A collaboration between three authors and a potentially infinite number of readers, Abra merges physical and digital media to draw attention to the way the body of the book has always been a shifting, mutating, and interactive surface. This living text encompasses an artist's book, trade paperback, and a free iOS app that invite readers to consider the history and future of the book by highlighting their role in bringing text to life. Each of Abra's forms takes advantage of the affordances of its medium to highlight the book as touchscreen interface. In this talk, Collaborators Ian Hatcher and Amaranth Borsuk unpack some of those affordances and lay out the conceptual underpinnings of the project, situating it within the bodies of work each has developed as an artist, poet, and new media maker.

Bios:
Amaranth Borsuk is a poet, scholar, and book artist whose work encompasses print and digital media, performance and installation. Her collaborative media works include Between Page and Screen, augmented reality poetry created with Brad Bouse; The Deletionist, an erasure bookmarklet with Nick Montfort and Jesper Juul; and Whispering Galleries, a LeapMotion interactive textwork. Abra an intermedia collaboration with Kate Durbin and Ian Hatcher, received an NEA-sponsored Expanded Artists’ Books grant and was issued as a limited edition book and free iPad / iPhone app. Borsuk is currently an Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington, Bothell. Her next volume, The Book, forthcoming in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series, considers the history, future, and idea of the book, tracing the interrelationship of form and content in its development.

Ian Hatcher is a writer, sound artist, performer, and programmer whose work explores cognition in the context of digital systems. Recent projects include a print poetry collection, Prosthesis (2016); a vinyl 7", Drone Pilot (2017); and two collaborative iOS apps: Vniverse (2014), and Abra (2015). His code-inflected live vocal performances have been presented widely in North America and Europe. He received his MFA from Brown University and lives in New York.