Widening the Experience of Artistic Sketchbooks

Artist’s sketchbooks may provide important insights into the genesis of the finished works and may also contain artworks that are at least as interesting and sometimes even more fascinating and fresh. However, sketchbooks are delicate and problematic exhibits; displaying them in a showcase leaves at most two pages visible, and allowing visitors to handle the books does not make sense. This paper describes an interactive, virtual sketchbook technology intended for the display of books which, at the same time, is faithful to the original book and provides an enhanced spatial experience, a gigantic pocketbook which you may seem to enter spatially and bodily. The installation has been shown at The Italian Culture Institute in Copenhagen (2011), two public libraries (2012-13), two Danish art museums (2014), and the Book Fair in Bella Center, Copenhagen (2015).