Digital Fiction Curios

Digital Fiction Curios is a unique digital archive/interactive experience for PC and Virtual Reality

One to One Development Trust's digital storytelling and games development studio Dreaming Methods is responsible for some of the internet’s earliest media-rich stories. Much of that work was created in Flash, a technology that will be removed from all major web browsers in 2020. Curios archives and re-purposes three of our Flash works originally made as far back as 1999 and makes it uniquely possible to explore them in VR through a magical virtual curiosity shop.

From fragments of words held in glass bottles to sprawling apocalyptic dreamscapes, Curios offers an immersive glimpse into Dreaming Methods’ signature world of dream-inspired narratives, living texts and lost realities.

Curios will appeal to anyone with an interest in the history of digital stories, electronic literature, digital art or the history of Flash. Or - anyone looking for something immersive and unique. It's a prototype. An experiment: part game, part research project, part digital archive.

Curios appeared at the Electronic Literature Organisation Conference in Cork and The British Library in 2019, and the New Media Writing Prize 10 year anniversary at Bournemouth University in January 2020. he first prototype was shown in May 2019 at The Art House in Wakefield as part of Wakefield Art Walk. You can watch a film about that event here.

Curios has been developed with Professor Alice Bell from Sheffield Hallam University and was funded through the University’s Creating Knowledge Impact Acceleration Account. The music is by Chris Joseph.