App set to change the face of digital publishing

Move over, Twitter: there's a new digitalized literary experiment in town.

Piloted by former McSweeney's alumns Eli Horowitz and Russell Quinn, as well as fiction writers Kevin Moffett and Matthew Derby, The Silent History is a literary digital app slated for release later this summer. The app is a startling take on the art of digital mobility, pushing the concepts of place, character, and time past the usual boundaries.

The Silent History chronicles a group of children born without the ability to speak and that are instead imbued with other (possibly supernatural) senses. The project is fully interactive: those who download the app will receive daily fictive "testimonials" available to read on both iPads and iPhones. The serialized testimonials are only one of the many facets of the app. An innovative component of The Silent History involves "Field Reports"-- specific places tagged (or "geo-tagged") that act as supplements to the narrative at hand. As of now, there are between 300 and 400 developed Field Reports located around the world, but this number is meant to eventually grow: readers will be encouraged to develop their own Field Reports, actualizing an additional texture to the narrative experience.

According to Reyhan Harmanci's article on Buzzfeed, creator Horowitz indicates that the project draws inspiration from The Wire for its narrative trajectory, and by the lack of creativity in the e-book industry.

Although The Silent History is not yet available to the public, a trailer for the app has been recently released, featuring the voices of an assortment of indie favorites: art/lit/film maven Miranda July, NPR's Ira Glass, and folk singer Thao Nguyen.