And the winner is...
New Media Writing Prize 2012 winner announced
Bournemouth University and if:book UK are delighted to announce that the winner of the 2012 New Media Writing Prize is
Katharine Norman for Window http://www.novamara.com/window
Dr James Pope said “It was tough picking a winner from such an accomplished shortlist. And whilst every shortlisted work met our judging criteria, in the end Katharine Norman’s Window stood out for the way the interactivity was entirely integral to the piece, for its meditative quality and for its impact on the audience’s perception.”
The winner was announced at an awards ceremony at Bournemouth University.
Window – an interactive sound essay in memory of John Cage – is a beautiful meditation made by a composer with a love of coding and an imagination that naturally expresses itself in digital, multimedia productions. The term ‘poetic’ in this field can be code for impenetrable, but this really is a multimedia poem of depth and substance, inspired by the work and philosophy of John Cage. The viewer/listener/reader looks out of a window, hears ambient sound, evocative text, using a slider which makes it possible and pleasurable to move from day to night, to remix the balance of text to sound.
Katharine Norman is at times a teacher, writer, sound artist and composer – in no particular order. She has an especial interest in listening, sound and place, and what’s sometimes called ‘acoustic ecology’, and her creative work traverses several disciplines, with an emphasis on sound and text.
She has a PhD from Princeton and has held academic posts in music and sonic art at Dartington College of Arts, Sheffield University, Goldsmiths and City University London. She has also taught in the Communications and Contemporary Arts Departments of Simon Fraser University, Canada, and has taught creative writing at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge. She currently continues her creative practice and research as an independent scholar and artist, and is honorary Research Fellow at De Montfort University’s department of Music, Technology and Innovation.
Her music and sound works are available on several CDs and by download. Her writings include Sounding Art (Eight Literary Excursions through Electronic Music), an unconventional monograph on listening and digital music (Ashgate, 2004), and several commissioned essays on sound. Most of these can be downloaded at her site, www.novamara.com.
For more information contact Chris Meade or Lisa Gee of if:book
Ends
Notes for editors
1. The shortlist
Jerome Fletcher: Pentimento http://air.falmouth.ac.uk/
2. Judging criteria
- Innovative use of new media to create an engaging, satisfying narrative or poem
- Ease of accessibility for the reader/viewer
- Effective use of interactive elements
- An example of how new media can do things traditional media can't
- The potential to reach out to an wide audience, i.e. not just specialist interest groups
3. judging panel
Dr James Pope (chair)
Sarah Butler
Lisa Gee
Louise Rice
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