Home For Fiction – Blog

When I make something new, such as a program, a book, or a music album, I often write a blog post about it. Sometimes this might span more than one post – think of The Perfect Gray and its review – but it’s far less often to see two different facets of the same work. Old Memories Murmured in Dreams is a young-love poetry collection I wrote sometime ago. And Dreams in 16-bit is a program I made to add another layer of experiencing this collection.

The text is identical and so is the order of the poems, however, the divisions differ and are accompanied by images stylized as retro computer graphics. Nostalgia and all that, huh?

The artistic focus in on emulating a late 80s/early 90s computer-game conceptual landscape. Note that, apart from the navigation buttons, there is no interactive element in this. Dreams in 16-bit is not an adventure game like Mansion Escape or an interactive experience like The Clock Village. It is only an artistic experience.

Old Memories Murmured in Dreams: the 16-bit Experience

There is not much to say about the poetry collection itself that I have not already mentioned in the relevant blog post. But just a couple of points that are important to keep in mind:

The idea of experience should pervade all art. More than half of any artistic endeavor is about seeing the world in all its (only apparently) mundane moments. Only then can we ever hope of reaching some sort of understanding of ourselves and one another.

As such, Old Memories Murmured in Dreams approaches experiencing from a collective perspective. That is to say, these experiences both are and aren’t autobiographical, both are and aren’t post-autonomous, both are and aren’t imaginary conceptual landscapes.

In other words, there are elements here that, although personal to me, are not exclusive to me. The same conceptual drive propels the program, Dreams in 16-bit.

The childhood and youth of many Gen X people, spanning the late 80s and early 90s, revolved around computers like Amiga 500 or Atari ST that featured stunning graphics (for the time) that came to affect many young minds.

To me – and I assume most other people of my generation – 16-bit graphics are synonymous to another world.

Using the Program to Experience the Collection

Is reading the poems using the Dreams in 16-bit interface different from simply downloading the pdf/epub/mobi I offer as a free download? Well, yes; by definition. It’s not just the graphics that add another dimension to it, but also the navigational buttons that allow a much faster movement (also randomly) between poems.

To me – and let’s remember, everything I do I do it for you I do it for me; I am the intended audience, and you can benefit from that – it depends on the day. Sometimes, I prefer to read the poems the traditional way, from a plain text document. On other occasions, I want the 16-bit graphics.

And here’s a secret: I also have yet another way of experiencing this collection, involving randomization and shuffling. But we’ll leave that for another day.

Try the program here. And remember:

Most of my fiction is available as an immediate free download – simply visit the Fiction page on the main site.