MATT Blackwood wants you to feel it: what it’s like to be there; your feet where theirs stood, the layers of the very streetscape before you peeling away to reveal an alternate reality.

The concept fueling the MyStory laneway project is an immersive reading encounter- in essence, tangible inception.

One of three text projects commissioned by the City of Melbourne this year, MyStory entices the reader to experience the locations that inspired a series of short stories using a digital map available on the project’s website to embark on a self-guided literary tour.

“It’s far more immersive to stand there in the laneway and be open to experience everything in the story,” Blackwood said.

“[It’s] a place that’s evocative of the ideas in the story.”

An audio narration of the story corresponding with each setting is also available for the reader to download or stream, liberating their eyes from the confines of print to appreciate the scene the story was written for.

Blackwood and his team dedicated four months to ensuring the project would be simple to use, testing for the most accessible fusion of technology and storytelling.

“I want people to connect with the stories rather than grappling with technology,” he said.

A version of the website has been developed specifically for use on smart phones, making wireless access more convenient.

“The smart phone version of the website is available on all smartphones, not just iPhones,” he said.

“If you don’t have one of these, you can also download the MP3 tracks of the stories and listen to them on your MP3 player.

“If you don’t have an MP3 player, you can always print the PDFs.”

A printed booklet is also available for tourists, whom Blackwood noted, “may not have access to a printer.”

In addition to Blackwood’s own literary talents, esteemed authors Cate Kennedy, Barry Dickins and Tony Birch contributed three short stories apiece to the virtual literary map of Melbourne.

Evident in Dickins’ commissions is his fascination with the Block Arcade of past and present.

He cites 1951 as the year he fell in love with its “beautiful leisureliness”; for Dickins, memories of long days spent there with his father are a permanent feature of its iconic architecture.

Much of the Block Arcade Dickins recalls is no longer corporeal- the precise location of the now non-existent Adams Gallery he writes of has become something of an urban myth.

He said the ghosts of 1940s Melbourne linger there instead.

“Once you’ve made a mental note that the past exists, it’s there all right,” he said.

Kennedy said she too saw the spirits of stories past as she “wandered aimlessly” through the city.

She found the burial site of an aged opium pipe during her explorations, its origins a mysterious addition to a smattering of remnants from the buildings of an older, seedier Melbourne.

Kennedy also stumbled upon the spot from which the last of the majestic river red gum trees once lining Elizabeth Street was removed.

“I’m just paying better attention to the place [I was] standing on,” she said.

Birch’s approach saw him “extracting a fictional past from the faded layers of paint on the buildings” of the city.

“All those past lives of [a] building still inhabit it, and a good writer brings life to it,” he said.

A trip down Equitable Lane spurned one of his stories. Birch recounted his father’s predilection for expensive sports jackets, purchased from a tailor in the street; a street he had not revisited for some time prior to the project.

“Although I had known that place well, I had forgotten it or taken it for granted,” he said.

“Everything came back when I paid attention to it.”

Birch explored the possibilities offered by imagining the interactions of those before him with the spaces he visited to develop stories about the current human condition.

Infidelity underpins two of his three pieces. Birch noted, however, that this is in no way a reflection of his own marriage- rather, a scenario that interested him at the time. 

The authors are hopeful their experiences, and their narrations of their stories, will entice people to explore more of Melbourne’s many (and often obscure) laneways.

“I think to be literally in someone else’s shoes is fantastic,” Kennedy said of the opportunity.

There is also hope for further expansion of the project.

“I want this to be an ongoing literary map of Melbourne,” Blackwood said.

“Melbourne is one of only four cities in the world to be a UNESCO City of Literature.”

He stipulated that all further contributions to the project would need to be commissioned, as the first four have been.

“I don’t want people to submit unique, beautiful things unpaid,” he said.

MyStory is available free-of-charge at http://mystoryworld.com.au/map.php. All four guided tours of the story sites, offered in the program of this year’s Melbourne Writers Festival, are fully booked.