Edwin Morgan: Culture, hacked…

By Sarah Hepworth on May 2, 2012 • ( 1 )

'Looking for' - the requests window at Culture Hack

It was great to attend Culture Hack Scotland last weekend, meet some of the artists, designers and technologists who were there and see what they put together in less than 24 hours. Myself and fellow data provider Julie Johnstone (Scottish Poetry Library) were pleased that Edwin Morgan received a lot of attention; prototypes included an interactive exploration of his poem ’Stobhill’ using gaming technology and a number of his poems told in other people’s tweets - highlighting individual words and alerting the owners of the tweets to the project and Morgan’s work. Other data sets inspired visualisations based on sound archives from the National Museums of Scotland, visitor footfall at Tramway and levels of spending by Creative Scotland in different parts of the country. Among many other projects was a site for people to record their experiences of Edinburgh Festivals, a browsable showcase of festival photos taken by Richard Demarco and a Macbeth Parlour game. One of my favourite ideas was a map based on poems, stories and letters contributed to the Scottish Book Trust. How about a map of Edwin Morgan’s poems? – The Starlings in George Square, Glasgow Green, At Stirling Castle 1507, The Loch Ness Monster’s Song, The Moons of Jupiter etc…