h y p o t e x t . is a heat-sensitive narrative created in partnership with the reader’s body. The work is formed from an acrylic and aluminium block, designed to recall a tablet or smartphone, and a remote screen that displays the narrative. On holding the block, temperature readings of the reader’s body heat are processed through an algorithm to generate a composite retelling of the culturally-suppressed tale type, 510B.
510B is the other Cinderella story. The one we left in the woods. It is Catskin, Thousandfurs, Donkey Skin, The Princess and the Suit of Leathers, Ye Xian and other close variants such as The Girl Without Hands. 510B is loose net of stories gathered within the Aarne-Thompson index, an academic cataloguing system that prioritises objects over narrative.
Fish bones, gold rings, severed hands, spinning wheels, girls, cyborgs, borrowed skins and fathers are arranged into a jittering, jarring array of bodies that the reader can briefly, remotely touch – but not hold.
This tactile text draws the reader into a private communion with the text – and the text as a difficult, uncooperative co-creator – asking the reader to consider their own agency and power within their relationships with texts and their own bodies.