Tom Abba
@tomabba
Professor of Narrative Technologies. Director Digital Cultures Research Centre and Pervasive Media Studio Resident. Artist, writer and publisher. Opinions are all my own. Usually making something.
In a break from making immersive experiences (yes, books are immersive too), here’s the first three chapters of a huge project that started fourteen years ago. On sale by this weekend.
COME ON!! We're in @sfxmagazine.bsky.social this month. Still taking pledges for 13 more days. Six episodes of folk horror immersive audio in @davidmbarnett.bsky.social's Withered Hill universe. (photo by Jeni Clack. Bookshelves by Tom and Jeni) www.kickstarter.com/projects/tom...
Am trying to find time to finish the Twenty Days of Turin (Giorgio De Maria, translated by Ramon Glazov). Another recommendation from @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social (with an intro from Jeff to boot)
All Tomorrows by C. M. Kösemen. Superb, strange and so so weird. #BookSky #AmReading #MondayReads #TBR
We had a (rotting trunk) one taken down a few years ago. Frighteningly fast…
A closed community is at once a shelter, a mystery and a trap. #12daysofyule #witheredhill #thedevilssound
Down by the river, where the willow buds float, marking the arrival of spring. Down by the river, where the corpse petals rot, clinging to your skin like a curse. #12daysofyule #witheredhill #thedevilssound
Bury your regrets. Cover them with dry earth, and burn herbs over the mound. Leave this place as you found it, and return to the sunlight. #12daysofyule #witheredhill #thedevilssound
Husk by husk, crumb by crumb, pinch by pinch. The trail to follow was laid years before, and left for you and you alone. To another’s eye, it was never there. #12daysofyule #witheredhill #thedevilssound
The ability to survive, and even thrive, in a new environment, is immediately tied to one’s facility for adaptation and rapid reevaluation in the face of a changed worldview. #12daysofyule #witheredhill #thedevilssound
The message that underscores all encounters with the land, with the older ways, is that there are rules you have forgotten. The consequences of which will exact a price. #12daysofyule #witheredhill #thedevilssound
Inside the deep midwinter, when the days are narrow, we see our footprints, piled one on top of the other. We have travelled these roads before. #12daysofyule #witheredhill #thedevilssound
We begin, appropriately enough, at the end. Where everything is revealed and some things are put to rest. #12daysofYule #thedevilssound #witheredhill
Massive news!!!! The Devil’s Sound - a six part immersive audio series, set in @davidmbarnett.bsky.social’s Withered Hill universe, is coming to Kickstarter January 9th. Sign up for updates: www.kickstarter.com/projects/tom... Follow the Devil’s Sound Instagram: www.instagram.com/thedevilssou...
@richardlittler.bsky.social seen on Vinted. Glad to know things are categorised properly.
That’s not a sign. It’s a poorly kerned (do I detect the hand of Microsoft word?) printout on sheets of A3 paper tacked to the wall.
Found it! The Malago. What I didn’t know until yesterday is that one of its relief culverts runs right under the building my studio is in.. (Hugely enjoying Is A River Alive btw. This journey is for a piece of immersive art that’s becoming massively informed by that book)
Our forefathers tamed the brooks, and the streams, and the rivers. They harnessed the sea, and tethered the flow of life itself to their own ends. But none of it was ever theirs. The Devil’s Sound. A limited series immersive audio presentation. The journey begins soon.
Okay. Two books published today. Each is designed to be strange. They’re books, and not books. They know who you are, and where they came from. And they’re not going back quietly. Shipping today. ambientliterature.bigcartel.com/product/none... ambientliterature.bigcartel.com/product/none...
We don’t do unboxing videos here. But, it has arrived. Hardback and softback. Update and ordering details in a few days.
Spent most of the day wrestling with layouts and then realised exactly what I was recreating. (Yes, @iangadd.bsky.social, this is your fault..)
With book reading. We should do more book reading in lunchtime talks. Seems civilised somehow.
Stage one. 24 hard bound cases ‘treated’ with an oxyacetylene torch. Now to flatten them back and move to the inner contents. (I’m making a book)
Back in the studio for the first time in weeks. First steps. This one is for @hutchinsondave.bsky.social