TIG

Images

Creating images on my computer was a hobby of mine from 1995 to 1999.

In 1998 Rainbirds came in 61^st in a raytracing contest!

Fiction

Tom’s Image Gallery accommodates a cycle of plays and an html story. The plays contain images. Twelve gallery images are those in plays.

I would be remiss not to mention the plays were not always online plays: Visitors are advised that just as there is no sex in space (until someone puts it there), there is no cybersex in cyberspace (until someone puts it there). I estimate a performance of the plays would take between one hour and an hour and a half in playing time.

1998-1999: I wrote the plays, submitted with the images to publishers and agents the fait accompli, and they were rejected.

2005: I sent two copies of a manuscript and the images to literary agents.

October 2005: An agent replied to an eBook of the plays, “I’m afraid I don’t feel sufficiently committed to offer representation.”

2009: “We represent stage plays and writers for film and television, rather than online plays.”

Fiction links

Magicus Oculus (plays: In-Line Guide page) link

Berliner (prose: html fiction) link

oBook

The oBook oDition of Magicus Oculus (77 pages – full version) is an interactive eBook. Images are linked. Following the links (clicking) constitutes interacting — “operating on instructions entered by somebody at a keyboard or other input device” (Encarta® World English Dictionary © & (P) 1999, 2000 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.) — with the ‘oBook’.

Magicus Oculus is interactive. Behold (click): Blind, an envisaged stage set.

Themes

The theme of the raytracing contest was “Great Engineering Achievements”. Rainbirds was inspired by smart missiles homing in on their targets during the first Gulf War. The second Gulf War was somewhere over the horizon. We just didn’t know it yet.

A very salient theme, following 9/11, is terrorism. Enter The Gentleman, a short, satirical piece about a gentleman who accepts responsibility for a foreign terrorist attack on American soil.

Alienation

The technique of hyperlinking to images in the plays is an example of the dramatic device the German playwright Brecht called Verfremdungseffekt. I didn’t mean for that to happen. In the prose images are linked but not hyperlinked, while Verfremdungseffekt (alienation effect) is stepped up a further notch. Pages are formatted to facilitate jumping around in the plot. Berliner is forty-four pages. Seventeen pages are linked content. You must read Berliner in a browser. I did mean for that to happen.

Art

Interactive literary experiments like hyperlinking are as hard to find buyers for as cybersex in cyberspace (until someone puts it there).

TIG offers prose, drama and the images in eletronic form as art. That is not to say, performing (and publishing) the play cycle is now superfluous. Art is never superfluous. I am convinced the plays are enjoyable as-is. The plays could prove their worth on stage. (Call me an optimist.)