Application

In this digital first picture book app, the reader encounters several interwoven stories connected by a thoroughly digital aesthetics that suits the different stories. The frame narrative centres around Kubbe, an anthropomorphic wooden log (kubbe is Norwegian for log) who is having a picnic with his grandmother and becomes curious about the shadows he sees. Upon hearing his grandmother’s story about how shadow theatre was created in ancient China, Kubbe decides to produce his own shadow theater: an unusal retelling of “Little Red Riding Hood”. The tablet’s affordances of back lighting, animation and visual spatiality are exploited in this app in a manner that suits and enhances the different stories’ individual characteristics. (source: ELO 2015 conference catalog)

Children’s literature can include non-fiction texts, and this app, developed by Spinfy, is an example. It is a creatively retold version of the The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child Rights in a way that is aimed at young children. Each spread is read aloud, and when the reader touches one of the illustrations, a sound is heard, or the speech bubbles that many illustrations have are read out. For instance, the page explaining that all children have the right to privacy shows a girl with a diary, and when you touch the diary, a voice whispers: “Ssh, don’t tell”. The app is an adaptation of a picture book Pernilla Stalfelt’s wrote and illustrated in 2010. (source: ELO 2015 Conference Program and Festival Catalog)

The Taro at the Center of the Earth iPad application is a digitized version of the popular Finnish childrens’ author Timo Parvela’s first book about the character Taro (2010). The story is about a little boy and a bear’s journey to the center of the Earth, and is delightfully illustrated by Jussi Kaakinen. Taro makes use of point-and-click adventure game conventions to create an experience which is still quite close to a print book, but it manages to evoke more of a sense of exploring a fictional space than turning print pages by its unusual use of the spatial screen space. The individual panes follow each other either seamlessly in horizontal or vertical directions, depending on the movements of Taro and his bear friend, so there is no strong division between parts of the work, as is the case with book pages. The scrolling illustrations, which are only partially under the user’s control, help the user to identify with Taro in his exciting adventure, perhaps allowing for a tighter experience of emotion and immersion in the story.

The fascinating story of Moomin, Mymble and Little My comes alive in this new interactive storybook. Shake, rotate, swipe and tap the screen to discover the fabulous animations hidden on each page. You can listen to the narration or read the story yourself to your children. See what happens as Moomin travels through wonderfully illustrated adventures with his friends. Amazing interactive content and funny sound effects make the magical journey so exciting your children will enjoy this classic Moomin story over and over again. original illustrations and story by Tove Jansson eye-catching animations and funny sound effects amusing interactions on each page read-aloud narration (Source: http://www.spinfy.com/products/applications/the-book-about-moomin-mymbl…)

When your iPad is lying down you can read or listen to this story about animals who live in a red house, during the coldest winter in 2000 years.. When you pick up the iPad, it becomes a window into a 3D rendition of the fictional world, and you need to move around to pan through the world. Each of the creatures in the house has a short story, and for each story you need to interact with the iPad to help solve the creature’s problem: shake it to get the snow down from a tree; shout into it to wake up Gregers’ siblings; or find a yellow color with the camera to turn on the lights in the dark winter night. Merete Pryds Helle has, alongside her work as a novelist, been a pioneer in the field of Danish digital literature or hybrid literature, and wrote several successful computer games in the 1990s. In this millennium she has been first to introduce danes to SMS novels, app novel (“The funeral”, 2011), an electronic calendar novel (“Mikkels mareridt”, 2014). With its clever use of the tools offered by the iPad, Wuwu places the reader in a tension between the written and imagined on one side and the animated, interactive and visible on the other side. The reader has to both join and separate the physical reality of the body and the reality on the screen, which heightens the awareness of both.

