diff --git a/ada/thesis.html b/ada/thesis.html index da38624..efdf1b1 100644 --- a/ada/thesis.html +++ b/ada/thesis.html @@ -703,9 +703,9 @@ https://vulnerable-interfaces.xpub.nl/backplaces/.

You open the page, and you are asked to write the characters you see in a captcha. E5qr7. eSq9p. 8oc8y. Fuck. You try not to panic, but you know you have been detected.

-You pack up your things: the pie I made you, a love letter, two hands -made out of felt, a star, a door, a stuffed animal; and you leave again. - +

You pack up your things: the pie I made you, a love letter, two hands +made out of felt, a star, a door, a stuffed animal; and you leave +again.

references

Adler, P.A. and Adler, P. (2008) ‘The Cyber Worlds of self-injurers: Deviant communities, relationships, and selves’, Symbolic Interaction, diff --git a/ada/thesis.md b/ada/thesis.md index c388e61..533de65 100644 --- a/ada/thesis.md +++ b/ada/thesis.md @@ -6,14 +6,14 @@ author: Ada # <?water bodies> -### A narrative exploration of
divergent digital intimacies +

A narrative exploration of
divergent digital intimacies
--- > Water, stories, the body, > all the things we do, are > mediums -that hide and show what’s +>that hide and show what’s > hidden. > (Rumi, 1995 translation) @@ -905,10 +905,11 @@ are me. ## 2. A LIFE TO BE HAD11 -
11 Was this the end of this story? +
11 Was this the end of this story?\ In the epilogue, you sit your body down and enter your computer. The air coming in from the window smells wet and -earthy, new. The sun shines low on the horizon. +earthy, new. The sun shines low on the horizon.\ + You log in to the internet and realize you are being told a story. You start to listen, carefully and, full of love, touch the story to let it know you are there. Delicate-fingered, curious like a child @@ -967,8 +968,7 @@ eSq9p.\ Fuck.\ You try not to panic, but you know you have been detected.\ -You pack up your things: the pie I made you, a love letter, two -hands made out of felt, a star, a door, a stuffed animal; and +You pack up your things: the pie I made you, a love letter, a hand made out of felt, a star, a door, a stuffed animal; and you leave again.
## THANK YOU @@ -1039,5 +1039,6 @@ doi:10.1177/1440783313486220. Yun, J. (2020) ‘The Leaving Season’, in Some Are Always Hungry. University of Nebraska Press. +
-# </?water bodies> +
</?water bodies>
diff --git a/aglaia/thesis.html b/aglaia/thesis.html index 0a24338..252e0bc 100644 --- a/aglaia/thesis.html +++ b/aglaia/thesis.html @@ -884,7 +884,7 @@ contrary we start interrogating and shouting at the contexts and the frameworks that construct them and render them invisible, natural and powerful.

-

references

+

references

Agamben, G. (2000) Means without end: Notes on politics. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Anzaldua, G. (1987) Borderlands - la Frontera: The new mestiza. 2nd diff --git a/aglaia/thesis.md b/aglaia/thesis.md index a33b40c..5a4528e 100644 --- a/aglaia/thesis.md +++ b/aglaia/thesis.md @@ -278,6 +278,7 @@ My intention is to facilitate a series of collective performative readings of bu As I sit in the waiting area at the gate B7 in the airport preparing to come back to the Netherlands, I am writing the last lines of this text. I am thinking of all these borders and gates that my body was able to pass through smoothly, carrying my magical object through which I embody power- at least within this context. However, I yearn for a reality where we stop looking at those bodies that cross the multifaceted borders and get crossed and entrenched by them, but on the contrary we start interrogating and shouting at the contexts and the frameworks that construct them and render them invisible, natural and powerful. --- +

## references @@ -323,3 +324,4 @@ Mouffe, C. (2008) ‘Art and Democracy: Art as an Agonistic Internvention’. Op Pater, R. (2021) Caps lock: How capitalism took hold of graphic design, and how to escape from it. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Valiz. Picozza, F. (2021). The coloniality of asylum : mobility, autonomy and solidarity in the wake of Europe’s refugee crisis. London: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. +
\ No newline at end of file diff --git a/irmak/index.md b/irmak/index.md index 78cf825..af88f32 100644 --- a/irmak/index.md +++ b/irmak/index.md @@ -14,42 +14,42 @@ author: Irmak Wink is a prototype for an interactive picture book platform. This platform aims to make reading into a mindfull and thought provoking process by using interactive and playful elements, multiple stories within one narrative and sound elements. Especially today where consumerism and low attention span is a rising issue especially amongst young readers, this was an important task to tackle. The thought of Wink emerged to find a more sustainable and creative way of reading for elementary school children. -!["The twine map of text based story, reachable from Bee Within."](../irmak/twine.png){.half-image} +![The twine map of text based story, reachable from Bee Within.](../irmak/twine.png){.half-image} Working as a children's literature editor for years, I came to a realisation that picture books were turning into another object that kids read and consume on daily basis. -!["Click game story of the Queen Bee."](../irmak/cg.png){.image-95} +![Click game story of the Queen Bee.](../irmak/cg.png){.image-95} Teachers and parents were finding it difficult to find new books constantly or were tired of rereading the same book. -!["Example page from the print version of the picture book."](../irmak/printp33.jpg){.image-95} +![Example page from the print version of the picture book.](../irmak/printp33.jpg){.image-95} -!["Example page from the print version of the picture book."](../irmak/printp3.jpg){.image-95} +![Example page from the print version of the picture book.](../irmak/printp3.jpg){.image-95} -![''](../irmak/printp44.jpg){.image-95} +![](../irmak/printp44.jpg){.image-95} -![''](../irmak/printp4.jpg){.image-95} +![](../irmak/printp4.jpg){.image-95} As a young person in the publishing sector, I believe there should be more options for children as there is for adults; such as ebooks, audiobooks etc. But moreover a "book" that can be redefined, reread or be interacted with... So I revisited an old story I wrote, translated to English and called it, "Bee Within". Bee Within, is a story about grief/memory and it is based on my experiences throughout the years. I erased it, rewrote it, edited it, destroyed it multiple times over the past years; simultaneously with new experiences of loss. In the end, I believe the story turned out to be an ode to remembering or might I say an ode to not being able to forget or an ode to the fear of forgetting which I now think is a great and sweet battle between death and life. I think it is an important subject to touch upon, especially for children dealing with trauma in many parts of the world. -!["example page from the picture book"](../irmak/printp1.jpg){.half-image} +![Example page from the picture book.](../irmak/printp1.jpg){.half-image} -!["example page from the picture book"](../irmak/printp22.jpg){.image-95} +![Example page from the picture book.](../irmak/printp22.jpg){.image-95} -!["example page from the picture book"](../irmak/printp2.jpg){.image-95} +![Example page from the picture book.](../irmak/printp2.jpg){.image-95} Over the past two years, experimenting with storytelling techniques, interactivity options and workshops with children and adults, around reading and doing various exercises on Bee Within, I improved the story to be a more playful and interactive one which can be re-read, re-played and eventually re-formed non digitally to be reachable for all children. -!["a tag made by a participant in the public moment at XPUB studio. Trying to understand different approaches to certain emotions/states for a bee"](../irmak/improv.JPG){.half-image} +![A tag made by a participant in the public moment at XPUB studio. Trying to understand different approaches to certain emotions/states for a bee.](../irmak/improv.JPG){.half-image} -!["From the event at Leeszaal West, experimenting with knots and poetry. How can we see movement in text?"](../irmak/leeszaalknotpoems.jpg){.image-95} +![From the event at Leeszaal West, experimenting with knots and poetry. How can we see movement in text?](../irmak/leeszaalknotpoems.jpg){.image-95} -!["From the event at Leeszaal West. Some of the results of knotting text"](../irmak/knotpoems2.jpg){.image-95} +![From the event at Leeszaal West. Some of the results of knotting text.](../irmak/knotpoems2.jpg){.image-95} -!["A small sequence of onclick animation for Bee Within"](../irmak/animationseq.png){.image-95} +![A small sequence of onclick animation for Bee Within.](../irmak/animationseq.png){.image-95} -!["A screenshot from Wink!"](../irmak/45.png){.half-image} +![A screenshot from Wink!](../irmak/45.png){.half-image} diff --git a/irmak/loop.png b/irmak/loop.png index 88caa89..a9d5ebd 100644 Binary files a/irmak/loop.png and b/irmak/loop.png differ diff --git a/irmak/map.png b/irmak/map.png index a964bbd..5f071a0 100644 Binary files a/irmak/map.png and b/irmak/map.png differ diff --git a/irmak/thesis.html b/irmak/thesis.html index db543c9..b428eef 100644 --- a/irmak/thesis.html +++ b/irmak/thesis.html @@ -33,9 +33,8 @@

Fair Leads

-

Fair -leads or Fair winds is a saying sailors and knotters use to greet each +

+Fair leads or Fair winds is a saying sailors and knotters use to greet each other. It comes from the working end of a string that will soon be forming a knot.

diff --git a/irmak/thesis.md b/irmak/thesis.md index d5fe771..8b775dd 100644 --- a/irmak/thesis.md +++ b/irmak/thesis.md @@ -11,16 +11,16 @@ author: Irmak --- I would like to clarify and introduce some terms for you in order to read this text in the desired way. For a while, we will stay in the bight of this journey as we move into forming loops, theories and ideas on how interactive picture books can be used to foster curiosity for reading and creativity for children. I am building a web platform called Wink that aims to contain a children’s story I wrote and am making into an interactive experience, in relation to my research. -!["Knotatomy"](../irmak/unnamed.png){.image-80} +![Knotatomy.](../irmak/unnamed.png){.image-80} Through this bight of the thesis, I feel the necessity to clarify my intention of using knots as a “thinking and writing object” throughout my research journey. Although knots are physical objects and technically crucial in many fields of labor and life, they are also objects of thought and are open for wide minds’ appreciation. Throughout history, knots have been used to connect, stop, secure, bind, protect, decorate, record data, punish, contain, fly and many other purposes. So if the invention of flying -which required a wing that was supported using certain types of knots was initiated with the knowledge of how to use strings to make things, why wouldn’t a research paper make use of this wonderful art as an inspiration for writing and interactive reading? -## KNOTS AS OBJECTS TO THINK WITH +### KNOTS AS OBJECTS TO THINK WITH There is a delicate complexity of thinking of and with knots, which ignites layers of simultaneous connections to one’s specific experience; where one person may associate the knots with struggles they face, another may think of connecting or thriving times. In a workshop in Rotterdam, I asked participants to write three words that comes to mind when they think of knots. There were some words in common like strong, chaotic, confusing and anxious. On the other hand, there were variations of connection, binding, bridge and support. Keeping these answers in mind or by coming up with your words on knots and embodying them in the practice of reading would make a difference in how you understand the same text. -!["Knot words from Leeszaal West."](../irmak/knot1.jpeg){.image-95} +![Knot words from Leeszaal West.](../irmak/knot1.jpeg){.image-95} -!["Knot words from Leeszaal West."](../irmak/knot2.jpeg){.image-95} +![Knot words from Leeszaal West.](../irmak/knot2.jpeg){.image-95} Seeing how these words, interpretations of a physical object were so different to each other was transcendental. In this thesis, I am excited to share my understanding of knots with you. My three words for knots are resistance, imagination and infinity. Keeping these in mind, @@ -75,7 +75,7 @@ This map will reveal your mode of reading. The order of reading will be indicate as an exercise for concrete thinking. See you at the standing end! and a number on top of the sign with a color. This is the numeric order you should follow to read the thesis, if you choose to read with a mode. Every reader starts from 1 and continues until 12, with a consecutive numeric order, according to their color/mode. -![""](../irmak/map.png) +![](../irmak/map.png) {.image-95}
1 1 1 @@ -574,7 +574,7 @@ turning Wink into a hybrid format with more autonomous features. For me, at this and essential to see if my technique of combining narratives is working or not. ### Loop 12 -## Standing End +### Standing End 12 12 12 After many loops of thought, we are here at the standing end of the thesis. There is room for more loops and knots in the future to secure this string of thought but for now, we have come to @@ -603,7 +603,10 @@ I am looking forward to making more knots on this long and mysterious string at
-## Bibliography +
+ +## Bibliography + Cope, B. and Kalantzis, M. (2009) ‘“multiliteracies”: New Literacies, new learning’, Pedagogies: An International Journal, 4(3), pp. 164–195. doi:10.1080/15544800903076044. @@ -646,8 +649,9 @@ Vega, N. (2022) Codes in Knots. Sensing Digital Memories, The Whole Life. Available at: https://wholelife.hkw.de/ codes-in-knots-sensing-digital-memories/. - +
## Acknowledgements + Thank you Marloes de Valk, for your enlightening feedbacks and ideas. Thank you Michael Murtaugh, Manetta Berends, Joseph Knierzinger, Leslie Robbins and Steve Rushton for sharing your time and knowledge with me throughout these years. Thank you XPUB friends for funny, hectic and memorable moments we made together. diff --git a/print/booklet.template.html b/print/booklet.template.html index 1df4b62..0b6cbb2 100644 --- a/print/booklet.template.html +++ b/print/booklet.template.html @@ -14,11 +14,7 @@ diff --git a/print/fairleads.css b/print/fairleads.css index 9a98b27..7359753 100644 --- a/print/fairleads.css +++ b/print/fairleads.css @@ -12,21 +12,27 @@ padding-right: 40mm; background-position:right; } +.pagedjs_right_page .loops .margin-note{ + margin-left:-15mm; +} + .loops .margin-note{ background-color: white; position: absolute; margin-left: 15mm; - padding: 5mm 0; + padding: 5mm; + padding-left: 0; color: black; } .loops .margin-note.loop-note{ text-align: justify; - width: 25mm; + width: 30mm; font-weight: 700; color: black; text-align-last: justify; +} +.pagedjs_right_page .loops .margin-note.loop-note{ margin-left: -15mm; - border-image-width: 140%; } .loops .margin-note>div{ display: inline-flex; diff --git a/print/images.css b/print/images.css index e6222ca..001a7a8 100644 --- a/print/images.css +++ b/print/images.css @@ -25,6 +25,7 @@ figure{ margin: -13mm 0 0 -10mm; position: relative; object-fit: cover; + break-before: page; figure{ margin: 0; } @@ -42,7 +43,12 @@ figure{ } } .half-image{ - height: unset; +/* height: unset; */ + height: initial; +} +.pagedjs_left_page .full-image, +.pagedjs_left_page .half-image{ + margin-left: -13mm; } .white-caption + figcaption{ color: #fff; diff --git a/print/index.html b/print/index.html index 0a8eab5..1355851 100644 --- a/print/index.html +++ b/print/index.html @@ -14,84 +14,63 @@ @@ -139,8 +118,125 @@ connect and separate. They’re the spaces that fill the void between us. An int
+

