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This is my personal website. Please also visit my other site, The Hyperliterature Exchange. Please also note that although a lot of the material on this site is child-friendly (and a good deal of it was created with my daughter Rachel in mind), certain items contain strong language, gruesome murders etc. I've labelled these items "Adult Content" to avoid giving offence.

My Recent Stuff

House of Dreams (June 2009) - About a year ago the musician and video artistMichael Szpakowski posted on YouTube a remix of Radiohead's "House of Cards", and I was so smitten with it that I kept trying to think of some words to go with it. Eventually I came up with a video called "House of Dreams", which has just been posted on the DVblog site at http://dvblog.org/movies/06_2009/picot/houseofdreams1.mov. It uses images from Second Life and The Endless Forest, footage from the original Radiohead video for "House of Cards", and some of Michael's own video imagery. You can also see it on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRr4e8ve7O8.

The Puzzle Box again - At the beginning of the year I gave The Puzzle Box a makeover (mainly a new index-page, but quite a lot of internal changes too) and prepared a print version for publication. You can see the made-over online version via the link above; or, if you're interested in the printed book, you can find it on Amazon UK if you search for "Edward Picot The Puzzle Box", or get it from Lulu.com, the publisher.

I recently had an e-mail about The Puzzle Box from Matt Fair, author of the epic philosophical sound-poem The World Owes You a Living. He wrote: "I want to tell you how much I enjoyed The Puzzle Box -- anyone who brings in William Blake as a character in a story has my attention -- wonderful dive down into the deep mythic roots of the world-soul and human soul. Story as medicine, thank you."

The Puzzle Box, a story for children in 12 chapters:

  • Chapter One, February 2008 - "You are the digital realm's answer to J K Rowling! It's quite lovely... I'm on the edge of my seat." (Michael Szpakowski, multimedia artist and composer)
  • Chapter Two, March 2008
  • Chapter Three, April 2008
  • Chapter Four, May 2008
  • Chapter Five, June 2008 - This chapter is dedicated to David Daniels, the great American shape-poet, who died in May. Two of his last e-mails to the WebArtery group were about The Puzzle Box: "I want to buy this yellow cards. This is gripping... truly healthy and mysterious in an elegant way!"
  • Chapter Six, July 2008 - "We are enjoying The Puzzle Box very much!" William, Artselector.com
  • Chapter Seven, August 2008 - "This is wondrous" - Joel Weishaus; "I am reading your 'The Puzzle Box' and loving it." - Regina Celia Pinto
  • Chapter Eight, September 2008
  • Chapter Nine, October 2008
  • Chapter Ten, November 2008
  • Chapter Eleven and Chapter Twelve, December 2008 - "The Puzzle Box has all the magical numinous quality of Lewis, Tolkien, and L'Engle." - Millie Niss

Flower Story (originally created in 2003; reworked in July 2008), a story for my daughter Rachel (who was then three and a half) with some stop-frame Flash animations. This is a piece of apprentice-work, really, so please look at it with some of your critical faculties switched off.

Bluedolph (December 2007), a Christmassy animation.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, (February 2007, April 2007, June 2007, July 2007), visualisations of Wallace Stevens' famous thirteen-part poem. The first three parts were completed in February, the next three in April, the next three in June, the last four and the interface in July. "This is a very beautiful visual poem... I am showing it to everyone I know" - David Daniels. (David Daniels runs a site called The Gates of Paradise and is a very fine visual poet himself, someone whose work I admire greatly.)

An article about Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, written by Katie Haegele as part of her Digitalit series, appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer in July 2007. Another article, this time by Mark Garrett, appeared on the Furtherfield site in September 2007 (Furtherfield "was founded in London in 1996 and is... dedicated to the creation, promotion and criticism of adventurous digital/networked media art"). Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird was also included in the gallery section of HZ #11 (HZ is the net journal of a Swedish arts organisation called Fylkingen, which was established in Stockholm in 1933 and is the oldest forum for experimental music and intermedia art in Sweden); and three sections of it were included in the second season of Michael Cousin's Outcasting site.

