Edward Picot's blog

Dr Hairy in: Phoning the London Hospital

In "ordinary life" I work as an administrator in the NHS, and in collaboration with my friends Julian Le Saux and David Hindmarsh I have recently started to put together a series of 10-minute puppet-videos chronicling the misadventures and frustrations of an ordinary (but rather hirsute) General Practitioner called Dr Hairy.

Not-so-silly Millie: An appreciation of Millie Niss

Newly co-published by Furtherfield and The Hyperliterature Exchange: an appreciation of Millie Niss, the writer and new media artist, who died in November of last year.

And - Chapters 9-16

"Mr Thornton walked rapidly, without awaiting Dixon's slow movements. Margaret stood by the tea-table, resolved. The lines in her father's face were soft and waving, with a frequent undulating kind of trembling, the dreamy lids a considerable distance from the eyes. Mr Thornton's straight brows fell low, principally about the lips, one moment stretching from earth to sky and filling all the width of the horizon, at the next obediently compressed into a vase."

London Churches, Part 2

"Coffee stall by the front entrance. People drinking coffee in the shade of a tree. More or less everyone in suits. Business coffee-break. Giles, meet me at half-two, outside the church, for a power-espresso. Stockbrokers, financiers, commodity-dealers. I don't do tangibles, I do invisibles, I'm into futures, that's where the big money is. Right in front of the church steps. If Jesus were to pay an unexpected visit, I wonder if he'd knock their tables over?"

And - Chapters 1-8

"The house was full of packing-cases. Even the pretty lawn at the side was to pack up, stiffly and slowly, through the bare echoing November. The very robin that her father had so often made, with his own hands, more gorgeous than ever; amber and golden; here, at this bed of thyme, began to speak of carrots. The grand inarticulate mighty roar."

In a Dark Wood - review of The Path by Tale of Tales

Newly co-published by Furtherfield and The Hyperliterature Exchange: a review of The Path, a "short horror game" by Tale of Tales (Michael Samyn and Auriea Harvey), based on the story of Little Red Riding Hood.

London Churches, Part 1

The idea of the London Churches project is to visit every church in the City of London - and probably a few outside - and use the visits as the basis of an online work. This isn't a blog, and it certainly isn't a historical or architectural guide. It's a work of hyperfiction, but derived from real places, real experiences, real observations and real conversations. In many ways it isn't about the churches themselves, but the experience of visiting them.

Play on Meaning? - Computer Games as Art

Newly co-published by Furtherfield and The Hyperliterature Exchange: an examination of the new genre of art computer games, dealing with The Princess Murderer by Geniwate and Deena Larsen, The Free Culture Game by Molleindustria, The Marriage by Rod Humble, Samorost 2 by Amanita Design, The Graveyard by Tale of Tales and Gravitation by Jason Rohrer.

The Puzzle Box complete - and some experimental videos

I have now finished revising The Puzzle Box, as follows:

1. A new interface/front cover
2. One new Help Card animation and a couple of minor amendments to other animations
3. More sparing use of the box-icon within the chapters: it now only appears at those points where the box is mentioned in the narrative, and where readers will find something new if they click to open it
4. The page-background for Chapter Three has been redesigned

The Puzzle Box, Chapters 11 & 12