Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
University of Edinburgh
reRead
‘reRead’ is an interactive digital installation enquiring into the relationship between reading and writing. The work adopts the principle of autopoiesis (self-creating biological and cybernetic systems – Maturana and Varela) as a process for authoring and interpreting texts, questioning our conventional understanding of readers, writers and the hermeneutic cycle.
On entering the work the viewer is electronically reflected within a video projection composed of texts which are constantly writing themselves, adapting their content and form in response to the viewer's movements.
Seeming initially meaningful, these texts are written by algorithms that have no intent or contextual awareness. As the texts increase in length they reduce in point-size, becoming so small they approach single pixel scale and disappear, subsequently reappearing as new large texts.
The texts are horizontally inverted and are most easily read by turning to face a mirror that is mounted on the wall opposite the projection, the reader again seeing themselves reflected. The entire space is visually memorised on the screen in a grid format, the viewer iteratively recorded as they interact with the system.
When the viewer departs the area between the projection and the mirror the writing system enters stasis and, as it continues to acquire 'memories' of the now vacant space, gradually erases (forgets) the previous activities reflected in its surface. Forgetting is proposed as an active process of inscription.
‘reRead’ was selected for exhibition in the following locations:
2009: Commissioned (value 2000 euros) and exhibited as an interactive immersive installation at Language Games, Berlin Poetry Festival, Akademy der Kunste, Berlin, Germany.
2010: Exhibited as an interactive immersive installation, McCormack Theatre, Brown University, Providence, USA, as part of the Electronic Language Organization conference.
2011: Exhibited as an interactive immersive installation, Palazzo della Arti, Naples, Italy, as part of the first Electronic Language exhibition in Italy.
