International acclaim for innovative literary project | Western Cape Education Department
International acclaim for innovative literary project

International acclaim for innovative literary project

25 July 2019

The Byderhand Pioneer project has been singled out at the recent Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) Conference and Media Arts Festival in Ireland as an excellent example of applied e-literature research.

The project is a collaboration between the subject group Creative Writing of the North-West University (NWU) and the Pioneer School for the visually impaired in Worcester.

The project presents interactive reading experiences in which location and literature can be experienced in an entire new way.

The project has three parts, Pioneer stories, Garden Verses and Karoo Garden Verses.

Writers and artists in the project include famous poets, learners, alumni and staff from the Pioneer school.

A combination of media was used to make the project accessible to visually impaired as well as seeing persons.

At the ELO conference, the Byderhand team consisting of Gustaf Tempelhoff, a multimedia designer, and Professors Bernard Odendaal and Franci Greyling did a panel presentation titled "Site/sight-specific digital literature: an interdisciplinary project for and with persons with visual impairment".  The lively discussion afterwards gave an indication of the interest in the project.

In her closing lecture, Prof Astrid Enslin, who serves on the ELO council and was one of the main speakers at the conference, specifically mentioned the project as an example of applied e-literature research, a new movement in digital literature studies.

She tweeted that the panel was probably her favourite panel at the conference.

Visit http://byderhand.net/pionier.html for more information about the project.