Kate Pullinger Releases a New Episode of 'Inanimate Alice'

In March 2008 we interviewed Kate Pullinger, who was then creating stories that were innovative and which exploited multimedia and technology. She had embarked on a digital fiction project, ‘Inanimate Alice.’ and after a break of six years has just published a new episode. The project hasn’t stood still, has been taken up by many children around the world and has been translated into Spanish, French, Italian, German, Indonesian, and Japanese. It also remains a multimedia story which is free for all to experience.

We obviously had to remind ourselves of the early episodes before we looked at the new one.

We will all have our own views on the presentation, uses of multimedia and story itself. 

What is interesting is that what appeared just a few years ago as ground breaking and exciting, now appears to lack that same excitement and sparkle it once had. It is often said that a year is often a long time in technology and simply bombarding every sense and incorporating every technology trick isn't perhaps enough today. What once appeared as a ‘chevron clicker’ (a digital page turner) of a story and a fresh multi media experience is now looks somewhat lost. There are still frames when the story and the graphics come together but there are others when you feel it could have been more subtle and better. 

We have huge respect for Kate's previous ground breaking work on ‘Inanimate Alice’ but perhaps, it also shows that sometimes you have to know when to put things to bed and move on and that a six year break is a huge chasm to transverse in today’s technology.

Vook: Sounds Like?

When we heard of the release by Simon & Schuster of their Vook we were intrested to see it and understand how it linked multi media. The same night we were on Litopia After Dark and were asked to rebrand the 'book'.

The jury is still out on the Vook as far as the content is concerned but the name is a mess and certainly one to drop. What we can see from the clip above is interested but somehow lacks that cutting edge found in other multi media stories such as 'Inanimate Alice'.

It certainly isn't a video book trailer and all media is contained within the Vook which can also be downloaded directly onto an iPhone and viewed/read there. Today there are four titles available , two fiction and two nonfiction priced at $4.99. These are available a dedicated section of S&S's web site and Vook's site.

We wish them well and respect that they are thinking outside of the jacket.

Digital Novels That Break The Spine's Straightjacket

We spent some time with some creative media friends one of which is a film producer and talked about what digital content will look like in this new age. It was interesting that he immediately thought games, books and film went hand in hand but stated that the big problem was getting creaters to work outside their comfort zone.

We showed him kate Pullinger’s ‘Inanimate Alice’ and he was transfixed. Having not seen it for many months we too found the creativity and diversity of its construction even more compelling than we have first seen it and interviewed her.

Anthony Zuiker, the creator of the CSI: Crime Scene Investigation U.S. television series, is to release a multi media ‘digi-novel; to be published by Dutton this month. ‘Level 26: Dark Origins’, is a crime novel that ‘ invites readers to log on to a website about every 20 pages using a special code to watch a "cyber-bridge" — a three-minute film clip tied to the story.’

By combining books, film and the web he is breaking the spine of the book and although it appears not to be as greater step to that taken by Pullinger it still is a significant one. Zuiker wrote an outline for the novel, which was then written by Duane Swierczynski, and then wrote and directed the film clips for the website.

Zuiker say the book can be read by itself but believes that the one dimensional ebook readers fail to offer entertainment choice as they don’t play videos. He believes that people’s attention span is shortening and they need more options on how they consumed entertainment and books. "I wanted to bring all the best in publishing, in a motion picture, in a website and converge all three into one experience and when the book finished and the bridges finished, I wanted the experience to continue online and in a social community."

Both Pullinger and Zuiker are exploding the spine that has straight-jacketed creators and although it may not suit all this new environment is enabling some to express themselves and engage with the reader on many levels.

A Lesson in Digital Creative Writing

We are now speaking to a number of authors and content creators about the digital opportunities and challenges that they now face. We are looking at how it is affecting them, their relationships, and the processes and activities right across the publishing value chain and life cycle from creation to public domain.

This week we had the pleasure of interviewing an author with a difference perspective, Kate Pullinger. We were drawn to Kate by the article she wrote in the Guardian last month, ‘Writers can learn a lot from the Hollywood strike. We deserve a better deal from digital publishing’. The article raised many valid points and clearly touched a spot, as it generated high number of comments.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/feb/28/bookscomment.digitalmedia
We were interested in her digital experiences not so much from the commercial side but the writing itself. She has authored several novels, writes for radio, film and for digital media and currently teaches on the MA in Creative Writing and New Media at De Montfort University, Leicester. She was also the Research Fellow for TRACE online writing centre from 2002-3.

So Kate not only writes, but teaches writers and has importantly worked with new media. Kate clearly sees the glass half full and the opportunities for all in the New World, but she also recognises that the format often dictates the form. To put it another way, books are books and their size and structure are often fixed to fit the package not necessarily the content itself. Creating multi media works needs to support multi media at the beginning, during the development and at the end. It is not a case of writing the text and adding the ‘effects’ at the end.

We visited Kate’s impressive web site http://www.katepullinger.com and her latest digital work http://www.inanimatealice.com , a multi media graphic novel in episodes. We will all have our own views on whether it works or doesn’t but the one thing it certainly provides is evidence that creativity is not confined to a live in a jacket. Just as MTV enhanced music and YouTube changed video, then digitisation has the potential to change the book.