Surplus Matter

by Tom McCarthy
The Generative Crash orig delivered at ‘When Organism Meets Playstation: Emulation in a Cultural Context’ Symposium, Mediamatic Foundation, Holland, 2000 and pub in Mediamatic, Holland 2001
This paper is called The Generative Crash: Emulation in a Literary Context. What do I mean by ‘generative’? Simple: generation is the means by which something is created, […]

by Tom McCarthy
Dead Letters Sent orig pub in ‘Incommunicado’, Hayward Gallery Publishing, London, 2003
Adapting Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet for the MTV generation, Baz Luhrmann invents a mailing company called Post-post-haste Dispatch. They, and not Friar John, convey to Mantua Friar Laurence’s vital letter informing Romeo that Juliet is not dead but asleep. Not finding him […]

by Tom McCarthy
I live in a twelfth floor Central London flat. The flat has long, tall windows facing West and North. Talking to people on the phone, I stare across the city and the sky. The vista usually provides a backdrop to the conversation. Often, though, it’s the conversation’s subject: I tell friends what weather […]

Act One
Lights up to reveal the entrance to a house. This consists of a free-standing doorway (frame only) installed in the middle of the stage and facing along the stage right to stage left axis, i.e. at an angle of exactly ninety degrees to the audience. On the floor immediately to the doorway’s left (stage […]