The recent IOCT Salon was a great opportunity for students from the Online MA in Creative Writing & New Media to show case their most recent work. It featured inspirational performances from Chris Meade and Christine Wilks, fascinating talks from Toni Le Busque, Claudia Cragg and Alison Norrington – and a bit of waffling from me!

The event was organised by Chris Joseph as his last salon at the IOCT, as his time as digital writer in residence nears its end. Both past and present students were invited to show their work to a public audience, showing the range of artistic endeavours covered by the course and where these can lead.

Chris Meade has recently published a report commissioned by Sue Thomas titledDigital Livings, examining how digital writers, like us, might be able to monetize our work. Together with launching the report, he gave a performance of his creative non-fiction piece “drumming – becoming – forgetting”. I had only previously seen this piece as a blog with YouTube clips of drumming which could be left playing whilst one scrolled down to read the text. In the live performance, Chris read the text whilst playing a small drum. This interlocked with the audio and visuals from the YouTube clips to create far more complex texture. I have to say that this was quite a surprise for me – not because I didn’t enjoy Chris’ writing on its own previously, but because I had not considered how much a live performance like this could enhance a piece of new media writing.

In a similar way, Christine’s performance of her piece “Fitting the Pattern” brought the text element to life. Again, I had seen this during the workshop stages and enjoyed the tactile nature of the user engagement with the piece, which is built in Flash and requires the user to mimic dressmaking processes such as cutting, pinning and unpicking to reveal sections of the story. I remember that I was totally absorbed by the themes of fabric and family, but in the live performance I got a much stronger sense of place. This was particularly apparent when dialect terms arose such as “let’s bray her”, which Christine put across with far more expression than my internal voice could have managed.

In contrast, Toni gave a talk about her work throughout the course and some of the factors she considered when developing her creative practices – specifically with regards to copyright and fighting the battle against the “you’re out to destroy the book” gang. She showed us her final dissertation piece “Drunkalogue” as well as some of her more recent work using the Sophie software developed by The Institute for the Future of the Book. She gave us a quick demo of the software, showing how easy it is to create multimedia projects and share them with others. She made the very valid point that there are lots of emerging platforms that enable writers to create media-rich work without learning Flash or other complex programming skills.

Claudia also picked up on this theme in several of her observations throughout her talk about her Laboratory project “Twitter Suu”. She noted that beautifully designed websites alone are not the key to getting real involvement in a project, and programming skills are not necessary when using new media. Claudia spoke of the resistance she experienced from journalists who did not understand the role social networking tools like Twitter can play in generating support for a cause, and of her findings when researching where to focus her efforts to attract people most likely to rally in support to a cause. Her insights were particularly relevant in context of theNLab Social Networking Conference the next day.

Alison also spoke about the use of social networks in relation to her work – particularly the lessons she learnt from her Staying Single project, where she attempted to use a very wide range of social media to generate interest in her blog-based fiction. Alison gave us a sneak preview of her latest project “I ♥ NY” and how the lessons of Staying Single have informed her plans for this story. She is very enthusiastic about the ways that new media can be used to bring people into a story from different places, but also realistic about the amount of time that this type of promotion and networking can involve. She aims to be more focussed in her future efforts, rather than spreading herself too thinly across lots of networks – again, relevant to many of the discussions which followed at the NLab conference.

My own talk was a slightly waffly account of my current dissertation project to create an online tour of Bath – informed by an analysis of live guiding techniques. I demonstrated a couple of examples of existing virtual tours and talked about the importance of narrative when guiding an audience around a physical space. The project is in the early stages of development, but I was able to show the draft design, which features a chatterbot programmed to answer simple questions (although a failed wifi connection made this impossible to show). I also showed a clip of the tour itself, complete with animation.

In addition to the range of presentations, Dr Jess Laccetti had produced a critical essay considering the work of all the MA students. You can read is essay here. Greetings also came from many of the students who were unable to be present, including Janine, who despite being on her honeymoon was with us in spirit in the form of copies of her fanzine, produced as part of her Laboratory project and available for sale throughout the salon.

Many thanks have to go to Chris Joseph for organising this great showcase, and to Sue Thomas, Kate Pullinger and Jess Laccetti for all their efforts. It was a fascinating evening!