Dreaming Methods – I ❤️ E-Poetry

“Dim O’Gauble” by Andy Campbell

July 22, 2012 by Leonardo Flores

This multimedia work uses a set of child-like drawings, links to gorgeously spooky artwork, zooming user interface, parallax scrolling with layers of artistic imagery, and a combination of static and scheduled lines of poetry to craft a richly immersive narrative experience. In his interview with Fabio De Vivo, Campbell discusses his creative process and goals when producing works for digital media, comparing it “to scrapbooking, with snippets of graphics, code, writing and sound all brought into the same place and blended/edited together to create a work which transcends (hopefully) any particular single component.”

“The Flat” by Andy Campbell

July 21, 2012 by Leonardo Flores

This narrative poem uses a series of photographs of an apartment that the reader can click on certain parts to navigate or explore with the pointer. The use of parallax scrolling, atmospheric background sounds, and the images themselves create an immersive experience for the readers, who have slightly over 2 minutes to explore these spaces perhaps with the hope of “winning.” Running out of time leads to a ghostly ending and the opportunity to “re-enter the flat,” which you’ll get three times before being redirected to Campbell’s main site, Dreaming Methods, a kind of “game over” convention from video games. This game aspect, in addition to the mystery of this flat’s history, help draw readers in to deeper, faster explorations of the spaces in this work, seeking narrative and game closure.

“Joyride” by Judi Alston and Andy Campbell

July 20, 2012 by Leonardo Flores

This hypertext poem is based on a set of images of a wrecked car— ostensibly the result of a joyride. Each image focuses on a detail of the crashed (or trashed) vehicle, punctuating the violence of the result with a sound associated with its frame of reference.

“Spawn” by Andy Campbell

July 19, 2012 by Leonardo Flores

This poem is structured around a cluster of little black dots that were “spawned” inside an upside down glass jar, that looks like a terrarium seeded with an alien species— or a surreal twist on capturing fireflies in a jar.

“FaceDown” by Andy Campbell

July 18, 2012 by Leonardo Flores

Open “FaceDown” by Andy Campbell

This poem is mapped onto an oddly lit, distorted image of a young man’s face that looks unconscious, drunk, maybe dead. The interface is simple: the reader drags the image and zooms in and out (predating Prezi’s ZUI by about 8 years) to be able to read the texts arranged on the face. With the use of grids and sounds making it reminiscent of the Esper machine in Blade Runner, this interface turns the reader into a kind of detective, examining this image for clues, texts, and insight on this emotional wreck of a speaker. Highlighted words in the poem (and in a navigation menu) trigger kinetic and responsive textual structures, each of which arranges lines in different ways, inviting readers to figure them out and the insights they provide.

“The Dead Tower” by Andy Campbell and Mez Breeze

July 17, 2012 by Leonardo Flores

This narrative poem is arranged on a darkly atmospheric virtual world designed to both creep you out and pull you in through curiosity. Like the proverbial moth, the reader’s attention is drawn towards the brightest things around: white words float in the air, static or rotating. And the lines of mezangelle verse both heighten the dread by telling fragments of a ghostly narrative prefigured by the bus crash site the reader finds herself in and soften the tone with hints about the interface that nudge the fourth wall.