SKIN: A Mortal Work of Art

A short story where each word was tattooed on the skin of a volunteer. These volunteers were the only people who saw the full text of the story. The website documents the work using photographs of tattooed words, a map showing where the words "live", and describing the concept: 'From this time on, participants will be known as "words". They are not understood as carriers or agents of the words they bear, but as their embodiments. As a result, injuries to the printed text, such as dermabrasion, laser surgery, tattoo cover work or the loss of body parts, will not be considered to alter the work. Only the death of words effaces them from the text. As words die the story will change; when the last word dies the story will also have died. The author will make every effort to attend the funerals of her words.'

(Source for quoted text: Author's Project Announcement)

Research Collection that references this work:

Title
Electronic Literature, Chapter 4: Interactive Fiction and Other Gamelike Forms

Critical writing that references this work:

Title	Author	Year
Distributed Narrative: Telling Stories Across Networks	Jill Walker Rettberg	2005
I Hold It Toward You: A Show of Hands	Shelley Jackson	2018
Life Poetry Told by Sensors	Jill Walker Rettberg	2014
Subjective Boundaries: Shelley Jackson's Hypertexts and the Terrain of the Skin	Cara Ogburn	2008
The Metainterface: The art of platforms, cities and clouds	Søren Bro Pold, Christian Ulrik Andersen	2018
Transmedia Practice: Theorising the Practice of Expressing a Fictional World across Distinct Media and Environments	Christy Dena	2009
Written on the Body: An Interview with Shelley Jackson	Scott Rettberg, Shelley Jackson	2006

The permanent URL of this page:

https://elmcip.net/node/505

Record posted by:

Jill Walker Rettberg