What if there was a little extra magic in the world?
What if your everyday could be infused with story?
For the last two years, our team of artists, writers, researchers, and technologists have been developing literary works that manifest alongside your daily routine. Delivered by smartphone, and responding to your presence in the world, these pieces of Ambient Literature offer each reader an opportunity to experience the world a little differently. Whether as a participant in a ghost story that knows where you are, or experiencing a poetic reflection on connection, change and memory as you walk through the streets, these works exist somewhere between the ethereal and the magical.
The Ambient Literature project is bringing two commissioned works — Kate Pullinger’s Breathe, and Duncan Speakman’s It Must Have Been Dark By Then to the festival.
On Monday 28th May, we’re hosting a panel discussion about the future of the book and technology, and a series of workshops in which participants can learn how these stories are written and made, and write one themselves. A new piece of Ambient Literature — Words We Never Wrote — written by Tom Abba — has been created especially for Hay, and will be available to experience during the whole festival.
More Information about Words We Never Wrote >>
More Information about Hay Festival >>
Ambient Literature and the future of storytelling, 28th May, 7pm
Join the Ambient Literature team and their guests for a discussion exploring the role digital technologies can play in designing and writing literary experiences that go far beyond the printed page. The smartphone’s ubiquitous presence in our society and the emergence of new digital platforms offers writers and designers the opportunity to make work that doesn’t replicate the physical book, but rather explores how we might encounter new technologies and new stories. Panelists will include Jon Dovey and Tom Abba, writer Joanna Walsh, and others.
Writing Ambient Literature Workshop, 28th May
Join writer Tom Abba to make your own ambient stories from words, audio and objects in this practical workshop. You will be introduced to writing techniques that will help you to craft stories from the world around you, and rethink your relationship with the phone in your pocket.
You don’t need to bring anything to this workshop — if you have a smartphone though, that would be helpful.
Three Sessions: