What is ‘New Media Writing?’ For those working outside or on the fringes of the digital and creative industries, the term may simply conjure images of dot.com hopefuls publishing literature, news or blogs online. But a conversation with Sue Thomas – the founder of an online new media writing centre, trAce, based at Nottingham Trent University – quickly reveals otherwise. The field of new media writing is full of blurred boundaries, but Thomas and the team at trAce are on the road to exploring the many possibilities this emerging medium can embrace.
‘We think of new media writing as being writing that can only happen in a new media environment,’ Thomas explains. ‘Essentially, you could print it out, but it would be pointless. It can only be looked at, it can only occur, in a digital environment and it can only be read in a digital environment.’
There is currently a major divide, Thomas notes, between literature and writing published on the web, and projects that involve ‘actually writing in hypertext.’
By way of explanation, Thomas points to the ‘Concrete Poetry’ movement, which emerged in the 1950s and used words in a visual way.
‘If you wrote a poem for a tree,’ says Thomas, ‘you actually shaped the words of the poem on the page in a shape of the tree – so you’re mixing the two elements.
‘When you take that online, what you could do with that poem is, you could animate it and have the leaves falling off the tree – but the leaves might be words.’
This analogy provides a useful tool when thinking about, or attempting to read, the kinds of new media writing which are emerging globally. Innovative digital projects which are being created are often documented in regular submissions to frAme, trAce’s Online Journal of Culture and Technology. Such projects are also being created by some of the trAce tutors and are a regular focus of both online and in-person seminars held by the centre.
Thomas points to Talan Memmott as one of the best examples of someone creating a new language using hypertext technology. Memmott, an artist/writer from San Francisco and trAce tutor, was the winner of the 2000 trAce/Alt-X New Media Writing Award with his work, Lexia to Perplexia. The piece, like many others he has created independently and for the journal he edits, (BeeHive Hypermedia/Hypertext Literary Journal), takes the ‘reader’ on a visual journey which incorporates narrative, graphics and coding. Basically, Memmott successfully utilises the technology available to him to create a new language, and as this reporter experienced, a new way of reading. The narrative and images unfold as the user moves the mouse across the page, occasionally requiring a ‘click’ but often bringing up a series of graphics, images or words when the indicator floats over hyperlinks.
‘He [Memmott] combines a very strong visual sense with really good programming [and] very stimulating content,’ Thomas affirms.
‘I think the big problem with it [new media writing] is that people don’t know how to read it,’ she notes. ‘It’s almost like, if someone handed you a book with the pages glued down and you didn’t know any better, you wouldn’t know what it was. I think a lot of people, especially literary people, are illiterate in new media. They don’t know how to ‘turn the page’, they don’t know how to click the link.’
Thomas has observed a sense of distrust with online publishing in literary circles in the UK. There is a perception, she notes, that anyone can publish online and therefore the credibility of web resources cannot be guaranteed. True, but Thomas explains that on the one hand, it could also be argued that a lot of rubbish is published in print, and further, people who regularly work online know how to discriminate between credible and questionable sources.
TrAce was founded by Thomas in 1995, who was, at the time, the Course Leader of the new Master’s Degree in Writing at the Nottingham Trent University. The first website was launched in 1996, but received a much-welcome boost towards its development the following year when the Literature Department of Arts Council England invested in it through the Arts for Everyone scheme. Six years later, the centre now incorporates the frAme journal, a Kids on the Net website, and the popular Online Writing School, which was established in 2001.
The school incorporates tutors based in Australia, the UK, USA and Canada, teaching a range of writing workshops and nine-week courses including short fiction, children’s fiction, screenwriting and writing for theatre, but also more complex new media writing such as: ‘Animated Poetry in Flash’ and ‘Designing Web-based Narratives.’
The course participants are also international, and Thomas notes that unlike the zillions of other so-called writing courses available on the web, trAce has developed a national and international reputation, endorsed by the British Council engaging the writing centre’s tutorial services.
The centre has also received a number of substantial grants from NESTA, the organisation which invests in creativity and technology in the UK. The latest funding boost is supporting trAce’s new digital writer-in-residence, Tim Wright.
Wright, who is known for his BAFTA-award winning drama serials created for the web, will drive forward the centre’s new Writers for the Future initiative. The project aims to blend traditional literature with new styles of writing and digital technologies, as well as supply news and information about unique online projects; provide access to curriculum teaching resources; new media works; and an archive of trAce resources.
Thomas is excited about Wright’s residency, pointing out that the one area which is still to be experimented with on a larger-scale, is interactivity in new media writing.
Wright will be soon be hosting TEXTLAB, a week-long residential workshop to be held in Nottingham, providing new media writers with the opportunity to work together. And Thomas is keen to involve people who are interested in exploring the area of new media writing.
And after six years of trAce, Thomas observes the team is now interested in focusing on particular areas of interest. ‘The area that interests us very much [is] this borderline, people working in print and people working new media. We’re very interested in the kinds of people who make that transition, because they don’t necessarily come from writing, they come from all different kinds of media.’
For more information about the trAce Online Writing Centre visit trace.ntu.ac.uk
The upcoming TEXTLAB workshops are open to a mix of people, and anyone wishing to apply but not sure whether their ideas are what trAce are looking for, are encouraged to take the risk and apply anyway. Applications should be emailed to writersforthefuture@ntu.ac.uk by Monday 1st September 2003. See the Writers for the Future website for details on how to apply.
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