tattoos | D9 ELMCIP

Kjell Theøry will be a site-specific mobile Augmented Reality poem mapped visually to geo-spatial coordinates in a public outdoor space in Bergen. The work responds to historical and fictive narratives of Norway as a landscape for exile and escape in conjunction with writings and memories from my residency as a Fulbright Scholar in Bergen last year. It will be accessible for viewing with internet-enabled smart phones and tablets throughout ELO 2015 and will be activated by a brief live event in which I manipulate and read from the virtual space and generate additional material by scanning augmented tattoos on the body of a local male performer. This work evolves out of my AR installation in June 2014 at the Bergen Bibliotek, The Empty House, but will be a substantially new iteration. (Source: ELO 2015 Catalog)

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Abstract (in English)

This presentation traces connections between Shelley Jackson's hypertext, "Patchwork Girl" (1995), and her more recent "Skin" Project (2003-present): a 2095 word short story published only once, tattooed word-by-word onto the bodies of applicants who have elected to become words, henceforth understood as embodying these words. Both works are interested in consequential relationships between living/dying bodies and texts: what it means to embody a text, what texts do to the body. Through avoiding traditional print media, both pieces also call into question the ways we read or write and the future of the book in the age of digital media.

(Source: Author's abstract, 2008 ELO Conference)