Sounds & Visions

It seems only yesterday that I was advising community groups and arts organisations about getting on the web or having a blog for their project. But what has happened recently is that the written “blog” isn’t enough for everyone – as cheap and easy audio and video devices become ubiquitous – the more can-do end of the arts is putting even the big boys to shame. I’m an irregular reader of Manchester Library’s Lit List – it’s a great place to find out what’s going on in the city’s literary scene – but was impressed to find you can now listen to this blog, as they’ve implemented Odiogo to make their blog speak for itself, allowing you to listen to the blog, or to subscribe to the podcast.
Literature should be seen as well as heard of course, and the relaunched website for The Other Room, Manchester’s only (as far as I know!) regular avant garde poetry night held at the Old Abbey Inn, has a great range of video content as well as the other stuff you’d expect, and is a really nice use of one of the more recent WordPress templates.
Add in Comma Films impressive archive of video interpretations, and local writer, and social media cafe regular Isabel Joely Black’s regular podcast of her expansive fantasy world of Amnar, and it’s clear that Manchester based writers, publishers, and literary nights are putting to shame their peers elsewhere in their taking to the web. Whereas the writer used to be technologically tongue-tied, the easiness of new publishing platforms and the judicious use of their own skills and contacts, means that for once, it is literature that is making good advantage of the web, perhaps even ahead of other art forms.
In all these cases the fickle nature of new web technologies has played to people’s advantage – seeing a new technology, a new service, or even a new WordPress template – the literary and tech-literate blogger is willing to give it a go.
And whilst we’re talking about innovative uses of web technologies for writing, this Friday is the deadline for a book being put together for Comic Relief, using Twitter to gather contributions. And of course, it won’t surprise you that there’s a Manchester angle to this as well, with Levenshulme’s Louise Bolotin editing the anthology before publication.