This is a multimedia piece. For full effect please have this song playing while you read the article. - Annie.

During the afternoon of July 25th, the Design Exchange and the organizers of DigiFest 2008 ran their first charrette of a series that will spur innovative thinking around our treatment of water. The challenge of the day, admittedly rather misnamed í¢â‚¬Å“Adapting to Water Disastersí¢â‚¬  gathered 30 or so of Torontoí¢â‚¬â„¢s most creative thinkers to focus on imagining possible solutions to major catastrophic anomalies that the world could not have anticipated. I was happy to have been fortunate enough to participate.

Annie Spencer

Whenever I voice my attention to some new obscure thing, it surprises me when whoever is listening scrubs it off by saying, í¢â‚¬Å“oh, well thatí¢â‚¬â„¢s normalí¢â‚¬ . Their retort has a way of padding my newly perceived anomaly as an already-realized standard that somehow I had missed. Equally parsed and relieved by their statement, my own wonderment soon drowns in that personí¢â‚¬â„¢s perception of í¢â‚¬Ëœstandardí¢â‚¬â„¢. If this thing seems to be so anomalous to me, then just what is normal to you?

Annie Spencer is a new media poet and experience designer living life beyond its margins and writing postcards home about it. Her current artistic practice is dedicated to an expansive game-story approach to trans-media, narrating and curating powerful questions with a unique sense of possibility.