Thematic-Making It Public

Image: Turning Pages by Annett Höland

Synopsis

Now that digitalisation is commonplace and born-digital materials are mainstream this thematic wants to focus on theories and practices of e-publishing in various forms. The central focus of the thematic is: what is a hybrid publishing platform and how can it be used?

Focusing on the results from the documentation classes of the previous three years, in which first MMDC years students developed documentation projects that portraited or responded to the graduation works from the second year's students. Using these as materials for the creation of a collaborative e-pub will answer these questions. The documentation material consists of texts (articles and interviews), photos, animations, video, paper publications, and websites. Next to the practical implications we will discuss how research and publishing in the arts have changed over the past decade. We will explore new tools for gathering knowledge, examine platforms for multimedia publishing or collaborative writing experiments, focus on the interplay between pixels and print, and discuss open and closed spheres of knowledge. As an outcome we'll challenge students to conceive and implement an electronic publication for the works developed under the context of the documentation project.

In the meantime this will inform thinking about the meaning and value of documentation and the way it is used by different kinds of institutes, organisations and individuals that produce, collect and manage cultural material.

Public Text

Digitisation is commonplace and born-digital materials such as moving images are mainstream. One of perks of electronic media is that they allow for rich media, yet the now common format for electronic books - ePub - is in many senses a poor medium, focused manly on text, whose visual manifestation vary widely from reading device to reading device, a scenario reminiscent with the early days of the World Wide Web. Whist there are many experiments and research that challenge digital publishing, few of these are being adopted by the industry. Does this mean we are still in a transitional phase? If so, how to benefit from this unstructured field? Or, are we merely up against technical developments, standardisation and platform challenges?

Making it Public – the thematic project from the Master of Media Design & Communication – consisted on a three-day experiment to incorporate all forms of documentation – from video to websites and paper flipbooks – onto an ePub. Next to a glimpse of the challenges and potential found in this process, two guests will present their views on the tricks and treats of e-publishing. Pia Pol (Valiz) will talk about what hybrid publishing means for a traditional publisher and how it can be used. Florian Cramer (Reader, Creating 010, Hogeschool Rotterdam) will focus on the need for means of off-line digital reading.

Pad http://pzwart1.wdka.hro.nl/pad/p/Making_It_Public

Replacement Pad http://piratepad.net/MakingItPublic

Topics

MONDAY : Distribution Networks

10:00-11:30 Introduction

• Introduction to the Documentation project at MMDDC
• Introduction to Hybrid Publishing
• Outline of the thematic; Goals
• Reading assignment

11:30-12:30 Aymeric Mansoux - Making it public for who? The limits of consensus in free culture access and distribution.

12:30-13:30 Lunch break

13:30-14:30 Amy Wu - Fanzines and underground networks of publications' distribution.

14:30-15:00 Break

15:00-17:30 Practice

• Documentation goals: publicity, funding, process
• Exploring the documentation materials and their different media( video, photography, text, print) -

(As 1 single group OR 1 group per year for?)

• Exploring overlaps: funding + process for different purposes

• Strategies for digitizing off-line content
• Strategies for common and retrievable storage

17:30-18:30 Dinner break

18:30-22:30 Film

• Introduction / comments by Martino Morandi on the Mondoteque project.
• Film: Francoise Levie, The Man Who Wanted to Classify the World (2002) - 60 min

Pre-reading - for morning assignment

Dick Hebdige, Subculture: the meaning of style (chapter one, from culture to hegemony, pp.5-19) http://www.erikclabaugh.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/181899847-Subculture.pdf

Ferdinand Tönnies, Community and Civil Society (Book one, the argument, pp.17-21)

Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony, Radical Democracy and the Political (Part III, for an agonistic model of democracy, pp.191-206)

GROUP: [please add your name]

1. Nadine

2. Chloe

3.Julia

4. Sam

Practice

• Introduction to the Documentation project at MMDDC
• Introduction to Hybrid publishing
• exploring the documentation materials and their different media( video, photography, text, print)
• documentation goals and overlaps: publicity, funding, process
• strategies for digitizing off-line content
• strategies for common and retrievable storage
• Explore in groups the documentation from different years

Pre-reading - for afternoon practice

From Print to Ebooks: a Hybrid Publishing Toolkit for the Arts http://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/from-print-to-ebooks-a-hybrid-publishing-toolkit-for-the-arts/ http://networkcultures.org/digitalpublishing/ (chapters 02, 06 (sub-section on DIY Epub Using InDesign is very long and detailed - skip if you are not interested), 07, 08, 09)

Additional reading (not required, yet recommended)

Vannevar Bush. As We May Think. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/ original article scan

Aymeric Mansoux. How Deep is Your Source. http://texts.bleu255.com/how-deep-is-your-source/

Talk: Public Library / 2014 / Lecture Femke Snelting. Württembergischer Kunstverein https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PTrkUKUlT8

