Presentation of 3.3. Johanna Drucker: SpecLab Summary/Restructure/Synthesis of Main Arguments with my own supporting take. *
Opening Critique
Current conceptualizations of the e-Book are misguided. Good case study of how a “too-literal” understanding of what constitutes the material form of one media (print book) is misconceived when that media is converted to another media environment (135).
Replication Pitfalls
Q: What formal and paratextual conventions are associated with the print codex?
In e-Book development there is too much emphasis on replicating print interface/paratext conventions, rather than engaging with how these features impact the reading process and the book’s function (136).
“Electronic presentations often mimic the kitschiest elements of book iconography, while potentially useful features of electronic functionality are excluded” (136).
Not based on strength and potential, but you get the kitschy page turn!
Examples of Extended/Augmented Content
1.
Publishing Company that makes e-Books for Penguin other artists on our panel for SXSW. Sacredness of text and platform development they were confined to adding “jazz” to some sections of On the Road as their improved book. Panelist did not take kindly to platform specific development approach, because operating from a company top-down corporate model.
2.
THE FREAKING VOOK demo: content embedded in a page
not a new idea: worst book trailers
3. The current State of E-books From Alice to Jason Lewis to Us & Amaranth + other dude:
Prescriptives
“The icon of the “book” that casts its long shadow over the production of new electronic instruments is a grotesquely distorted and reductive idea of the codex as a material object” (138).
Q: Which aspects of the book have relevance for/use in the digital environment?
set 1:
rapid refresh time
time-stamped updates,
collaborative and aggregated work.
“outstanding characteristic is its mutability” (137)
set 2:
juxtaposition of disparate material for study/analysis (document aggregation)
community discussion/expression of shared conditions of textual production (intersubjective exchange)
data processing (144)
These aspects help alter the materiality of an encoded information that comprises a text. In other words, they make the text mutable. The capacity to alter materiality is where the interesting opportunities lie. (137).
“DESIGNERS MIGHT DO WELL TO CONSIDER EXTENDING THE WAYS A BOOK WORKS” (136, emphasis added).
Q: What are the “metaphors” of book structure?
preserving some metaphors make no sense (page turn animation/clippy) “like preserving a coachman’s seat on a motor vehicle” (137).
Though markers as a metaphor to keep oriented in an array of data is ok
We can understand how to proceed in designing for the new media iteration of the book by understanding the historical contexts and inspirations that lead to its codified/popular representation (138).
“Instead of reading the book as a formal structure, then, we should understand it in terms of what is known in the architecture profession as a “program”, that is, as constituted by the activities that arise from a response to the formal structures
Further
“we should look to scholarly and artistic practices for insight into ways the programmatic function of the traditional codex has been realized” (138).
- Heinz von Foerster: ask how a book does its particular actions rather than what a book is.
Prescriptives Summary
pg. 140 Drucker’s three approaches:
1. analyze how a book works rather than what it is.
2. describe the program that arises from a book’s formal structures
3. discard the idea of iconic metaphors of book identity for understanding how forms serve as “constrained parameters for performance.”
Traditional codex has some notions that are useful for virtual books, but these are not as “literal metaphors, rather as sites of “performative space for the production of reading” (140).
The Codex as Alpha/Omega
Traditional Codex is already “virtual”
1. literary theories that readers are required to “activate” a text.
“produced anew by the activity of each reading” (140).
2. Contains Hypertextual Elements
Q: What are some paratextual/hypertextual elements in print codex?
Paratext and Hypertextual elements famously may contribute toward a text that has “various routes of access” (143). But because you can posit a link to virtual theory, doesn’t mean that they transfer the same function when recreated in the electronic space. This is partially because they are being instantiated in a different materiality. Instead we should use our knowledge of the codex to think of the“function that every graphical feature can serve, as well as the informational reference it contains as part of its production or reception history” (143).
It seems that much of Drucker's argument may be in support of her concept of graphesis
“The development of graphical features that abstract the book’s contents thus reflect a radical change in attitudes toward knowledge” (141).
or structure is “produced through graphical performance” (142).
or “The information space of a book appears as the structure of its layout” (142).
“graphical elements are not arbitrary or decorative, but serve as functional cognitive guides” (143).
The Book of Kells
Other Interesting Points
MARKET
- expanded content “On the Road”
In marketing driving need to market as a type of print book that is safe and recognizable. Connect to the historical priority of print books and “invoke a link with their established cultural identity” (135).
Irony that marketing carries claims of “improving on the book”. However, keeping the same design models and trying to force a material interface onto an inappropriate form is not only a poor product choice but also implicitly suggests the print book is “flawed” in some way. When in reality they should be too different models evaluated for individual strengths and weaknesses.
Mediation as Invisibility
if we think of the book as a medium than it may have already gotten to the place lots of contemporary “new” media aspire to go (and may eventually go)
Our familiar history with book conventions “causes them to become invisible, and obscures their origin within activity” (142).
