Julia Cole

Julia Cole received a 2004 GAP to aid in the purchase of materials and equipment necessary to construct a “Poetry Machine.” An invention of the artist’s, the machine would interactively “empower individuals to enjoy language as a constantly shifting resource.” With the flexibility, ambiguity, and imprecision of communication via the spoken word in mind, the artist will construct a booth the size of a human body, allowing a person to enter the structure and simultaneously be surrounded by a bank of sensors. Movement near these sensors elicits a verbal response from a computer with a pre-recorded vocabulary of several hundred words, while also providing the visitor with the selection of a variety of color and texture combinations that provide varying emotional intensity. “I envision the final structure being durable and portable and moving outside the gallery into a public sphere.”