Lewis Carroll Society of North America » CyberSpace

A website theme and typeface inspired by Alice, whoever she is

Rachel Eley — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 04:42:38 +0000

When we are told something is “Alice in Wonderland inspired,” we all know it can mean many things. In the case of restaurants, for example, it may simply mean that the china doesn’t match. In the case of tennis dresses it can mean anything at all. Spotting the Alice in the “Alice-inspired” can sometimes be a tea-time riddle in itself.

Take the new WordPress website theme called Alice designed by Raygun (single site license $25) – what’s in the name? The design feels neatly combed and dressed, much like our very proper Victorian friend, and the sample color-scheme could definitely be described as “tea party” (with an emphasis on “cupcakes”*). The prominence of gallery and slide-show features in the demo shows that thought has been given to the proper balancing of conversation and pictures – very important, as we know – and Alice is surely an appropriate source of inspiration whenever anything needs to be both “flexible-width” and “responsive,” as the tag line highlights. But is the overall effect “Alice”? Who’s to say? The Caterpillar would probably have an opinion.

Alice WordPress theme by Raygun

A clearer case is made by Lith, a new typeface by Stefan Huebsch. Whenever we see the bold pairing of teapots and rabbit faces we know we are either in the inspirational realm of Alice in Wonderland or Beatrix Potter, but the addition of a single chess piece swings the dial. To be true, the Alice muse at work is strangely furry, and almost certainly mediated by Tim Burton, nevertheless Lith is a typeface that will say “Alice,” whatever else it might be saying at the time.

Lith, Copyright Typocalypse

*Not very Victorian, I’ll admit, but very Alice Moderne.

Good Alice images on Avax News

Rachel Eley — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 03:20:02 +0000

Avax News is a website for interesting photos. Their mission is clearly stated:

Every day, Lord Almighty is responsible for hundred thousands of fascinating and mysterious events in our earthly existence, which people gaze upon with wonder through the lenses of the camera. The most gripping of those images you can find within these pages. Nothing less, nothing more. It’s just you and the images you see.

Earlier this year they posted a nice collection of high-quality Carroll-related photos under the sub-heading “Appealing.” There are images of Carroll, by Carroll, and of various stage productions. If you are looking for high quality images of a decent size, it may prove very helpful indeed. I would only caution against venturing away from the Carroll images via other sub-headings such as “Sad” or “Disgusting.” You know the internet. You have been warned.

Baby Leroy as "Joker" in the Paramount production of “Alice in Wonderland” (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images). 1933

Yours, virtually, for free: the original Under Ground manuscript

Rachel Eley — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 18:03:43 +0000

The British Library has a new project: high-definition images of their most precious manuscripts available for download by one and all. These eBook Treasures are viewed in a virtual “3D” environment where you can zoom in, turn pages, search content and generally do everything but smell the paper or spill your coffee on it.

This month, the featured eBook is the original handwritten manuscript of Alice’s Adventures Under Ground. Using the application you can see each page in full-screen high-definition, read a transcription or listen to a narration by Miriam Margolyes (Professor Sprout, O.B.E.). The download is free but only for the next two weeks. Go to eBook Treasures to get it for yourself.

eBook Treasure: Alice's Adventures Under Ground

The application has been developed with Armadillo Systems (not to be confused with Atomic Antelope, the developers of the revolutionary digital pop-up book of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland for the iPad). Over the next two years, 75 of the library’s most interesting or important manuscripts will be made available for download. Other titles available now include Leonardo Da Vinci’s Codex Arundel, William Blake’s Notebooks, and Geradus Mercator’s Atlas of Europe. Coming soon, the Tyndale Bible. This is the digital bibliophile’s promised land.

What’s the catch? It’s a big one. At the moment the whole kaboodle is only available for Apple devices, the iPad and iPod Touch. It’s a remarkably undemocratic move for a project designed to increase access to the treasures of a national institution, but hopefully they will find a way to expand this to the majority world of non-Mac users some day soon.

