Imagining, Creating and Publishing Escape Artists Anthology

Innovation Showcase
Ruth Skilbeck  

The purpose of this reflective practice paper is to discuss insights gained from the process of imagining, creating, editing, designing and publishing an innovative social media and 'sci-fi' themed multimodal international literary arts anthology with 29 contributors, professional artists and authors from around the world and across Australia, 75 images and 1 music track, which came together as a result of social media networking, and took over 4 years to publish. I reflect on the visual inspiration and motivations for doing this and on overcoming 'computer problems' of what seemed like surveillance and hacking (and then publishing a second anthology). I draw conclusions about the significance of the anthology which I independently self-published, an arrangement of authentic, affective, political and creative works and arts research as an individual and collective expression of reflective humanity, emotional intelligence, and human resilience through the creative arts, in the context of the shift to a surveillance society of data scanning, artificial intelligence imaging and programmed algorithms. The first (ebook) and second (paperback) anthologies will be exhibited with the paper presentation.