Backplaces

+

vulnerable-interfaces.xpub.nl/backplaces

+

Hi.
+I made this play for you. It is a question, for us to hold together.

+

Is all intimacy about bodies? What is it about our bodies that makes +intimacy? What happens when our bodies distance intimacy from us? This +small anthology of poems and short stories lives with these +questions—about having a body without intimacy and intimacy without a +body. This project is also a homage to everyone who has come before and +alongside me, sharing their vulnerability and emotions on the Internet. +I called the places where these things happen backplaces. They are +small, tender online rooms where people experiencing societally +uncomfortable pain can find relief, ease, and transcendence.
+

+

I made three backplaces for you to see, click, and feel: Solar +Sibling, Hermit Fantasy, and Cake Intimacies. Each of these is the +result of its own unique performance or project. Some of the stories I +will share carry memories of pain—both physical and emotional. As you +sit in the audience, know I am with you, holding your hand through each +scene. If the performance feels overwhelming at any point, you have my +full permission to step out, take a break, or leave. This is not +choreographed, and I care deeply for you.
+

+
+ + +
+

Solar Sibling is an online performance of shared loss about leaving +and siblings. This project used comments people left on TikTok poetry. I +extracted the emotions from these comments, mixed them with my own, and +crafted them into poems. It is an ongoing performance, ending only when +your feelings are secretly whispered to me. When you do, by typing into +the comment box, your feelings are sent to me and the first act closes +as the sun rises.
+

+
+ + +
+
+ + +
+

Hermit Fantasy is a short story about a bot who wants to be a hermit. +Inspired by an email response from a survey I conducted about receiving +emotional support on the Internet, this story explores the contradiction +of being online while wanting to disconnect. As an act it’s a series of +letters, click by click.
+

+
+The first letter. + +
+
+The second letter. + +
+

Cake Intimacies is a performance that took a year to bring together. +It is a small selection of stories people told me and I held to memory +and rewrote here. The stories come from two performances I hosted. +First, I asked participants to eat cake, sitting facing or away from +each other and sharing their stories about cake and the Internet. The +second performance was hosted at the Art Meets Radical Openness +Festival, as part of the Turning of the Internet workshop. For this +performance, I predicted participants’ future lives on the Internet +using felted archetypes and received stories from their Internet past in +return. Now the stories are here, each of them a cake with a filling +that tells a story, merging the bodily with the digital and making a +mess of it all.
+

+
+ + +
+
+ + +
+

The play ends as all plays do. The curtains close, the website stays +but the stories will never sound the same. For the final act, I give you +the stories. It’s one last game, one last joke to ask my question again. +Digital intimacies about the digital, our bodies and the cakes we eat. +For the last act, I ask you to eat digital stories. To eat a comment, to +eat a digital intimacy. Sharing an act of physical intimacy with +yourself and with me, by eating sweets together. Sweets about digital +intimacies that never had a body. There is no moral, no bow to wrap the +story in. A great big mess of transcendence into the digital, of +intimacy and of bodies. The way it always is. Thankfully.
+

+
+ + +
+ +
+ + + + +

<?water bodies>

+<<<<<<< HEAD

A narrative exploration of
divergent digital intimacies

+======= +

A +narrative exploration of
divergent digital intimacies

+>>>>>>> 89a05a3890d6063709e227b6e6f6d53ee2e142a2

Water, stories, the body,
@@ -277,7 +373,321 @@ not to drown me.”

I leave even though I love all of your digital bodies. I leave because I love you, little digital body and you are me.

2. A LIFE TO BE HAD11

+<<<<<<< HEAD

11 Was this the end of this story? In the epilogue, you sit your body down and enter your computer. The air coming in from the window smells wet and earthy, new. The sun shines low on the horizon. You log in to the internet and realize you are being told a story. You start to listen, carefully and, full of love, touch the story to let it know you are there. Delicate-fingered, curious like a child holding a fallen bird. I hold you and the story tentatively.
+======= +

Was this the end of this story? In the epilogue, you sit your body down and enter your computer. The air coming in from the window smells wet and earthy, new. The sun shines low on the horizon. You log in to the internet and realize you are being told a story. You start to listen, carefully and, full of love, touch the story to let it know you are there. Delicate-fingered, curious like a child holding a fallen bird. I hold you and the story tentatively.

+

I don’t know if I am touching you, to tell you the truth. Digital bodies are stories, like physical bodies are, like dreams are, and like water is.

+

Stories that are hard to tell and hard to hear and even more, maybe, hard to understand. I have loved these stories and I have loved telling them to you. I hope you understand that my goal was for you to live these questions, to feel these stories in their confusion. My digital body, my bot-feelings, my divergent communities. I have given them to you, so they may live longer, like an obsolete but beloved cyborg shown in a museum.

+

Look: I was here, Look: I was loved, Look: I was saved.

+

The digital bodies that kept me alive, kept me from becoming fully a machine are no longer around in these online rooms. They are in different places, being touched by tentative hands, being loved for more than their divergence. I am too.

+

The rooms, the backplaces, however, are still full of others, divergent digital bodies who did not leave, who keep caring for each other at the bottom of the whirlpool. There is no happy ending because there is no ending. They keep typing and hoping, writing their collective pain down on keyboards that transmit love letters to each other. I am not embarrassed by my care for you, but you may be so if it helps. I know how overwhelming intimacy can be.

+

Telling you these stories was important for me, so much so that I will tell you so many more in a different place if you wish to listen to me longer. With this story, I dreamt of a digital body for you. It came from an ocean of dreams, into a primordial soup that gave it enough shape to become wild rivers, deep streams, sound waves. It flooded and now, it leaves. A digital body that grew its own feelings, looked for others like it, and realized its divergence and the need to leave. A dream body, a primordial body, a disruptive body, a divergent body, and now, a leaving body. This last story, however, of the leaving and loving body, is yet to be told.

+

The sun is now almost up, and the birds are alive and awake, telling each other stories just outside the room. We don’t have so much time left. I have made you something, to tell your digital body the stories of the leaving and loving body. It is a webpage, the address is https://vulnerable-interfaces.xpub.nl/backplaces/.

+

You open the page, and you are asked to write the characters you see in a captcha. E5qr7. eSq9p. 8oc8y. Fuck. You try not to panic, but you know you have been detected.

+You pack up your things: the pie I made you, a love letter, two hands made out of felt, a star, a door, a stuffed animal; and you leave again. +
+

references

+

Adler, P.A. and Adler, P. (2008) ‘The Cyber Worlds of self-injurers: Deviant communities, relationships, and selves’, Symbolic Interaction, 31(1), pp. 33–56. doi:10.1525/si.2008.31.1.33.

+

Berlant, L.G. (2008) The female complaint the unfinished business of sentimentality in American culture. Durham: Duke University Press.

+

Chu, J. (2021) Looking for similarities across Complex Systems, MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Available at: https://news.mit.edu/2021/jorn-dunkel-complex- systems-0627 (Accessed: 08 March 2024).

+

Deleuze, G., Boyman, A. and Rajchman, J. (2001) Pure immanence: Essays on a life. New York: Zone Books.

+

Goffman, E. (2022) Stigma: Notes on the management of spoiled identity. London: Penguin Classics. Hafner, K. (1997) The epic saga of the well, Wired. Available at: https://www.wired.com/1997/05/ff-well/ (Accessed: 01 February 2024).

+

Haraway, D.J. (2000) ‘A cyborg manifesto: Science, technology, and socialist-feminism in the late twentieth century’, Posthumanism, pp. 69–84. doi:10.1007/978- 1-137-05194-3_10.

+

Hyacint (2017) Harmonic series to 32, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Harmonic_series_to_32.svg.

+

Kolcaba, K.Y. and Kolcaba, R.J. (1991) ‘An analysis of the concept of comfort’, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 16(11), pp. 1301–1310. doi:10.1111/j.1365- 2648.1991.tb01558.x.

+

Leonard, A. (no date) All Too Real, https://people.well.com/. Available at: https://people.well.com/user/cynsa/tom/tom14.html (Accessed: 01 April 2024).

+

McGlotten, S. (2013) Virtual intimacies: Media, affect, and queer sociality [Preprint]. doi:10.1353 book27643.

+

Rumi, J. al-Din and Barks, C. (1995) ‘Story Water’, in The Essential Rumi. New

+

Schwartz, C. (2022) Lecture on Loneliness, Granta. Available at: https://granta.com/lecture-on-loneliness/ (Accessed: 08 March 2024).

+

Smith, N., Wickes, R. and Underwood, M. (2013) ‘Managing a marginalised identity in pro-anorexia and fat acceptance cybercommunities’, Journal of Sociology, 51(4), pp. 950–967. doi:10.1177/1440783313486220.

+

Yun, J. (2020) ‘The Leaving Season’, in Some Are Always Hungry. University of Nebraska Press.

+

<?/water bodies>

+======= +

Let’s care for this digital body. I’ll feed it virtual vegetables +while you wipe away the wear of battery fatigue. And why not encourage +it to take strolls through the network, it might be good for it.

+

But what if it falls ill? What if its sickness is inherent, designed +to echo like the distorted reflection of rippling water a corrupted, +isolated, and repulsive physical form? Then we must comfort care for +it.

+

Comfort care is a key concept in healthcare, described as an art. It +is the simple but not easy art of performing comforting actions by a +nurse for a patient (Kolcaba, 1995). The nurse is in this story an +artist full of intention, using the medium of comforting actions to +produce the artwork of comfort for the uncomfortable. Subtle, +subjective, and thorough. However, achieving comfort for another is far +from straightforward. It demands addressing not only the physical but +also the psychospiritual, environmental, and socio-cultural dimensions +of distress, each requiring its blend of relief, ease, and transcendence +(Kolcaba, 1995).

+

In moments of need, digital comfort may become the only care certain +digressive bodies receive. When the distress a body is in becomes too +culturally uncomfortable, no nurse will come to check on it.

+

If care is offered, it’s often only with a desire to assimilate the +divergent body back into expected standards of normalcy and ability. +This leaves those with non-conforming bodies isolated, ashamed, and +yearning for connection and acceptance.I +am talking here about the distress caused by mental health issues that +have direct connections to physicality—self- injuring in any direct +form; food, drugs, pain. The culturally uncomfortable diseases, the +it’s- personal- responsibility, and just-stop disorders. This is a +hidden topic of this text because I cared more about the pain +surrounding them and the reasons to hide rather than the grim +physicality of them all.

+

In the depths of isolation and confusion, marginalized bodies often +look for belonging and understanding online. Gravitating towards one +another with a hunger born of desperation, forming intimate bonds +through shared pain. Through a shared sense of unwillingness, a lack of +desire, and a desperate need for physical assimilation with the +norm.

+

The healthy body, the normal body, the loved body.

