Interactive Work-table and Escritoire

The project is an augmented recreation of Dr. Johnson’s writing desk; a combination of traditional media and digital technology. Johnson is largely remembered for his dictionary, the work gathering etymological information from widespread sources. Johnson’s creation of a work of such lasting lasting impact and importance informed the design of the situated interpretive, Interactive Work-table and Escritoire, thus inviting comparison with contemporary communicative phenomena:
1.Online search engines and databases notably rely on communal contributions for content.
2.The notion that language is in continuous and expansive evolution through ever-increasing linguistic subjectivities.
3.The decline of paper and pen and the simultaneity of growth in digital communications. The desk’s digital pen and customised proforma translate handwriting into text-based data. Visitors are encouraged to add words to an online dictionary. Interpreting and mining the emergent combination of the physical and digital the assembly is situated in the garret room where the original dictionary was compiled.