selected projects (interactive)
writing is work
about
resistance bursting test (2009)
performance checklist (2005)
critical craft (2008)
sequential radio (2007)
mirror poem (2013)
glyph arcade (2010-11)
vibrating toolbelt (2008)
prospecting (2014)
stole (2011)
selected projects (interactive)
The links at left will take you to screenshots or photographs of a rangeof projects that I started making in 2005. After finishing work on "The Stolen Time Archive," a collaboration with artist Raegan Kelly that appeared in the first issue of the electronic journal vectors, I began moonlighting as a digital design student, eventually completing an MA in Interactive Design and Game Development from the Savannah College of Art & Design. The selection of projects shown here includes games, interactive playthings, and  diagrams made in Flash, a handful of wearable (or occasionally unwearable) electronics made with components from Leah Beuchley's LilyPad system, a project made with Processing and activated by the Leap motion controller,  and other experimental objects. Many are designed in response to inter- pretive problems I have encountered in my more traditional work; others I created just for fun, or to try out something unfamiliar. I have just begun to make videos of some of the interactions so that they can be archived as their platforms become obsolete. I hope to start posting those videos later in Spring 2015.
hide/seek (2007)
reveal codes (2008)
gallery skin (2010-11)
opera gloves (2009)
again (2010)
During Summer 2014 I took a workshop with Joshua Davis wherewe used Processing to create projects activated by the Leap motion controller. My project animates excerpts from oral histories published in Studs Terkel's book Working. 
My colleague, poet Molly Bendall, wrote a poem a few years ago thatshe published in an ephemeral format: it was etched in fragments on eight mirrors that were displayed as an assemblage (which has since been dispersed). I made a digital version that activates the viewer's Web camera. The differences between the two are striking, with the Web cam giving the project an invasive, slightly creepy edge that the original did not have.
A fake fox stole made of store-bought squeak toys.
stolen time (2005, with Raegan Kelly)
"Glyph Arcade" is a series of small games and activities designedin response to Britta Austin's experimental novel Artifacts.
"Gallery Skin" is a tool for arranging, shuffling, and annotatinggroups of 2D images that can be projected at scale on the wall. GS was inspired by curator Aaron Rose's experiments with  "cluster" displays.
"Again" modifies a traditional memory/matching game ina series of activities inspired by Alison Bechdel's graphic novel Fun Home. The player examines a small collection of family photographs from a number of different per- spectives, racing against the clock.
"Resistance Bursting Test" is one of a trio of electronic books (they lightup when held) made with recycled cardboard boxes, conductive thread, and LilyPad mainboards, battery packs, switches, and lights.
The "opera gloves" are a pair of vintage cotton glovesequipped with a LilyPad mainboard, battery pack, and speaker that plays a musical scale.
"Reveal Codes" uses the visual metaphor of a microscope andset of slides to respond interactivey to Jeanette Winterson's novel Written on the Body. Text excerpts are from Winterson's book.
In 2008, my undergraduate students were invited to participate in a group showin San Francisco. Watchword Press curated the show, titled "Whole Story 3," at the Intersection for the Arts gallery, and I made a little booklet documenting their work.
I made the vibrating toolbelt in an edition of three (this is theprototype version). They were made of old lingerie fabric, metal corset boning, metal ribbon trim, conductive thread, and a LilyPad mainboard, battery pack, and vibe pad.
"hide/seek" is an interactive text and image mixer that I madein response to Jim Nelson's short story "A Concordance of One's Life." I screened an earlier version of the project in a group show called "Whole Story 2" at The Lab in San Francisco. The show was curated during the summer of 2007 by Watchword Press.
"Sequential Radio" is an interactive meditation on the importanceof the radio in Michael Chabon's novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Text excerpts are from Chabon's book.
I made this interactive diagram in my very first digital design class, a wonderfulworkshop (or "camp," as it was called) conducted online from MIT. It examines statistical assessments of job-related illness or injury among US office workers. The professor pronounced the project "bizarre," and I agreed with her.
Alice Gambrell is Associate Professor of English atthe University of Southern California. She teaches, writes, and makes experimental projects about relationships between physical and digital media, and is particularly interested in mixtures of or points of contact between the two. Her book in progress,  Making Work, examines below-the-line labor as visible and invisible presence in a range of art forms that mark the analog/digital shift. Gambrell published her first book, Women Intellectuals, Modernism, and Difference, in the Cultural Margins series at Cambridge University Press. Her Stolen Time Archive, a digital collaboration with artist Raegan Kelly, appeared in the first issue of the electronic journal Vectors. Gambrell's published research includes essays on stop motion animation, the history of feminist theory, fashion journalism, and the pleasures and torments of office work. She directed USC's Center for Feminist  Research from 2001 - 2004.
selected projects (text)