Ink: designing for performative literary interactions | Personal and Ubiquitous Computing Skip to main content
Springer Nature Link
Log in

Ink: designing for performative literary interactions

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Personal and Ubiquitous Computing Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In this article, we present the interactive literary installation Ink, an experimental installation displayed at the Roskilde library, and the Roskilde Festival, which is designed to prompt public reflection on the nature and role of digital literature. By manipulating three books embedded with sensors, and watching text visualized on a 55” screen, members of the public select from a range of predefined sentences, previously created by a Danish author, and stored in a database. Squeezing the books alters each poetic line by degrees. The final poems print onto a library receipt for their producers and upload to a blog for public viewing. We present (1) design challenges to an installation meant to persuade people to engage affectively with the ergodic nature of digital literature and (2) an in-depth analysis of the empirical findings from the installation studies at the Roskilde Festival. In particular, we highlight the broad, rich range of performative interactions facilitated by the interactive setup. This analysis examines the performative writing and reading achieved by the public through interaction with Ink and also with the resultant poems. From this exploration, we discuss general tendencies when designing affectively engaging literary interactions at the edge of art and design.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
¥17,985 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price includes VAT (Japan)

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11
Fig. 12
Fig. 13
Fig. 14
Fig. 15
Fig. 16
Fig. 17
Fig. 18

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. The project was called “Litteraturen finder sted” (Literature Takes Place), included the libraries in Aarhus and Roskilde and Litteratursiden.dk, was supported by Styrelsen for Bibliotek og Medier (the Danish Agency for Culture) and took place 2010–2013. See http://www.netlitteratur.dk/ (in Danish).

  2. http://unity3d.com/.

  3. www.processing.org.

  4. [VIDEO 1].

  5. For present purposes, we have focused on findings from the Roskilde Festival, but we plan future studies comparing the receptions in the various library spaces with the festival setting.

References

  1. Aarseth EJ (1997) Cybertext perspectives on ergodic literature. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore

    Google Scholar 

  2. Andersen CU (2011) Writerly gaming: political gaming. In: Andersen CU, Pold S (eds) Interface criticism: aesthetics beyond buttons. Aarhus University Press, Aarhus, pp 178–199

    Google Scholar 

  3. Barthes R (1989) From work to text. The rustle of language. University of California Press, Berkeley & Los Angeles, pp 56–64

    Google Scholar 

  4. Barthes R (1990) S/Z. The Noonday Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  5. Bolter JD, Gromala D (2003) Windows and mirrors: interaction design. MIT, Cambridge, Mass.; London, Digital Art and the Myth of Transparency

    Google Scholar 

  6. Breinbjerg M (2012) Urban sound interfaces: poetic approaches to media architecture. In: Proceedings of the media architecture Biennale 2012, Aarhus, ACM, pp 43–47

  7. Brignull H, Rogers Y (2003) Enticing people to interact with large public displays in public spaces. Proc Interact 3:17–24

    Google Scholar 

  8. Brynskov M, Lunding R, Vestergaard LS (2012) The design of tools for sketching sensor-based interaction. In: Proceedings of the sixth international conference on tangible, embedded and embodied interaction (Kingston, Ontario, Canada, 2012). ACM, 2148178, pp 213–216

  9. Bullivant L (2005) The listening post: Ben Rubin and Mark Hansen. Arch Des 75(1):91–93

    Google Scholar 

  10. Bødker S (2006) When second wave HCI meets third wave challenges. In: Proceedings of NordiCHI, 06, Oslo, Norway, ACM

  11. Dalsgaard P, Nielsen R, Halskov K (2008) A design space explorer for media façades. In: Proceedings of OZCHI’08, pp 219–226

  12. Dalsgaard P, Koefoed Hansen L (2008) Performing perception: staging aesthetics of interaction. ACM Trans Comput Hum Interact 15(3):33

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Dalsgaard P, Halskov K (2010) Designing urban media facades: cases and challenges. In: Proceedings of 2010 SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems (CHI 10), ACM, 2277–2286

  14. Dunne A (2005) Hertzian tales: electronic products, aesthetic experience, and critical design. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  15. Electronic Literature Organization: Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 1 (2006), Volume 2 (2011), Electronic literature organization. http://collection.eliterature.org/. Accessed 17 May 2013

  16. Foth M, Forlano L, Satchell C, Gibbs M (eds) (2011) From social butterfly to engaged citizen: urban informatics social media, ubiquitous computing, and mobile technology to support citizen engagement. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  17. Frayling C (1993) Research in art and design. R Coll Art Res Pap 1(1):1–5

    Google Scholar 

  18. Fritsch J (2009) Understanding affective engagement as a resource in interaction design. In: Proceedings of the Nordic design research conference, “engaging artifacts”, Oslo 2009

