physical

Artist’s Statement:
When materials that support texts change, the content could be affected. This installation is a physical reflection on how the materiality could affect the text. From ceramic tiles to displays, each new supporting material has opened new possibilities for writing.

MATTERS, seeks to write through the manipulation of electromagnetic fields with new raw materials instead of the screen. Sensitive components to these fields will be placed on three acrylic drawers (45 x 30 x 15 cm). Each drawer allows different reading times, interactions and experiences.
(Source: http://elo2016.com/jose-aburto-olezzi/)

The Reading Glove is the first component of a research program called the TUNE Project (Tangible, Ubiquitous, Narrative Environment). Karen and Josh Tanenbaum describe TUNE as a story, a space, a game, and a research instrument that investigates questions of interactive narrative, player modeling, adaptivity, and tangible embodied interaction.

The Reading Glove itself has gone through several iterations. Version 1.0 consisted of a wearable RFID-enabled glove and tagged objects that allowed readers to experience an interactive narrative by picking up objects that have been augmented with story fragments.  There is a video of Reading Glove 1.0 and details of the design process on our blog.

For Reading Glove 2.0 we added a tabletop display and a recommendation engine the helped to guide readers through assembling the distributed narrative. This version has its own video and its development is also documented on the blog. In the summer and fall of 2010 we ran a series of user studies exploring how participants experienced the adaptive system and object-based narrative.

(Source: author's website.)

A short story where each word was tattooed on the skin of a volunteer. These volunteers were the only people who saw the full text of the story. The website documents the work using photographs of tattooed words, a map showing where the words "live", and describing the concept: "From this time on, participants will be known as "words". They are not understood as carriers or agents of the words they bear, but as their embodiments. As a result, injuries to the printed text, such as dermabrasion, laser surgery, tattoo cover work or the loss of body parts, will not be considered to alter the work. Only the death of words effaces them from the text. As words die the story will change; when the last word dies the story will also have died. The author will make every effort to attend the funerals of her words."