Here’s a promotional video showing the capabilities of the software. For some reason the sound isn’t working. I guess technology isn’t perfect yet.

Alice’s XLNT TXT Adventure

Rachel Eley — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 19:57:25 +0000

RU ready? New York author Susan Crimp has written an updated version of Alice’s Adventures entirely in text-speak. Alice’s Adventures in NYC: The text generation is available for Kindle from Amazon with plans for a print edition “soon.” In addition Crimp is working on two similar books, Through The NYC Looking Glass and Great Textpectations, to be published later this year.

In Crimp’s story, a descendant of Alice falls down a rabbit hole near the Alice statue in Central Park, has an adventure in Wonderland and then records the story on her cellphone in between classes, with help from her BF. The book includes a glossary (“offered 4 u in case u r lost 4 words”), and a cast of characters. Here’s an extract from the latter:

Alice – The original Alice wz a 7- year old English school girl who talked like Harry Potter. She wz polite, kind + made people . Alice however didn’t always say th right things + stimes upset many of the people n Wonderland

Modern Day Alice – Our Alice n thz story while encountering th same Wonderland az the original character iz nt British bt American + uses modern + understandable language as opposed 2 long winded waffle…

Ok, but is this modern + understandable language all that it seems? I’m suspicious that Crimp has taken a few liberties with text speak. The phrase “as opposed 2 long winded waffle” doesn’t seem particularly thumb-friendly, and why is the word “the” sometimes abbreviated and sometimes not? Excerpts from the book’s glossary, also available on Amazon, suggest either that the text messages of 7 year olds have reached Byzantine maturity, or else that Crimp has made some judicious additions to the stock vocabulary: are the teenagers of Manhattan really texting each other “OBE” (overcome by events), “AWGTHTGTTAG” (are we going to have to go through this again?) or, my favorite, “BHA” (bring him Advil)? I hope so, I’m just not sure.

Reviews of the book can be read on The Village Voice and DNAinfo.com. Better still, we would love it if someone with a Kindle would buy the story (only $5.99!) and send us a review for this blog. We would be yr BFF.

Madness Returns next week! The long awaited sequel to American McGee’s Alice

James — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 22:46:51 +0000

On June 14, Electronic Arts will release American McGee’s Alice: Madness Returns, the sequel to the 2000 computer game American McGee’s Alice. The new game will run on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 as well as PC. Judging from one of the trailers, the graphics are luscious and the scenarios violent. A dark-haired adult Alice at a psychotic tea party rams a knife through the giant eye of a cycloptic monster. Blood splatters on her face – and, scene!

Here’s a newer more revealing trailer:

There’s a nice article interviewing American McGee at news.com.au here. American McGee is his real name; he is the legendary game designer famous for Doom and Quake.

“I can remember the copy of the book that I had,” he said of the classic he read many times as a child, and many more as an adult.

“The size and the feel of it. I know it made an impression on me as a child.

“I think Humpty Dumpty (from Through the Looking Glass) had a pretty significant impact on me. It was a pretty dark piece of the story — this character shattering and breaking.”

Watch the LCSNA Spring 2011 Meeting online

Rachel Eley — Fri, 06 May 2011 03:37:00 +0000

All the thrills of the LCSNA Spring 2011 Meeting in the privacy of your own home!

Thanks to our host Brewster Kahle and the magnificent Internet Archive, last month’s San Francisco/Petaluma meeting is now available online. If you missed the event, or would like to relive the highlights, you can download any or all of the meeting segments here.

The mission of the Internet Archive is to offer permanent access for researchers, historians, scholars, people with disabilities, and the general public to historical collections that exist in digital format. We encourage you to watch founder Brewster Kahle’s address to the meeting to learn how the Lewis Carroll Society of North America could, like the Grateful Dead, be at the forefront of media preservation – ensuring the immortality of Alice for future generations.

