The App's The Thing: Shakespeare, Rebooted

The world's most famous playwright was a media theorist, says the co-creator of a new "Tempest" app for iPad, Notre Dame professor Elliott Visconsi. Here he explains how you re-create the bard for the iOS age.Today the lofty Times Literary Supplement--“the leading international forum for literary culture”--will run an unusual advertisement: It's for an iPad app. The app, “The Tempest,” is essentially an enhanced ebook version of the Shakespeare play. (You know, the one with Prospero, Miranda, the island.) It’s loaded with features--including an audiobook version read by professional actors, inline commentary from Shakespeare scholars, and social tools for your class or study group--and is available from the iTunes store for $9.99. Fast Company spoke with Elliott Visconsi, a Notre Dame professor of English and one of the app’s makers, to find out how a university can be like a venture capital firm and why Shakespeare is more fun than "Angry Birds."FAST COMPANY: First, full disclosure to our readers: many years before you became an iOS entrepreneur, you were my English professor. When did you decide the bard needed rebooting?ELLIOTT VISCONSI: A little more than a year ago. I saw that the iPad transformed the way the humanities was delivered to students and to the general public, and the tools that it makes available to foster collaboration and conversation. I started to educate myself as best I could about mobile technology, in and out of education, and about what was... Continue reading at 'Fast Company'

[ Fast Company | 2012-07-20 00:00:00 UTC ]

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