In gallery space lit by amber and violet, I saw words unmoored from the page. Instead, they wafted around us like confetti. It was a reimagined reading room, a stage with walls fluttering with projected letters and blinking icons that guided visitors through interactive storylines.
A friend had mentioned an Alice in Wonderland exhibition being presented at the Ewha Womans College student showing, and naturally, we went. Instead of sitting in a chair, reading about Alice’s fall down the rabbit hole, we slipped through pastel corridors while holographic playing cards pirouetted across our path. A row of teacups rattled in cheerful dissonance, and we followed the distant giggle of the Cheshire Cat through an actual maze. The experience was playful and slightly disorienting, but I got the sense that that was the intention. I had stepped into a dream made real.
Meanwhile, libraries and bookstores have taken on fresh lives of their own. At some locations, you can point a phone at a row of classic covers and watch an AR app animate the spines so the book seems to be breathing. Some spaces set up text-based storytelling on digital kiosks, encouraging readers to exchange messages with characters that might be fictional or might be fragments of ourselves—who could be sure anymore? Even pop-up cafés and escape rooms have become themed around bestsellers, so that we incorporate ourselves into communal narratives over latte foam or puzzle locks.
All of this pushes literature beyond just traditional paper. Will these innovations be just as revolutionary as Gutenberg’s printing press? Will these novel ways to interact with words attract a new generation of readers who are otherwise busy with other digital media? Perhaps. But there is also doubt. To what extent does the spectacle of the word steal the soul of the written word? Do we lose the quiet trance of solo reading when the experience is made so theatrical? Still, if anything, these installations suggest a shift in how we learn, how we connect, and how we entertain ourselves: through taste, touch, conversation, and play.
Perhaps in order to survive, literature needs to have a new identity—no longer content to sit and wait on the shelf. In a world driven by screens and constant iterative design changes, maybe that’s the ultimate testament to the power of words: the original World Wide Web and connector of people.
