Shelley Jackson is a pioneering writer and artist who fearlessly engages in genre-bending experimentation. She has worked in the realm of hypertext works and electronic literature.
I was especially taken by Jackson's project, Skin, which was started in 2003. The work is a story that is published on the bodies of 2095 volunteers. I love how the project is grounded in participation. The work completely depends on the participants. Skin has been called a "mortal work of art."
Jackson put out a call for participants in 2003, which read: "Writer Shelley Jackson invites participants in a new work entitled "Skin." Each participant must agree to have one word of the story tattooed upon his or her body...From this time on, participants will be known as "words". They are not understood as carriers or agents of the texts they bear, but as its embodiments. Only the death of words effaces them from the text. As words die the story will change; when the last word dies the story will also have died. The author will make every effort to attend the funerals of her words."
For the video portion of the project, Jackson asked a subset of the participants to record a video of their tattoo and also say the word. Jackson then cut together the footage and created a shorter version of the original story. Here is that video:
