This post is my first contribution here at the Institute of Network Cultures. For the next months (until the end of January) I will be here as an intern and I will carry on the Out of Ink project. This first post opens the artistic issue, that will be a significant part of my research.
56 Broken Kindle Screens, a project made by Silvio Lorusso (intern at INC last year, working at the Out of Ink project) in collaboration with Sebastian Schmieg, is a print on demand paperback that consists of found photos depicting broken Kindle screens. The Kindle is Amazon’s e-reading device which is by default connected to the company’s book store.
The book takes as its starting point the peculiar aesthetic of broken E Ink displays and serves as an examination into the reading device’s materiality. As the screens break, they become collages composed of different pages, cover illustrations and interface elements.
In the next month Silvio will be also involved in the Out of Ink research.
View the project on Silvio Lorusso’s website
(Click the Read more link to have information about the research plan for the next months)
In the next month the research will be focused on the social issues (and also the resulting ethical matters) connected to the future of publishing: for example, book practices and social event and, in general, occurrences connected to the book, that happens especially because of the digital turn and the possibilities that this huge shift can bring and has led up until now — some forecasts about the near future can also be made.
The social issue – some ideas and fields of investigation:
1. Self-publishing practices; and also alternative practices and uses, like collaborative publishing, …
2. The “places” of the book; and also changes in the concept of library, the role of the publisher, new forms business related to the bookshops, …
3. Online communities; and also tools and platforms of social interaction on the web around the concept of book and library, …
The world of the arts will be a previleged field connected to the practices around the book and in which the social issue can be observed, both in its visual and narrative research about the medium (digital or physical) and both in the social aspect (like collective projects) of the artistic practice.
The art issue – in this specific field, the research will be focused on:
1. Artist’s book by design – experiments between traditional and digital book
The art world seems to be divided among the artists who opt for the traditional art book, and those who experiment with digital (perhaps the most are designers and programmers, though the boundary is uncertain: there are interaction designers who make art and artists who are programmers, etc.)
Can art contribute to a discussion on digital practices and a definition of models and structures for the digital book? Can art be a privileged way to make research on the digital book, as a parallel path to linguistic and communication research? This point will be about looking at some relevant and different artistic approaches to the digital book that try to figure out what it could be.
In a certain way, the research on organization of digital content is itself a new form of art, as art is research: some thoughts on the medium are made to understand what are its potentials. So it is neither possible define the artist’s book as it was conceived before.
On the reverse path, is also interesting to see how the digital approach has influenced the traditional media. For example, there are several physical books that work in a fluid way, more like a blog (open to participation input) or for example with some search modes which are different from the traditional ones of the book (indices and numbering). In the field of art many experiments are carried out on the traditional book have been inspired by the digital world.
Of course, some practices about organizing contents in the digital realm are reinterpreted in the physical book; and then, conversely, are there experiments that begin in the traditional book and constitute a starting point for the digital?
2. Social reading as art
The research on tools looks at the social practices of social media and create new methods of organizing social discourse around a text content. On the way back, these tools can create different kind of social practices around the book.
What about artistic practices that do a research on social media and social reading/writing? This issue wants to investigate the collective approaches in the art of digital book.