Writing – Page 8 – orbific weblog

The New Aesthetic and (Uncreative) Writing

I’ve been seeing references to the ‘New Aesthetic’ for a while but never really understood the term. A rainy Bank Holiday Monday seemed a good time to try and understand what this is all about.

Following a recent panel discussion at South-by-Southwest, Bruce Sterling wrote An Essay on the New Aesthetic. Much of this feels as if Sterling is declaring that he, for one, welcomes our New Aesthetic overlords. There’s a slightly bullying tone to the article, an us-and-them separation which occurred in several pieces I've read about the New Aesthetic.

It is 5 paragraphs before Sterling attempts a definition: “The New Aesthetic is image-processing for British media designers”, apparently. Sterling sees this as an art movement, referring to Cubism, Impressionism, Constructivism and Futurism. "This is one of those moments when the art world sidles over toward a visual technology and tries to get all metaphysical. This is the attempted imposition on the public of a new way of perceiving reality," one that "concerns itself with 'an eruption of the digital into the physical'"

Sterling’s essay left me bemused. He seems more interested in the New Aesthetic as a movement than a category, which seems to be a common trope. But I didn’t want to dismiss this (after all, it took me weeks to decide that deconstruction wasn’t just clever pedantry). New things often take time to grasp. But it’s hard to find a clear description of the New Aesthetic – it is too new or else judged to be too insignificant for a wikipedia page.

The New Aesthetic is often defined by its strong visual element, as demonstrated on the Official Tumblr Feed. This visual style is summarised by Damien G Walter as "glitches and corruption artefacts in digital objects, render ghosts, satellite views, retro 80′s graphics" (the New Aethetic's love of 'retro 80's graphics' has prompted an interesting response by Dan Catt).

There is no recording availble online from the SXSW panel, although there are some good summaries. James Bridle, the panel's chair, writes: "One of the core themes of the New Aesthetic has been our collaboration with technology, whether that’s bots, digital cameras or satellites (and whether that collaboration is conscious or unconscious), and a useful visual shorthand for that collaboration has been glitchy and pixelated imagery, a way of seeing that seems to reveal a blurring between “the real” and “the digital”, the physical and the virtual, the human and the machine". Bridle's related talk at the Lift Conference, We Fell in Love in a Coded Space is well worth the 20 minutes it takes to watch.

But the article that really persuaded me about the New Aesthetic was one by Russell Davies, another of the SXSW panellists: SXSW, the new aesthetic and writing. Starting from a simple typo on a printed notice, Davies goes on to say that "lots of what's great about reading and writing is the direct connection between reader and author, but what's exciting me at the moment is the idea that there's a third party in there too – machines, software, bots".

And it’s in the world of writing where this makes most sense to me. Writing is always mediated by some sort of technology, and different technologies have different effects. The poet Kenneth Goldsmith stated that, with the Internet, writing had met its photography, that the effect of being able to publish, distribute and generate text on such a scale would have as significant an effect on writing as photography did on painting.

Goldsmith responded to these issues, among others, in his book Uncreative Writing. One can see many other bizarre and fasinating examples of what modern technology does to writing. The company Narrative Science are working on software to automatically write news stories. Realtime website analysis is leading to media companies such as Gawker and the Mail Online optimising their stories to most efficiently produce advertising revenue, with fascinating effects on their style and content. There are content farms automatically producing ebooks and selling them on amazon. Recently Google Ngram was used to spot anachronistic language in Downton Abbey (what happens when word-processors add real-time detection of such things?). And then there is robo-poetics, poetry written by software to be read by software. Writing is becoming stranger than ever.

I don't know if all of the examples above fit within the New Aesthetic (is there an inspection council? A grading system of some type?). The issues questioned by the New Aesthetic are obviously not new, but it's good that those things have a name, and thus a means to collect and analyse them.

UPDATE: I've written a brief follow-up

Spacedog fan fiction

Spacedog are one of my favourite bands. They seem as if they'd be easy to describe, but obvious words like ambient, haunting, or ethereal don't do them justice. There's a lot of humour in their live shows, robotics and a weird touch of folk music. And there's also Hugo.

Back in May I saw Spacedog's Televisor show at the Brighton Fringe (video here). In the interval I scribbled a short story inspired by one of their songs, Laika. I tidied it up a week or two later and gave Sarah a copy. She's now put it on her website and you can read it there.

