#fully makes use of its medium's potential to capture a story that would be impossible in almost any other form

[kettle-bird]

Commission for @modmad of RGB from The Property of Hate! Which you should totally go read immediately it is absolutely top notch

[multimodalmagic]

[READING] Bibliocircuitry and the Design of the Alien Everyday

Bibliocircuitry the Design of the Alien Everyday Charity Hancock, Clifford Hichar, Carlea Holl-Jensen, Kari Kraus, Cameron Mozafari, and Kathryn Skutlin

“a transparent instrument or technology — one that recedes from view — gives rise to either an embodiment relation, in which the technology becomes an extension of the self (a hammer, a pair of eyeglasses) or a hermeneutic relation, in which the technology becomes a vehicle for displaying a conventionalized notation or writing system (a thermometer, a literary text) that references the world.” (73-74)

“Conversely, an intrusive technology— one in which the medium continually distracts us from the message, or the object relentlessly asserts its status as object — gives rise to an alterity relation.... Alterity relations allow us to look at a technology, rather than through it or with it.” (74)

“In this essay we apply Smith-Welch’s insights to the book as material artifact. In everyday contexts, printed books — like household appliances, old wallpaper, or the floorboards beneath our feet — “withdraw” from view, to invoke Ihde’s terminology (1990, 48). They do so principally by virtue of their familiarity: it is their very ordinariness that makes them invisible.” (74)

“To study the book as a material object, then, is to make use of the hands. Such “tinker-centric pedagogy,” as Jentery Sayers calls it (2011, 279), deepens the alterity relation by enabling us to engage more fully with the thingness of books — with their tactility as much as their visual properties. The tactile experience draws on an expanded range of gestures and manual operations to reveal the secrets of the book’s material composition: holding it up to the light, turning it upside down, pressing a magnifying glass to its surface, even physically dissecting it if the book in question is part of a teaching collection.” (74-75)

“Reflective design complements the recent emphasis on critical making in the digital humanities: the embodying of ideas or arguments in things.” (75)

“The role of reflective design in this trio is key: it is what helps us discover fault lines in the objects, artifacts, or systems being explored — the location of a teapot’s spout or, say, the stitched binding that turns otherwise loose sheets of paper into books — and in doing so allows us to imagine them otherwise: to see them as alterable rather than immutable; as possibility spaces rather than rigid, inherited structures.3 It is this dimension of design that allows us to envision ourselves as creative agents of change." (76)

“Technological fluency is the ability to be creative with technology” (76)

“reflective design not only disarms complacency, allowing us to see the book-as-artifact anew, but also foreshadows alternative conceptions of the book.... one of its primary purposes is to defamiliarize an object by making its constituent parts, attributes, properties, or affordances visible and explorable, thereby revealing potential sites of change.... Each project shows reflective design at work, reminding us that prevailing notions of “bookness” aren’t hard-coded into reality, but are instead susceptible to change.” (77)

“Both Hichar and Mozafari’s books, for example, are intricate cross-wirings of atoms and bits. While physical books serve as the base or substrate of their designs, their functionality is enhanced by the addition of miniature computers known as microcontrollers, which transform the books into programmable media.... As used in our title, the term “bibliocircuitry” is meant to capture the spirit of reflective design. In one sense, we are interested in thinking about physical books as platforms for experimenting with computation.” (77-78)

“Hichar’s The Pussycat Said to the Owl is an altered book in the tradition of British artist Tom Phillips’ A Humument, which surfaces a new narrative out of a pre-existing Victorian novel by selectively collaging and painting over the text, leaving some fragments intact to tell a radically different story. In Hichar’s case, an unlikely base text serves as the occasion for a visual adaptation of Edward Lear’s classic nineteenth-century nonsense poem, “The Owl and the Pussycat”. Neither born-digital nor digitized — nor yet entirely paper-based — Hichar’s electronic book is a hybrid space in which analog and digital components are co-expressive.” (78)

