For this edition of Meanwhile… we asked around the Annexe HQ for the internet treats that we recommend. Not all of these are new, but they’re all well worth a gander. From the Book Cover Archive to a Museum of Unnatural History with a brief stop at the world of interactive arts to tell stories.
The Book Cover Archive
An absolute gem of the interweb. Ben Pieratt and Eric Jacobsen have been archiving and maintaining the archive for quite some time now. It’s a fantastic place to wonder through the various imaginings of classic and contemporary books.
The Book Cover Archive
The Lake
Recently Cologne was the setting for the NotGames Festival. The idea behind NotGames is to explore how far interactive media (like video games) can be used to express ideas and convey stories without the focus lying in competitive goals and ‘winning’. One of our favourites from this year was a piece called the Lake.
It’s a very difficult thing to tell an entire story only in sound effects, but Patrick Juchli has succeeded admirably. The plot centres around a journey to a lake. You contral a playing card, turning it over and over. As you turn the card you get closer to the lake. As you get closer to the lake, the sounds change and the story unfurls. The story/game exists on your smartphone so you can play as you walk around, letting the sounds blend in with the real world. It creates a delightfully secret form of storytelling. You can hear a whole world that no one else can.
The Lake
The Museum of Unnatural History
This is one for our friends across the Pond. The Museum of Unnatural History is much like our own Ministry of Stories. A space for supporting young creative writing. It’s a fantastic project that we wholeheartedly support.
The part that we get a particular chuckle out of is their gift shop. The objects are normally pretty mundane things, but the stories they weave for each one lift them to be unique. Stuff like Sabretooth Tiger dental floss, Koala Bear Containment Units, the Missing Link and Mega Sand make us laugh more than we’d care to admit.
The Unnatural History Gift Shop
If you’re interested in our own creative writing centre have a look at the Ministry of Stories
annexemagazine 