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Entertainment

A Virtual Pop-Up Poetry Book

Relive all your favorite stories from childhood, only this time with augmented reality-enabled pop-up books.

Remember those fantastical days of your youth when books weren’t just printed words on pulped wood (or pixels on e-paper), but actually came alive in three-dimensional pop-up images that surprised and delighted with every page turn? As you’d flip the absurdly thick page, a movable cardboard landscape would extend, leaving you entranced, illustrating everything from the mysteries of the universe to Alice’s dubious adventures in wonderland. Pop-up books are a much beloved relic from our childhoods, one that’s even enjoyed some literary praise for ingenuity and artistic skill, but has failed to follow us into adulthood.

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Now that whimsical childhood favorite has been given a digital update by developer Brad Bouse in a poetry chapbook featuring the poems of Amaranth Borsuk, called Between Page And Screen. The book itself contains no words but instead features the blocky black and white images of QR code markers. Once you hold it up to a webcam you’ll be treated to some animated poetic typography. You can watch a demonstration in the video above or try it for yourself by printing out a digital marker over on their website.