Welcome to our new Voiceworks Online editor, Aries Gacutan
Express Media is thrilled to announce Aries Gacutan as the inaugural Voiceworks Online Editor!
Aries M. Gacutan is a poet and digital creator working on the traditional lands of the Woiwurrung and Boonwurrung people of the Kulin nation. They also do a bunch of other artsy things for money. They often write about space/place, migrant identity and digital ephemerality. They were a recipient of the Emerging Poets Residency with Red Room Poetry in 2024, and currently facilitate Toolkits: Digital Storytelling with Express Media. Read about their dastardly poetic escapades at thearieszone.neocities.org.
A very warm hello to Aries Gacutan! Aries credits previous Voiceworks print editor Silas Moir for encouraging them to get involved with the mag. They recall, “I had no idea Voiceworks was even a thing and I was thrilled (and kinda intimidated) to learn about it and get stuck in myself. Fittingly, Voiceworks Online was my proper on-ramp! I got started with 2021 Toolkits: Digital Storytelling, facilitated by Rory Green, then applied to VW Online Edcomm, and the rest was history.”
For anybody unfamiliar with the worlds of digital literatures, Aries gives this introduction:
“To borrow the words of the illustrious Rory Green, anything that cannot be printed physically, or is best suited to be published online. Digital literature works with both multimedia elements (text, image, sound) and interactive elements (sources of agency upon the piece, authors, readers, machines), and meaning is made at their intersections. For example, in a digital piece, a reader may fill in the blanks of a poem to generate something entirely new, or an algorithm may combine two images provided by the author to spit out something novel.”
When asked whether they have any favourite pieces of digital writing to recommend, they say:
“Do I ever! 17776 AKA "What football will look like in the future" by Jon Bois is one of my favourite digital experiences hands-down ever. I adore anything Everest Pipkin does, which might be basic of me but it's the truth. In particular I love Anonymous Animal, a browser poem that plays every hour on the hour. Other assorted pieces: steel/foam by Tegan E Webb, novena by Cecile Richard, and Cross the border by Anita Solak.”
Five years later, as Voiceworks Online Editor, Aries hopes to bring “A love of digitality to rival my love of literature; being good at video games; a fixation on borders and the end of the world; adoration for the freaks of the world; an ability to take things seriously, but only until a point.”
We’re full of excitement for this new era of Voiceworks Online, guided by Aries and supported by Writing Australia’s Literary Journals Capacity Building Fund.
Are YOU under 25 and daydreaming about digital literatures? Submissions for Voiceworks Online ‘Forgive/Forget’ close on Monday 21 September!
Applications for Toolkits: Digital Storytelling 2026 will open soon.