+

On the internet, these digital bodies claw onto each other, holding +each other close and comfort-caring for one another. The spaces where +this happens are rooms, or corners of the internet that I’ll call back +places. Back places were initially defined by the sociologist Goffman as +symbolic spaces where stigmatized people did not need to hide their +stigma(1963). In our story, backplaces are small rooms online, tender +soft spaces reserved by those in terrible psychological pain themselves, +where they can find relief, ease, and transcendence.

+

Of course, when we speak of digital bodies, their physicality is not +relevant. To comfort care for a digital body one would thus need to +provide relief, ease, and transcendence for the mental, emotional, and +spiritual; through the digital environment of the body and the +interpersonal cultural relations of the individual. As with any place of +healing, however, it is a transient place. It is an achy place, for the +last step of the journey will see them leave the community and +compassion that saw and sustained them.

+

There is no other way for divergent people.

+

b. uncomfortable comfort

+

In the past and the present, social scientists have studied the +people in the corners of the internet, characterizing these spaces +between people as deviant. Like children lifting stones to look at the +bugs underneath— simultaneously repulsed and fascinated by the coherence +discovered where once was separation. A partition that was then +reinforced by the scientists themselves as they began documenting the +bugs’ behavior. They eavesdropped on conversations, captured intimate +moments, and asked again and again what made them so different. The more +they probed, the more they made sure to separate their behavior from the +norm to place the deviants against (Adler and Adler, 2005, 2008; Smith, +Wickes & Underwood, 2013).

+

The concept of deviance, particularly concerning what people do with +their bodies and how their bodies behave, I find inherently flawed. +Observing from an artificial external standpoint only serves to further +alienate those already marginalized. I like to approach my research into +the intimacy and comfort care expressed in marginalized digital +communities without the alienation of social science. There are many +approaches one can take if one wishes to avoid this, and the one I am +choosing to borrow is a mathematical approach to anthropology. I would +like to borrow from mathematician Jörn Dunkel’s work in pattern +formation. It’s a conscious choice to approach divergences in bodily +behavior through their similarities, not differences. This includes +specificities in atypicality, of course, but also the distinctions +between me as the writer and them as the writer. You as the reader and +you as the community. Me and you, as a whole. Both exist, both separate +but in what is not of such importance.

+
+

“Though many of these systems are different, fundamentally, we can +see similarities in the structure of their data. It’s very easy to find +differences. What’s more interesting is to find out what’s +similar.”
+(Chu & Dunkel, 2021)

+
+

Individuals who forge and inhabit these communities, fostering +tender, intimate connections amongst themselves, are not deviant but +rather divergent. Deviance involves bifurcation, a split estuary from +the river of appropriate cultural behavior.Of course, the river itself is not a river; it’s +many confused streams that believe themselves both the same and +separate. I don’t know where I’m going with this, I just don’t love the +river of normativity and I’d rather go swim in the ocean of dreams with +you.

+

Divergence can be so much more than that. In mathematics, a divergent +series extends infinitely without converging to a finite limit. A +repetition of partial sums with no clear ending, never reaching zero. +Mathematician Niels Abel once said that “divergent series are in general +something fatal and it is a shame to base any proof on them. [..] The +most essential part of mathematics has no foundation”(1826). Drawing a +parallel to social relations would then imply that there is no end to +divergence, too many paradoxes in the foundation of normativeness to +base anything on it.

+

Harmonic series are, on the other hand, also divergent series. They +are infinite series formed by the summation of all positive unit +fractions, named after music harmonics. The wavelengths of a vibrating +string are a harmonic series. These series also find application in +architecture, establishing harmonious relationships. Despite their +integral role in human aesthetics, all harmonic series diverge, +perpetually expanding without ever concluding. They embody a richness +that transcends conventional boundaries, blending into one another +infinitely.

+
+ + +
+

By likening digital bodies to divergent series, we embrace the +complexity and infinite possibilities arising from their +interconnectedness and deviation from the norm. However, it’s crucial to +note that the divergence I’m discussing here carries a halo of pain, +accompanied by the requirement of bodily discomfort. There are other +forms of divergence, ways to have different bodies that necessitate +creating spaciousness around normativity to allow them grace to +grow.

+

The divergent digital bodies we are dancing with and caring for, +however, are of a particular type. If we were to go back to our water +stories, we’d see that the digital bodies we are following are painful +ones. Cold, deep streams, hard to follow, hard to swim in. Their +divergence from the norm makes them so.

+

They have intricate relationships with themselves, existing in +unstainable forms devoid of comfort, nourishment, or thriving. What does +comfort mean for a body whose whole existence is uncomfortable? +Moreover, what if the comfort care performed for these divergent bodies +makes them too comfortable being in their pained state of self? Could +they be?I heard the idea of living +questions for the first time in “Letters to A Young Poet” by Rainer +Maria Rilke and then again on the podcast On Being with Krista Tippet. +It may be a bit transparent but this entire text is informed by the +concept of keeping the unsolved in your heart and learning to love it. +Not searching for the answers for we cannot live them yet. The point is +to live it all. It could be that at some point we will live our way to +an answer but it is feeling the questions alive within us that is +important. Do you?

+

Caring for a digital body involves providing it with space to live, +giving its experimental bot-feelings tender attention, and revealing +your own vulnerable digital body in response. It’s about giving it an +audience, hands to hold, eyes that meet theirs in understanding. A +rehearsal room, a pillow, a mirror. These rooms, backplaces scattered +across the internet, are hidden enough to allow the divergent to +comfort- care for one another, sometimes to the point where it is only +the same type of divergent digital bodies reflecting back at each +other.

+

So far I have talked fondly of divergence and the harmony of +divergent series, and the need to have no finite ending. I’d like to +tell you a different story now. Divergent digital bodies are, by this +point in our text, built and alive as they can be. They are many, they +are together and seeing each other, producing harmonic waves. They are +in backplaces on the internet, but they are less safe than they seem. +They are themselves resonant echo chambers, with an ongoing risk of +catastrophic acoustic resonance.

+

Acoustic resonance is what happens when an acoustic system amplifies +sound waves whose frequency matches one of its natural frequencies of +vibration. The instrument of amplification is important for the harmonic +series, for the music must not match exactly. An exact match will break +it for the object seeks out its resonance. Resonating at the precise +resonant frequency of a glass will shatter it. Digital bodies meet in +these rooms, amplifying their own waves seeking resonance but the risk +of an exact match is that it may shatter them. These spaces full of +divergent digital bodies quickly grow unstable, tethering echo chambers. +Rooms full of reflections, transforming what was once individual pain +into a mirrored loop of anguish. Caring for your own and others’ bodies +becomes increasingly difficult, making permanent residence in the mirror +room unbearable. You all know you must leave before you meet your exact +resonance.

+

c. unbearable intimacy

+

This is the end of the story. Our digital bodies have a shape, a +sense of life and death, and someone to care for us and to care for. We +are alive and have found intimacy with each other.

+

We live in the backplaces, hiding and being hidden online as we have +been for years. We used to be on invitation-only forums, +password-protected bulletin boards, or encrypted hashtags. Now we are +alive in the glitches between pixels, in a shared language of numbers +and acronyms and misdirection. Avoiding a content moderation algorithm, +always hunting the dashboards of social media websites for visible pain +it can cure by erasure. We cannot tell you where to find you or it might +too. We try to stay alive, to hold each other, hiding behind code words, +fake names, and photos. We care for each other as best we can, the blind +leading the blind, the sick caring for the sick. We have brought our +unseemliness, our gory gross bodies to each other and found tender +intimacy and understanding.

+

On good days, dashboards are full of goodbyes and my heart swells +with hope, for those of us who make it and for the small bright light +telling us that we may be one of them. At the same time, some of us +leave only to come back ghosts of ourselves, hunting threads with the +empty hope of missionaries.

+

Don’t give up, it’s worth it!

+

Most of us scoff at this. The idea of leaving only to come back and +tell people you left is uncomfortable, the failed progress that washes +away hope. A healed patient who regularly comes back to the hospital to +encourage the sick, who wish to be anywhere but there. The genuine love +and care within these communities transpire better under goodbye posts. +When people do heal and shed their accounts’ skin, they often leave it +surrounded by all those who once cared for the digital body within +it.

+

I’m so proud of you! Never come back, we love you so much.

+

Recover, don’t come back. Recover, don’t come back. Recover, never +come back.

+

I had a conversation with a friend who once lived in these spaces +between letters but has since moved outside them. When asked, he +mentioned he could only find recovery by leaving that community. His +body has changed since now it is the spitting image of a standard, +healthy body. I didn’t ask, but he knew I’d wonder. He told me he didn’t +like his new body and preferred the divergent one he once built himself. +Why leave then? Why did you stop?

+

Because that was no life.

+

Now life sparkles, everything feels brighter and more exciting. I got +my will to live back. Before, there was nothing but my body. I was +willing to die for it.

+

He pulls up the sleeve of his shirt to show me his shoulder, where he +has tattooed a symbol for a community friend who died.

+

I hope I never go back. I miss them every day.

+

This is the last dichotomy. For the divergent digital body can’t stay +in a Backplace for very long, the intimacy of it is unbearable. It is an +intimacy that floods, and overruns. In their definition of intimacy in +the context of a public surrounding a cultural phenomenon, the author +Lauren Berlant denotes that intimacy itself always requires hopeful +imagination. It requires belief in the existence of an ideal other who +is emotionally attuned to one’s own experiences and fantasies, +conditioned by the same longings and with willing reciprocity +(2008).If we were to be honest, the +entire exercise of writing this for you requires this very +faith.

+

In the context of the intimacy of a Backplace, where divergent +digital bodies have formed a community around existing outside the +healthy and standard, longing and hopeful intimacy becomes a heavy- +hearted and cardinal concept. Being in these rooms and finding care and +love for others like you can be so uncomfortable when the longings, +experiences, and fantasies you are sharing are centered around pain. The +shared cultural experience of existing as a collective divergent digital +body promises a fantasy of belonging, a collective hope, and commitment +that is extremely fragile.

+

There is a duality then, if not a dichotomy. As a divergent body, +there is nothing you crave more than to be seen and to be loved in a +space where you are safe, where the faces looking at you are not +repulsed but warm with familiarity. Yet, it is this very warmth that +becomes unbearable and an inherently traumatic intimacy. Being loved at +your worst, at your most embarrassing, cultural borderline self is an +agonizing duality to deal with. McGlotten, who was referenced earlier +concerning the potential of bot-feelings of a digital body, now comes +back to remind us of their impossibility. In his book, he talks of a +digital intimacy that inundates us and is both a source of connection +and disconnection (McGlotten, 2013). We are looking at a smaller scale +than he does, but intimacy in the context of shared vulnerability can be +a need just as intolerable.

+

Certain kinds of witnessing can become curses, shivers of resonance +so close to an explosion of glass if only you strike the cord that will +keep me going. Certain kinds of divergence can only end with leaving or +death, truth be told. People in these bodies know this, even if the +digital bodies behave as if there is hope in a future where the +divergence brings joy to one’s life consistently. The shared +vulnerability itself then, is unbearable. I need you to see me, I need +you, who are just like me at my worst, to love me. When you do, I can’t +stand it. It ruins both of us to be seen this way and we need it so +desperately. It has to exist and yet it can’t for long.

+

I leave even though I love all of your digital bodies. I leave +because I love you, little digital body and you are me.

+

2. A LIFE TO BE HAD11

+
+

11 Was this the end of this story?
+In the epilogue, you sit your body down and enter your computer. The air +coming in from the window smells wet and earthy, new. The sun shines low +on the horizon.
+

+

You log in to the internet and realize you are being told a story. +You start to listen, carefully and, full of love, touch the story to let +it know you are there. Delicate-fingered, curious like a child holding a +fallen bird. I hold you and the story tentatively.
+>>>>>>> 89a05a3890d6063709e227b6e6f6d53ee2e142a2

I don’t know if I am touching you, to tell you the truth. Digital bodies are stories, like physical bodies are, like dreams are, and like water is.

@@ -301,7 +711,12 @@ eSq9p.
Fuck.
You try not to panic, but you know you have been detected.

+<<<<<<< HEAD You pack up your things: the pie I made you, a love letter, two hands made out of felt, a star, a door, a stuffed animal; and you leave again. +======= +You pack up your things: the pie I made you, a love letter, a hand made +out of felt, a star, a door, a stuffed animal; and you leave again. +>>>>>>> 89a05a3890d6063709e227b6e6f6d53ee2e142a2

THANK YOU

Special thanks to Marloes de Valk, Michael Murtaugh, Manetta Berends, Joseph Knierzinger and Leslie Robbins.
@@ -370,7 +785,142 @@ I made this play for you. It is a question, for us to hold together.

