DOING BETWEEN THE LINES
How do we experience a text? How do we interact with the words and the characters, the semantic operations and the diegetic events of a piece of fiction? With an irreverent attitude toward the technology of the book and the sanctity of the reader, Brett Ascarelli investigates and experiments with the physical act of reading. Borrowing operations and techniques from a wide range of sources – the event scores of the Fluxus artists, the participatory models of performance art and avant-garde theater, and so on – she sets out to design other modes of text-body interaction, ultimately aiming to expand the scope of literature’s aesthetic and cognitive effects. Her research approaches two general questions: How could transformations of the material properties of the book generate other behavioral patterns? And how, using which narratological means, could fiction – stories about actions and events – itself provoke people to develop new practices and habits? – Kim West
Brett Ascarelli works as an artist, journalist, photographer, and designer.