An interdisciplinary team of media artists, graphic designers and programmers together with a literary expert created 11 interactive installations which form the major part of the exhibition organized by the prestigious Petőfi Literary Museum in Budapest, to celebrate the Hungarian poet Sándor Weöres. It was a challenge to create an engaging experience around the heritage of a poet – unlike looking at his pen and other objects, or having (longish) texts on display, which have been the common practice in literary musea. Most of the 11 interactive installations allow to play around with some poems, in this way making the „viewer” and „reader” an active co-creator (which is actually essential in understanding poetry). One can „blow” a poem and see how dancing letters settle into meaningful lines, or take into hand (3d printed versions of) poems and feel under fingertips the metric and melody. Another installation invites the visitor to patch poems by carefully moving vagabonded words to their places holding them in their palm. Yet another installation allows the visitor to create new poems by stitching the original 16 words in different orders – and make the verdict if and why their version (too) is a poem.
In the talk the each of the 11 installations will be demonstrated by videos. Then the technology will be outlined, and discussed how they are related to the very nature of the heritage of the poet.
Visitors spend much more time with the exhibition than in „traditional” exhibitions, and seem to enjoy the playful and cheerful (and unexpected) encounters. Moreover, they seem to learn and get seriously interested. Often spontaneous discussions groups emerge to unveil the „secrets” of the magical effects, and the related poetical phenomena. The feedback from both visitors on spot and from the public and academic media are overwhelmingly positive.