The play ends as all plays do. The curtains close, the website stays but the stories will never sound the same. For the final act, I give you the stories. It’s one last game, one last joke to ask my question again. Digital intimacies about the digital, our bodies and the cakes we eat. For the last act, I ask you to eat digital stories. To eat a comment, to eat a digital intimacy. Sharing an act of physical intimacy with yourself and with me, by eating sweets together. Sweets about digital intimacies that never had a body. There is no moral, no bow to wrap the story in. A great big mess of transcendence into the digital, of intimacy and of bodies. The way it always is. Thankfully.

+<<<<<<< HEAD Accept My Cookies, biscuits for the performance.
Accept My Cookies, biscuits for the performance.
+======= +Accept My Cookies, biscuits for the performance.
Accept My Cookies, biscuits for the performance.
+======= +

Is all intimacy about bodies? What is it about our bodies that makes +intimacy? What happens when our bodies distance intimacy from us? This +small anthology of poems and short stories lives with these +questions—about having a body without intimacy and intimacy without a +body. This project is also a homage to everyone who has come before and +alongside me, sharing their vulnerability and emotions on the Internet. +I called the places where these things happen backplaces. They are +small, tender online rooms where people experiencing societally +uncomfortable pain can find relief, ease, and transcendence.
+

+

I made three backplaces for you to see, click, and feel: Solar +Sibling, Hermit Fantasy, and Cake Intimacies. Each of these is the +result of its own unique performance or project. Some of the stories I +will share carry memories of pain—both physical and emotional. As you +sit in the audience, know I am with you, holding your hand through each +scene. If the performance feels overwhelming at any point, you have my +full permission to step out, take a break, or leave. This is not +choreographed, and I care deeply for you.
+

+
+ + +
+

This project appeared as a need to explore potential bureaucratic +dramaturgies within the educational institution I was part as a student. +I was curious about educational bureaucratic mechanisms being driven by +smaller-scale paperwork struggles and peers’ narratives, stories and +experiences. However, unexpected emergencies - due to my eviction on the +31st of January 2024 - placed centrally my personal struggles unfolded +in parallel with the making period. I ended up conducting accidentally +auto-ethnography as the project was dynamically being reshaped due to +the material constraints of the bureaucratic timeline.

+

Talking Documents are performative bureaucratic text inspections that +intend to create temporal public interventions through performative +readings. I utilized the paperwork interface of my smaller-scale story +in order to unravel and foreground questions related to the role of +bureaucracy as less material border and as a regulatory mechanism +reflecting narratives, ideologies, policies.

+

Central element of this project is a seven-act scenario that +construct my personal paperwork story, unraveling the actual struggles +of my communication with the government. The body of the text of the +“theatrical” script is sourced from the original documents, email +threads as well as recordings of the conversations with the municipality +of Rotterdam I documented and archived throughout this period. I +preserved the sequence of the given sentences and by discarding the +graphic design of the initial forms, I structured and repurposed the +text into a playable scenario.

+
+ + +
+

+
+ + +
+

+

I perceive the document as a unit and as the fundamental symbolic +interface of the bureaucratic network. The transformation of the +materiality of a document into a scenario to be enacted collectively in +public aims to examine these artifacts and highlight the shrouded +performative elements of these processes.

+

I see the collective readings of these scenarios as a way of instant +publishing and as a communal tool of inspecting bureaucratic bordering +infrastructures. How can these re-enactments be situated in different +institutional contexts and examine their structures? I organized a +series of performative readings of my own bureaucratic literature in +different spaces and contexts, pubic and semi-public WDKA, Art Meets +Radical Openness Festival in Linz, the City Hall of Rotterdam where I +invited people to perform the play together, like a tiny theater.

+

+
+The first letter. + +
+

The marginal voices of potential applicants are embodying and +enacting a role. “The speech does not only describe but brings things +into existence”(Austin, 1975). My intention was to stretch the limits of +dramaturgical speech through vocalizing a document and turn individual +administrative cases into public ones. How do the inscribed words in the +documents are not descriptive but on the contrary “are instrumentalized +in getting things done”(Butler,1997). Words as active agents. Bodies as +low-tech “human microphones”. A group of people performs the +bureaucratic scenario in chorus, out loud, in the corridor of the +school’s building, in the main hall, at the square right across, outside +of the municipality building.

+

I documented and recorded these public acts and I re-created the +collectively voiced scenario. This audio piece is a constellation of +different recordings and soundscapes of these public moments, a vocal +archive, published in the graduation exhibition of XPUB in 2024.

+
+ + +
+
+ + +
+
+ + +
+

The play ends as all plays do. The curtains close, the website stays +but the stories will never sound the same. For the final act, I give you +the stories. It’s one last game, one last joke to ask my question again. +Digital intimacies about the digital, our bodies and the cakes we eat. +For the last act, I ask you to eat digital stories. To eat a comment, to +eat a digital intimacy. Sharing an act of physical intimacy with +yourself and with me, by eating sweets together. Sweets about digital +intimacies that never had a body. There is no moral, no bow to wrap the +story in. A great big mess of transcendence into the digital, of +intimacy and of bodies. The way it always is. Thankfully.
+

+
+ + +>>>>>>> 0d34f2967a266c03a36514751c02bce2519f810f +>>>>>>> 89a05a3890d6063709e227b6e6f6d53ee2e142a2
@@ -583,6 +1133,78 @@ Joseph says about his ID card.

Mouffe, C. (2008) ‘Art and Democracy: Art as an Agonistic Internvention’. Open:14 Art as a Public Issue, No.14 (2008), p.4

Pater, R. (2021) Caps lock: How capitalism took hold of graphic design, and how to escape from it. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Valiz.

Picozza, F. (2021). The coloniality of asylum : mobility, autonomy and solidarity in the wake of Europe’s refugee crisis. London: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

+<<<<<<< HEAD +======= +======= +

“we didn’t +cross the border, the border crossed us”(20)

+

As I sit in the waiting area at the gate B7 in the airport preparing +to come back to the Netherlands, I am writing the last lines of this +text. I am thinking of all these borders and gates that my body was able +to pass through smoothly, carrying my magical object through which I +embody power- at least within this context. However, I yearn for a +reality where we stop looking at those bodies that cross the +multifaceted borders and get crossed and entrenched by them, but on the +contrary we start interrogating and shouting at the contexts and the +frameworks that construct them and render them invisible, natural and +powerful.

+
+
+

references

+

Agamben, G. (2000) Means without end: Notes on politics. Minneapolis, +MN: University of Minnesota Press.

+

Anzaldua, G. (1987) Borderlands - la Frontera: The new mestiza. 2nd +ed. San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books.

+

Austin, J. L. (1975) “lECTURE VII”, in How to do things with words. +Oxford University Press, pp.83-93.

+

Barthes, R. (1983) Fashion system. Translated by M. Ward and R. +Howard. Hill & Wang.

+

Border controls (2017) Defensie.nl. Available at: +https://english.defensie.nl/topics/border-controls

+

Borelli, C., Poy, A., and Rué, A. (2023). “Governing Asylum without +‘Being There’: Ghost Bureaucracy, Outsourcing, and the Unreachability of +the State.” Social Sciences, 12(3), 169. [DOI: +https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci12030169]

+

Butler, J. (1997) Excitable speech: A politics of the performative. +London, England: Routledge.

+

Cretton, V., Geoffrion, K. (2021). “Bureaucratic Routes to Migration: +Migrants’ Lived Experience of Paperwork, Clerks and Other Immigration +Intermediaries”, University of Victoria

+

Cunningham, J. (2017), “Rhetorical Tension in Bureaucratic +University”, University of Cincinnati, Ohio, USA

+

Graeber, D. (2015) The utopia of rules: On technology, stupidity, and +the secret joys of bureaucracy. Brooklyn, NY: Melville House +Publishing

+

Hayles, N. K. (2002) Writing Machines. London, England: MIT +Press.

+

Introduction days (2021) Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences. +Available at: +https://www.rotterdamuas.com/study-information/practical-information/international-introduction-days/Tuberculosis-test/ +(Accessed: April 8, 2024).

+

Keshavarz, M. (2016) Design-Politics: An Inquiry into Passports, +Camps and Borders. Malmö University, Faculty of Culture and Society.

+

Khosravi, S. (2010) “illegal” traveller: An auto-ethnography of +borders. 2010th ed. Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan.

+

Khosravi, S. (ed.) (2021) Waiting - A Project in Conversation. +transcript Verlag.

+

M’charek, A. (2020) “Harraga: Burning borders, navigating +colonialism,” The sociological review, 68(2), pp. 418–434. doi: +10.1177/0038026120905491.

+

Malichudis, S. (2020) How the Aegean islands became a warehouse of +souls, Solomon. Available at: +https://wearesolomon.com/mag/focus-area/migration/how-the-aegean-islands-became-a-warehouse-of-souls/ +(Accessed: April 7, 2024).

+

McKittrick, K. (2021) Dear science and other stories. Durham, NC: +Duke University Press.

+

Mouffe, C. (2008) ‘Art and Democracy: Art as an Agonistic +Internvention’. Open:14 Art as a Public Issue, No.14 (2008), p.4

+

Pater, R. (2021) Caps lock: How capitalism took hold of graphic +design, and how to escape from it. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Valiz.

+

Picozza, F. (2021). The coloniality of asylum : mobility, autonomy +and solidarity in the wake of Europe’s refugee crisis. London: Rowman +& Littlefield Publishers.

+>>>>>>> 0d34f2967a266c03a36514751c02bce2519f810f +>>>>>>> 89a05a3890d6063709e227b6e6f6d53ee2e142a2
@@ -617,14 +1239,75 @@ Joseph says about his ID card.

The statue in the garden of Gemeente is reading the scenario
The statue in the garden of Gemeente is reading the scenario
+<<<<<<< HEAD +======= +======= +

+
+ + +
+

Working as a children’s literature editor for years, I came to a +realisation that picture books were turning into another object that +kids read and consume on daily basis.

+
+ + +
+

Teachers and parents were finding it difficult to find new books +constantly or were tired of rereading the same book.

+
+ + +
+
+ + +
+

+

+

As a young person in the publishing sector, I believe there should be +more options for children as there is for adults; such as ebooks, +audiobooks etc. But moreover a “book” that can be redefined, reread or +be interacted with… So I revisited an old story I wrote, translated to +English and called it, “Bee Within”.

+

Bee Within, is a story about grief/memory and it is based on my +experiences throughout the years. I erased it, rewrote it, edited it, +destroyed it multiple times over the past years; simultaneously with new +experiences of loss. In the end, I believe the story turned out to be an +ode to remembering or might I say an ode to not being able to forget or +an ode to the fear of forgetting which I now think is a great and sweet +battle between death and life. I think it is an important subject to +touch upon, especially for children dealing with trauma in many parts of +the world.

+
+ + +
+
+ + +>>>>>>> 0d34f2967a266c03a36514751c02bce2519f810f +>>>>>>> 89a05a3890d6063709e227b6e6f6d53ee2e142a2
- -
+ +

Fair Leads

Fair leads or Fair winds is a saying sailors and knotters use to greet each other. It comes from the working end of a string that will soon be forming a knot.

@@ -762,6 +1445,882 @@ This map will reveal your mode of reading. The order of reading will be indicate

Thank you Marloes de Valk, for your enlightening feedbacks and ideas. Thank you Michael Murtaugh, Manetta Berends, Joseph Knierzinger, Leslie Robbins and Steve Rushton for sharing your time and knowledge with me throughout these years.

Thank you XPUB friends for funny, hectic and memorable moments we made together.

Thanks to my family and especially Kemal, my brother, who supported me in my studies and encouraged me to do better, always…

+<<<<<<< HEAD +======= +======= +

Fair +leads or Fair winds is a saying sailors and knotters use to greet each +other. It comes from the working end of a string that will soon be +forming a knot.

+
+

I would like to clarify and introduce some terms for you in order to +read this text in the desired way. For a while, we will stay in the +bight of this journey as we move into forming loops, theories and ideas +on how interactive picture books can be used to foster curiosity for +reading and creativity for children. I am building a web platform called +Wink that aims to contain a children’s story I wrote and am making into +an interactive experience, in relation to my research. Knotatomy. Through +this bight of the thesis, I feel the necessity to clarify my intention +of using knots as a “thinking and writing object” throughout my research +journey. Although knots are physical objects and technically crucial in +many fields of labor and life, they are also objects of thought and are +open for wide minds’ appreciation. Throughout history, knots have been +used to connect, stop, secure, bind, protect, decorate, record data, +punish, contain, fly and many other purposes. So if the invention of +flying -which required a wing that was supported using certain types of +knots was initiated with the knowledge of how to use strings to make +things, why wouldn’t a research paper make use of this wonderful art as +an inspiration for writing and interactive reading?

