RIVETED IN THE WORD: Portraying the Experience of Broca Aphasia in a New Work of Digital Fiction

Submission Type

Performance

Start Date/Time (EDT)

19-7-2024 7:15 PM

End Date/Time (EDT)

19-7-2024 7:30 PM

Location

Algorithms & Imaginaries

Abstract

This three-person talk/performance will describe, demonstrate, and perform (excerpts) of “Riveted in the Word,” a new e-lit book-app inspired by the true story of a writer’s hard-fought battle to regain language after a devastating stroke. Written and designed by a longtime author/designer of highly-visual books and animations, this dynamic e-book made for mobile devices places the reader inside the mind of an author/historian as she recalls her journey with Broca Aphasia. The book-app is developed and programmed in close collaboration with an interdisciplinary web/electronic literature developer. The resulting interface reflects the bifurcation of hemispheres within the protagonist’s stroke-traumatized brain, and toggles between columns of text read at one’s own pace and animated sections that evoke gaps between perceptions (thoughts, emotions, memories) and the words needed to communicate. “Riveted in the Word” is a story about overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles, told in an innovative way with kinetic typography and an original soundtrack. The project combines creative writing, music, user interface and motion design with healthy doses of poetic license to create an empathic literary experience that helps communicate an otherwise little-understood condition. In the face of so many fast-paced online/digital reading and gaming platforms designed to satisfy shorter and shorter attention spans, this unusual but approachable setting of a seemingly difficult text containing fragmented language about a challenging subject offers a hopeful future for an electronic literature that can slow down the pace of reading and facilitate deep, mid-length to long-form reading experiences. This lively and informative presentation will be presented by the author/designer, the programmer, and an actor.

Bio

Warren Lehrer is a NY-based writer and designer known internationally as a pioneer of visual literature and design authorship. His work is acclaimed for its marriage of writing and typography, capturing the shape of thought and speech and reuniting oral and pictorial traditions of storytelling in books, animations, interactive media, and performance. Honors include Ladislav Sutnar Lifetime Achievement Prize, Center for Book Arts Honoree, The Brendan Gill Prize, the Innovative Use of Archives Award, the International Book Award for Best New Fiction, three AIGA Book Awards, and fellowships and grants the National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, Rockefeller, Ford, and Greenwall Foundations. His books are in many collections including MoMA, The Getty Museum, Georges Pompidou Centre, and Tate Gallery. Lehrer is a founding faculty member of the Designer As Author/Entrepreneur MFA program at the School of Visual Arts, Professor Emeritus at SUNY Purchase, and co-founder of EarSay, a non-profit arts organization in Queens, NY.

https://warrenlehrer.com/
https://electronicbookreview.com/essay/a-life-in-books-an-interview-with-author-designer-warren-lehrer/
https://motionographer.com/2014/11/12/literature-and-motion-design-crossing-the-boundaries-with-warren-lehrers-a-life-in-books/

Artemio Morales is a creative technologist whose interests lie at the intersection of storytelling, art, and technology. A programmer by trade, he is founder of AltSalt, a publisher and promoter of innovative, creative work by alternative voices, as well as Artmayu Studios, a studio dedicated to exploring electronic literature and its capabilities around interdisciplinary, collaborative forms of expression. You can find his work with AltSalt at www.altsalt.com and his work with Artmayu Studios at www.artmayu.com.

Judith Sloan is an actor, audio artist, writer, radio producer, human rights activist, educator and poet whose work combines humor, pathos and a love of the absurd. For over twenty years, Sloan has been producing and presenting interdisciplinary works in audio and theater, portraying voices often ignored by the mass media. Her solo performances and plays have been produced in theatres and festivals throughout the U.S. and abroad including: LaMama E.T.C, The Public Theatre, The Theatre Workshop (Edinburgh), The Smithsonian Institution, the Market Theatre (Johannesburg). She has been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Theatre Week, The London Stage, San Francisco Chronicle, among others. HERE. Her commentaries, plays, poetry and documentaries have aired on NPR, PRI, BBC, and listener-sponsored stations throughout the U.S. Sloan has received awards for her audio mixes, radio documentaries and work with various musicians integrating storytelling, acting, sampling and multiple languages into symphonic pieces, live performance with actors and musicians, and radio. Awards and commissions include a 2022 NYSCA Individual Artist Commissioning Grant, Queens Council on the Arts Commissioning Awards and Individual Artist Awards, NYFA Fellowship in Music and Sound; grants from the Ford, Rockefeller, and Mellon Foundations. She is a member of the adjunct faculty at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. In 2009, Sloan received the Partnership in Education Award from the International High School at LaGuardia Community College for her ongoing programs for arts-in-education with immigrant and refugee teenagers, Cross-Cultural Dialogue through the Arts and Transforming Trauma Into Art.

https://earsay.org/
https://gallatin.nyu.edu/people/faculty/jls9.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/nyregion/13websloan.html

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Jul 19th, 7:15 PM Jul 19th, 7:30 PM

RIVETED IN THE WORD: Portraying the Experience of Broca Aphasia in a New Work of Digital Fiction

Algorithms & Imaginaries

This three-person talk/performance will describe, demonstrate, and perform (excerpts) of “Riveted in the Word,” a new e-lit book-app inspired by the true story of a writer’s hard-fought battle to regain language after a devastating stroke. Written and designed by a longtime author/designer of highly-visual books and animations, this dynamic e-book made for mobile devices places the reader inside the mind of an author/historian as she recalls her journey with Broca Aphasia. The book-app is developed and programmed in close collaboration with an interdisciplinary web/electronic literature developer. The resulting interface reflects the bifurcation of hemispheres within the protagonist’s stroke-traumatized brain, and toggles between columns of text read at one’s own pace and animated sections that evoke gaps between perceptions (thoughts, emotions, memories) and the words needed to communicate. “Riveted in the Word” is a story about overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles, told in an innovative way with kinetic typography and an original soundtrack. The project combines creative writing, music, user interface and motion design with healthy doses of poetic license to create an empathic literary experience that helps communicate an otherwise little-understood condition. In the face of so many fast-paced online/digital reading and gaming platforms designed to satisfy shorter and shorter attention spans, this unusual but approachable setting of a seemingly difficult text containing fragmented language about a challenging subject offers a hopeful future for an electronic literature that can slow down the pace of reading and facilitate deep, mid-length to long-form reading experiences. This lively and informative presentation will be presented by the author/designer, the programmer, and an actor.