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THE MODERN STORYTELLER :
The Languages of Computer Mythologies and the Algorithms of Technological Animism



Aleksandra Domanovic - Still from 'Turbo Sculpture', 2010-2013. HD video, colour, sound 22 mins


2014 at Chelsea School of Art and Bristol UWE spike island

This workshop and discussion group examines the role of contemporary storytellers in the age of prolific digital reproduction and how the mode of their language and the means of transmission might find new audiences and functions within our mediatised society. The current virtual landscapes of 'new-media' (skype, twitter, reddit, snapchat etc.) are implying shifts in narrative structures that are inline with our vast consumption of a variety of media from multiple sources. We are surrounded by new rituals and mythologies, communally curating a world full of devices that listen, breathe and sing to us, harking back to a type of Tribal Animism.

We aim to investigate these new languages and aesthetics that are adopted from the digital elite all the way down to your cyber-amateur. Whether artistic or programmatic the routing of meaning and implementation of signifiers has been rewired into our prosthetic senses; cameras, touch-screens, microphones and speakers acting as 'Extra-Sensory-Perception'. The development of computers and thusly computer games allowed for a personalisation or seemingly tailor-made experience of content causing a change-over from readers to users. The stories we tell each other today have no straight linearity instead they delineate participatory spaces and offer ambient worlds created through constant decision making; but within these communal spaces are some voices louder than others?

The workshop will involve active discussion and will lead up to a group exhibition displaying works by you as artists or users, pieces of fact or fiction that display your personal concerns, memories and experiences relating to Modern Storytelling and Computer Mythologies.

Some topics we will be covering: dark-nets, retro-videogames, 'weird twitter', Gary's Mod, The New Aesthetic, chatroulette, The Long Tail, BBM, Snapchat, Post-recently, dumpFM, 4Chan, PirateBay