Digibury: comedy, hypertext and what makes space a place

We ushered in a rather stormy 2014 with three excellent presentations at The Gulbenkian: The impact of technology on hypertext fiction, what makes space a place and the history of technology in stand-up.

#1: Hyperfiction: Where did it go wrong?

Heidi Colthup looked at the history of hyperfiction and hypertext: Back in the 1990s when computer screen went mainstream, there was much talk about "the end of the book". Some writers of experimental fiction started producing CDRoms of hypertext stories, some continued to use traditional hard copy books with surprising results, and others wrote video games.

Today, we have games which we can read and hard copy books we can play. So, this begs the question: Where does that leave hypertext fiction?

#2: What makes space a place?

Daniel Knox and Keith Greenhow explored the meaning and development of the 'maker culture', posing the question to the audience, 'what makes a space a place?'... Oh, and they also brought a laser engraver built from cddrives and a 3d printer/milling machine which made a snowflake during the talk!

#3: Microphone, Spotlight and Twitter

Traditionally, stand-up comedy has been seen as a low-tech format, relying on equipment no more sophisticated than a microphone and a spotlight. In his talk, Olly Double examined the history of technology in stand-up, from the pre-microphone days of variety theatre, to the increasing use of multimedia in today’s comedy scene.

Been inspired? Got something to talk about? Submit your idea here and you too can be a Digibury speaker!

Next Digibury event: February 12 at The Gulbenkian.