Tumbarumba
Supported by Jerome Foundation
Tumbarumba is a frolic of intrusions — a conceptual artwork in the form of a Firefox extension. Tumbarumba hides stories — twelve new stories by outstanding authors — where you least expect to find them, turning your everyday web browsing into a strange journey.
TAXONOMY
Cagean | Conceptual | Electronic Literature | Fiction | Firefox | Intertextual | Intervention | Net Art | Playable
REQUIREMENTS
Install Firefox Plugin.
MEDIA & ACHIEVEMENTS
Tumbarumba – a surreal fiction anthology in the form of a browser plugin | Boing Boing
Tumbarumba | Jacket Copy | Los Angeles Times
Thumbarumba, turning the ordinary web into a textual treasure hunt | Neural.it
The Escapist | News – Tumbarumba – The Conceptual Art Firefox Extension
An Anthology Built for Your Web Browser | mediabistro.com – GalleyCat
Tumbarumba Proposal | Ethan Ham
A Conversation with Ethan Ham and Benjamin Rosenbaum | The Present Group Journal
ADDITIONAL NOTES
Tumbarumba quietly sits in the background, occasionally inserts a fragment of a story into a webpage that is being viewed. The result is an absurd sentence that is reminiscent of the surrealist exquisite corpse game. If the inserted fragment (we call the fragments “tumbarumbas”) is spotted and clicked upon, the entire story will emerge and eventually take over the page.
It’s easy to turn off Tumbarumba’s effect at anytime.
Our intention is for the reader to not only have the pleasure of finding and reading the stories, but also the momentary disorientation of stumbling upon a nonsensical sentence as well as a heightened awareness of textual absurdities (of which only a fraction will be the result of Tumbarumba).
The project is the second collaboration between Ethan Ham and Benjamin Rosenbaum. Their first collaboration was Anthroptic.
Stories:
“Temp” by Greg van Eekhout
“Reunion“ by Stephen Gaskell
“Birthday“ by John Phillip Olsen
“Bio-Anger“ by Kiini Ibura Salaam
“Sequins“ by Mary Anne Mohanraj
“Little M@tch Girl“ by Heather Shaw
“Martian Dispatches“ by David Moles
“MonstroCities“ by David J. Schwartz
“A Steadfast Tin Soldier“ by Tim Pratt
“Of Love and Mermaids“ by Jeff Spock
“Painting the Air“ by James Patrick Kelly
“Listen to Me“ by Haddayr Copley-Woods