+

KNOTS AS OBJECTS TO THINK +WITH

+

There is a delicate complexity of thinking of and with knots, which +ignites layers of simultaneous connections to one’s specific experience; +where one person may associate the knots with struggles they face, +another may think of connecting or thriving times. In a workshop in +Rotterdam, I asked participants to write three words that comes to mind +when they think of knots. There were some words in common like strong, +chaotic, confusing and anxious. On the other hand, there were variations +of connection, binding, bridge and support. Keeping these answers in +mind or by coming up with your words on knots and embodying them in the +practice of reading would make a difference in how you understand the +same text.

+
+ + +
+
+ + +
+

Seeing how these words, interpretations of a physical object were so +different to each other was transcendental. In this thesis, I am excited +to share my understanding of knots with you. My three words for knots +are resistance, imagination and infinity. Keeping these in mind, I +experimented with certain reading modes as you will see later on.

+Knots are known to be used 15 to 17 thousand years ago for multiple +purposes. These purposes were often opposing each other. For example, it +could be used to let something loose or to restrain it; for pleasure or +pain; for going high above or down below… I believe this diversity of +uses can also be seen in how people approach knots as an idea or a +metaphor. One can think it represents chaos where someone else might see +it as a helpful mark. Essentially, this diversity is what got me +interested in knots years ago and since then, I have found ways to +implement this “loop of thought” in my daily life and research methods. +
+

There are two main reasons to why I chose to write this essay in a +“knotted” format. One is that I would like to share my process and +progress of research on this project and this involves “thinking with an +object”, in this case types of knots. In Evocative Objects, Sherry +Turkle, who is a sociologist and the founder of MIT initiative of +technology and self, refers to the object in the exercise of thinking as +emotional and intellectual companions that anchor memory, sustain +relationships and provoke new ideas. I completely agree with this +statement through personal experience. The second reason is that I see +this as an opportunity to experiment if I can use knots as an +interactive (which is not in knots’ nature since they are mainly +practiced in solo) and playful element in writing. This is also why I +would like to take a moment to mention what happens to the interplay of +processes in which we call thought when we think with knots in +specific.

+

For Turkle and Seymour Papert, who is a mathematician, computer +scientist and educator that did remarkable research on constructivism, +being able to make a reading experience tangible, or even physically +representable makes the process of thought more concrete. Concrete +thinking in this sense is a way of thinking that I adapted to in the +past years, where you think with the object and imagine it vividly +during the process and address meanings to it as you read or write +along. This way it’s easier to compartmentalize or attribute certain +parts of a text to an imagined or real physical item which makes the +mind at ease with complex chains of thought.

+

Imagine you are reading a story… What if you think of the string +itself as the journey and the slip knot (which is a type of stopper +knot) as a representation of an antagonist because of its specific use +in hunting, would this change your approach to reading this story? I +believe so…

+

Slipknot is widely +used for catching small animals like rabbits and snares. It is also +commonly used to tie packages.What if instead of a slip +knot a bowline was on the string, would that represent something else in +the story because of its usage in practice. A Bowline is commonly used +to form a fixed loop at the end of a string; it’s strong but easy to +tie, untie. Due to these qualities, we can imagine the bowlineBowline is known to +be used since 1627. Some believe it was used in Ancient Egypt because a +knot resembling it was discovered in the tomb of pharaoh Cheops. Even +after it’s used and very tight, bowline is still easy to untie, which +makes it commonly used. to represent the conclusion in a +story. What if we have a Square Knot, how would that change the course +of a narrative? Square knot is used to bundle objects and make the two +ends of the same string connect. From just this, we can use it to +represent the connection between the beginning and end of a story. My +point is, there are limitless implementations on how to use knots in +literature because of their versatile purposes and the narrative +vocabulary they create. Topologists are still trying to identify +seemingly infinite numbers of combinations which we simply call “knots” +and I see this as an inspiration to keep writing.

+

One example of the wondrous versatility and potential of knots is how +they are used to archive and encrypt information. Incan people from the +Andes region recorded information on Quipus, dating back to 700 CE +Quipus are textile devices consisting of several rows of cotton and/or +camelid string that would be knotted in a specific way to record, store +and transmit information ranging from accounting and census data to +communicate complex mathematical and narrative information (Medrano, +Urton, 2018). Another example is the Yakima Time Ball, which was used by +North-American Yakama people to show life events and family +affairs.Square knot is one of +the oldest knots. Romans knew it as Hercules knot. A roman scholar +claimed that it speeds up healing when used to secure a bandage. It is +often used to tie belts and shoe laces.

+

This is why I humbly decided to document my research process with a +Quipu of my own. I am trying to symbolize the twists, decisions and +practices throughout this year with knots of my choosing. I was inspired +by Nayeli Vega’s question, “What can a knot become and what can become a +knot?”

+

WEAVING INTO THE TEXT

+

This thesis expects participation from its reader. You have the +Broken +knots are knots that aren’t tied well, done with a wrong material or was +under more pressure than it could take.option to have a +mode of reading, where you will be guided by strings to This thesis +expects participation from its reader. You have the option to have a +mode of reading, where you will be guided by strings to start reading +from a certain section according to the type of reader you are and read +the loops one by one until the end, weaving through the text. To +determine the string or mode of reading, there are some simple questions +to answer. Bends are joining +knots. They attach two strings together. The bend above is a sheet bend +and it works well when koining two different strings and can take +stress.

+

The three modes of reading are combine, slide, build. After you +discover the starting point with the yes or no map in the upcoming +pages, you will continue the reading journey through the strings of +different colors that will get you through the text. This way, the +linear text will become in a way, non-linear by your personal +experience.

+

Bear in mind that you can choose to read this thesis from beginning +to end as a single string too if you wish so.

+

Combine mode of reading is for readers who are more interested in the +journey and the connections between process and result. Slide mode of +reading is for more laid back readers who aren’t looking to connect +ideas but are more focused on the motivation and purpose of the project. +Build readers are detail oriented and academic readers who would prefer +a “traditional” lead to reading. Hitches are used to +tie strings to a standing solid object. Alongside the +different strings to follow the text, there will be little drawings in +the margins as seen above, which will have different representations +like in a Quipu. Certain knots represent the experiences that raise +interesting opportunities for research and distinct events I went +through while making the project and underneath the drawing you can find +the relation to the knot itself explained. For example if I couldn’t +manage to do something I planned to do, this will be represented with a +broken knot. Bend knots which are used to connect two strings, will be +representing the relation between theories and my own +experiences/motivations. Hitches which are knots that are formed around +a solid object, such as a spar, post, or ring will be representing the +evidence or data I have collected on the subject. We move on now with +the working end and make some loops!

+

HOW TO CHOOSE YOUR STRING

+This map will reveal your mode of reading. The order of reading will be +indicated with a loop sign Please hold a string in your hand as you read +the text and make knots or loops as you weave through the reading as an +exercise for concrete thinking. See you at the standing end! and a +number on top of the sign with a color. This is the numeric order you +should follow to read the thesis, if you choose to read with a mode. +Every reader starts from 1 and continues until 12, with a consecutive +numeric order, according to their color/mode. +
+

+
+

1 1 +1

+

Working End

+

Loop 1

+

Why am I doing this?

+

My desire to write a children’s book about grief and memory ignited +when I was studying in college and doing an internship in a publishing +house in Ankara. I was struggling to process a loss I experienced at the +time and to find something to cling to on a daily basis. Then one day I +started hearing a buzzing sound in my bedroom at my family’s house. I +searched everywhere but couldn’t find the source for this noise. I asked +my father and he started searching too. A couple of days passed and the +buzzing was still there.

+

One day I found a bee on the floor in my bedroom and realized that +the bees nested on the roof and were coming inside my room through a gap +in the lamp. I was terrified because I have an allergy to bees and +thought they might sting me in my sleep. This moment was when I realized +I was so determined to find this buzzing sound for some time that I +forgot about dealing with the loss I was experiencing. This made me feel +very guilty and I remember thinking I betrayed the person I lost.

+

As funny as it may appear, I felt like I was sabotaged by these bees +that I thought were here to hurt me but in the end they made me +understand that its ok to let things go and every being does what it has +to do to find its way of survival. The little habitat that they chose to +create in my room seemed like a calling or a sign that I can aff ect +another living being significantly without being aware of it. This goes +for everything, no matter if some people leave us in this world, they +have living matter in us that keeps pulsing. So then I started +researching bees and their ecosystems. I read Alan Watts, Alan Lightman, +Emily Dickinson, Maurice Sendak, Meghan O’Rourke, Oliver Sacks, Joanna +Macy, Rilke, Montaigne and theories on order in chaos, correlative +vision, harmony of contained conflicts and the mortality paradox. I +wrote a lot and erased a lot and fairly figured out the wisdom of not +knowing things.

+

Years passed and I wrote and deleted and rewrote the story that I am +working on to make interactive today so many times and was waiting on it +because it always felt incomplete. In a way it will always be incomplete +because of the natural ambiguity the topic carries. Years later, grief +was back in my life with the loss of my grandfather. So therefore, the +story I wrote and abandoned changed again as I attempted to rewrite it +as a diff erent version of myself with a diff erent understanding of +death. And this went on… The story remained hidden and I forgot why it +ever existed in the first place. I wrote and deleted +and rewrote the story 3 times already. Last year when two +earthquakes hit Syria and Turkey, I was drowned like everyone I know, by +a collective trauma and grief. Then this horrible feeling flared up by +neglect and desperation. It was and still is impossible to mourn so many +strangers at the same time. I lost two dear friends, I was furious, away +from home, mostly alone and remembered vividly my failed attempt to +understand or place grief in one of the piles in my mind.

+

Previous months, I was working on this story (yes, again) but didn’t +know how to tackle the text because it was so diff erent to what I was +experiencing now, when compared to the last time I rewrote it. A tutor +asked me why I wrote this story in the first place and I couldn’t +remember. I kept tracing back to 2016 and step by step, remembered why, +as told above. The consciousness that this story is actually a personal +history of how I went through grief in diff erent stages of my life, +made me realise that it doesn’t have to be or even can be a perfect +story.

+

In the end with the experience I had with loss, I believe the story +turned out to be an ode to remembering or might I say an ode to not +being able to forget or an ode to the fear of forgetting. 11 7 +4

+

Loop 2

+

The effect of storytelling knowledge on kids’ development and +creativity. What can we learn from open ended and multiple ending +stories?

+

ability to form basic stories or to express their emotions through +fictional characters or events. Children are not born with a wide +vocabulary of emotions and expressions. They learn how to read, mimic +and express their feelings over time. The more children read, write and +are exposed to social environments, the more they widen their sense and +ability of expressing themselves. The language gained as kids comes in +many forms and storytelling plays a crucial role in this development. +The exposure to stories prepares the kids to the era of reading and +writing. Children come to understand and value feelings through +conversation (Dettore, 2002). When children are offered to read or share +stories, they also learn to understand people around them better and +gain emotional literacy.

+

Storytelling has been a means of communicating with others for many +centuries. It is not only a way to discuss important events, but also a +way to entertain one another (Lawrence & Paige, 2013). Stories have +been told orally, in writing or with drawings for thousands of years and +some of these stories are still alive. This is because language is a +living thing that travels through time and still remains brand new. When +necessary, it just adapts form, evolves and blends in with the changing +world. Children comprehend the idea that they have a story to tell by +hearing other stories and this ignites the imagination. We tend to +forget many things but almost everyone remembers one small story they +heard or read when they were a kid, this moment we remember is the +moment a certain story sparked for us.

+

Nowadays storytelling takes many forms. For example, some readers’ +story might even begin from here although it isn’t the beginning. +Interactivity is one of the storytelling forms that can signifi- cantly +improve children’s creativity. This is mainly because children as +readers or listeners get to contribute and aff ect the story. This of +course requires and improves creative and active thinking. Getting the +chance to choose a path for a fictional character gives the child the +freedom and confi dence of constructing a world, a character or an +adventure. Although this is essentially “writing” as we know it, +children think of this as a game, yet to discover they are actually +becoming writers. What kind of reward can we expect from active +participation in a story? Narrative pleasure can be generally described +in terms of immersions (spatial, temporal, emotional, epistemic) in a +fictional world (Ryan, 2009). When we are set to create or co-create a +world, the narrative has effects on us such as curiosity, suspense and +surprise. At this point, we start creatively producing ideas to keep +these three emotions. Multiliteracy +theory helped me ground my passion of using multimedia for children’s +literature. Interactive storytelling reminds everyone but +especially children that there are limitless endings to a story that is +solely up to the maker’s creation. Learning to think this way instead of +knowing or assuming an end to a story, I think influences the children’s +decision making abilities and sense of responsibility towards their +creations. It is basically the same in theatre where if an actor chooses +to create an imaginary suitcase on stage, they can’t simply leave this +object they created on stage and exit the scene because the audience +will wonder why the actor didn’t take the imaginary suitcase as they +left. In this case, when kids decide to choose a path or item or any +attribute for a character in a story, they feel responsible and curious +to see it through to the end or decide what to do with it. This +interactivity therefore creates a unique bond between the reader/writer +and the text.