Sarah's site also includes a great pair of essays on Twitter, one against and one (guardedly) in favour. They give an interesting account of what twitter is and isn't, as well as describing one person learning how they prefer to use the medium.

Clown stories volume one

Last night, Mr. Parkinson came round to visit:

We drank beer, ate curry and worked on the layout for Clown Stories Volume 1. There's still a little more work to do, but I'm hoping to finish that later this month. A few last minute bits of proofing, and a general polishing of the design and it will be ready:

The cover is by the illustrator Kate Shields. The book contains three stories by Chris and the rest are mine. They're not the worst of my clown stories – only two people have read those, and I'm not really in touch with them any more. They're not the worst of my clown stories, but some of them are not very nice.

What can we learn from Hitler and Hume?

In his talk on Algorithmic Art, Tom discussed the sales on his Hitler and Hume project. Tom used Mein Kampf as an input to music generation software and has put it for sale on Amazon and iTunes. Tom openly admits that ambient marimba and woodblock music is not a great musical innovation. However, he surprised me when he announced, "I'm selling nearly £25 a month of this rubbish at the moment. Vast majority EU, then the US. Grossed about £250… I have friends with actual musical talent who've sold less."

The interesting question here is: what are people buying when they buy a record from HItler and Hume?

Tom's discussion of his project made me think of some interesting posts I've read lately:

Which is not to compare Hitler and Hume to scammy ebook publications. But, what's interesting is that

Amazon is such a low-friction way of selling content
People who want to buy the Hitler and Hume EP are finding it (even if there are only a small number of potential fans out there)

I think this is, potentially, incredibly exciting.

Not for the Faint Hearted and the third thought

Last night was the ninth Not for the Faint Hearted session that Ellen and I have run. I still feel the same excitement about the event that I felt for the first. We're also still bringing in new people along with our regulars. That mix of friends and newcomers is one of the things that keeps it fresh.

The prompt images that we used last night were:

This time we used several black and white archive images. Weirdly I found those more difficult to write about than modern photos.

My favourite thing about these sessions is hearing the different responses people have had to the same images. For me, one of the challenges is finding a good idea in the time available while still having time to write it.

I know now that I can write and edit a basic story in about 90 seconds – although I prefer to have longer. This gives me time to sift through ideas, abandoning the first few until I encounter one that surprises me. This reminds me of some advice that the journalist Caitlin Moran was given by Alan Coren:

"The first idea that occurs to you, will have occurred to everyone. The second idea that occurs to you, will have already also occurred to the clever people. But your third idea – only you will have had that one."

Writing and the Tarot Workshop

On Saturday we had the latest of the Brighton Creative Writing Sessions workshops, on Writing and the Tarot. Ellen and I were very excited as we had a guest tutor for the event, poet and tarot-reader Naomi Foyle.

The tarot has an interesting history as a tool for writers. Italo Calvino described it as a "machine for telling stories", and used it as the basis for his book The Castle of Cross Destinies. (Apparently there was supposed to be a third part of this book, called the Motel of Crossed Destinies, which was never written).

The workshop explored the Major Arcana and Fool's Journey. We played with relating the archetypal symbols on the cards with stories. For me it was most interesting to see how different people interpreted the cards, and the way these symbols could be used, something I want to continue exploring. I was also fascinated to learn that Ted Hughes collection, the Birthday Letters can be analysed in terms of the Major Arcana – more information here.

I had a fascinating day – thank you to Naomi for running the workshop, and to Jake for providing the space. Ellen and I are now planning 2011's workshops. We have a Top Secret session planned for January, and Writing Brighton in February. Details to follow!

