Showing posts with label Twitter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Twitter. Show all posts

Thursday, 5 March 2015

30 Days of FIN: my Cornerhouse closing project

#30DaysofFIN



FIN.

A simple enough word seen in the darkness of the cinema that means a special journey has come to an end.

During my work as researcher and music producer of ‘The Storming’ – the final installation that takes place at Cornerhouse on April 4th – I have, like an accidental snowball, been gathering up stories, memories and assorted ephemera relating to our unique Manchester arts institution.

As we count down the days to the closing of Cornerhouse – towards the FIN of the film of Cornerhouse’s life – I will be using the Cornerhouse Twitter account to send into the world a selection of images, historical detail, videos, anecdotes and memories relating to Cornerhouse.

Mimicking human memory, my timeline will be un-chronological, the posts gleefully abstract and enticing, but the stories and feelings they communicate will all be genuine. They will hopefully reach out to all those who have loved Cornerhouse.

My previous Twitter intervention for Manchester Central Library can be seen here.

Watch out for the hashtag #30DaysofFIN from the Cornerhouse Twitter account, every day until April 4th when my final Tweets will be sent live from The Storming.

FIN.



Thursday, 27 November 2014

Virtual Books and Library Twickets: The Collection


I recently spent a week as writer-in-residence at Manchester Central Library for the Everything Everything Chaos to Order residency.

I took the opportunity to undertake a modest, highly enjoyable digital art project using the simple tools of library books, iPhone and the Manchester Central Library Twitter account.

The concept, to quote myself, was as follows:

‘In a modern library you’re just as likely to leave with a laptop full of information as a rucksack full of books. I wanted to find a way to symbolise the evolution from paper to data that emphasises the importance of both.’

The project turned into a way to showcase printed treasures from around Central Library; exciting, mundane, beautiful, forgotten, well-loved. Each book was reduced to a single image and a piece of quoted text and sent as a Tweet – a digital artefact if you like – to Central Library’s thirteen thousand followers.

Below is the full collection sent over the duration of the residency from start to finish. Armistice Day fell in the same week so I opened the collection with an image from the First World War and finished with an entry from a compendium of Army names from the Second World War, a soldier named G. Thorpe.




  









































































































Tuesday, 11 November 2014

Virtual Books and Library Twickets


As part of my role as a writer-in-residence for Chaos to Order, I’m executing a small-scale digital art project that utilises library books, photographs and the Manchester Central Library Twitter account.

In a modern library you’re just as likely to leave with a laptop full of information as a rucksack full of books. I wanted to find a way to symbolise the evolution from paper to data that emphasises the importance of both.

To that end I’ll be rummaging around the many shelves of Central Library, unearthing books that appeal to me in some way, and reducing the physical item of a book down to a single photograph and a single Tweet. That’s one digital image and 140 characters to capture the essence of a book.

I will then check the book out of the Library ‘virtually’ via the Central Library Twitter account. The book will be sent out into the world as a small digital artefact that will represent a combination of the contemporary and the traditional library.

You’ll see me check in and out of the Manchester Central Library Twitter account from time to time over the next few days, sending virtual books into the world.


Tuesday, 28 January 2014

‘Please sign and share’: Is it possible to sign a petition every day…?


Log onto Facebook and Twitter in the morning and one of the first things you’ll usually see is a request to sign a petition. Amnesty, All Out, Avaaz ... Homophobia in the Olympics, a venue threatening to close, ‘Margaret Thatcher Day’: the Internet wants your signature (well, your name and your fake address anyway...).

Some fear that internet activism is replacing the real thing. Just as likely is that it's facilitating nation-wide mobilisations too. Either way, this is the age of the petition and it’s time to get seriously involved. So, from tomorrow onwards I'm going to seriously consider every petition I come across (even more so than usual...) then I'll sign it if I agree strongly enough and Tweet it with this hashtag:

#apetitionaday

Let’s see how it long lasts. Please sign and share.


Monday, 20 August 2012

The Shakespeare Girl : a novel



‘GOOD FRIEND FOR JESUS SAKE FORBEARE,
TO DIGG THE DUST ENCLOASED HEARE.
BLESE BE THE MAN THAT SPARES THES STONES,
AND CURST BE HE THAT MOVES MY BONES …’


I’m writing a novel. Yes, another one. My first one is currently sitting unpublished in a  metaphorical sock drawer, as all first novels should for a time. One day I will take it out, dust it off and take another look, and possibly cringe, or maybe even re-consider and re-submit it.


In the meantime I have an MA in Creative Writing to complete. My final piece of work for the course is a novel: The Shakespeare Girl.  As part of the project I’ve set up a website to accompany the novel, which you can look at here. I will be adding various reviews, images, news items and guest posts to the site over the coming weeks, and eventually I will post an extract or two from the novel itself. 





The opening quotation above, as you might know, is taken from Shakespeare’s tombstone. If we believe, as many do, that these words are amongst the last ones written by the playwright himself, they reveal an anxiety about exhumation which also makes an appearance in sixteen of his thirty-seven surviving plays. When I first read about this peculiar obsession, I was intrigued. I began to read about the Holy Trinity Church, where Shakespeare is buried, and discovered that the building sits right on the riverbank, hovering over the waters of the Avon, and that it is in some state of dilapidation.

Erosion, disrepair … a thought occurred to me: What would happen if you had to dig up William Shakespeare…?

That was the starting point for a story, which I decided to people with characters whose lives are somehow connected to the Bard: a professor, a student, an actress… In homage to Angela Carter’s Wise Children, I also decided to include some type of reference –obvious, oblique, or somewhere in between – to every Shakespeare play in the course of the book. Not to be clever – I’m learning about Shakespeare as I go – but to try and neatly dramatise the way in which Shakespeare infiltrates our daily lives, often without us knowing.

So, whenever time permits, I’m working away at the novel. The plot, I think, is decided. The characters, I hope, are beginning to come off the page. It’s ambitious, hopefully funny, certainly accessible, and I can’t wait to finish it.

If you’d like to get in touch about my writing, or about anything Shakespearean, or better still, if you’d like to contribute something to my website, then I’d love to hear from you, at this address here. If you’re on Twitter I also have a dedicated account to follow, here.


Thank you for reading …!