Wittenoom: Speculative shell
and the cancerous breeze • 2008

”This award-winning responsive poem focuses on the Australian ghost town Wittenoom, abandoned due to toxic dust caused by asbestos mining. Each of its nine parts focuses on an aspect of the abandoned town and consists of an image from Wittenoom, generally portraying urban decay, an brief looping instrumental audio track, links to other parts of the poem, a title for the section, and a text accessible through different responsive interfaces. A brief parenthetical help text near the bottom left corner of each screen provides encouragement that hints at the interface, promting readers to explore the interactivity and intuit its internal logic. The thematic focus and consistent visual design pull the work together, while the varied interfaces lead to new explorations of the spaces, together producing an experience both jarring and immersive.”

-Flores, Leonardo. 2011. at https://elmcip.net/node/7126

Published & exhibited

Leonardo Electronic Almanac, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Winner of Newcastle Poetry price, New Media category, 2008.

Select documentation

Playable version: Wittenoom: Speculative shell and the cancerous breeze.

Szilak, Illya. 2013. ”Just Playing Around: Why E-lit Matters”. Huffpost. 15. March 2013.

The Next entry: https://the-next.eliterature.org/works/948/26/0/

Elmcip entry: https://elmcip.net/node/7126