This is certainly an interesting twist. I have to admit even though I am a fan of most anything that is cross media and starts from print, this one puzzles me a bit. Besides that fact that you can’t read the poems unless you are sitting at a computer, augmented reality is most often associated with something being there, and then enhanced or added to through digital means. In this case, nothing is there but the markers. You can try it yourself here: http://betweenpageandscreen.com/
via Huffington Post: Between Page And Screen: Poetry Book Uses Augmented Reality.
Siglio Press recently announced a book called “Between Page And Screen”, what they call “a digital pop-up book.” Each page will contain no words at all – only a special QR code that the reader can hold up to a webcam, allowing sections of the poem to appear on their screen.
Carlton Books used this technology last year for a series of children’s books with augmented reality content.
But for the most part, such technologies have been supplemental to the text itself, whereas “Between Page And Screen”‘s physical book contains nothing but black-and-white codes.
If you, like Jonathan Franzen, are skeptical of digital book technology, bear in mind that poetry has always been about different forms of word art and experimentation. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once put it, “All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.”
See below to watch “Between Page and Screen” in action:
