Ambient Literature

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This project explores what might happen when data aspires to literary form. It asks how can situated literary experiences delivered through pervasive media systems produce new forms of literary experience? The research looks at the history of the book to establish how the physical situation of the reader has effected the nature of the writing itself, it will then apply this historical understanding to thinking about how the reading situation is changing through pervasive and ubiquitous computing. The development of travel, urbanity and mobility through the 19th & early 20th Centuries produced a mobile reading market supplied in the UK for instance by the WH Smith bookstall chain (1792) and later by the Penguin imprint for the easily affordable but literary, pocket sized paperback (1935). Texts and reading practices have been an increasingly dense feature of urban life for the past three hundred years. The 'solitary reading' paradigm of the private collection or university library is actually a comparatively minor part of the history of reading. Coffee houses, newspapers, handbills, fly posters, letters, and signage have all been part of the daily experience of the city. We have extended this range in the past thirty years, first with the Walkman (and the potential not only for mobile music but also for literary text to be delivered on the move), and now with portable screens (plus audio) extending this range of tools once more. Experiences of text interweave themselves into our daily lives with a bewildering promiscuity. Despite the dominance of the solitary reading model, the city has always been a text-mediated experience. Since 2012, these literary modes have been available in the seamless continuity of Amazon's Whisper sync Kindle service that makes it possible for the user to switch between text reading and voice narration in over 45000 titles that have now been recorded. Our reading may now occur in the context of urban information systems that are dynamic, responding to what people do; they integrate embodied and imaginary experiences, material and mediating objects. In short they increase our opportunities for new forms of reading and listening experience. The research draws upon performance, audio walks, and creative writing to commission three new works by contemporary authors that will demonstrate the power of situated literary experience. The Ambient Literature author has the potential to produce work becomes a part of the unscripted shared material world. They can produce an encounter between the reader and their environment where the immediate surroundings become the stage on which the story plays out.