Here is why the availability of a (preferably) high-quality digital reproduction is important. It greatly increases the accessibility and reduces the need to visit the location where the physical original material is kept. This is also beneficial for the preservation of the material since physical handling can be risky: documents can get lost or destroyed. Intentionally or not. Although not entirely safe - scanning and storing digitally also reduce the dangers of a collection being endangered/threatened by the forces of nature.
3.6 <b>Digital influence on zines collaborative publising</b><br>
3.7 <b>On open tools for collaborative publishing</b><br>
3.8 <b>Creating hard copies: customising content</b><br>
3.9 <b>Recources & links </b><br><br>
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Key questions in this section:<br>
- What collaborative formats can be used to embrace a variety of content? <br>
- What are the benefits of digital publishing combined with printing? <br>
- What are the options for customization of content? <br>
- How to collaborate and publish with others? <br>
- What if this content won't ever be accessible again from tomorrow? <br>
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<h6>3.1 Collaborative publishing formats</h6>
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When exploring all kinds of publishing formats and frameworks that embrace various types, styles of content and voices, one inevitably encounters the so-called 'zine' and 'cookbook'. Even though they come in various shapes, both have been used and proven to be a successful form for activating, creating communities, and spreading non-commercial ideas. Ever present as a hearable voice that flows in counter-current to popular opinions and media.
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A Cookbook is some kind of handbook with 'recipes' used for DIY and subversive practices with the aim of getting people involved by handing them tools and techniques to use themselves, often within activist and political groups. A Zine is a small-circulation self-published work of original or appropriated texts and images, usually reproduced via a photocopy machine. Zines are the product of either a single person or of a very small group and are popularly photocopied into physical prints for circulation.
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<h6>3.2 Providing 'tools' for activation</h6>
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A publication that was, and is still influential today was The Whole Earth Catalog. Published by Stewart Brand regularly between 1968 and 1972, all kinds of informative tools, how-to's, maps, journals, courses, equipment, computers, and even synthesizers, etc. were provided. Brand had a strong ideological motive making all kinds of knowledge accessible. The idea of the publication was focussed on how to guide the reader to become self-reliant. Rather than selling, a large number of products which (were tested and therefore) proved to be qualitative and sustainable were recommended. While the book was strictly speaking confined to being a catalog, it also consisted of experiences, suggestions of readers/users as well as the Catalog's staff. This interaction between publishers and users sharing information made the format of the Whole Earth Catalog a network by itself.
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<h6>3.3 The influence of design</h6>
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One notable aspect of alternative press material such as zines and cookbooks is how the design can add a striking 'voice' to a publication. When thinking about old activist documents, a mental image pops up in our heads immediately. Besides the use of illustrations and photography, the design and layout can strongly affect how information is perceived. A layout gives a certain expression to a page; it can emphasize or even contradict the content.
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In the current state of home-printing, standardized paper sizes, limited binding options. Home-printing documents are visually often indistinguishable from each other. Same paper color, texts in black ink. The same can be said for digital libraries and how texts are often being displayed on e-readers.
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<h6>3.4 Content and personality</h6>
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In the pre-internet world, zines were self-published and distributed publications to target small (obscure) audiences and create a network to like-minded people. To reduce costs, they were often photocopied and distributed physical prints for circulation in sections of Libraries and by mail or alternative bookshops, listed in Zines about zines like Factsheet Five*. The content of zines, sometimes provocative and subversive in nature, are often not found in the mass media. (This culture is pretty much alive today in independent publications from marginal communities of artists, poets, (political) activists, feminists, queers, music genre-specific, etc.)
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In 'Perzines' or personal zines, the content was created from intimate stories, anecdotes, comics, photos, and stories about the authors written by others. Often giving the user the feeling to be part of an intimate conversation between close friends. Often designed by using cut-outs and original letters and typewritten documents which added an extra personal layer to the content.