When your iPad is lying down you can read or listen to this story about animals who live in a red house, during the coldest winter in 2000 years.. When you pick up the iPad, it becomes a window into a 3D rendition of the fictional world, and you need to move around to pan through the world. Each of the creatures in the house has a short story, and for each story you need to interact with the iPad to help solve the creature’s problem: shake it to get the snow down from a tree; shout into it to wake up Gregers’ siblings; or find a yellow color with the camera to turn on the lights in the dark winter night. Merete Pryds Helle has, alongside her work as a novelist, been a pioneer in the field of Danish digital literature or hybrid literature, and wrote several successful computer games in the 1990s. In this millennium she has been first to introduce danes to SMS novels, app novel (“The funeral”, 2011), an electronic calendar novel (“Mikkels mareridt”, 2014). With its clever use of the tools offered by the iPad, Wuwu places the reader in a tension between the written and imagined on one side and the animated, interactive and visible on the other side. The reader has to both join and separate the physical reality of the body and the reality on the screen, which heightens the awareness of both.

This is a story about a girl, a woman and an old sailor told in images, sounds and fragments of text that the reader must find by navigating through a dreamlike ocean landscape. By taking advantage of the affordances of a tablet, Simon Flesser and Magnus Gardebäck have created a fictional world built on an exceptional lyrical narrative, engaging graphics and a soundtrack that completes a well balanced enviroment that readers will love to navigate. The work uses the iPad in portrait mode, and begins with a dark screen with the words: “It’s night.” The reader swipes the words to the left to read more, sentence by sentence on the dark screen: “A girl lies in her bed. There’s not a sound. No footsteps in the hallway, no one talking or whispering. Everything is quiet. The girl shuts her eyes.” The sound of waves fades in, and you see you are in the ocean with islands to explore. A visual hypertext without links, you navigate through this world finding spaces that lead to short texts that seen together tell a story of loss, memories and fire.

The Computer Wore Heels is an interactive book app for the iPad that shares the little known story of a group of female mathematicians, some as young as 18, who did secret ballistics research for the US Army during WWII. A handful of these human 'computers' went on to serve as the programmers of ENIAC, the first multi-purpose electronic computer. The app is based on the documentary film Top Secret Rosies: The Female Computers of WWII (LeAnn Erickson 2010), and aims to bring this story to younger students in the hopes of giving today's teens role models that might encourage them to study math, science and computer science. The app's design resembles a girl's diary from the 1940's with the narrative unfolding as an adventure story. Readers may access primary research documents such as original WWII era letters, photographs and mathematical equations actually completed by the story's subjects. There are also numerous audio and video clips that expand on story plot points or events.

(source: Kid e-Lit booklet)

The Secret Language of Desire (2015) is an electronic literature app exploring the narrative and touchscreen affordances of digital tablets. Merging 27 ultra-short chapters with interactive animations and sound, The Secret Language of Desire traces a woman’s journey from everyday life into a landscape of sensuality and desire. Every chapter of The Secret Language of Desire contains elements to enrich the narrative – objects can be touched, triggering animations and sound, or images can be rubbed off, revealing hidden contents.

The Secret Language of Desire differs from Heyward’s early works by emphasising textual content over image, sound and interactivity, reworking the balance of multimedia elements into an electronic literature form that is predominantly textually-driven. The project was supported by funding of $15,000 in 2014 from the Australian Government through the Literature Board of the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.The work includes mature content and themes. It was produced for iPads and was available in the AppStore from 2015 to 2018.

The Secret Language of Desire was written and developed by Megan Heyward using Adobe InDesign DPS (Digital Publishing System) and Adobe Animate. It features original sound design by Michael Finucan and original music by Australian saxophonist Martin Kay.

Notes for Walking (the space in between time) is a locative artwork developed for Middle Head National Park and Mosman Art Gallery, NSW for the Sydney Festival, 2013. In Notes for Walking, visitors use their mobile phones to discover a set of short video ‘notes’ as they explore the abandoned naval fortifications on the headland. Thirteen short videos are electronically tagged to features of landscape onsite, asking audiences to contemplate notions of waiting, time and impermanence as they walk. Working with the spectacular intersection of land, sea and sky at Middle Head, and the emerging capacities of augmented reality and location-based technologies, Notes for Walking is an intriguing exploration of a remarkable landscape.