Via boingboing, I discovered this brand-new web collaboration between writer John Sundman and artist Matthew Frederick Davis Hemming. The Pains is a serialized novella with pictures, available in a variety of media. Here, Sundman describes his collaborative, exemplary creative process...
"It started with a simple sentence in a Kuro5hin diary. Farq Q. Fenderson wrote,
'I woke up this morning with a pain in my body that felt like it might be a soul gone bad.'
I was struck by that conceit. What might “a soul gone bad” feel like? And how would you know? What would cause it?"
These multi-tasking and collaborative web wizards will survive the Internet Publishing Earthquake, part of a tough new breed of web-inspired writers. As networked books mature, hybrid artists like Sundman and Hemming will set the industry standard. We can learn a lot from their example.
Hemming runs StoryZoo Studios, "producing award-winning broadcast animation, experimental music, illustrated storybooks" with his wife, Astra Leona Hemming. Sundman writes the Wet Machine blog, meditating on computers, telling stories, and collaborating with his wife.
Thanks for your kind words. One correction: there are four main writers on wetmachine, of whom I am one. I don't write all the entries there. On average, I write about a third of them.
The fellow who made the video about the power lines with his wife is my friend Howard Stearns, a software engineer who works on the Croquet project.
Posted by: John Sundman | April 21, 2006 6:57 PM | Permalink to Comment