The Internet Archive, San Francisco

www.TwasBrilligAndTheSlithyTovesDidGyreAndGimbleInTheWabe.com

Rachel Eley — Wed, 04 May 2011 03:14:06 +0000

The internet domain name www.twasbrilligandtheslithytovesdidgyreandgimbleinthewabe.com is up for auction on Ebay – starting bid only 1 cent!

It may be tricky to type, and it could be a struggle to fit it on your business card, but it sure is memorable.

Atomic Antelope detonates another amazing Alice app

James — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 20:46:14 +0000

Atomic Antelope‘s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland digital pop-up book for the iPad was not just a best selling app for the new tablet device, it was also one of the most innovative eBooks on the market. The New York Times ran an article last November complaining that, with the possibilities in the touch-screen age for cool interactive books, most of the releases were “boring.” The Alice pop-up was one of their “honorable exceptions.” It wasn’t just games or angry birds, it was actually the full Carroll text with the Tenniel illustrations that moved and danced as you played with them.

Guess what!? Atomic Antelope is back with more Alice, released this week. This time, her adventures are in the Big Apple. Judging from the illustrations, it’s their variation on Through the Looking-Glass. Alice in New York appears to also have something to do with physics. It’s available for $8.99 in the iTunes store. I’ll let the specs and screenshots speak for themselves:

You loved Alice in Wonderland. Now join her in New York! Touch, tilt and shake your iPad to bring this amazing book to life. Meet Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Humpty Dumpty, the Walrus and the Carpenter, the Lion and the Unicorn and dozens of other classic Lewis Carroll characters. This book is from the same publisher that created the blockbuster “Alice for the iPad”. as seen on the Oprah Winfrey show.

Take a tour of Manhattan with the Red Queen as your guide. Ride with Tweedledum and Tweedledee in their taxi. Meet the Frog and the Fawn. Ride an elevator through the Empire State building. Attend a fireworks party and eat oysters with the Walrus and the Carpenter. Plus lots, lots more.

Alice in New York is a groundbreaking adaptation. A special celebration of the 140th anniversary of Through the Looking Glass, first published in 1871. This incredible iPad book includes a new story and never-before-seen color illustrations that transport Alice from Sir John Tenniel’s original drawings and into modern New York.

Just a few highlights of this magical book:

• 140 years in the making!
• Explore New York for the first time with Alice
• Enjoy 136 beautiful digitally-remastered pages
• Feast on 27 fully interactive illustrations
• Be stunned by pictures that come to life as you tilt your iPad
• Based on a Lewis Carroll classic, with illustrations adapted from Sir John Tenniel
• Delight in the physics engine that responds to your touch

Leave us a comment if you have any opinions about the new app; we poor far-flung bloggers have no iPad.

DRINKme-EATme-READme

Rachel Eley — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 06:41:06 +0000

This sweet fantasia on the theme of digital readers was sent to us by Adriana Peliano of the Lewis Carroll Society of Brazil. It was created by Irina Neustroeva. The embedded version below is smaller than the original upload to Vimeo.com.

DRINKme-EATme-READme from Irina Neustroeva on Vimeo.

New Alice-Themed Web Comic Namesake Launches

andrew — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 13:57:21 +0000

Isabelle Melançon, creator of the new web comic Namesake, which has just launched, promises that Lewis Carroll, Alice, and many familiar fairy tale characters figure prominently in the story. From the web site:

“Namesake is the story of Emma Crewe, a woman who discovers she can visit other worlds. She finds out that these are places she already knows – fantasy and fairy lands made famous through the spoken word, literature and cinema. Her power as a Namesake forces her to act as a protagonist in these familiar stories as she figures out how to get home. But as she travels, she discovers that those controlling her story have their own selfish goals in mind – and her fate is the key to everyone’s happy ending. Join Emma, her sister Elaine and their friends as they tumble down the rabbit hole. If you like, adventure, humor, stories of friendship, fairy tales and fantasy, this is the webcomic for you.”

Click the image on this post to visit the site. Since the comic will have new content three times a week, if you like what you see, you might want to subscribe to the site’s RSS feed to make sure you see the prologue and all subsequent pages.