The Act of Reading

This publication explores reading in the digital age through the lens of art, poetry, neuroscience and literary theory. The book document and disseminates the findings of a year-long research project which included a symposium at FACT Liverpool and an exhibition at Furtherfield, London. Including essays by renowned theorists such as N. Katherine Hayles and Esther Leslie, poetry by Charles Bernstein, text-based artwork by Anna Barham, and the work of many others, housed in an unconventional design by Mark Simmonds. Unavailable for many years a small number have been made available in 2025 via Antenne Books to coincide with the release of Torque Editions related 2025 publication BiblioTech: ReReading the Post-digital Library. “Reading inquisitively over each others’ shoulders, the poems, meditations, analyses and experiments in this volume respond with audacity and adventure to the challenge of characterizing what reading, this most familiar yet renewedly strange occupation, has been and may yet become.” —Steven Connor, Professor of English, University of Cambridge