The Disappearing

The Disappearing is an interactive phone app that uses GPS technology to connect poetry to place. Over 200 poems linked to particular locations around Australia can be accessed via the phone app. What the poems have in common is that they all address the subject of 'disappearance'. It might be a natural feature, like the water in Lake Eyre as described in Rachael Mead's poem 'Kati Thanda'. It might be a place, like Fonzie's Fantasyland in Kate Lilley's poem about the seedy past of Sydney's Oxford Street. It could be a person, such as Emiko Ogura in Adam Aitken's poem 'Missing Persons'. Or it could be a species on the verge of disappearance, as in Bret Dionysius's 'Black Throated Finch'.
Excerpt from the radio program Poetica, Radio National

Artist Statement
The Disappearing is a free app for Apple and Android devices that (literally) maps poetry and place. As an ongoing project, The Disappearing uncovers poetry’s invisible currents in the world around us. Using geo-location to map poetry to place, the app charts fragmentary histories, impressions and memories, encouraging readers to interact in a non-linear way. Not only is The Disappearing a pocket-sized library of poems about places, the app is also an alternative travel guide that preserves and shares experiences, emotions and ideas that vanish over time.
Source of Artist Statement

Red Room App Project

The Red Room Company

2012

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Interactive poetry mapping

App mobile phone/tablet