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* Factsheet Five was a periodical mostly consisting of short reviews of privately produced printed matter along with contact details of the editors and publishers. In the 1980s and early 1990s, its comprehensive reviews (literally thousands in each issue) made it the most important publication in its field, heralding the wider spread of what would eventually be called fanzine or zine culture. (source: Wikipedia)
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<h6>3.5 Digital zines</h6>
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A Zine can be described as a way of thinking. It is a more or less abstract framework that can hold together all kinds of content from different voices and collaborators. It's flexible, adaptive and, curated or not, assembled based on the content. The role the creators and the readers are diffused and interchangeable as interested people are invited to contribute, distribute and make zines themselves. If a zine has many owners, distribution, in both - digital and analog formats, can be un/decentralized, so takedown is less likely to happen and the content manages to live on.
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In the early days of online publishing, electronic zines (a well-known one was called 'PDF-Mags') were created by an underground scene of designers to share free content and showcase creative skills. The main purpose of the downloadable PDF's was to share aesthetic experiments and to create be a platform to publish non-commercial content. Although these zines were not interactive at all, they had a networked function: connecting like-minded creatives. In a much quicker way than the traditional printed zines ever allowed, constrained by their physical medium.
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<h6>3.6 Collaborative publishing tools</h6>
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Collaborative digital publishing makes use of the possibility of content being continuously updated and added by its numerous creators. Coming from the ideology and culture that believes that software should be open and accessible, free and open-source software (FLOSS) makes possible the creation of custom workflows that enable people to collaborate on writing, designing and publishing. Here, the role of the writer, reader, and publisher becomes even more diffused.
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Networked capabilities such as remote printing, anonymous sharing, peer-to-peer distribution, personal customization can have a huge social and political impact as they can reshape the act of publishing subversive content. For example, new workflows can be used for speeding up a process when there is a need for urgent publishing. A real-time peer-reviewed content editing process and co-authorship can 'single-author-knows-it-all-ideology'. And finally, it can be used to target a certain audience for getting a publication into the right hands.
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<h6>3.7 Creating hard copies: customising content </h6>
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Another possibility that web-to-print provides is that it allows the user to select, add and modify content to create a personalized printed copy. In the process of printing a selection of the content that fits your interest, assembling and binding a document can result in adding another personal value to the self-printed material. By these means, one can feel more strongly connected to the physical object. as they have directly participated in its creation.
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In ‘The Art of Zines’ (Factsheet Five #63, 1998) C. Becker gives an examples on how collective binding methods could function: “The publisher invites contributions and from a few people and each of them sends multiple copies of their work to cover the number of copies in that edition. Each zine copy is then collated and bound making (it) unique, and personalized.”
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<h6>3.8 On distributing physical documents </h6>
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One may wonder if the more we are getting used to reading digital and volatile screen-based content, the more we have the urge for tactile physical formats. Not only to cater to our reading habits, but also for human connection and interaction it creates. The original gestural act of spreading printed content as a conductor of ideas and information*, using the possibilities of collaboration and distribution that the digital realm provides.
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“In this context we view the act of publishing as a gesture that accommodates the political, the artistic, and in some cases, the defiant… A gesture is something preceding the action, and therefore signifies motion and agency of the most expressive and potent kind, precisely because it is so wrought with intentionality.”
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(Muller, N. and Ludovico, A. (2008) ‘Of Process and Gestures: A Publishing Act’ in The Mag.net reader 3 - Processual Publishing. Actual Gestures, OpenMute)“
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While our trust in print is still pretty much present after all these years of screen reading, we start to experience printed media as slow compared to the online media environment where everything is unsteady and can be constantly updated. As we can see in the changing ways of how we consume news over the past years; with decreasing newspaper sales and the rise of distrust in news. <br>
I personally believe there is a lot to explore in the field of collaborative publishing and what the role of print can be in this. I am in particular curious to what extent or in what situation it is preferable to create physical copies. For me, the methods and tools we used for making this publication gave a whole new insight on how to shape collaborative publishing processes and change more traditional roles for production and distribution. Opening up the process to the extend so that it becomes custumizable for a certain intention, means or strategy to target or create a specific public.
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<h6>3.9 Resources</h6>
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Imagine this: tomorrow the internet is down. These hyperlinks below will be inaccessible and therefore useless. All the bookmarks to external references will lead you to blank pages. While the internet seems as a stable way of global communication, its centralized infrastructure is also its weakness.
Max Lehmann
4 years ago