Creative writing workshop

On Tuesday 26th August 2008, novelist Tony White, the Science Museum’s writer in residence for summer 2008 will be running a creative writing workshop.

The workshop is FREE, but pre-booking is essential.

Workshop Information

The workshop is inspired by Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin's Listening Post, the Science Museum’s recent art acquisition which can be seen every day for free until February 2010.

Listening Post immerses the viewer in a rhythm of computer-synthesised voices reading, or singing out, a fluid play of uncensored and unedited real-time text fragments. The fragments are sampled from thousands of live, unrestricted internet chatrooms, bulletin boards and other online public forums. Listening Post asks the question: what might 100,000 people chatting online actually sound like? In the words of the artists, 'the messages start to form a giant cut-up poem'.

Inspired by Listening Post, this workshop explores the use of experimental writing techniques to create completely new works of fiction, using methods and approaches that Tony has developed both for his current work-in-progress Balkanising Bloomsbury and for his ongoing series of collaborations with visual artists.

To maximise writing time and discussions among the group, spaces are strictly limited to a maximum of 10 participants. This writing workshop is suitable for participants aged 18+.

Please note: Listening Post features uncensored fragments of text from live chatroom data. It may occasionally include content that is unsuitable for children or which some visitors may find offensive. The material is not produced or solicited by the Science Museum, so the Museum is unable to accept responsibility for the nature of the content that the work may extract from these sources.

Tuesday 26th August
09:45 to 17:00
The Science Museum, Exhibition Road, London, SW7 2DD

Refreshments and lunch is included as part of the workshop.

Participants will be asked to bring as a minimum:

• * Laptop or A4 notebook (whatever you'd normally write with!).

• * At least three source texts. These could include:

• - A number of phrases or text-fragments 'sampled' from Listening Post. (Please note the date and time that these samples were made.)

• - One or two newspaper cuttings – ideally one of these should reflect upon some aspect of media arts and society, the internet or communication generally. (Please retain the following information about these cuttings, e.g. author, title, publication and date of publication.)

• - A print-out of no more than two pages from a historical text sourced on the internet: this should be an 'open-source', creative commons-licenced or publicly held text resource – e.g. a Project Gutenberg e-text (fiction or non-fiction). This may be something that seems to have a connection or resonance with the 'Listening Post' project. As above, all information necessary to reference these texts should be retained.

• - Participants may also bring photocopies of a more personal piece of writing – in typed form – e.g. notebook fragments, letters from their youth, or rejected/unfinished/early drafts of their own writing.

Application

If you are interested in participating in this workshop, please send the information below to Ruth.Fenton@ScienceMuseum.org.uk.

Name
Age
Email address
Phone number
Why you are interested in participating in this workshop

If you require further information please contact Ruth Fenton, Arts Projects Coordinator. 020 7942 4896, Ruth.Fenton@ScienceMuseum.org.uk

About Tony White

Tony White is a London-based writer and the author of novels including Foxy-T (Faber and Faber, 2003), and the non-fiction work Another Fool in the Balkans (Cadogan, 2006). He co-edited the short story collection Croatian Nights (Serpent's Tail/VBZ, 2005), which was published simultaneously in English and Croatian translations. Tony has edited and published the artists' book imprint Piece of Paper Press since 1994, been literary editor for the Idler magazine and was part of Arts Council England's former Interdisciplinary Arts Department where amongst other things he executive produced the Pioneers in Art and Science DVD series and worked on development of the joint Arts Council/AHRC Arts and Science Research Fellowships (co-guest editing a special supplement on the programme for Leonardo Journal).

In 2007 Tony White received a Grants for the Arts award from Arts Council England towards completing a work of fiction in progress and exploring creative writing in interdisciplinary and research contexts. He was the attached writer for the recent Arts and Law Seminar on Interdisciplinary and Media Arts at King's College, Cambridge, and has produced works of fiction/prose as part of collaborations with artists including London Fieldworks, Bob and Roberta Smith, Alison Turnbull, Stephen Hull and Chris Dorley-Brown.

Tony is currently writing the libretto for a new Antarctic opera, South, by Martyn Harry. South is commissioned by The Opera Group and is expected to open in the summer of 2009.

Photo (c) Hugo Glendinning