Letterpress Meets the Internet!

I saw Amaranth Borsuk and Brad Bouse’s book project Between Page and Screen at the Santa Fe International New Media Festival today. The designs printed in the book can be read by the webcam which provides an overlay of information (in this case poetry). What made the work particularly pleasing was that when the webcam read the code it did not simply direct the reader to a link in the manner of traditional qr codes. Instead the image recorded by the webcam remained on the screen and the text appeared to be floating as if it were over the actual book. When I moved the book from side to side the text followed or even tilted. It was as if I were looking into a mirror while reading a book and saw the text magically appearing above my reflection. As a printmaker who loves the tactile nature of books I was delighted to finally find a technology that created diologe between the physical page and virtual text.

(via Between Page and Screen)

“Between Page and Screen is a hand-bound and letterpress-printed book of poems that engages both the digital poetry and artist’s book traditions.”