+

There are many theories on how to approach interactive literature for +children. Multi-literacy theory and digital literacies are some of the +theories which I find relevant to my aim with Wink. Multiliteracy theory +in a nutshell is an education oriented framework that aims to expand +traditional reading and writing skills. This theory was developed by the +New London Group. They were a collective of scholars and educators who +addressed the changing nature of literacy in an increasingly globalized, +digital world. The theory explores multiple modes of communication +consisting The sense of storytelling settles for kids, starting from age +three. By this time, children have the of multimodal communication, +cultural and social contexts, critical inquiry, socio-cultural learning +theory and pedagogical implications. Multimodal communication focuses on +the variety of communication techniques. This was groundbreaking in the +90s because of its acknowledgment of a diverse range of literacies and +its departure from traditional approaches to literary texts. This theory +includes new media and communication studies such as visual, digital, +special and gestural literacies.

+

I kept this theory in mind as I chose the interactivity elements to +use in the picture book. I think the usage of multiple media such as +sound, image and games is a good way to start and diff erentiate from a +regular interactive e-book. The fact that this theory has an educational +perspective and is taking the rapidly changing qualities of literature +seriously, made me consider it as a guide in designing the +prototype.

+

Looking through the perspective of multiliteracies, questions come up +for me that lead to the rest of this thesis: What is an interactive +picture book? Is it a book? Is it a game? Is it an exercise?

+

What is it defined as? How can we design an interactive reading +environment without confusing children?

+

8 9 +5

+

Loop 3

+

Differences and similarities between interactive e-books and +storytelling games.

+

Storytelling games and interactive e-books have many things in +common. To begin with, they both centralize the narrative to engage the +audience. While both of these formats are storytelling tools, e-books +tend to stay more in a linear narrative and format when compared to +storytelling games where the audience is commonly the main character. +Reading experiences are also a way to be in the shoes of the narrator or +the character but in a storytelling game, you embody the mission and the +experience overrules the story most of the time. In the specific example +of a child, storytelling games are complicated and puzzle driven where +the player has missions to complete. Whereas in an interactive e-book, +the missions are solely based on the interactive elements implemented in +the text and images.

+

Another difference is that the visual world in an interactive e-book +is less cinematic and has limited movement. The imagery plays a massive +role in a storytelling game where the world created is offered to the +player. In an interactive e-book, the text itself is designed to be +playful and ready for readers to discover.

+

The main difference in my opinion that separates these two methods of +storytelling is the reward. In a game, we expect to be rewarded by a +victory, passing a level or unlocking something throughout the +experience. In an interactive e-book, we work with the story and in +return we expect a good experience and there is no reward other than +that. But, the whole design of interactivity involves aspects of a game +where the reader –not the player- is captured by surprise effects or +elements that come up on the pages. This ignites curiosity but not +ambition, which is a good start to foster the love for reading. +5 4 +11

+

Loop 4

+

Ways of using interactivity in digital platforms

+

CASA theory, also known as the Cognitive-Aff ective-Social Theory of +Learning and Development, is a framework used in educational psychology +to understand how learning occurs within the context of cognitive, aff +ective, and social factors. Research on cognitive learning with keeping +in mind the limited attention span and memory factors. For children in +specific, I think these are very important factors to keep in mind when +trying to design an interactive experience. This is because children get +bored very easily and can be disengaged because of failure of +solving/understanding something in a story. This is something I kept in +mind as I wrote for children and chose the interactive elements in the +story. CASA framework +helped me understand the key elements in designing for +children.

+

Finding the balance between making the interactive element surprising +and making it easy to interact with is the key to designing for kids in +this scenario. We don’t want to make them struggle and use the limited +attention span in a non-engaging way but we want to keep the reading +interesting enough so they want to continue.

+

Digging deeper into how to do this, I found Children Computer +Interaction (CCI) study very useful. This study examines how children of +different ages and developmental stages interact with digital devices +and how these interactions can support their growth. This made me think +about digital gestures; how they change through generations and how to +use these to design a platform where children can navigate easily and +freely. CCI suggests that when introducing a new media to children its +better to start easy and clear when they try it. Through this I think +the best easy interaction is the tap or click for children. It is easy +to do, instinctive and common. So I decided to base the interactive +elements on click animations. CCI was a theory +that helped me decide on the interactive elements. There +are multiple ways to use digital gestures in storytelling to make the +experience more intriguing. These are usually elements such as sound, +animations, voice-overs that are ignited with a click or tap by the +reader. For children younger than 5, its usually just tapping over the +page and experiencing an action-reaction. For older kids between the +ages 6-8, I made some workshops to figure out which types of interactive +elements are most useful in engaging them in the reading process.

+

It is true that sound and animations are very inclusive and it is +engaging for kids to find out which part of a page is interactive by +clicking on images. Another thing I found out is that kids enjoy being a +part of the story. For the prototype of Bee Within (the story I am using +to test interactivity also can be read in the appendix) I will focus on +color, sound and click based animations according to the results of my +research. 4 3 +2

+

Loop 5

+

What is the target age group for the designated prototype and +why?

+

It is tricky when it comes to choosing the right age spectrum for +children’s interactive literature. Children between the ages 3-5, +referred to as preschoolers have more developed social skills and day by +day increasing interest in play. They can take on roles in imaginative +play scenarios. They can also share and take turns more, listen and +think about rules of a game. They can form friendships and connections +easily.

+

This +data about school age children was a starting point to choose the age +group to have the workshops with.

+

School age children are between the ages 6-12, which is Wink’s chosen +age group is a little different. These kids can form more rooted +friendships and engage in more complex narratives. They learn to +negotiate and compromise around this time as well. This age group is +desired for Wink because kids this age are open to creative problem +solving, connecting events and comprehending slightly more complex +narratives. Moreover, this age group would benefit the most from the +interactive stories and the reading process because of the developmental +phase they are in.

+

The average amount of time children between these ages use on a daily +basis is depending on their parents and circumstances. But to be fair, +it is often not less than 2 hours. If a child isn’t very interested in +spending these hours reading a book, why not ask them: “Would you like +to be a part of a story?”

+

Today, kids from age 3 can use digital gestures successfully and +experience these as simple as flipping the page of a book. This is why +it is fairly easy to create an interactive picture book which kids can +navigate themselves and be able to browse through with or without their +parents. But for Wink, I chose to design for older kids because I want +to experiment on multi-leveled narratives and I want to avoid the risk +of confusing children. 3 10 +7

+

Loop 6

+

Limits of interactivity in narratives for children and why do we have +less modes of reading and writing for children?

+

Although there are many upsides of creating digital environments for +children due to their advanced skills in technology from early ages, +there are also risks involved in this where the kid can be overwhelmed +and confused due to the autonomy they receive. Reading a story is +supposed to be effortless and a good free time activity but with +interactive picture books, it is slightly more than that and more +complicated as an experience. This is the elbow of +our strings. Elbows are created when an additional twist is added to a +loop. In this case, it represents the counter argument in the +string.

+

First of all, with the story at hand, called Bee Within, there are +two other stories in one. Although the main story is about a little +girl’s journey, kids get the chance to hear the Queen Bee’s story and +the tree’s story as well. This is not a must but if they interact with +certain pictures on the page, they will be led to the bee’s perspective +or the trees. This is where the storyline can get a little bit +complicated for younger kids. The child reader at this point should be +able to follow the main storyline after visiting the side quests or +stories presented in the interactive book. To create this balance I +tried to limit the interactive elements I used in the main story. I +tried to keep the picture animations limited and focused more on the +storylines.

+

Another aspect I am concerned about after the workshop I did with the +kids, is the risk of confusion due to an undefined and multimodal design +for a “book”. Kids tend to be confused when they can’t define things or +are asked to improvise without knowing the purpose.They know what a book +is and that it is similar to what they encounter on the screen. But the +method of reading and interacting with Bee Within is different than what +they are used to. This concerns me because they might prefer to just +read a book or play a game instead of discovering a new thing, which +they are exposed to daily because they are always in a process of active +learning. So one more thing to learn might come as exhausting. +Therefore, in designing, I want to make interactions as clear as +possible for them. 9 11 +8

+

Loop 7

+

Interactive reading and writing examples and surveys done with +kids.

+

As an improvisation theater enthusiast myself, I tried to engage the +kids with the story through some exercises and games during the +workshops. My aim was to see how involved they want to be in +storytelling. Improvisation has a certain way of storytelling and +interaction where there are either too many options or none. You need to +have good empathy and harmony with the person you are acting with and +you are designated to be creative in your own way. I tried to use +several improv games and warmups to involve the kids in the story more +and see how they see certain characters from the picture book.

+

My first attempt was to make a survey at the end of workshops with +kids to whether they liked it or not, but when I researched further, +surveying with kids has very different methods and complications. +There is a +broken knot here because I ended up not doing a survey with children at +the workshops. Most kids either really like or really +dislike things. Finding the in between emotions with a survey, ends up +being vague. Most surveys done with kids use emoticons as representation +of a good or bad or average time. Instead, I chose to observe the +environment and understand how much empathy kids can offer in an +interactive reading or playing environment. 6 2 +6

+

Loop 8

+

What does the joy of destruction and the awe effect have to do with +interactivity? Indeed, why did we ever start playing games? The most +important aspect of a game for me is that it surprises you and leaves +you in awe towards something you weren’t expecting happened. I feel like +every reaction I give when I’m surprised, is a mirror of what I felt +when I was playing freeze and had to stop moving at any given time or +when I found the last friend hiding somewhere in hide and seek. This +feeling of appreciation and unexpectedness is why most people remember +certain games, movies from their childhoods very vividly. Its an +introduction to a feeling we experience maybe for the first time because +we don’t necessarily learn from books how and when to feel surprised, +that is why it’s a surprise; we live it, experience it and it leaves and +impression with us.

+

In my opinion, what drives everyone as a common denominator is +amazement; because it takes us to our childhoods or distant memories +where we first felt that feeling of awe. This is the main purpose behind +any kind of interactive design and I think books can be an amazing +medium to experiment this with. Specifically because this ancient device +can take us to numerous worlds. For me as a millennial, books give me +enough amazement as it is. But as I worked in publishing through the +years and observed, I think kids today need something more to ignite +their interest. There are so many factors in a picture book such as the +image, the text and sound which can be played with to create an +experience that is more surprising. This is the main purpose behind my +research and protoype. Today’s world being visually stimulating and +serving very short attention spans with social media, it is a tough task +to insert a story or reading experience that requires full attention and +patience. There are examples of Tiktok stories, Instagram reels, audio +books and games that try to tell stories worth listening with attention. +Wink is also an attempt to do this and I believe the key is to make an +already engaging story enriched with interactive elements that appear to +you through a click if you choose to. I think this is also the key to +nourishing a new way of storytelling. 7 5 +3

+

Loop 9

+

Interactivity in reading and writing in history. What changed?

+

Interactivity has always been an experimental area in literature from +inscriptions to narrative games then to playable stories and artificial +intelligence. I will expand some of these examples from the rich history +of interactive fiction. When I dig a little bit into the media +archaeology there are three still relevant aspects that strike me and +change/improve my approach to Wink. The first is the need to connect +that remains untouched through centuries of human communication, the +second is how there were multiple projects concerning interactive media +especially for kids that later turned into narrative games or remained +as prototypes and lastly how the integration of media and literature has +been such a grand topic even before information and technology era. Some +examples to this is music, masks, puppets, props used in +storytelling.

+

Ancient texts with annotations such as The Odyssey, The Mahabharata +are maybe the earliest written interactive experiences in a historical +context. They are published with notes and explanations, clarifications +which make the text inhabit different opinions and approaches in an +engaging way where the reader can choose to hop on and off from the +annotation and margin texts.

+

From the 70s to the present there have been many examples but I will +be focusing on a few here. One of them is, Choose your own adventure +books which allowed the reader to participate in the plot. These still +exist as picture books where you are directed to certain pages according +to the choices you make throughout the story. Along with this were also +board games and cards that required interactive inputs. Some examples to +this is exploding kittens or cards against humanity where the player has +the autonomy to be creative and fill in the blanks to win the game. +Simultaneously, text-based adventure games such as Zork and Adventure +were popular. Early days of computing offered a wide space for exploring +virtual worlds. In the early 80s, hypertext fiction contributed to +electronic literature. Hyperlinks were used as a tool to navigate a text +and choose paths of reading. This inspired me to write this thesis with +different modes of reading as well. After the 80’s, Interactive fiction +gained popularity as a genre of interacting with text based input. +Dynabook by Alan Kay was prototyped during this time as a promising +reading and writing device designed for children.

