Project Demo
Samantha Gorman
HASTAC Scholar/Ph.D. candidate
School of Cinematic Arts at USC
Biography
Samantha Gorman is a writer, scholar and media artist who composes for the intersection of text, performance and digital culture. She is concerned with issues surrounding contemporary reading and writing practices: particularly, what these practices mean for the future of our cultural heritage in an increasingly digital world.
Abstract
Penumbra is a hybrid, re-imagining of the E-book. Crafted for mobile tablets, it carefully integrates gesture, video, interaction design and text. Increasingly, the tablet represents a readership that is poised for rich interactive worlds: new stories for new screens. Authoring with, in and through the tablet platform has the potential to create future literature that redefines our reading practice beyond simple existing emulations of print on screen or “touch and click” reading. In Penumbra, the digital and physical work together to bring the reader into the mind of the main protagonist. A series of P.O.V. interactive elements allow the reader to explore the language, senses, and visuals of the protagonist’s increasingly muddled thoughts. Through this engagement with a new type of book, the cultural expectations of what it means to “read” are interrogated and rethought. When encountered as an installation, Penumbra is an evocative standalone app. that can be read by interacting with the touch-based screen of an iPad. The aim is to create a strong fictional world where the interactions required to traverse it are non- trivial, compelling and content rich.