"Train Coming", June 2007 - A few weeks ago my friend Michael Szpakowski launched An Exciting Competition on his site, to publicise a literary magazine called "And Then..." from the USA. He published a song with lyrics by Robert Roth and Carletta Joy Walker and music by himself, and invited people to submit a karaoke version of it, or some other piece of digital art using the song as a jumping-off point. My submission is an extended version of the song, much in the style of Bob Dylan, with an accompanying video. WARNING! - this is a big download, so right-click the link, select "Save as...", and occupy yourself with something else while it runs its course. Alternatively, download the sound-only version on MP3, which is much smaller. For the video version click here, and for the sound-only version click here.

Creative Week, April 2007: Anyone living in the London area might be interested to know that my work has been featured in the April edition of Creative Week, a monthly newspaper about the arts distributed in and around the capital.

Frog-o-Mighty, (November/December 2006), a story in Flash made up with the help of my daughter Rachel, using some of the ornaments on our living-room window-sill.

Some fragments of my Mum, (September 2006), a Flash piece about my Mum, who was eighty earlier this year.

A Short History of Everything, (July 2006), a Flash montage of text and images, which reworks some of the text and images from Myron Turner's Timeline.

An Unimportant Story, (Adult Content - June 2006), a nonlinear story in four "strands", using HTML and JavaScript.

Banana Story, a short animation in Flash, based on a story made up by my daughter Rachel.

Rilke and the Archaic Torso, a mixture of commentary, undercommentary and poetry which I produced as a response to the German poet Rilke's famous poem "Archaic Torso of Apollo" ("Archaischer Torso Apollos"). Uses JavaScript and Flash. Millie Niss, whose website is at http://sporkworld.org has just started keeping a weblog and publishing work by other artists, and I'm very fortunate to be the first guest artist whose work she has used.

The Greyhound Murder, (Adult Content), a nonlinear murder-story in Flash.

Don Quixote's Dream, originally submitted as part of the collaborative project Ovelhas de Quixotes/Quixotes and Sheep, launched by Regina Celia Pinto and engineered by aLexandre Venera.

Triptych: The Lost Sheep, originally submitted for Regina Celia Pinto's open-source collaborative blog The Big Sheep. Requires a screen-width of 1024 pixels. Please don't go clicking on this expecting it to do something clever: it's just three pictures in a row: no interactivity or anything; but the new media artist Babel has done an excellent interactive reworking of one of the images, which can be seen at http://arteonline.arq.br/blog/mixes/babel.htm.

Sheep, originally submitted for a themed collection about sheep brought out by the ArteOnLine group. Regina Celia Pinto, who runs the group, called it "essentially political and very intelligent... a narrative that can be understood by everybody". It was created just before the 2005 General Election.

Chicks. "ohoh oh oh oh this is just great!" - Alan Sondheim. A short animation for children, composed with the help of my daughter Rachel.

The Stream, a nonlinear story/poem with pictures.

Linesland, a short animation for children, composed with the help of my daughter Rachel.

The Bonfire, a prose poem with pictures.

Penguin Memories, a very short piece in Flash, with audio and pictures, which I made up for my daughter Rachel.

Sweetheart's Expedition, a picture-story for children which I made up with my daughter Rachel about her toys.

The Recycling Bins, (Adult Content), a nonlinear short work of hyperfiction, including one song.

The Sound of Church Bells, a hyperpoem.

Up Close and Virtual, review of Close Reading, a book of hyperliterature criticism, for the trAce organisation.

For Alan & Reiner (earth blown out to stars), a response to Alan Sondheim and Reiner Strasser's Tao. Both Tao and earth blown out to stars were published in The Museum of the Essential (and Beyond That), a Brazilian-based website run by Regina Celia Pinto.

Documentary Websites, an article for the trAce organisation.

What makes them click?, a comparative review of work by Lewis Lacook and Deena Larsen/geniwate for the trAce organisation.

For my older stuff, please see the Contents page.

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