A Place For Words: Science Museum, Writer in Residence
What happened?
Novelist Tony White was appointed Writer in Residence at the Science Museum for summer 2008. The brief was devised collaboratively through dialogue with Science Museum Arts Projects (SMAP). Tony wanted to use fiction as a means to respond imaginatively to the Museum's location in South Kensington and in particular to Mark Hansen and Ben Ruben's Listening Post, an artwork that remixes live text from internet chatrooms, bulletin boards and online forums in a digital soundscape, and which is part of the Museum's collection.
Drawing on the museum's history and locality, Tony devised a series of free public writing workshops to tie in with London Lit Plus (the 'open source literary festival for London' which ran in 2007 and 2008). Exploring a range of literary techniques including 'cut-ups' (combining disparate text fragments to create new stories), Tony led participants through the process of creating a new short story from scratch, in response to communication technologies and location. Participants had the opportunity to perform their work and have their stories published on the Science Museum website.
Tony also wrote his own short story, Albertopolis Disparu, which was published as 'A Science Museum booklet', a disused publishing imprint that he discovered in the Museum's archives and which the Museum revived for the occasion. 5,000 copies were printed and distributed for free via a dedicated display in the Museum, at accompanying events and at a Victorian cabman's shelter in South Kensington (local publishers used to distribute free books and newspapers to cab drivers at these shelters).
Project Gallery
Purpose-built display adjacent to the Listening Post gallery, the Science Museum. Photo: Tony White
Tony White reading at the launch © Science Museum
Display/poster graphic (detail) © Science Museum
What made it work?
- The 'stories' the museum already tells about itself provided a backdrop for Tony's own writing and opened unexpected doors in his work, including an exploration of 'steampunk', a science-fiction genre influenced by nineteenth century mechanical artefacts.
- The Science Museum and SMAP were very open to Tony's ideas about how the resulting work might be published and distributed, creating freedom to experiment throughout and being creative with corporate branding.
- Collaborating with existing literature networks and events such as London Lit Plus and The Book Club Boutique allowed the workshops, stories and Tony's final booklet to be circulated beyond the Science Museum's usual reach.
