‘Why can’t reflection be more jubilant?’
This phrase from Eduardo Navas’ Spate may serve as an adequate line to proudly introduce our new publication series Deep Pockets. ‘Jubilant reflection’ on networks, media activism, the political economy of the social, and other INC topics is what we’re after with this new line of print-on-demand and electronic books, of which Spate: A Navigational Theory of Networks is the first.
Deep Pockets are just the right size to stick in your pocket and read on the subway, not much bigger than your smartphone which carries the epub version of the work. And yet, Deep Pockets go, well, deep . They offer both the wealth of the rich and the cunning of thieves.
With this series we present artistic and creative work that takes a step beyond the purely theoretical or empirical research that INC’s followers are used to get from us. For us, this also means taking a next step in our research into digital publishing, since artistic work offers more of a challenge in a standardized workflow such as we use. We strongly believe in experimenting with forms of publishing and with Deep Pockets we pursue the next level in that ongoing experiment.
We couldn’t have been more happy than to start the series with the highly artistic, creative, and jubilant work of Eduardo Navas. Spate is an experimental, funny and deep reflection on networked media. It is composed with tweets written by the author over an extended period of time and repurposed into a text which studies media processes such as flowing, searching and trending and at the same time is a flow, a search, an illustration of trend.
‘For flowing, the thickness of a book becomes an obsolete element in the experience of reading. Flatness becomes the norm across all material and immaterial elements produced; kind of a there-[ish]-ness behind the hidden exposure of social media. And so one may say to oneself, “someday… I am going to know less about things, but it does not mean that I will forget”.’
Spate: A Navigational Theory of Networks consists of five chapters and an afterword. It is available as print-on-demand, pdf and epub. Have it printed, downloaded, and uploaded to your own device. Stick it in your pocket and take a ride deeply underground with it.
We want to thank Eduardo Navas for his work, Léna Robin for the design, and all INC colleagues and friends for their help in working on Deep Pockets. If you have a jubilant idea of your own, you can contact miriam@networkcultures.org.