email check’ still has the ability to turn me into the writer’s equivalent of Jennifer Connelly in Labyrinth, dashing breathlessly from Pinterest oubliette to Facebook bog while the great social media Bowie-god in the sky waves a hardback in front of me with a mockingly raised eyebrow.

I’m not a big believer in online ‘nanny tools’ such as Cold Turkey or Chrome Nanny, which forcibly shut down timewasting applications or restrict your web access.  I am, however, a big fan of the rewarding sensation of self-control. So acquaint yourself with that unfortunately Americanised little menu-option called Quit. Yes, turn shit off. Close your email application. Shut down your browser. Deactivate Skype and MSN. Don’t just put your phone face down on the desk, tuck it in your bag and do up the zip. Promise yourself a ‘check-in session’ every ninety minutes. I still sometimes find this really difficult; I recommend meditation as an effective accompaniment to keep your focus muscles lean and mean.

Writer Kate Pullinger, Editor of The Writing Platform, is also a professor at Bath Spa University, co-sponsors of The Writing Platform. At Bath Spa, Pullinger runs a series of lunchtime talks, aimed at all the postgraduate writing students who study at the Corsham Court Campus. These talks, Digital Corsham, are given by writers, academics, publishers, and pundits, all of whom are interested in writing and publishing in the digital age. The talks are filmed for The Writing Platform.

This first short film in the Digital Corsham series features Naomi Alderman, a novelist who also writes games. Here Naomi talks about her experience as a game-player, what lead her into writing for games, and how games provide ways of telling stories.

Further viewing: Philip Hensher and Charlotte Abbott Digital Corsham talks.