A Manifesto for Ambient Literature

We’ve spent the past two classes looking at manifestos with the objective of better understanding the ideas and ambitions of writers separated by an entire century but united in their commitment to exploring emergent aesthetics and technologies shaping poetics and stories. Next time round, I would like to include the Ambient Literature team’s Manifesto introduced by Tom Abba at last year’s Ambient Literature Symposium in Bristol.

This is an interdisciplinary project focused on understanding how the situation of reading is changing through pervasive and ubiquitous computing. Drawing on literary studies, creative writing, design, human-computer interaction, performance and new media studies, the research being developed looks to engage with the history of the book and see what that history is able to tell us about its future.

Ambient Literature is a two-year collaboration between the UWE Bristol, Bath Spa University, the University of Birmingham, and development partners Calvium, Ltd. established to investigate the locational and technological future of the book.

The aims of this interdisciplinary project are a multi-year collaborative investigation of the changing horizon of storytelling and bookmaking central to our own course.