VirtualDayz 2.0

I'm planning to revive this blog, VirtualDayz, and continue the explorations of personal and cultural memory that my earlier posts addressed. (Entries from June 2005 to July 2006 are documented in the book VirtualDayz: Remediated Visions & Digital Memories and in a Kindle edition.)

I'm looking for projects to critique, so please feel free to recommend innovative approaches to personal or cultural memory that use some form of new media, a term I use broadly. When I began a "Webliography" of such works about ten years ago, I used the following categories: online diaries/journals; self-representations/memoirs; letters; travelogues; representations of others; memorials/remembrances (with special section devoted to 9/11); and fan sites. I'll have to update these categories.

Note: Abridged versions of self-representations and letters have been posted on this blog.

Leah's Belated Hurrah

My novel, Arella's Repertoire, is undergoing another transformation. A Time Traveler En Route: Leah’s Belated Hurrah, the latest incarnation of this hybrid text, can be read in a variety of ways: as a linear narrative; as the early stages of a script for film, video, or interactive digital platforms; and as the basis of a choreographed dance performance.

The entire piece contains separate chapters/performances for selected time periods in the main character’s life, from childhood to middle age. Each decade of her life is represented: Chronologically, the first performance takes place in the mid-1960s, and the last one, so far, takes place in the mid-1990s. I may add new chapters later, crossing over into the twenty-first century.

A Time Traveler En Route: Leah’s Belated Hurrah may be read in any order, since each chapter is designed to stand on its own, as well as part of the ongoing narrative. I've been posting excerpts on Scribd (the YouTube for writers). "A Child's Space" is the only chapter accessible to the public now, although I may make other chapters public later.

For an overview of all the documents I've posted on Scribd, click here.

I'm also experimenting with "FiledBy," a new site for published books. I now have a profile.

Revisiting Annette Kuhn on VirtualDayz

The most popular entry I've posted on VirtualDayz since I started this blog in 2005 has been a commentary on Family Secrets: Acts of Memory and Imagination, a memoir by British film scholar Annette Kuhn. Four years later, it's still attracting readers from around the world. The text receives at least a few hits almost daily, mainly through Google searches.

When I published VirtualDayz: Remediated Visions & Digital Memories, a "blook" (blog + book) based on this blog, I slightly edited both "Annette Kuhn and Memory Work: Reflections on Family Secrets" and "Enigmatic Fascinations: Re-viewing Memory Texts," a follow-up post inspired by Kuhn's creative memory work. Given the widespread interest in Kuhn's work, I've posted a pdf of these two entries on my Scribd site. See “Annette Kuhn on VirtualDayz.”

"Video-Graphic Alchemy" on Scribd

Video-Graphic Alchemy: Transforming "Dear Diary," my multimedia artist's book, can now be read online in its entirety on Scribd, a social publishing company that allows writers to share their work. Hard copies of the 52-page book are available on Amazon.com.

Autobiographical Mashups and Recycled Memories: A Multimedia Quartet

Recycled Memories: A Multimedia Quartet, a DVD now available on my storefront, includes digital copies of the four interrelated books I recently published:

• Arella’s Repertoire—a novel that reworks archival materials across various media while exploring personal and cultural memory during the second half of the twentieth century. The text is framed as a hyperlinked blog.
• Vagabond Scribe (Leah’s Backstory)—a literary experiment that inspired Arella’s Repertoire. Both texts tap into the same archives.
• Video-Graphic Alchemy: Transforming “Dear Diary”—a personal, illustrated reflection on how the multimedia projects I was working on in the late 1980s influenced my approach to Vagabond Scribe and thus, indirectly, to Arella’s Repertoire.
• VirtualDayz: Remediated Visions & Digital Memories—my blog reformatted and published as a “blook” in which an early draft of Video-Graphic Alchemy first appeared. I kept the blog while writing Arella’s Repertoire and refer to the novel now and then.

The idea to present these four texts as a quartet came after I had finished them all. Only then did I start to connect the dots and see how the disparate works might relate to one another and contribute to a project greater than the sum of the parts. Initially, my primary focus had been on Arella’s Repertoire—I saw everything else as background for understanding the novel. Lately, though, my perspective has been shifting, and I’m thinking more about how the four texts together set in motion a creative methodology that resembles autobiographical variations of the mashups and remixes that have become so popular in the digital age.

My fictional texts draw from both personal and cultural archives that shaped the characters’ life stories, and my early multimedia experiments tap into my childhood diaries. Overall, the entire project that the quartet represents relies on transformations of texts from one context—and often one medium—to another. Video-Graphic Alchemy explains the process so far and offers examples (see the preview online). Arella’s Repertoire, the most recent incarnation of this open-ended venture, may turn out to be a springboard to future transformations.

If so, I’d like the next stage to involve collaborations. I envision original videos of live performance and dance combined with digital presentations of the text either online or on DVD. The transformations could deal with the prelude of the novel (which can be previewed online), with the scenes listed in Arella’s Multimedia Gallery, or perhaps with the dance performances scattered throughout Arella’s Repertoire. I’d welcome suggestions.

P.S. Video-Graphic Alchemy and VirtualDayz are also available on Amazon.com. (Video-Graphic Alchemy should be searchable soon.) VirtualDayz is available on the Kindle, too. It’s also being processed for the Google Book Search program.

Technorati tags: archives, autobiography, collaboration, literary fiction, mashup, memory, multimedia, remix, transformation, video art, writing, creative process

VirtualDayz Transformed Once Again

VirtualDayz: Remediated Visions & Digital Memories, the “blook” based on my blog, is now available on Amazon.com. The “search inside” feature should be activated soon. I may format the text for the Kindle, Amazon’s new wireless reading device. Transformations of my work continue.

Technorati tags: blook, blog, autobiography, cultural memory, personal memory, diary, digital art, new media, multimedia, video art, writing, e-literature, archives, performance