Thematic Trimester 2: Narratives/Mutant books
Within the framework of Narratives thematic project, I'll be be meeting with students. In informal work-sessions, we'll review and discuss the prototypes developed by the students, and discuss and problematize issues such as the boundaries of physical and digital (photo) books, and the potential, limits, and rationale of photo book as digital objects.
(This page will serve a log for the sessions, fell free to edit).
Dates
22/01/2015 19/02/2015 12/03/2015
work in progress session #1
Questions
Why a digital photography book? What is the added value of a digital photo book?
Digital books can serve:
- moving image
- generative or interactive works
- wide audiences
- reflowable context
- reader generated content
Can a photo book exist without the unit of the page?
As digital book formats, such as ePubs, content exists in a page-less container, with shifting dimensions and colors. In such reflowable layouts the book mutates visually from reading device to reading device. Can then a photo book, that is known for its articulation of images and sometimes text, over the space of the page inhabit this unstable territory? Can these shift and relocations become more than accidents and turn essential component of a photo book?
What can be considered a digital photo book? Can a book, whose its entire construction process, but its outcome, is digital, be considered a physical book? Is [The SKOR Codex|http://societeanonyme.la/] - a printed book made of binary encoded images - a physical book? Isn't it digital, since all information on it is displayed only in binary form? Can a website be a digital book?
The book as an experience As a reply to the previous question Manneta suggested that the book, more than an object is an experience. If it is so, we can perhaps create an object that is as removed as possible from the common image of the book, but that induces the same type of experience, an that object, through the experience, becomes a book. If that is case, the reverse, might also be possible: to create a book like object that is as removed from a book experience as possible, such is the case of The Black Book.
Can the same be applied to the specific case of photo books? Can experience and object be identified and subverted?