Text-based fiction no longer has to be limited to the printed page.
Dreaming Methods is a non-profit making website established in 2000 which evolved from digital collections of short stories that were available on floppy disk during the 1990s. It is now an experimental venture into combining fictional narratives with atmospheric multimedia designed to be read and experienced on-screen.
Dreaming Methods is inspired largely by abstract concepts that would perhaps be difficult to capture using writing alone. The multi-layered complexity of dreams/nightmares and real/imagined memories that feature in many of the narratives are represented by a heavy mix of media that is designed to be compulsive and immersive. Projects are inspired by music, film and web design as much as literature, and attempt to take strands of each and weave them into something entirely new.
Dreaming Methods is not a leading edge flash site or a publishing outlet for ebooks - it's free and openly experimental. Whilst the publishing industry dabbles about squashing fiction into iPhone apps and pinning bells and whistles around fiction xeroxed from printed books, our plan is to produce challenging hybrid fiction projects that push the boundaries of digital writing and reading.
Comments about Dreaming Methods
"One of the most impressive purveyors of the new art of internet reading... a semi-literary, semi-cinematic blend of haunting visuals, music, click-and-point and floating text... A distinctive voice that couldn't be replicated in print."
- Times Educational Supplement
"One of the most interesting British storytellers who uses interactive media."
- D'Log (www.d-log.info)
"Some of the best digital storytelling on the internet. With an archive of more than 20 works, [Dreaming Methods] is a great place to learn about digital literature."
- Infinity's Kitchen (www.infinityskitchen.com)
"The way it's put together and the way it draws us in... [Dreaming Methods is] streets ahead of anything anyone else is doing..."
- Edward Picot, Hyperliterature Exchange (www.hyperex.co.uk)
"Fresh new creative cutting edge... Dreaming Methods has impressed me enormously - I get an instant emotional response to it."
- Greg Dawe, author of Theta Head (www.gregdawe.com)
"Dreaming Methods is ambitious. It's digital fiction, but not in a way you'd expect. Methods's fiction can't be categorized. It's film, but with gameplay. Prose, but with sound. Animation, but with photographs. What is it, exactly? I can't say. But I'd like to think it's a taste of the future."
- Novelr.com (www.novelr.com)
"Very cool." - Electric Literature (www.electricliterature.com)
"Each piece has the kind of care and sensibility I hope to (but rarely) find in digital fiction."
- Alan Bigelow, Web Yarns (www.webyarns.com)
"Absolutely fantastic... you have really moved and shocked me." - Peggy Riley, East Kent Live Literature (www.livelit.co.uk)
"Andy Campbell's site showcases his multimedia narratives, hovering somewhere between prose poetry, film, and actual dreams. Captivating, immersive work that augurs some exciting future directions for literature."
- Tim Horvath (www.timhorvath.com)