Voiced Verses

This web-based prototype invited visitors to contribute their voices to a collective poem. Each participant recited a single line, which automatically became part of the poem’s continuous performance. This experiment transformed poetry into a shared experience, highlighting the diversity of voices and interpretations.

Building on this concept, we developed a physical installation that invited participants to recite a part of the poem in person. Presented during Dutch Design Week 2021, this iteration brought poetry into a tangible space. By speaking their lines aloud, participants became active performers, contributing not just their voices but also their presence to the evolving work. This part of the research focuses on the performance of poetry. It’s about unity, division and communication. About subtext. What is carried within a voice?

Evolving words

Expanding on the idea of the ever growing poem, we explored ways to open Gershwin’s poetry at a substantive level. Beyond performance, we wanted to give readers the ability to alter the poem’s words and meaning. We developed a web-based platform where readers were guided in making changes to the text. Each modification was added to a continuous scroll, generating endless variations of the poem. This process blurred the boundaries between author and audience, as individual contributions wove together into a living, ever-evolving work. Through this experiment, collective authorship emerged, transforming poetry into a dynamic exchange rather than a fixed creation.

As a next step, we thought about ways to bring this digital form back into public spaces through augmented reality, in a way that leveraged the growing length of the poem. Could the length create additional meaning? Maybe by guiding the way in the shape of a route, or by packing a building? these forms of poetry create a connection between the content and the space it inhabits, transforming the poem into a site-specific experience.

This research was funded by the Dutch Foundation for Literature and The Creative Industries Fund NL with the purpose to research new forms of digital literature.