  19. Fritsch J, Brynskov M (2011) Between experience, affect and information: experimental urban media in the climate change debate. In: Foth M, Forlano L, Gibbs M, Satchell C (eds) From social butterfly to engaged citizen: urban informatics, social media, ubiquitous computing, and mobile technology to support citizen engagement. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  20. Greenfield A, Shepard M (2007) Urban computing and its discontents. The Architectural League of New York, New York

    Google Scholar 

  21. Halskov K (2011) CAVI: an interaction design research lab. Interactions 18(4):92–95

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Jacucci C, Jacucci G, Wagner I, Psik T (2005) A manifesto for the performative development of ubiquitous media. In: Critical computing, between sense and sensibility, the fourth decennial Aarhus conference. ACM Press, Aarhus, Denmark 20–24 August 2005, pp 19–28

  23. Jacucci G, Wagner I (2005) Performative uses of space in mixed media environments. In: Davenport E, Turner P (eds) Spaces, spatiality and technologies. Springer, London

    Google Scholar 

  24. Jacucci G, Morrison A, Richard G, Kleimola J, Peltonen P, Parisis L, Laitinen T (2010) Worlds of information: designing for engagement at a public multi-touch display In: ACM CHI ‘10: pp 2267–2276

  25. Kukka H, Kruger F, Kostakos V, Ojala T, Jurmu M (2011) Information to go: exploring in situ information pick-up “in the wild”. In: Proceedings of the 13th IFIP TC 13 international conference on Human-computer interaction, Lisbon, Portugal

  26. Ludvigsen M (2006) Designing for social interaction: physical, co-located social computing: PhD dissertation, Center for Interactive Spaces, ISIS Katrinebjerg, Aarhus

  27. Massumi B (2002) Parables for the virtual: movement, affect, Sensation. Duke University Press, Durham

    Book  Google Scholar 

  28. Massumi B (2009) Of micropolitics and microperception (interview with Joel McKim. In Inflexions No. 3, Micropolitics: Exploring ethico-aesthetics)

  29. McCarthy J, Wright P (2004) Technology as experience. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  30. McCullough M (2004) Digital ground: architecture, pervasive computing, and environmental knowing. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  31. Müller J, Alt F, Schmidt A, Michelis D (2010) Requirements and design space for interactive public displays. In: Proceedings of MM’10, Firenze, Italy, ACM, pp 1285–1294

  32. Nielsen R, Fritsch J, Halskov K, Brynskov M (2009) Out of the box: exploring the richness of children’s use of an interactive table. In: Proceedings of IDC’09, Como, Italy, pp 61–69

  33. O’Sullivan D, Igoe T (2004) Physical computing: sensing and controlling the physical world with computers. Thomson, Boston, Mass

  34. Rogers Y (2011) Interaction design gone wild: striving for wild theory. interactions, July+August 2011, pp 58–62

  35. Reeves S, Benford S, O’Malley C, Fraser M (2005) Designing the spectator experience. In: Proceedings of the conference on human factors in computing systems (CHI’05). ACM, New York, pp 741–750

  36. Ulmer B, Ishii H (2001) Emerging frameworks for tangible user interfaces. In: Carroll John M (ed) Human-computer interaction in the new millennium. Addison-Wesley, Boston, pp 579–601

    Google Scholar 

  37. Zimmerman J, Forlizzi J, Evenson S (2007) Research through design as a method for interaction design research in HCI. In: Proceedings CHI’07, ACM, pp 493–502

Download references

Acknowledgments

Ink (Tilfældigvis er skærmen blevet blæk/Accidentally, the Screen Turns to Ink) is created within the project Litterature Takes Place (Litteraturen finder sted) by Roskilde Bibliotekerne and Participatory Information Technology Center, Digital Urban Living, CAVI, Aarhus University. 3D programming and sound design are supported by Jonas Oxenbøll Petersen, Janus Bager Kristensen, Rolf Bagge and Rune Wehner, respectively. This research has been funded by the Aarhus University’s interdisciplinary research center Participatory IT, PIT.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Aesthetics and Communication, CAVI, Aarhus University, Helsingforsgade 14, 8200, Aarhus N, Denmark

    Jonas Fritsch, Søren Bro Pold & Lasse Steenbock Vestergaard

  2. Department of Scandinavian Studies, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Melissa Lucas

Authors
  1. Jonas Fritsch
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Søren Bro Pold
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Lasse Steenbock Vestergaard
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Melissa Lucas
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Søren Bro Pold.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

VIDEO 1 – Vestergaard, L. (2012) Presentation of Ink: http://media.cavi.dk/228/607914?player=true (MP4 759826 kb)

VIDEO 2 – Lucas, M. (2013) Observations of Ink from the Roskilde Festival: http://media.cavi.dk/228/607868?player=true (MP4 136154 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Fritsch, J., Pold, S.B., Vestergaard, L.S. et al. Ink: designing for performative literary interactions. Pers Ubiquit Comput 18, 1551–1565 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-014-0767-2

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-014-0767-2

Keywords

Search

Navigation