Documenting Amaranth Borsuk and Brad Bouse's Interactive Poetry Project
Readers' Traversals and Interviews
Interview with Alejandro Echeverria
Conducted by Stacy ReardonWednesday, June 14, 2017
SR: Tell us about your reading experience, in general terms. We're interested not only in how it may have differed from your experience of books, but also how it may relate to your experiences of other electronic media – the World Wide Web, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Differences? Similarities?
AE: More interactive, more bodily involved, instead of just moving with my cursor up and down the screen, I could flip the page with my hand, go side to side, or go backwards, that was a good technique. It was different from physical books because the printed word is just flat. And this one is kind of flat in the same sense, but it moves, the text is not static, That’s my first impression of this.
SR: How do you see yourself as a participant in the work, if at all?
AE: I see myself just as a, I feel like just from far away I’m a participant, even though I’m near, but in the same sense, the project pertains only to that region, which I’m not a part of, but that place can have two different times connecting together, through the virtual text.
SR: What effects stand out to you, and how do you think they speak to any themes of the work that you might identify?
AE: So the effects is the disappearing effects or the particlization of the text, the little dots, when they get erased, it was like time is pushing them away or something like that, and they’re slowly dissolving away, and revealing what is left, and what is left is the specific text of that message. The vanishing effect really speaks to that time is lost, or gone is a different context, and now we’re in a new time, but we’re still connected together.
SR: You obviously haven't seen every bit of the work. As a guess, what percentage of the work do you think you have seen in your reading?
AE: Probably only 5%. A minimal amount. Because it’s a diary. I think I only saw 5 pages or around there, so I want to know what the other pages would be.
SR: What do you think may be in the unseen parts?
AE: The unseen parts would be the coding, definitely to get the effects to run smoothly because maybe the effects would jam or not move at all, or keep the text fixed. That must be a difficult text to see.
SR: If you had to use a metaphor or analogy to describe this work, what would you choose?
AE: I would describe it as wind passing through a book and ripping off some of the pages, and what pages are left are the new story that is told.
SR: How do you think this might have been experienced if you had participated in the local exhibit?
AE: (Laughs) How would I? I would probably be more hands on-y. Trying to feel the full scope of the full interaction but aware that there are other people near me who wanted to see it as well, so that would limit me, but I would also want to see how other people interacted with the work as well. That would interest me.
Reader Traversal Video
View of Computer and ScreenView of reader's hands and gestures
Audio