This interactive artwork and piece of digital literature can be interacted with inside Helensvale Library, Gold Coast, Australia. Take your library item and scan the barcode to have it tell you about the places it has been and the interesting and quirky people it has been lent to in the past. This world first interactive art installation works for books, DVDs, audio books, and any other Gold Coast City Libraries item.
The Fingers of a Warm and Careful Android is the result of a four month long artist residency at Helensvale Library where I was commissioned to make an interactive artwork as well as give a series of workshops on digital animation, app game creation, and interactive controller creation, in the Helensvale Library Media Lab. This site-specific work uses a barcode reader to interact with the audience. Scanning your library book's barcode brings up a story and animation on the large screen that is unique to your book. The concept behind the piece is that all library books/items have stories from their past that we cannot tap into, and this project allows people to (fictionally) hear about the past adventures of their favourite books. The unique idea behind this artwork can be transported to other libraries around the world, and I am currently in talks with a couple of libraries in Europe about making versions specifically for them and their collection. It also works for other types of collections, such as museum collections. If you work at a library or museum and would like an interactive story box like this, either for on-site or for web, that audiences can use to interact with your collection, please email me at alintakrauth [at] gmail [dot] com.
Promotional material
Helensvale Library also has a large outdoor permanent projector that displays several video art pieces of mine, including a video version of Fingers of a Warm and Careful Android. This image shows a video version of my work Shadow Blisters on display.
This project received funding from Gold Coast City Council. 