Some links on writing that have excited me recently

James Bridle on Chetan Bhagat. I read all of Bhagat's novels on my holiday. They were a more interesting glimpse into India than many of the books I read written by non-Indian journalists. Bhagat is one of the most widely read authors in the world.
Russell Davies has posted some of his favourite quotes from the new Coupland novel. The comment he makes introducing them is interesting: "I'm sure I'll read more of Mr Coupland's books but I'd almost rather read his lists or his notes. It seems like he's the perfect novelist to write the something-that's-not-a-novel that must be just around the corner." Having recently read Reality Hunger, I'm starting to see signs of this something-that's-not-a-novel all over the place.
Another James Bridle article Birth Pangs of a New Literature: " Authors will keep on writing. They won’t get paid much, but hey, they never did. In fact, there’s a chance they’ll get paid more, if they’re smart, but probably not."
John Scalzi's Open Letter to MFA Writing Programs (and their students), prompted by the James Frey controversy. Some good points here, but one thing fills me with horror: some Americans are going into six figures of debt for a creative writing program? That sounds insane. More here.
An awesome post from Everett True. The comments are worth a read too. "You don’t have to work for them. You don’t have to write for them."
Fantastic interview with Mark Z. Danielewski, author of House of Leaves: "20 pages of architectural names. Ed Kastenmeier recalls this as MZD’s way of telling/showing Ed that the names weren’t meant to be read, that you were not expected to absorb every syllable in this book. Which is why when he was asked to cut them down, he sent back a revision with double the amount of names in it. Ed then understood that some of the passages in House of Leaves were not meant to be studied, at best, a misdirection at worst."
Via Tom: Six Word Story, which seems to be an online game similar to the Not for the Faint-Hearted workshops Ellen and I run.
Yet another link from James Bridle, who argues that publishers are losing millions to book guilt: "When someone with a bad case fails to finish a book, they don’t start a new one; they go into a holding pattern, crippled by guilt over their failure and unable to let go and start over. All reading stops. People have confessed to me that it’s been months since they last picked up a book, because they still haven’t finished the last one."
The cost of a Richard and Judy recommendation: £25,000 and 50p per copy sold
One last link, not really on writing… Path sounds like an interesting social network. Like twitter, it adds limitations: only 50 'friends' – focussing on quality of interaction, not quantity. Another limitation is that communication is restricted to photos, with the idea of 'giving' glimpses of moments. There is an interesting article at Wired. Today, I saw Path described as an 'anti-social social network'. Not sure how useful that description is, but this is an interesting category.

Some Thoughts On Writing About Clowns

Raymond Chandler once gave the following rule for writing: "When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand."

You can certainly see that in Chandlers' work. When the Big Sleep was being adapted for cinema, Chandler was asked whether a certain character had been murder or had killed himself. He confided in a friend, "dammit I didn't know either."

When I am writing at the Not For the Faint-Hearted events, I have a number of tropes that I fall back on if I am stuck. One of these is clowns. They're so easy to write about. They're supposed to be having fun all the time, so if a clown unhappy you have an immediate question to work with. A clown sitting at the side of a street, with a half-empty bottle of whiskey: why?

I've shared my clown theory with my friend Louise Halvardsson. Her first clown story, Clowntown, was recently read at a short story night. I think there should be more stories about clowns. As Louise advises, "add a clown to your writing whenever you get stuck."

Rapunzel: story in the Hint Fiction anthology

I'm very excited to have a story published in the recent Hint Fiction anthology. The books contains stories of 25 words or fewer and I am thrilled to be published alongside people like Jonathan Carroll, Joe Lansdale and Peter Straub.

I'm fascinated by how small a story can be. Much very short fiction is disappointing, little more than summaries. But when someone gets it right, the effect is stunning, like the Baby Shoes story that is often attributed to Ernest Hemingway. So simple, yet so surprising. The anthology's editor, Robert Swartwood, says that Hint Fiction "should be complete by standing by itself as its own little world", and the book contains some great examples.

There's an interesting discussion at The Millions here and a New Yorker review here. The latter includes some examples, including Bob Thurber's Shipwrecked and LR Bonehill's Cull, two of my favourites from the book.

People who follow the weblog or twitter will know how much I fret about writing author biographies. Hint fiction has 25 word biographies for each of the writer, and Michael Martone's entry is the best example I have seen yet.

Thanks to Robert Swartwood for organising the anthology.

Article on creative writing workshops in Friction Magazine

I'm a little tardy in posting this, but I have an article in the first issue of Friction magazine, which is published by the Newcastle Center for the Literary Arts:

"If the current growth in creative writing courses continues for another 70 years, more people will be learning to write than taking driving lessons.

This unlikely and invented statistic underlines a genuine problem. I am bombarded with invitations to paid creative writing workshops and courses. While some of these are probably excellent, the barrage of announcements makes me want to weep. (If you’re attending or, please god, holding a course in social media ‘platforms’ for writers, you need to stop and think about your life)." (More here)

There are some fascinating pieces in the first issue. My favourite was Alex Lockwood's article on The Responsibilities of the Novelist, which discusses Nick Royle's novel Quilt and Scarlett Thomas' The End of Mr Y. I enjoyed reading Nick's novel and it's good to see a thoughtful response. There's also a fascinating story by Max Dunbar.