Literature Review
How might one read in this super-media environment?
COMPUTERS, AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY, Christian Wurster
Hybrid Form, Kostas Terzidis
FAB, Neil Gershenfeld
If We Are Digital: Crossing the Boundaries, Charles H. Traub, Jonathan Lipkin
How can we open up new worlds with writing machines?
WRITING MACHINES, N. Katherine Hayles
VICTORIAN INVENTIONS, Leonard De Vries
THE NEW YORK TRILOGY, Paul Auster
How might I create a new, immersive reading environment?
ON READING, Andre Kertesz
A HISTORY OF READING, Alberto Manguel
The Pleasure of Text, Roland Barthes
If We Are Digital: Crossing the Boundaries, Charles H. Traub, Jonathan Lipkin
How do people read? How do students read? How do people read for pleasure? How to scholars read?
ON LONGING: NARRATIVES OF THE MINIATURE, THE GIGANTIC, THE SOUVENIR, THE COLLECTION, Susan Steward
A HISTORY OF READING, Alberto Manguel
BAUDRILLARD LIVE, SELECTED INTERVIEWS, edited by Mike Gane
The Work of Art in the Electronic Age, an interview with La Sept
Are there other meaningful methods of inscription?
THE ALPHABETIC LABYRINTH, Johanna Drucker
THE VISIBLE WORD, Johanna Drucker
INTERROGATING THE REAL, Savoj Zizek
THE MAN WHO MADE LISTS, Joshua Kendall
ISLAMIC PATTERNS, AN ANALYTICAL AND COSMOLOGICAL APPROACH, Keith Critchlow
SOUTHWESTERN INDIAN BASKETS, Andrew Hunter Whiteford
220 MORE CROCHET STITCHES, The Harmony Guides
I am developing a practice around stories around stories. In other words, I am writing about the things not written about; reading about the readers; writing about the readers, writing about the writers and having readers read the writing about readers which I have written. I'm looking for an alternate route or a method of adjacency. I am designing with literary means but looking through a sideways periscope. Why look sideways? To give a broad and blanketed answer, "to shift perspective." There are, however, more timely and essential reasons to work this way. The continuous cycle of invention, adjustment and acclimation is timeless and endlessly leads to boredom. This is, perhaps, a universal truth. However, this assimilation and boredom is amplified for our generation. As time moves forward and methods of recording improve, there becomes a greater and greater record of the past, creating a psychological complex in which people feel incapable of newness. The record of past novelties seems to expand endlessly, like a bloated piece of bread floating in a pond. As time goes on, the soggy mess grows larger and more porous until it drifts off in bits, which drift off in bits, which drift off in bits. Today, you might say that we are searching for smaller and smaller bits – new methods, which strive to be separate from their original, soggy origins. Once, Twitter was a fresh bit, venturing out into the depths of this pond, creating a new literary conversation in a new literary style. Now, tweets have lost their dissimilarity. There is a bland, beige film growing over the whole lot of them – making them, somehow, more and more similar to one another. Nevertheless, tweeting has become part of our common voice. Our only hope in turning a new leaf is to move onto the next literary device and to restart the cycle. This is a challenging task, which tends to result in accessories rather than truly new devices. With this deep knowledge of past executions designers have little choice but to alter pre-existing elements. My intention is to push forward; to identify other reading and writing methods based on the current condition; this may very well be by way of amplifying, flipping, reversing or otherwise altering existing methods. By investigating the adjacent material (stories around stories), perhaps a bit of newness may unfold. I hope this self-reflexive process will define a perpetual method for re-situating the voices of readers and writers. In order to design these new methods, one first must identify the ways that people read and write beyond the ordinary scope. Expression occurs through reading and writing in a myriad of ways; some of these are literary, others analytical and still others push the bounds of how people define "reading" and "writing" to begin with. It is a delicate, amorphous constellation that undergoes constant change. While personal methods differ drastically in a fantastically idiosyncratic way, the textual technology at hand also plays a giant factor in giving shape to such methods. I am curious to see what the future has in store for readers and writers – what new and meaningful methods of inscription will transform what we currently understand as language, and how the joys of reading will push these bounds in unforeseen and invigorating directions. As text becomes increasingly sticky, making its way onto so many more media than the printed page, it poses important questions for the writer + designer. There is a long