“the act of integrating several Arduinos into the project attuned her to the materiality of the page and the body plan of the book in ways that would have been quite impossible otherwise.... The thickness and opacity of the paper and the volumetric space of the artifact dictated design constraints and opportunities. The result is a harbinger of future bookscapes in which the mixing of material and digital fabrication is commonplace. Unlike a sleek contemporary machine whose protective outer covering serves to conceal what lies within, the first draft of a new technology often exposes its own mechanisms, making it seem less a mass-produced commodity than a bespoke design.” (78-79)

“Similarly, the open design of Mozafari’s interactive book, like a cutaway diagram of a train, shows precisely how the book was made. With the help of a microcontroller board and alligator clips, Mozafari embeds his print edition of Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” with touch-triggered sound, giving the reader a multisensory experience of the poem.... Mozafari’s book flaunts its status as technology by not attempting to hide its electrical components.” (79)

“Echoing the increasingly pervasive sentiment that one can make arguments with things or, in the words of Ian Bogost, “do philosophy” with artifacts (2012, 85), they position design as a core DH competency” (97)

-EB

[photographyreadings-blog]

Photographer as researcher in the project ‘Under Gods: Stories from Soho Road’ by Liz Hingley

Liz Hingley is a photographer and anthropologist, whose work practice key elements are teaching and research. In this essay, which target audience, I assume, are visual researchers and the main purpose of the paper is to discuss the methods of the contemporary use of the camera in research. Also, in this essay author is arguing against the views claiming that the camera is not an objective or distancing tool, rather a tool providing valuable description. In this paper, Liz Hingley analyses the photographer’s as researcher’s role through photography project she did about multicultural population of Soho road in Birmingham. Referencing Grimshaw, author says that the fact that she was able to immerse herself has made her an objective viewer: ‘I had to submit myself to the experiences of disorientation, vulnerability and ignorance and in a sense learn to see again through others’ eyes’. In the next paragraph L. Hingley underlines the fact that she was trained to be a non disturbing viewer, in order to be a good documentary photographer. By this, she is making one more argument to the statement that it is not a rule that a photographer’s presence would make an impact on the group photographed. One more vital detail to this invisibility, I believe, was the state of the photographer, as in the situation she was in at the time, which helped her to detach from self. As well as the background of the photographer: the fact that she grew up in between people of various faiths, lets her to approach each group she has photographed with needed respect as well as it should be easier for her to earn the trust and stay invisible in the final outcome. The ability not to project self identity for a researcher, which in this case, is a photographer, was discussed in an article Practising Photography: an archive, a study, some photographs and a researcher written by Gillian Rose. G.Rose discussed how identity of a researcher would always be a part of the outcome, as full self knowledge is impossible, therefore a researcher is not capable of separating the factors which are making influence to the research done. Despite the benefits of her identity and the background enlisted, Liz Hingley, is explaining that she is still fully aware of the factors related to her identity, which she has to be constantly aware of in order to make conscious decisions when capturing each group. Despite that, author basing on Gelsthorpe, Bowes and Meeham Domokos states that : ‘There is no ‘ideal’ position to which researchers can aspire; they have to maintain a reflexive, critical evaluation of circumstances and the ways in which these influence their work (Gelsthorpe 1993; Bowes and Meeham Domokos 1996).’ Similarly to S.Salgado, Liz Hingley underlines the importance of empathy and respect in between photographer and subject : ‘I knew as a photographer and I now see also as an anthropologist, that visual documentation or research has to be a social engagement, not an exercise in data collection.’ What I take away from both of these photographers, is that one of the most important elements, leading to telling truthful stories, is the ability to immerse yourself in the group of people, and spend more time communicating rather than photographing. In this essay, L.Hingley talks about how she asked her subjects to take photographs of her in order to understand how people view her as well as how she exchanged the allowance to photograph in other favors that she did to the people photographed. Author finishes her essay with a description to what photography is to her : ‘Photography’s strength lies in its potential as a medium to question, arouse curiosity, hear different voices or see through different eyes (Edwards 1997, 53). ‘ This description, for me, is a close description of the primary researcher’s goal and base of the duty, which is a non subjective description of somebody else’s culture or identity.