+

The 21st century offers a combination of text and illustrations in +augmented reality books that have animations, sound and external +interactions. These are followed by digital storytelling platforms like +Wattpad and Storybird and interactive e-book apps such as Pibocco, Bookr +and Tiny Minies. Most of these apps are dedicated to education however +and not solely to creativity. Their aim is to use creative elements to +foster education for kids.

+

With Wink, I want to use a mainly educational tool (a book) to foster +creativity and expression. So I believe it is the opposite purpose as to +these examples in certain ways. I am trying to combine the delicacy of a +narrative where you can only be a reader and the excitement of +autonomous writing and experiencing.

+

This is because I think the understanding and usage of media changed +in the last years. Some tools that created the awe effect for users +faded and left their place to more compact designs. Although audio books +were very welcome at some point, younger users nowadays prefer book +summary apps or podcasts to them. Of course they are still used and not +outdated but there is certainly a visible change to where media is +heading. 10 8 +10

+

Loop 10

+

Experimentation of creative exercises to be used in WINK. Exercises +of storytelling with words, images, drawing, sound and gestures.

+

Before I completed the prototype of Wink, I reached out to an +international school in Rotterdam to make a 20 minute workshop with kids +between ages 6-8. The aim here was to grasp the interactive elements in +the picture book to implement in the digital framework. I wanted to see +which parts of the story the children found exiting and which ones are +not so thrilling for them. It also helped me draw the pictures for the +book accordingly and edit the text with their reactions in mind. Due to +a privacy agreement, I couldn’t record or use any data from the workshop +but I made some helpful observations from my time there. This loop is all about +the observations I made during the workshops and the decisions I made, +according to the results.

+

The first workshop I planned consisted of two main parts that made up +20 minutes. The first 10 minutes we read Bee Within (attached in the +appendix) together in a circle and the last 10 minutes we played little +improvisation games, focused on the three main characters in the story +(the bee, the kid and the tree). I made three groups and gave these +groups the three characters. I asked them to embody a character +throughout the workshop and be loyal to it. Each group of three had 1 +minute on the stage to silently improvise their characters. They were to +use one sentence if they wanted to speak.

+

During the first part, I couldn’t observe as I was busy reading but +their teacher kindly took notes during this time, regarding the +children’ reactions to parts of the story. I inserted the bees and trees +narrative to the reading by tossing the paper I had in my hand and +picking up a new one as I kept reading the bees and trees story. This +was crucial because I wanted to see if this multiple stories in one +concept would be confusing for kids. The teacher told me that they were +excited about my gesture of juggling papers as I seemingly read one +story. They were intrigued and confused at first but they did keep up +with the storyline and understood all. Her notes basically said they +were very focused and less interested in the kids journey. They really +liked the bee and were a bit confused with the tree.

+

There were 12 international kids and 3 of them didn’t want to join +the workshop, they wanted to observe. I told them that they could paint +and draw what they see. The drawings they made were of their classmates +acting as trees or bees. They drew their classmate with a stinger and +the other was of a classmate as a tree with his hands wide open as he +was performing.

+

What struck me most on the second part of the workshop was how these +kids used the room so freely and in relation to their characters. +Because we read the story before the improvisation games, some of their +characters were influenced by how it is in the story we read. Next +workshop, I am planning to not tell the story but to talk about it +before and give context. This is because I want to see how their +understanding changes without a limitation of a story.

+

Bees in the classroom that day were all very active and they used +chairs, tables and windows to position themselves in a higher +perspective. Children who played the kid were usually standing closer to +the trees and looked very calm. Trees were all very different. One of +the kids used postits as leaves. Some of them didn’t have leaves because +it is winter. Trees didn’t move at all and the bees were buzzing all +around. “The kid” usually sat near the tree, on the tree (as in the +other performers’ lap or hugged them).

+

Overall only 2 groups used the option to say a sentence which were, +“I want to go on an adventure”
+“I don’t wanna leave Gray(the tree)”

+

This was a good feedback for me because I realized they are very +perceptive of actions and facial expressions rather than words. The +workshop we did in the studio with XPUB 2 students was harder than the +session with the kids because everyone felt so restricted to obligations +and were not comfortable to let go of bodily control. No one actually +attempted in using objects from the room which is a huge difference with +the kids because they drew on their faces, used plastic bags as wings +for the bee and made sounds with their mouths as trees.

+

The next workshop was to discover how improv would work without +reading the story first. This workshop was fruitful because it helped me +realize how much information or guidance I have to offer for children in +order for them to be comfortable to participate and interact without +confusion. We made a circle and I summarized the story to the kids, +acting in the middle of the circle. This broke the ice completely +because I was a part of the workshop and they thought I was funny. For +the next part, I divided the group in three and assigned a character to +them. After this, I asked them to decide on an attitude, pop in the +middle and tell or act out their character. I went first and they +followed easily. They were not under the influence of the story so the +performances were different but they still got influenced by each other, +which in my opinion is inevitable. Some of the kids were buzzing/running +around, the “kids” were walking around, acting like they are playing +which I found very interesting. Some trees were small some were mighty +and old. It was helpful to see the different attributions they gave to +the characters.

+

After the circle session, they separated in three groups: the kids, +the bees and the trees. I asked each group to come up, walk around +randomly, embodying the character they chose. Then as I rang the bell, I +asked them to change the character. I asked them to be a busy, tired, +injured, happy and scared bee one by one. They kept walking randomly and +acted these feelings out. For the “kids”, I asked them to be angry, sad, +scared, and curious. For the trees I asked them to be wise, mad, funny +and happy. The results were amazing. They adapted very quickly to the +changing of emotions which showed me that this age gap was good to work +with. The trees stopped walking as I changed the emotions and this was +an affirmation to not animate the tree with movement but more with +changing of color and tiny animations. They mostly used arms and face +expressions to show the emotions, some of them ducked or made sounds. As +I said mad, one of the kids ran and put her red jacket on. This made me +think about using color to show emotions for the tree. It was good to +see that they weren’t scared or discouraged by negative emotions as +well. We ended the workshop by drawing our characters. It was nice to +see them own their imaginary characters enough to draw them with joy. +There is a +broken knot here because I changed my mind about adding motional +elements to the tree character. Kids seemed to see the tree as +stationary.

+

The last workshop was dedicated to discovering the sound aspect. The +tree in the story speaks in verses so I chose one verse and +read/performed it in a circle to begin with. Then I gave them some +instruments: a drum, a bell, aluminum folio, a balloon and a bubble +wrap. I asked for a few volunteers and they made sound effects as I read +the verse very slowly. This went good and I saw that they like to +dramatize the sounds and make them funny or unexpected. They used the +bubble wrap to make sounds for snowing or aluminum folio for the +volcano. They had great fun but I think I made a mistake by making a few +kids do foley at the same time because they didn’t know how to take +turns and were hesitant at first. Then quite impressively, they made +their own system where they took turns to make effects for each +sentence.

+

Then I made four groups of three. 3 kids as actors and 3 kids as +foley actors. They buddied up and made short scenes where one group made +sounds effects to the others acting on stage. This was the best part of +this workshop because they could lead the actors with the sounds they +made or vice versa. This I think is very important because it shows that +they like to be a part of or be effective to the story itself. They were +very creative in using the objects in the room and turning them into a +tool for sound. They enjoyed to foley the bee and the other characters +not so much. Which showed me that I should focus on the sound of the bee +in the prototype.

+

Overall, the workshops were very helpful for me to understand where +to focus on as I develop. I realized that some of the sound, color and +movement animations I planned were too complicated and I decided to make +them more simplistic. I decided to animate the tree with only color +because I was effected by this one participant who took the red jacket +to represent the tree was mad. For the bee I decided to focus on sound +more. For the kid I decided to use more visual animations to make it +more interesting.

+

One other thing the workshops helped me with is the multiple stories +I am planning to tell in one narrative. The book I have has two side +quest/stories so it nice to see that kids weren’t confused with these +narratives. I decided to make the story of the tree as a click game +where the lines appear by clicking and the bee’s story through a text +based game. I wanted to use click game with the tree because it seemed +like they needed more stimulation to be interested in that story and I +though a ‘reveal the story’ click game could keep them interested. For +the bee, knowing they like the character, I wanted to make it more like +a game to give the kids a chance and autonomy to be a part of the story +itself. 2 6 +9

+

Loop 11

+

The differences of these exercises in WINK than the already existing +interactive e-book platforms The interactive e-book apps existing today, +made especially for children, are quite similar in both format and +purpose. If we take a look at Bookr, Piboco, and Kotobee, we can see +they seek a new way to tell a story but have one mode of reading. The +stories are linear and can be read once, without side quests. This is +the main difference with what I am trying to design. Wink acts as a tool +to play with and choose paths. The story isn’t linear in the traditional +way where you interact with the pictures and finish the book but there +are side stories to the main story that they can discover or choose not +to. I think this is a solid difference. This makes it a playable +narrative, different from a book.

+

This prototype is a good start to see how far I can get with the +interactive elements and side stories without confusing or discouraging +the children. There are many other aspects that can be implemented to +this design such as writing elements and drawing but for the meantime, +also in correspondence with the workshops, I choose to test the sound +and image along with one main and two small narratives.

+

For future prototypes, I envision space to draw and write as a +contribution to the story and maybe turning Wink into a hybrid format +with more autonomous features. For me, at this point, it’s valuable and +essential to see if my technique of combining narratives is working or +not.

+

Loop 12

+

Standing End

+

12 12 +12 After many loops of +thought, we are here at the standing end of the thesis. There is room +for more loops and knots in the future to secure this string of thought +but for now, we have come to the dock and rest ashore.

+

Reading this thesis with a string, using concrete thinking as a +technique to go through a research and text was a helpful exercise for +me and helped me mark my thoughts and ideas. The overarching theme of +knots and experimental approach to modes of reading was valuable for me +to share and try as an enthusiastic young writer. I like that I asked +the reader to interact with the thesis and follow paths accordingly.

+

It was enlightening to see the results of working with kids and be +able to see from their point of view and alter everything according to +these encounters. Using CCI and Multiliteracy theory as a guide to +approach the design and prototype was helpful in understanding how to +approach and tackle the desire of making something for children.

+

Now from where I stand, I feel more rooted and have a clearer idea of +what works and doesn’t work. Some features that I think would work very +well like the choice of writing didn’t go as planned because multiple +narratives is already too much. I realized I underestimated the effect +of introducing a new media to children. This is why I decided to take it +step by step with the interactivity.

+

Taking a step to make Wink and using the story I wrote and feel is +important in my personal history as a prototype was a breakthrough. I +feel like my interest and desire to discover new ways of writing, +reading and experiencing literature is ongoing and it was a beautiful +journey so far. I am looking forward to making more knots on this long +and mysterious string at hand.

+
+
+

Bibliography

+

Cope, B. and Kalantzis, M. (2009) ‘“multiliteracies”: New Literacies, +new learning’, Pedagogies: An International Journal, 4(3), pp. 164–195. +doi:10.1080/15544800903076044.

+

Dettore, E. (2002) “Children’s emotional GrowthAdults’ role as +emotional archaeologists,” Childhood education, 78(5), pp. 278–281. doi: +10.1080/00094056.2002.10522741.

+

Ingold, T. (2015) The life of lines.London, England: Routledge.

+

Lawrence, R. L. and Paige, D. S. (2016) “What our ancestors knew: +Teaching and learning through storytelling:What our ancestors knew: +Teaching and learning through storytelling,” New directions for adult +and continuing education, 2016(149), pp. 63–72. doi: +10.1002/ace.20177.

+

Papert, S. and Papert, S. A. (2020) Mindstorms (revised): Children, +computers, and powerful ideas. London, England: Basic Books.

+

Ryan, M.-L. (2009) “From narrative games to playable stories: Toward +a poetics of interactive narrative,” StoryWorlds A Journal of Narrative +Studies, 1(1), pp. 43–59. doi: 10.1353/stw.0.0003.

+

Smeets, D. and Bus, A. (2013) “Picture Storybooks Go Digital: Pros +and Cons,” in Quality Reading Instruction in the Age of Common Core +Standards. International Reading Association, pp. 176–189.

+

Strohecker, C. (ed.) (1978) Why knot? MIT.

+

The Effect of Multimodality in Increasing Motivation and +Collaboration among 4th CSE EFL Students (no date).

+

Turkle, S. (ed.) (2014) Evocative objects: Things we think with. MIT +Press.

+

Urton, M. M. &. (2018) The khipu code: the knotty mystery of the +Inkas’ 3D records, aeon. Available at: https:// +aeon.co/ideas/the-khipu-code-the-knotty-mystery-of-the-inkas-3d-records.

+

Vega, N. (2022) Codes in Knots. Sensing Digital Memories, The Whole +Life. Available at: https://wholelife.hkw.de/ +codes-in-knots-sensing-digital-memories/.