TUESDAY : Writing the Archive

10:30-11:30 Introduction Annet and Andre + group assignment

11:30-12:30 Sandra Fauconnier - Writing Wikimedia

12:30-13:30 Lunch break

13:30-16:00 Practice

16:00-17:00 Michael Murtaugh - Active Archives; Erkki Kurenniemi: In 2048

17:30-18:30 Dinner break

18:30-20:30 Continue Practice

Pre-reading - for morning assignment

Geoff Cox, Nicolas Malevé, Michael Murtaugh, Archiving the Data-body: human and nonhuman agency in the documents of Kurenniemi. http://activearchives.org/wiki/Archiving_the_Data-body:_human_and_nonhuman_agency_in_the_documents_of_Kurenniemi ( Logbook http://kurenniemi.activearchives.org/logbook/ )

Lori Emerson. Reading Writing Interface: from the digital to the bookbound. (Introduction, Chapter 4 - The Fascicle as Process and Product)

Matthew Fuller, It looks like you're writing a letter: Microsoft, in: Behind the Blip. http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0009/msg00040.html

GROUP: [team name]

1. Colm

2. Pleun

3. Sara

(4.)

Practice

Divided into the same 3 teams of yesterday:

• having ePub as your minimum final output format.
• Stipulate a goal for your publication.
• write-down all the steps that you'll need to go through in order to achieve the final publication.
• write-down limitations do you envision.

Additional reading (not required, yet recommended)

Michel Foucault, What is an author? http://www.movementresearch.org/classesworkshops/melt/Foucault_WhatIsAnAuthor.pdf

Matthew Kirschenbaum, What Is an @uthor? https://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/uthor

Shawn Martin. The Age of Erasable Books http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/07/how-monks-remixed-technology-in-the-middle-ages/373956/

WEDNESDAY : Digital & Hybrid Publishing

10:30-11:30 User:Castrobot/Hybrid-Publishing

11:30-12:30 Practice

12:30-13:30 Lunch break

13:30-17:30 Practice

17:30-19:00 - dinner

19:00-21:00 - Public presentation

• Annet Dekker/Andre Castro: presentation of thematic and documentation project
• Pia Pol - Digital publishing for publishers
• Florian Cramer - Off-line digital reading

Pre-reading - for morning assignment

Katherine Hayles, Writing Machines (chapters 1,2,3) http://monoskop.org/images/b/bf/Hayles_N_Katherine_Writing_Machines.pdf

Johanna Drucker, The Century of Artists' Books. ( Chapters 1 - The artist's Book as Idea and Form, 7 - Self-reflexivity in book Form) in WdKA library

GROUP: [please add your name]

1. Natalie

2. Stone

3. Max

(4.)

Practice

• Continue to work on Tuesday prototypes
• results, issues, questions
• elaborate a simple proposal a for the continuation the work initiated in the thematic, which will lead to a publication.

Additional reading (not required, yet recommended)

Friedrich Kittler, Gramaphone, Film, Typewriter - chapter 3 Typewriter

Alessandro Ludovico Post-Digital Print. http://monoskop.org/images/a/a6/Ludovico%2C_Alessandro_-_Post-Digital_Print._The_Mutation_of_Publishing_Since_1894.pdf

Video: Books in Browsers 2014: Johanna Drucker https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jz9aELG8aQs

Jodi Dean, Sean Dockray, Alessandro Ludovico, Pauline van Mourik Broekman, Nicholas Thoburn, and Dmitry Vilensky, Materialities Of Independent Publishing: A Conversation With Aaaaarg, Chto Delat?, I Cite, Mute, And Neural ([1])

Matthew Fuller, In the Paradise of Too Many Books: An Interview with Sean Dockray ([2])

Examples

Electronic Literature & Its Emerging Forms: http://dtc-wsuv.org/elit/elit-loc/works/

http://collection.eliterature.org/1/ http://collection.eliterature.org/2/

Silvio Lorusso, Post-Digital Publishing Archive: http://p-dpa.net/

I love e-Poetry: http://iloveepoetry.com/

Selection of hypertext-based artworks: https://ipertestualmente.org/selection-of-hypertext-based-artworks/

Active Archives, Erkki Kurenniemi (In 2048): http://kurenniemi.activearchives.org/logbook/

Film: Mika Taanila, The Future Is Not What It Used to Be (2002) Documentary on Erkki Kurenniemi (imdb link)

Selection of interviews http://cdc.leuphana.com/structure/digital-cultures-research-lab/projects/dcrl-questions/

Symposium unfolding from the intention to reflect upon the legacy of Paul Otlet and his work from the perspective of today's knowledge archives: http://monoskop.org/Ideographies_of_Knowledge

Events

30 October 2015, 11:00, Screening Google and the World Brain @ Impakt Festival, Utrecht ([3])

30 October 2015, 16:30, The Memory of Technology x Past with Olia Lialina and Evan Roth @ Impakt Festival, Utrecht ([4])

31 October 2015, 16:30, The Memory of Technology x Present: An Expanding Amount, with a.o. Kristen Gwinn-Becker and Bregtje van der Haak @ Impakt Festival, Utrecht ([5])

1 November 2015, 19:30, Keynote: Jason Scott @ Impakt Festival, Utrecht ([6])

23 November 2015, 10:00-17:00, Reading Wikipedia @ KNAW Trippenhuis Building, Kloveniersburgwal 29, 1011 JV Amsterdam ([7]).

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