Project
Digital Fiction Curios

Project Directors
Andy Campbell, Lead Developer and Writer, Dreaming Methods
Judi Alston, Creative Director and Writer, Dreaming Methods
Alice Bell, Co-Curator, Sheffield Hallam University
Chris Joseph, Musician

Project URLs
https://dreamingmethods.com/digital-fiction-curios
https://dreamingmethods.itch.io/digital-fiction-curios

Project Reviewer
Jessica Laccetti, University of Alberta

Project Overview

Andy Campbell and Judi Alston

Digital Fiction Curios is a prototype immersive gallery that experiments with the concept of celebrating and exploring older electronic literature through virtual reality (VR). Many of Dreaming Methods' earliest stories were created in Flash, a technology that was removed from all major web browsers in 2020. Digital Fiction Curios archives and re-purposes three of our Flash works originally made as far back as 1999 and makes it possible to explore them in VR.

As a reader/player, Curios places you inside a mysterious “curiosity shop” where all manner of historical items and gadgets can be picked up and examined. Almost everything on show was created digitally decades ago. Curios was made working with Alice Bell from Sheffield Hallam University, funded through the university’s Creating Knowledge Impact Acceleration Account. The music is by Chris Joseph. 

Digital Fiction Curios had an extremely low budget for a VR experience and was challenging to create. It was entirely built in-house by Dreaming Methods as an attempt to offer an authentic window into three original Flash works, presenting them in a new and unique way that would invite close examination, supporting research materials and the opportunity to partly re-imagine the works as if they had been created for VR itself. Our eventual hope was then to look at creating a wider archive of digital fiction by other artists/writers.

The process involved discovering a way to run Flash content within VR and to allow that content to be interacted with. Our work in this area was limited to PCs and Windows specifically. The project was co-curated and research was undertaken by Bell. Her research was then audio-recorded and added to the project as a series of audio/video sequences viewable in work. Our main aim with the project was to create a proof-of-concept prototype. Curios may appeal to anyone interested in or studying electronic literature, digital art, VR, digital curation, or digital archives.

Curios appeared at the Electronic Literature Organization Conference in Cork and the British Library in 2019. It featured at the 10th Anniversary New Media Writing Prize at Bournemouth University and at the International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling in 2020, for which we created a short 360 tour. 

Project Review

Jessica Laccetti

The Digital Fiction Curios project, an experimental prototype developed by Dreaming Methods (Andy Campbell and Judi Alston) in collaboration with Alice Bell from Sheffield Hallam University, offers a unique and immersive exploration of dream-inspired narratives and lost realities within the domain of digital fiction. Andy Campbell's Dreaming Methods has consistently crafted immersive and multimodal storytelling experiences. With Curios, Campbell's proprioceptive ingenuity revives incompatible digital works, offering a tangible and engaging rediscovery. This innovative endeavor exemplifies Alson and Campbell's commitment to narrative exploration, seamlessly blending technology and the sensory to enhance the reader's encounter with digital stories, rendering them more palpable and captivating. Curios re-purposes Flash works from as early as 1999, inviting interactors to traverse dreamscapes and historical artifacts within a mysterious curiosity shop. The chime that sounds as you enter the shop indicates an almost hypnotic immersion into the story as you move, examine, and use pieces of the past to uncover the stories. 

This work is an multimodal exploration at the intersection of digital literature, historical preservation, and immersive technology. It embodies a transformative vision where the boundaries between technologically extinct digital narratives and modern virtual reality (VR) technology blur. The project is grounded in the premise of salvaging digital literary artifacts, predominantly Flash-based narratives from as early as 1999, which faced obsolescence due to the removal of Flash technology from major web browsers in 2020. By repurposing and reimagining these narratives within the VR (or first-person PC) landscape, Digital Fiction Curios effectively reinvigorates the essence of these works, offering an immersive and dynamic encounter with the past.

The interactive VR or first-person platform transports participants into a virtual curiosity shop, presenting an array of historical items and gadgets derived from the digital works of the past. As users navigate this environment by putting floppy disks into a computer, opening cupboards, examining a stone carving, or listening to the voices on the radio as it switches statically between stations, we are piecing together fragments of stories suspended in the digital air, employing Astrid Ensslin’s “lore” of “unresolved contradictions” (Ensslin 2022). This kinesthetic act of piecing together gets challenged by the oral narrative, as if storyworlds are vying for your attention and physical space. As interactors, we literally embody the act of literary reconstruction. This process aligns with the theme of the project - resurrecting and reconstituting digital stories in a manner that invites a reimagining and technologically able interpretation. 

Donning a set of VR goggles while wearing VR goggles adds a level of meta engagement. Through a now amplified virtual view, we are doubly engaged in the story world creation both through the story and also in real life with our arms reaching out to touch and hold and examine historical artifacts. This is slow reading — to hold, and turn, and examine shards of narrative. Frustratingly we cannot stop the tumbling or scrolling of words, so we must pick  up — again and again — artifacts to thoroughly understand the narrative threads. Here we are literally the epitome of corporeal fiction; we are situated in and situated by each story. 

Digital Fiction Curios is testament to the potential of VR in reinspiring and representing digital literary works. By empowering users to step into the digital past and interact with it, the project not only bridges the temporal divide between early digital fiction and contemporary technology but also paves the way for innovative approaches to preserve and engage with digital literary works in a technologically evolving world. 

Works Cited

Ensslin, A. (2022). Pre-web Digital Publishing and the Lore of Electronic Literature (Elements in Publishing and Book Culture). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108903165