Finally, Backlash
Opening Critique
Current conceptualizations of the e-Book are misguided. Good case study of how a “too-literal” understanding of what constitutes the material form of one media (print book) is misconceived when that media is converted to another media environment (135).
Replication Pitfalls
Q: What formal and paratextual conventions are associated with the print codex?
In e-Book development there is too much emphasis on replicating print interface/paratext conventions, rather than engaging with how these features impact the reading process and the book’s function (136).
“Electronic presentations often mimic the kitschiest elements of book iconography, while potentially useful features of electronic functionality are excluded” (136).
Not based on strength and potential, but you get the kitschy page turn!
Examples of Extended/Augmented Content
1.
Publishing Company that makes e-Books for Penguin other artists on our panel for SXSW. Sacredness of text and platform development they were confined to adding “jazz” to some sections of On the Road as their improved book. Panelist did not take kindly to platform specific development approach, because operating from a company top-down corporate model.
2.
THE FREAKING VOOK demo: content embedded in a page
not a new idea: worst book trailers
3. The current State of E-books From Alice to Jason Lewis to Us & Amaranth + other dude:
Prescriptives
“The icon of the “book” that casts its long shadow over the production of new electronic instruments is a grotesquely distorted and reductive idea of the codex as a material object” (138).
Q: Which aspects of the book have relevance for/use in the digital environment?
set 1:
rapid refresh time
time-stamped updates,
collaborative and aggregated work.
“outstanding characteristic is its mutability” (137)
set 2:
juxtaposition of disparate material for study/analysis (document aggregation)
community discussion/expression of shared conditions of textual production (intersubjective exchange)
data processing (144)
These aspects help alter the materiality of an encoded information that comprises a text. In other words, they make the text mutable. The capacity to alter materiality is where the interesting opportunities lie. (137).
“DESIGNERS MIGHT DO WELL TO CONSIDER EXTENDING THE WAYS A BOOK WORKS” (136, emphasis added).
Q: What are the “metaphors” of book structure?
preserving some metaphors make no sense (page turn animation/clippy) “like preserving a coachman’s seat on a motor vehicle” (137).
Though markers as a metaphor to keep oriented in an array of data is ok
We can understand how to proceed in designing for the new media iteration of the book by understanding the historical contexts and inspirations that lead to its codified/popular representation (138).
“Instead of reading the book as a formal structure, then, we should understand it in terms of what is known in the architecture profession as a “program”, that is, as constituted by the activities that arise from a response to the formal structures
Further
“we should look to scholarly and artistic practices for insight into ways the programmatic function of the traditional codex has been realized” (138).
- Heinz von Foerster: ask how a book does its particular actions rather than what a book is.
Prescriptives Summary
pg. 140 Drucker’s three approaches:
1. analyze how a book works rather than what it is.
2. describe the program that arises from a book’s formal structures
3. discard the idea of iconic metaphors of book identity for understanding how forms serve as “constrained parameters for performance.”
Traditional codex has some notions that are useful for virtual books, but these are not as “literal metaphors, rather as sites of “performative space for the production of reading” (140).
The Codex as Alpha/Omega
Traditional Codex is already “virtual”
1. literary theories that readers are required to “activate” a text.
“produced anew by the activity of each reading” (140).
2. Contains Hypertextual Elements
Q: What are some paratextual/hypertextual elements in print codex?
Paratext and Hypertextual elements famously may contribute toward a text that has “various routes of access” (143). But because you can posit a link to virtual theory, doesn’t mean that they transfer the same function when recreated in the electronic space. This is partially because they are being instantiated in a different materiality. Instead we should use our knowledge of the codex to think of the“function that every graphical feature can serve, as well as the informational reference it contains as part of its production or reception history” (143).
It seems that much of Drucker's argument may be in support of her concept of graphesis
“The development of graphical features that abstract the book’s contents thus reflect a radical change in attitudes toward knowledge” (141).
or structure is “produced through graphical performance” (142).
or “The information space of a book appears as the structure of its layout” (142).
“graphical elements are not arbitrary or decorative, but serve as functional cognitive guides” (143).
The Book of Kells
Other Interesting Points
MARKET
- expanded content “On the Road”
In marketing driving need to market as a type of print book that is safe and recognizable. Connect to the historical priority of print books and “invoke a link with their established cultural identity” (135).
Irony that marketing carries claims of “improving on the book”. However, keeping the same design models and trying to force a material interface onto an inappropriate form is not only a poor product choice but also implicitly suggests the print book is “flawed” in some way. When in reality they should be too different models evaluated for individual strengths and weaknesses.
Mediation as Invisibility
if we think of the book as a medium than it may have already gotten to the place lots of contemporary “new” media aspire to go (and may eventually go)
Our familiar history with book conventions “causes them to become invisible, and obscures their origin within activity” (142).
Finally, Backlash
