Introduction

Abstract

This chapter introduces the concept of ambient literature and argues that situated literary experiences delivered through text and audio running on smartphones and tablets can offer distinctive new forms of reading, listening and looking. It shows how literary techniques using memory, history, place-based writing, hallucination, and performance can be combined with app design, user experience and interaction design, software, networked content management, localization, and pervasive computing to produce new kinds of ambient experiences. The chapter argues that the new conditions of mobile networked communications have the potential to produce new literary forms that place new emphasis on the significance of ambient cultural practices.