Gutter Words: [Augmented Reality Artwork]

Gutter Words is a text-based artwork by Jo Hamill. Using an edition of James Joyce's Ulysses as raw material, Jo Hamill methodically erased Joyce's text throughout, while deliberately preserving the words sitting nearest the gutter – the term used for the inner margin where a book's pages are bound together. In this artwork, Ian Truelove reinterprets Hamill’s physical manifestation of Gutter Words as an augmented reality experience. One version uses phone-based AR and was commissioned by Inscription: the Journal of Material Text - Theory, Practice, History, vol.6 ‘Cuts/tears’. The second version used a VR headset and was showcased at the launch of Inscription vol.6 at UCL on 22 June 2026.