I have seen the future of the pop-book and it is augmented and whimsical.
I’ve often discussed games as occupying many spaces, a nod to GA Tech prof Michael NItsche’s Video Game Spaces, and advance this idea that when we play games, we’re in several places at once. We’re in the world of the code, interpreting the screen, interacting with social context, and, of course, playing with others. Nitsche goes into deeper detail, but I contrast the experience with games with the experience of reading a book which is, by and large, not terribly interactive or social. There’s the public annotations features for the Kindle now that allow to see notes that others have left and parents read aloud to their children. But mostly are static experiences.
Except for pop-up books which I’ve always enjoyed for their dose of whimsy and surprise. Sadly though, as the book as a physical object is in transition and in decline, pop-up books face a similar fate to their dead pulp brethren. There are happily exceptions and Brain Pickings points to one.
From poet-developer duo Amaranth Borsuk and Brad Bouse, and Siglio Press, comes Between Page and Screen — a remarkable “digital pop-up book” that tells the love story of the letters P and S through minimalist, wordless black-and-white geometric patterns that spring to life and summon the text when looked at through a webcam. … At once contrasting and complementing the augmented reality technology is an exquisite original book letterpress-printed and hand-bound on fine press paper. What emerges is a beautiful meditation on where the heart of a book really resides — in the medium, be that page or screen, or in the reader’s experience and imagination.
Wouldn’t this be amazing for Choose Your Own Adventures?
[via Daily Beast]
