Projects
Illuminating the Macquarie thesaurus 2001
Pedestrians Terra Incognita A Little Skiting on the Side Roget's Circular Icemelt The Life and Death Show
I'd just completed the final de-bugging of Roget's Circular. Melissa and I had artists and teachers and others from different fields assessing its interface usability. One of these people, arts academic Dr Deborah Malor (Tasmanina University), suggested we seek a publisher - someone had already published a thesaurus. One day I walked down the hill from my place in Launceston and into the local bookshop. Reading the flyleaf of the Macquarie thesaurus, I was struck by the passion of its writer, editor Richard Tardiff. I immediately walked back up the hill and telephoned the Macquarie Library. He answered the phone! Listening to my description of 'Roget', he said "I think we might be able to do something with this" and asked to be sent a copy. Within a week he'd called back, saying that Macquarie were just about to publish their first electronic edition of their thesaurus and he could envisage 'wormholes' between the reference work and the artwork. Around six months later the publication was out, incorporating Roget's Circular in its entirety.
The coding and interface design for the integration between the Macquarie thesaurus and Roget's Circular were done by a Melbourne company.
More artwork associated with this project can be seen at
