Wish4[0]: 40 Days. 40 News Items. 40 Creative Responses.

On this first day of the year 2014, one countdown ends and another begins. This new countdown has nothing to do with the gradual fading of 2013 and the celebratory lauding of 2014, but instead ushers in a new social project: on the 4th of January, Wish4[0] begins.

As extensive use of mobile devices such as smart phones, wearables and tablets has become the norm, it’s apparent how networked/online communication has become a crucial component of our everyday news and entertainment cycles, as well as a critical social tool. In the resultant infoglut we’ve willingly created [and to which we seem quite content to constantly expose ourselves], privacy concerns are prompting pushbacks against oversharing and the incessant rush of accelerating digital news. And yet, deliberate poetic responses to such critical social issues seem constantly overlooked and underutilised…

…which is where Wish4[0] comes in. Once a day, for 40 days, a digital literature work will be posted to wishforyouand.me. Each work will take as its immediate inspiration a headline, or item, drawn from the electronic news cycle of that specific day.

The resulting block of creative responses will:
+ Act as a digital and creative “literary snapshot” of a specific period.
+ Highlight the accelerated nature of an electronic/networked-based news cycle.
+ Illustrate the discrepancies – and perhaps similarities – between how a digital audience responds to items deemed newsworthy and creative responses to such items.
+ Echo [and partially emulate] elements of digital culture that have become seamlessly integrated into the everyday [including communication conventions drawn from platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, MMO Games, Instagram etc].

In essence, Wish4[0] uses the very mechanisms and conventions of online, net-based communication to display lyrical content critiquing our increasing reliance on such technology.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.