For the IDCA conference this year in Aspen, Peter Cho has created a “typographical accompaniment” to Orson Welles‘ hysteria-inducing 1938 radio play of “War of the Worlds” by H.G. Wells.

“Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds, originally broadcast in 1938, is perhaps radio’s
most famous drama. While the existing audio recording is not of contemporary quality,
media artist Peter Cho has create a typographic accompaniment which provides
animated subtitles for the play. The typography will allow the audience to read along with
the story of panic and invasion, turning the radio play into movie for which the viewer must
provide his or her own imagery.”

Hopefully, this combination will get a release on the web somehow, as a flash movie or stream of some kind. I’d love to sit in a darkened room, listening to Orson Welles, with atmospheric type projecting eerily around me…

It seems that Spielberg is planning a version of War of the Worlds for 2006.

All of this, of course, is just an excuse for me to link to the fabulous War of the World book covers gallery again.