This practice-led research project explores the construction of a smartphone novel in China. Its purpose was to create a narrative of Mobile Moments on a smartphone, documenting and analysing the effects of this multimodal composition on the creative process. This project contains both the published multimedia artefacts and the critical exegesis.
The creative artefact features digital chapters presented in WeChat Moments, plus a chronological multimedia PDF and screen recording. The digital fiction contains video, photography, audio, emails, social media entries, and animation. These media were chosen in accordance with the range of developing smartphone capabilities from a Nokia E63 to an iPhone 12. The modes of creation and applications utilised demonstrate the scope of a ubiquitous mobile capturing device, and these were examined in the critical exegesis in terms of functionality, situational opportunity, and as a new platform for expression.
The critical exegesis scrutinizes how composing multimodal texts on an all-purpose device affects the author’s capturing, experiential, and editing processes. The analysis presents chapters on practice-led methodology; an examination of how the practicalities of working on a smartphone differ from more traditional modes of writing and even how it differs from constructing ‘cell phone novels’; an examination of how specific media are chosen to best portray particular characters, scenes, or narrative devices and how this offers a modern, sensory alternative to text-based novels; and a discussion of to what extent the environment offers creative inspiration.