The Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University is getting $50,000 to help make poetry more interactive.
The center is using a grant from the Knight Foundation Art and Technology Prototype Fundto create what it calls the Traveling StanzasListening Wall.
The center’s director, David Hassler, said the mobile touch-screen wall will allow visitors to listen to excerpts from the Kent State Shootings Oral Histories Project archives, choose words from the transcripts and record their own sound poems.
“This listening wall becomes a permeable and interactive space to bring people together in a creative conversation as opposed to divide them, and I think that we can find a shared humanity and some common ground in our essential human experiences,” he said.
The Wick Poetry Center is one of 12 organizations in the U.S to receive one of these grants.
The fund is focused on helping cultural groups better integrate technology.