history of discourse around this subject and the permutations of "reading" are countless. Manguel explains it so well in A HISTORY OF READING,"The readers of books, into whose family I was unknowingly entering (we always think that we are alone in each discovery and that every experience, from death to birth is terrifyingly unique), extend or concentrate a function common to us all. Reading letters on a page is only one of its many guises. The astronomer reading a map of stars that no longer exist; the Japanese architect reading the land on which a house is to be built so as to guard it from evil forces; the zoologist reading the spoor of animals in the forest; the card-player reading her partner's gestures before playing the winning card; the dancer reading the choreographer's notations, and the public reading the dancer's movements on the stage; the weaver reading the intricate design of a carpet being woven; the organ-player reading various simultaneous strands of music orchestrated on the page; the parent reading the baby's face for signs of joy or fright, or wonder; the Chinese fortune-teller reading the ancient marks on the shell of a tortoise; the lover blindly reading the loved one's body at night, under the sheets; the psychiatrist helping patients read their own bewildering dreams; the Hawaiian fisherman reading hte weather in the sky – all these share with book-readers the craft of deciphering and translating signs. Some of these readings are coloured by the knowledge that the thing read was created for this specific purpose by other human beings – music notation or road signs, for instance – or by the gods – the tortoise shell, the sky at night. Others belong to chance."1 Through my investigations in the world of reading, I have identified the following works as important references to my practice: A HISTORY OF READING, Alberto Manguel2 ON LONGING: NARRATIVES OF THE MINIATURE, THE GIGANTIC, THE SOUVENIR, THE COLLECTION, Susan Steward3 DEATH OF THE AUTHOR, Roland Barthes4 BAUDRILLARD LIVE, SELECTED INTERVIEWS, edited by Mike Gane5 SAUSSURE, DERRIDA AND THE METAPHYSICS OF SUBJECTIVITY6 The partner to my investigations in reading is the investigation of writing. As a practice, writing is a highly personal and highly varied process. There are, of course, gaps in which writing forms assimilate to one another. The aforementioned Twitter example is one of these gaps. Nevertheless, through designerly methods in production, textual syntax has found a great number of ways to redefine itself. Emigre Magizine is one publication / outlet through which designers have become pioneers in this way for 25 years.7 The neighboring practice of programming has taken on yet another form of writing, as exhibited by FORM + CODE IN DESIGN, ART, AND ARCHITECTURE by Casey Reas, Chandler McWilliams and LUST8 The algorithmic method of writing is one important and progressive method of writing that FORM + CODE defines as such: This type of code – often called an algorithm, procedure, or program – defines a specific process with enough detail to allow the instructions to be followed…It's just a precise way of explaining how to do something.9 What was once considered science has made a permanent place for itself in art, architecture, design and also in the field of writing. Algorithmic design creates a fresh and varied world for the writer, as well as a communicative and collaborative community that promotes development and creativity. We see algorithmic writing in many different places, but an especially iconic and influential artist in this field is Sol Lewitt, in whose work, "The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.10" Through this research, my design practice has been shaped around these questions: how may we enter new worlds through reading devices? Or writing machines for that matter? What happens to the reader in the immersive reading environment? How is this person affected? Transformed by the experience of reading? What are the current and future methods of inscription? How does this super-media environment affect language? And communication? When and how do symbols have intrinsic meaning? Wimble click crumblechaw beloo. Clack clack bedrack. Numb noise, flacklemuch, chemanna. Ya, ya, ya. Excuse me. I am the only one who understands these words. 