Chapter 17
Bibliocircuitry and the Design of the Alien Everyday, 2012–13
Kari Kraus
Bibliocircuitry and the Design of the Alien Everyday is a series of student projects that grew out of several book design labs conducted as part of a Fall 2012 course (ENGL 758B Book 2.0: The History of the Book and the Future of Reading) taught by Kari Kraus at the University of Maryland. Using physical books as springboards for computation and mixed media experiments, the student projects realize one of the larger aims of the course: to position bibliotextual scholarship and pedagogy as design-oriented practices that can be used to prototype and imagine the future of the book. The project resulted in a publication by the same name.
Figure 17.1. Illustration of Edward Lear’s Owl singing to the Pussycat. An Arduino board embedded in subsequent pages controls light-emitting diodes (LEDs) that make the stars visible outside the Pussycat’s window twinkle. Format: Physical computing and mixed media. Materials: Microcontrollers, electronics, mixed media, and physical books. Charity Hancock Balch, Clifford Hichar Moberg, Carlea Holl-Jensen, Kari Kraus, Cameron Mozafari, and Kathryn Skutlin Shutt. Illustration and photograph by Clifford Hichar Moberg.