+
+

Acknowledgements

+

Thank you Marloes de Valk, for your enlightening feedbacks and ideas. +Thank you Michael Murtaugh, Manetta Berends, Joseph Knierzinger, Leslie +Robbins and Steve Rushton for sharing your time and knowledge with me +throughout these years.

+

Thank you XPUB friends for funny, hectic and memorable moments we +made together.

+

Thanks to my family and especially Kemal, my brother, who supported +me in my studies and encouraged me to do better, always…

+>>>>>>> 0d34f2967a266c03a36514751c02bce2519f810f +>>>>>>> 89a05a3890d6063709e227b6e6f6d53ee2e142a2

So long and thanks for all the fish!

@@ -822,14 +2381,136 @@ This map will reveal your mode of reading. The order of reading will be indicate
“A screenshot from Wink!”
“A screenshot from Wink!”
+<<<<<<< HEAD +======= +======= +

A Prototype +for Interactive Children’s Literature

+

Wink is a prototype for an interactive picture book platform. This +platform aims to make reading into a mindfull and thought provoking +process by using interactive and playful elements, multiple stories +within one narrative and sound elements. Especially today where +consumerism and low attention span is a rising issue especially amongst +young readers, this was an important task to tackle. The thought of Wink +emerged to find a more sustainable and creative way of reading for +elementary school children.

+
+ + +
+
+ + +
+
+ + +
+
+ +
+Web page to share and read labour dreams. Scroll down for more. +
+
+
+ +
+Interactive dream telling. Click then type your story. +
+
+
+ + +
+
+ + +
+
+ + +
+
+ + +
+

Over the past two years, experimenting with storytelling techniques, +interactivity options and workshops with children and adults, around +reading and doing various exercises on Bee Within, I improved the story +to be a more playful and interactive one which can be re-read, re-played +and eventually re-formed non digitally to be reachable for all +children.

+
+ + +
+
+ + +
+
+ + +
+
+ + +
+
+ + +>>>>>>> 0d34f2967a266c03a36514751c02bce2519f810f +>>>>>>> 89a05a3890d6063709e227b6e6f6d53ee2e142a2
+ + + +*What do graphic designers do all day and why do they do it and what does "graphic design" even mean?!????!!1!?* is an assessment of what the term "graphic design" means to its practitioners today. Through experimental ethnographic research methods and the development of reflexive tools, the project highlights and questions the boundaries that exist around this apparent category. The research focuses on my own practices as well as other people and groups that identify with "graphic designer" as a label. The research was both conducted by and shared with interested parties in the form of the tools themselves, as well as a series of performances. There is no strict distinction between the research and its publication. The tools were released in an iterative cycle throughout the process of the project, and the research is conducted through the performative use and development of these tools. + +This research is carried out in three intersecting methods: experimental ethnographic research, reflexive tools, and performative research. Keylogging, performance of personal work habits, interviews about the manual work of "immaterial labourers", and dream analysis are combined in order to uncover less obvious and less discussed aspects of what a designer is and does in their daily life, as entry points to their worldviews, belief systems, mythologies or ideologies. The methods were developed in an iterative process that reflected on findings from the previous prototypes. The research took into account its own publication as part of one process. + +1. Experimental ethnographic research methods: I documented my own practices as a graphic designer for nine months. Sometimes based on technical observations of my interaction with my tools, primarily my laptop computer and the software on it. I conducted interviews with designers. I recorded the interviews. I had prompts to open the discussion such as reading material and weird tools to try with them. I will carry out auto-ethnographic research using experimental methods such as mouse tracking and unusual annotation methods. I shared the results of this research as a series of interactive publications (tools) with a small but selected audience of people who are involved in these processes and who would benefit from it. + +2. Reflexive tools: Software and hardware tools that explore the boundaries of "graphic design" as a category. For example at the boundaries between graphic design and other disciplines. At the boundaries between work and play, or between design and art. These tools malfunction in order to explore what it even means to be working. The tools aim to highlight what a graphic designer does by interacting with their user in ways that the designers standard tools do not (for example an interface to connect musical instruments to the designers workflow), or conversely by amplifying how the designer usually interacts with their tools (for example a keylogger to celebrate and focus on the use of the keyboard). The tools are digital in nature and involve software and hardware interventions into the graphic designers work. + +3. Performative research: I see all the methods above as having a performative element. For example the ethnographic-slash-performative act of answering my emails on a large screen in front of an audience, research which was carried out as part of this project at Leeszaal, Rotterdam West on November 7th 2023. By showing directly the work practices of graphic designers to an audience, or their interaction with the tools mentioned above, I am publishing through performance the daily activities of designers and my aim is to show these practices without the conventional lenses they are seen through. To be contrasted for example with how graphic design is presented on behance.net or in a bookshop, this performative approach will highlight the mythologies and practices of the graphic designer. + +I made this to explore why designers make design, based on Clifford Geertz's ideas of why humans make culture: "to affirm it, defend it, celebrate it, justify it and just plain bask in it" (Geertz, 1973). This exploration will also involve less constructive actions like participating, dissociating, questioning, protesting, destroying and disregarding. There is a disconnect between the narratives about "graphic design" and the effects it is known to have on its audiences, practitioners, and society in more general terms. I am attempting to "loosen the object" of graphic design (Berlant, 2022), to make the definition less defined and maybe more useful or easier to engage with. This shit could be better. Its urgent for the people being exploited by it, to break the inequalities it serves to maintain, to expose what it hides, to improve things that are definitely working but not in a good way. Design can hide and reproduce inequalities in its output and also dominate workers in its practices. This research starts primarily from the bodies and actions of the practitioners so will primarily engage with the effects on and by these bodies. + --> + - -
+ +

⊞

Stephen Kerr

@@ -1167,6 +2848,76 @@ book.com/pages/books/529/steve-mccaffery/carnival-the-first-panel-1967-70 (Acces

Van Doesburg, T. et al. (1921) ‘Manifesto III’, De Stijl, Aug.

Warde, B. (1913) ‘Printing Should be Invisible’ The Crystal Goblet, Sixteen Essays on Typography, London: The Sylvan Press.

Weber, M., (1905) “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”, Archiv für Sozialwissenschaften 20, no. 1 (1904), pp. 1–54; 21, no. 1 (1905), pp. 1–110.

+<<<<<<< HEAD +======= +======= +

Thanks to Ada, Aglaia, Ben, Chae, Conor, Irmak, Jenny, Joseph, kamo, +Leslie, Manetta, Marloes, Michael, Rossi.

+
+

Bibliography

+

Bayer, H. et al. (1975) Bauhaus, 1919-1928. New +York: Museum of Modern Art. 

+

Berlant, L. (2022) On the Inconvenience of Other People, +Durham: Duke University Press.

+

Brodine, K. (1990) Woman Sitting at the Machine, Thinking: +Poems. Seattle: Red Letter Press.

+

creativechair (2018) ‘Michael Bierut’ [Interview], Creative +Chair. Available at: creativechair.org/michael-bierut (Accessed: 15 +April 2024).

+

Design West (2024) Design West. Available at: +designwest.eu (Accessed: 16 April 2024).

+

Driessen, C. P. G. (2020). Descartes was here; In Search of the +Origin of Cartesian Space’. In R. Koolhaas (Ed.), Countryside, A +Report (pp. 274-297)
+ 
+Gates, B (2004) Remarks by Bill Gates, Chairman and Chief Software +Architect, Microsoft Corporation [speech transcript] University of +Illinois Urbana-Champaign February 24, 2004 Available at: +web.archive.org/web/
+20040607040830/https://www.microsoft.com/billgates/speeches/2004/02-24UnivIllinois.asp +(Accessed: 13 April 2024)

+

Gerstner, K. and Keller, D. (1964) Designing Programmes. +Teufen (AR): Niggli. 

+

Google (2014) Introduction, Material Design. +Available at: m1.material.io (Accessed: 16 April 2024). 

+

Hu, T.-H. (2024) Digital Lethargy: Dispatches from an age of +disconnection. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 

+

The Idea of the Book (2024) CARNIVAL: the first panel +1967–70 [book description] Available at: theideaofthe
+book.com/pages/books/529/steve-mccaffery/carnival-the-first-panel-1967-70 +(Accessed: 13 April 2024)

+

Loos, A. (2019) Ornament and Crime. London: Penguin. 

+

Lorusso, S. (2023) What Design Can’t Do: Essays on design and +disillusion. Eindhoven: Set Margins. 

+

Mondriaan , P. et al., (1917) ‘Neo-Plasticism in Pictorial Art’, +De Stijl, Nov. 

+

Mould, O. (2018) Against Creativity. London: Verso.

+

Müller-Brockmann, J. (1981) Grid systems in graphic ⊞. +Stuttgart: Hatje. 

+

Pater, R. (2021) Caps Lock. Amsterdam: Valiz.

+

Rock, M., (1996) The ⊞er as Author. Available at: +2x4.org/ideas/1996/⊞er-as-author (Accessed: 16 April 2024). 

+

Shaughnessy, A. (2005) How to Be a Graphic ⊞er, without Losing +Your Soul. Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press.

+

Shaughnessy, A. (2013) Scratching the Surface. London: Unit +Editions.

+

Tufte, E (1991) The Visual Display of Quantitative +Information. Cheshire: Graphics Press.

+

Van der Velden, D., (2006) ‘Research & Destroy: A Plea for ⊞ as +Research’, Metropolis M 2, April/May 2006.

+

Van Doesburg, T. et al. (1917) ‘Manifesto I’, De Stijl, +Nov. 

+

Van Doesburg, T. et al. (1921) +‘Manifesto III’, De Stijl, Aug.

+

Warde, B. (1913) ‘Printing Should be Invisible’ The Crystal +Goblet, Sixteen Essays on Typography, London: The Sylvan Press.

+

Weber, M., (1905) “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of +Capitalism”, Archiv für Sozialwissenschaften 20, no. 1 (1904), +pp. 1–54; 21, no. 1 (1905), pp. 1–110.

+>>>>>>> 0d34f2967a266c03a36514751c02bce2519f810f +>>>>>>> 89a05a3890d6063709e227b6e6f6d53ee2e142a2
diff --git a/print/print_style.css b/print/print_style.css index 55df035..a9369cb 100644 --- a/print/print_style.css +++ b/print/print_style.css @@ -99,7 +99,7 @@ blockquote .margin-note{ margin-left: -25mm; } .fake-margin-note{ - margin: 40mm 0 0; + margin: 20mm 0 0; a{color:var(--spot-color-1)}; h1{font-size: 7pt;} } @@ -133,6 +133,16 @@ h1 { string-set: title content(text); } +h2 { + font-size: 1.6em; +} + +.h2-no-pagebreak { + font-size: 1.6em; + line-height: 1; + font-style: italic; + break-after: avoid; +} .reset-margin-notes{ counter-reset: markerNote_marginNote -10; @@ -179,8 +189,8 @@ ol, ul { } .toc { - margin: 10mm 0 0 -10mm; - width: 100mm; + margin: 10mm 0 0 -5mm; + width: 90mm; } .toc h1{ display: none; @@ -190,13 +200,14 @@ ol, ul { list-style: none; padding: 0; margin: 0; - line-height: 8mm; + line-height: 6.9mm; + text-align: center; } -.toc-title:first-of-type, .toc-title:nth-of-type(2), .toc-title:nth-of-type(10){ +/* .toc-title:first-of-type, .toc-title:nth-of-type(2), .toc-title:nth-of-type(10){ margin-left: 40mm; -} +} */ .toc-title{ - font-size: 19pt; + font-size: 23pt; display: inline; } @@ -208,3 +219,12 @@ margin-left: 40mm; display: inline-block; line-height: 0; } +#digital-bodies + blockquote{ + margin-right: 0; +} + +#bibliography{ + font-size: 7pt; + line-height: 3mm; + +} diff --git a/stephen/index.md b/stephen/index.md index 9e42b1e..6bb2bc5 100644 --- a/stephen/index.md +++ b/stephen/index.md @@ -1,5 +1,5 @@ --- -title: do you ever dream about work? +title: Do you ever dream about work? author: Stephen --- diff --git a/stephen/thesis.md b/stephen/thesis.md index 07565a4..5711cae 100644 --- a/stephen/thesis.md +++ b/stephen/thesis.md @@ -1146,7 +1146,9 @@ surf was great and everything smelled like magnolias. Thanks to Ada, Aglaia, Ben, Chae, Conor, Irmak, Jenny, Joseph, kamo, -Leslie, Manetta, Marloes, Michael, Rossi. +Leslie, Manetta, Marloes, Michael, Rossi. + +
## Bibliography @@ -1233,3 +1235,4 @@ Sixteen Essays on Typography,* London: The Sylvan Press. Weber, M., (1905) "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism", *Archiv für Sozialwissenschaften* 20, no. 1 (1904), pp. 1–54; 21, no. 1 (1905), pp. 1–110. +
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