11 How can we unpack the vast power and history of words in a new media environment? As Barthes has made clear, "…the text is a tissue of citations, resulting from the thousand sources of culture."12 Susan Steward professes, Just as speech is structured by its context, so is there an effort here to join the content and form of writing. The mirror that is also a microscope, that both reflects and reveals, reappears in the other face of the miniature book, its pedagogic uses…13 The following works inform my practice as I sort through such questions: WRITING MACHINES, N. Katherine Hayles & Anne Burdick14 VICTORIAN INVENTIONS, Leonard De Vries15 THE NEW YORK TRILOGY, Paul Auster16 ON LONGING: NARRATIVES OF THE MINIATURE, THE GIGANTIC, THE SOUVENIR, THE COLLECTION, Susan Steward17 A HISTORY OF READING, Alberto Manguel18 ON LONGING: NARRATIVES OF THE MINIATURE, THE GIGANTIC, THE SOUVENIR, THE COLLECTION, Susan Steward19 THE PLEASURE OF TEXT, Roland Barthes20 If We Are Digital: Crossing the Boundaries, Charles H. Traub, Jonathan Lipkin21 Photo: Kertesz22 THE ALPHABETIC LABYRINTH, Johanna Drucker23 THE VISIBLE WORD, Johanna Drucker24 ISLAMIC PATTERNS, AN ANALYTICAL AND COSMOLOGICAL APPROACH, Keith Critchlow25 SOUTHWESTERN INDIAN BASKETS, Andrew Hunter Whiteford26 220 MORE CROCHET STITCHES, The Harmony Guides27 COMPUTERS, AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY, Christian Wurster28 Hybrid Form, Kostas Terzidis29 FAB, Neil Gershenfeld30 I am currently writing about reading, devising writing and reading devices based on those observations, and meddling with systems of reading and writing based on my observation of reading and writing habits, personas, truths and fictions. Research Postion Audit (see link for full-sized diagram) 1 Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading, Paper edition. (Penguin (Non-Classics), 1997). 2 Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading, Paper edition. (Penguin (Non-Classics), 1997). 3 Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Duke University Press Books, 1993). 4 Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author," http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:sNkWc4rNQPEJ:www.tbook.constantvzw.org/wp-content/death_authorbarthes.pdf+%E2%80%A6the+text+is+a+tissue+of+citations,+resulting+from+the+thousand+sources+of+culture.&hl=en
&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEEShTcplFRR18vEY4hZJsvZFPbcfVdUQByEWoAskx15QWs2Ev8inFppZSELYdNAljaeej2P2F7Qstx7sRdvsK
VaNT4SCMR6BCfbYwc_7vP6Ci5mmM64dQYal-oz7tEvafS7iZjRtq&sig=AHIEtbS3sOHkRVEQ91uIy7K2vASukNBseg&pli=1. 5 Mike Gane, Baudrillard Live: Selected Interviews, 1st ed. (Routledge, 1993). 6 Robert M. Strozier, Saussure, Derrida, and the Metaphysics of Subjectivity (Mouton De Gruyter, 1989). 7 Rudy VanderLans, Emigre No. 70 the Look Back Issue: Selections from Emigre Magazine 1-69. Celebrating 25 Years of Graphic Design, First. (Gingko Press, 2009). 8 Casey Reas and Chandler McWilliams, Form+Code in Design, Art, and Architecture, 1st ed. (Princeton Architectural Press, 2010). 9 Casey Reas and Chandler McWilliams, Form+Code in Design, Art, and Architecture, 1st ed. (Princeton Architectural Press, 2010). 10 Sol Lewitt, "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art," http://www.tufts.edu/programs/mma/fah188/sol_lewitt/paragraphs%20on%20conceptual%20art.htm. 11 Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy (Penguin Classics, 2006). 12 Roland Barthes, Image-Music-Text (Hill and Wang, 1978). 13 Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Duke University Press Books, 1993). 14 N. Katherine Hayles and Anne Burdick, Writing Machines (The MIT Press, 2002). 15 Leonard De Vries, Victorian Inventions (John Murray Publishers, Ltd., 1992). 16 Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy (Penguin Classics, 2006). 17 Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Duke University Press Books, 1993). 18 Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading, Paper edition. (Penguin (Non-Classics), 1997). 19 Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Duke University Press Books, 1993). 20 Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text (Hill and Wang, 1975). 21 If We Are Digital: Crossing the Boundaries, Charles H. Traub, Jonathan Lipkin. Leonardo Vol. 31, No. 5, Sixth Annual New York Digital Salon (1998), pp. 363-366 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1576596 22 André Kertész, On Reading, Reissue. (W. W. Norton & Company, 2008). 23 Johanna Drucker, Alphabetic Labyrinth: The Letters in History and Imagination, New edition. (Thames & Hudson, 1999). 24 Johanna Drucker, The Visible Word: Experimental Typography and Modern Art, 1909-1923 (University Of Chicago Press, 1997). 25 Keith Critchlow, Islamic Patterns: An Analytical and Cosmological Approach (Inner Traditions, 1999). 26 Andrew Hunter Whiteford, Southwestern Indian Baskets: Their History and Their Makers (School of American Research (SAR), 1998). 27 The Harmony Guides, 220 More Crochet Stitches: Volume 7 (Anova Books, 1999). 28 Christian Wurster, Computers: An Illustrated History (Taschen, 2002). 29 Hybrid Form, Kostas Terzidis. Design Issues Vol. 19, No. 1 (Winter, 2003), pp. 57-61 Published by: The MIT Press. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1512055 30 Neil Gershenfeld, Fab: The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop--from Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication (Basic Books, 2007).