Abra: A Living Text is a free iOs app and a limited-edition artist’s book printed with heat-sensitive ink and other features that animate the page. It is created by Amy Rabas at the Center for Book and Paper Arts at Columbia College Chicago with a collaboration between Amaranth Borsuk, Kate Durbin, Ian Hatcher. Abra invites a reader to play with touchscreen interfaces whereby you can shift words under your fingers, mutate the text, and write your own words. However, the iOs app does not make this book a special text; the biggest challenge is to move these effects to the printed page. Therefore, the artist’s book printed is a great experience of reading the page as an interface. Thanks to thermochromic ink that disappears with the heat of your hands or breath, and laser-cut openings, the book becomes a real interface.

Read more about Abra.