Dan Cristea

My principal interest in the project is related to the following aspects:

Understanding better the needs a reader may have while reading, for instance: the need to look back in the text in search of the first mention of a character, the difficulty of memorizing complex family trees, mental organisation of actions on the time scale, especially there where the text includes frequent changes of the time axis, the need to complement information contained in the book with extra-textual facts about real places, persons, etc.

Application of these findings to the design and development of a new reading digital object, in which the technology helps the reader to complement the original text with links inside or outside the book (in the virtual and even the real world), genealogical and relational schemas involving mentions of characters, places, people, etc., visual timelines showing correlation between time and events, semantic links between characters, etc. The intention is to transform a (digital) book into an “active” object, connected more intrinsically with the personality of the reader and the context of the act of reading (for instance signalling in the text meaningful places in the momentary proximity of the reader).