Output details

Short Films for You

This collaboration with Duncan Speakman comprises a collection of micro-experiences, presented as a hard-bound volume accompanied by audio recordings, photography and audience-led participation. Abba’s contribution builds on his previous work in this field, developing a literature of ambience within Speakman’s site-specific experiential narrative practice.

Abba’s practice-led research critically addresses literary form in a digital environment. The work makes tangible the narrative framework outlined in ‘As We May Watch’ (Output 4), situating an audience’s imagination, presence and participation as hinges for interaction.

Abba’s curational contribution to the overall project was to originate formal techniques (including reader participation, platform interdependency, the role and form of the book) as part of a narrative design framework for the project. This was then employed by each successive artist to consider the convergence of digital and physical media as a specific platform as it related to their work on the project.

The complete work begins with Abba’s authored piece: ‘Six Shots’; asking the reader to sit alone while observing a stranger whose life story is experienced through an auditory proxy. This and each successive ‘story’ explores the relationship between medium, site, and the material object held by the participant.

The physical volume has an MP3 player embedded inside it, headphones attached. Inside the book are materials for each experience. A hand-made wooden box holds book, headphones and a magnifying glass. The completed work cannot be ‘read’ without navigating between multiple forms; readers can only reconcile the narrative by synthesising components of a cohesive whole. In this way, the work challenges norms identified with transmedia form, which hitherto have allowed readers to navigate independent media elements.