What's the ideal skill set for a transliterate creative practitioner? I'm not sure. All I know is it's very broad, encompassing a wide range of creative, multimedia, storytelling, problem-solving and technical skills - at least it is for an electronic writer/artist like myself, who tends to work alone. Here I'm thinking mainly about the skills and creative abilities you need to develop and create a work of digital storytelling or electronic literature. But what about once the work of e-lit is finished? How can you help it reach an audience? How do you promote it? That's when another set of skills comes into play.
We're used to seeing print writers give readings on the literary festival circuit. Electronic writers need to do this kind of thing too. Self-publishing and submitting work for online publications and exhibitions is fine, but you can't just rely on an audience finding your work on the web - like musicians and print writers, it helps to go out on the promotional trail, make a live appearance, give a performance.
Later this month my transliterate abilities as an e-lit performer are going to be tested - at Ilkley Literature Fringe Festival, with a great group of poets and fiction writers, and at Inspace in Edinburgh, with a fabulous line-up of digital writers and artists, as part of the International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling (ICIDS 2010).
In Ilkley, I'm performing with a group of creative print writers who came out of the Yorkshire Art Circus writer development programme some years ago. It's a kind of reunion and to give ourselves an angle, we're staging it as The Writers' Group Exposed!!! We'll be simulating a typical meeting - well, maybe not so typical because there will be an electronic writer in the group. It'll be interesting to see how my e-lit (Fitting the Pattern) is received in this context.
For any writer, it's seldom as simple as giving a reading, as the Ilkley gig demonstrates, but for the electronic writer, inevitably, there's even more to consider. You've got to sort out the tech (computer software/hardware, digital displays/projection, sound, etc.) and more than likely you've got to be able to operate your tech and read/perform at the same time. Those are the practicalities, but there are also aesthetic and dramaturgical considerations too. How will your live self, your bodily presence, affect or interact with the virtual presence/s, visually, sonically and kinetically? Should work designed for the web be repurposed for live performance?
Canadian electronic writer Jim Andrews has an interesting take on this. Here's his plan for a work he intends to perform at e-Poetry 2011:
Basically, the idea of the project is to scream my fool head off while playing Jig-Sound and dbCinema as instruments.
You’ve seen musicians play an instrument while they sing. Well, this is similar. Only I’ll be telling a story between (or perhaps during) screaming bouts. And the instruments I’ll be playing are Jig-Sound, which is sonic, and dbCinema, which is visual.
If live gigs are part of the process of reaching an audience, then should one build that potential into the design of the work from the outset (or at least somewhere along the way during the process of creation)? Should one consider it an opportunity for transmedia storytelling rather than promotion and networking?
In Edinburgh I'm performing Underbelly - playing it like an instrument - in an evening dedicated to Language in Digital Performance and, as such, the occasion will give me scope to explore these potentialities. For the most part, Underbelly presents a diegetic story-world that explores a psychic landscape where the predominance of spoken word exploits the intimate relationship between voice and the body, voice and interiority. I designed the piece as a work of playable media but not particularly for live performance so I'll be adapting it for the Inspace show, mixing my live voice with the multiple voices on the digital soundtrack.
The ICIDS Language in Digital Performance event is billed as Inspace no one can hear you scream and, since it's taking place on Halloween, we've been invited 'to engage the spirit of this festival'... so, who knows, I might end up screaming too.
