PhD researcher Gisela de Castro presents her steps from the interactive videobook for deaf people in Brazil, to the project AFOA.NZ.

Since the advent of writing, letters have been a powerful way to register feelings and confidences, propose ideas, revindications, and manifestos, communicate and connect people, and create literature. Letters could also be one of the ways to understand the construction of a national identity from personal or collective perspectives in a determined historical moment.

This research-creation aims to address issues about the artistic process related to epistolary literature, geography, and transdisciplinarity. The process explores creative possibilities to transform the materiality of a paper sheet into digital art through the remediation of hand-written letters made by children.

What are the remediating possibilities of curating and representing children's letters as an interactive videobook? What are the possible ways of spreading children’s thoughts about their living regions through electronic literature?

Thinking about the current technological times, and the issues of place and belonging, the project A FLIGHT OVER AOTEAROA NZ (AFOA.NZ) emerges as an investigation into digital art. From Aotearoa schools, children will be invited to write a letter to their living regions in the future, aiming to build a panoramic view of their diverse understandings of the country, at the current moment.

Concerning the book format, how can the affordances of interactive media create new opportunities for children's epistolary communication practices? What are the exploratory possibilities and practices connected to creative digital technologies at the intersection between geography, place, and literature? The investigatory aspect of this research-creation concerns the curatorship of the material sent by children and the methodology to build a digital platform.

All content registered, developed, gathered, and made will be available on the website for free, and for all audiences, to amplify the accessibility in the electronic literature field.

This conference will present the pathway from an awarded master´s project in Brazil to a PhD with a practical component at The University of Waikato, NZ. The artist and researcher, Gisela de Castro, will expose what were the steps from the interactive videobook for deaf people, The Book of Capitals (https://www.olivrodascapitais.com.br), to the new project A FLIGHT OVER AOTEAROA NZ (AFOA.NZ).