Abra

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Abra is a magical poetry instrument/spellbook for iOS. In this free app, touch words and watch them shift under your fingers. Cast spells to mutate the text and set it in motion. Write your own words and see them become part of Abra’s vocabulary. Read, write, and experiment to discover her secrets and make her poems your own.

 

The recipient of an Expanded Artists’ Books Grant from the Center for Book and Paper Arts at Columbia College Chicago, Abra is an exploration and celebration of the potentials of the artist’s book in the 21st century.

A collaboration between Amaranth Borsuk, Kate Durbin, Ian Hatcher, and a potentially infinite number of readers, the project merges physical and digital media, integrating a hand-made artists’ book with an iPad app that can be read separately or together, with the iPad inserted into the back of the book.

 


Editing: Louis Mayo
Music: Graham Bole, “We Are One”
Footage: Nathan Evers, Digital Future Lab, University of Washington, Bothell