Far South - cooperative creativity, the use of chance, and the escape of the imaginary author: the making of a multi-platform novel

The present work is an early exploration of the role of chance in creativity, the serendipities and synergies that emerge in a collective project, and questions of authorship in an interdisciplinary practice-led research project. Far South by David Enrique Spellman is a multi-platform narrative with a published novel at its heart but incorporating film, graphic novel, photographic images, sound files and supplementary text on a series of websites. Desmond Barry is the writer of the core novel and directed some twenty-four people who participated in the multiplatform production. Participants' interaction, however, took the fictional narrative in different directions in the creative process. Found objects, postcards and photographs from Tristan Navaja flea market in Montevideo, Uruguay, influenced the narrative in 'surprising conjunctions within carefully delimited frameworks and processes' as Joanne Retallack described composer John Cage's lifelong project (Retallack 1996). In an academic environment where chance and risk are often considered suspect, the present work, a self-reflective narrative examination of practice-led research and creative process, is an initial interrogation and illumination of the potentialities of using cooperation and chance in prose fiction and interdisciplinary multi-platform stories.