Distracted Dad – Brighton Digital Festival

Last month, I was involved in three events in Brighton Digital Festival. That does mean that this column isn’t about kids – I promise Lego, tantrums and dinosaurs next time – but as the title says, sometimes I’m a Dad, and sometimes I’m distracted.

The Digital Festival is the kind of thing that makes it great to live in Brighton. There were over 150 events in this, its third year, mixing performance, art, literature, innovation with technology, coding, hacking etc. Anything digital really.

One of my events was called ‘Geo-Writing’ (www.geo-writing.com) Writers were invited to access writing prompts from their mobile or PC, and these varied according to their location. Basically, if you were near the pier the prompt might be an old photo of a couple in their 30’s, and at Hove Park you might witness someone slapping a man in an ice cream van. That sort of thing. I had to painstakingly input various Brighton or Hove positions and prompts, so I can now tell you the latitude and longitude of the gyratory on the Lewes Road (even if i’m still not sure the precise way to drive around it).

Loads of writers got involved, and the submissions had a rich variety. There are dying nuns, lost love against the background of canoes, and social embarrassment at cash points. Oh, and aliens. I got submissions from further afield too; their prompt just became the nearest border of Brighton. Sweden got Carden Park. I think New York found themselves with Portslade Old Village.

While in the midst of Geo-Writing, I was invited to be a guest writer in New Writing South’s Dot Dot Dot project. This was a digital game of ‘consequences’. With the first chapter by Brighton’s crime novelist Peter James, I was in honoured company. Each section was in a different medium – YouTube, Audio, Facebook etc. My contribution was fairly minor – I was allocated Twitter and tweeted under my alter ego @paragraphplanet – but the final results are definitely worth seeking out.

Finally, I also co-organised (together with local literary promoters Grit Lit and Story Studio) Flash-Lit Fiction, which took place at The Latest Musicbar (an excellent venue I should say: perfect size, great location, served alcohol, all the main requirements). We’ve done Flash Lit Fiction the last three years and it consisted of short story writers reading out tales under 300 words long (AKA ‘flash fiction’) in a competitive ‘slam’, plus there were also two Twitter competitions. One of my roles was to read the shortlisted mini-story tweets which I did so with all the actorly skill and resonance of a Sat Nav. It is a truth universally acknowledged that you have to Bear Left etc. The writers, I should say, were excellent. Check their details out on the website (www.flashlitfiction.com)

Not everything within the month went smoothly. I blame freak weather and freaky cats. Just as I was trying to prepare, lightning took out the phone, the digibox and – most relevantly – our router – and then our new cat, Percy, chewed through not one but three (digital) mice. This combination of Acts of God and Acts of Percy were not ideal preparation when I was trying to prepare digital events. As they say, though, the show must go on and – in the digital version of the cliché – if the show doesn’t go on, try turning it off and then turning the show on again. That should fix it.

Richard Hearn
www.geo-writing.com
www.flashlitfiction.com
www.newwritingsouth.com/bdf