Most people think of bootlegs as cheap knock-off products that masquerade as the real deal; bootleg cigarettes, designer-label clothes, not-quite-right imitations of Disney products and the like. Bootlegging began during the prohibition era with the practice of illegally distilling and distributing alcoholic beverages, often literally concealed in the leg of a boot while being transported. Run an image search on the keyword “bootleg” and you’ll probably see all sorts of suspicious-looking bootlegged products. But the way I want to speak of bootlegging is as a social act, a homage, and one that creates and celebrates a multiplicity of form. I’m referring in particular to the vibrant culture of music sharing in the 1970s that followed portable cassette tape recorders entering the market. These allowed fans to cheaply record live performances and share these recordings—also known as bootlegs.
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*A note to the reader:
-This text has been written with the intention to be materialised in a very specific form; a set of A6-sized index cards, contained in a box. Please read it while holding the cards in your hands, shuffling and reordering them, making your own text as you read.
-These cards list the tasks performed on the site of contingencies, the bootleg library. Tasks are described on the obverse, and related images and references are on the reverse.
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Most people think of bootlegs as cheap knock-off products that masquerade as the real deal; bootleg cigarettes, designer-label clothes, not-quite-right imitations of Disney products and the like. Bootlegging began during the prohibition era with the practice of illegally distilling and distributing alcoholic beverages, often literally concealed in the leg of a boot while being transported. Run an image search on the keyword “bootleg” and you’ll probably see all sorts of suspicious-looking bootlegged products. But the way I want to speak of bootlegging is as a social act, a homage, and one that creates and celebrates a multiplicity of form. I’m referring in particular to the vibrant culture of music sharing in the 1970s that followed portable cassette tape recorders entering the market. These allowed fans to cheaply record live performances and share these recordings—also known as bootlegs.
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Most people think of bootlegs as cheap knock-off products that masquerade as the real deal; bootleg cigarettes, designer-label clothes, not-quite-right imitations of Disney products and the like. Bootlegging began during the prohibition era with the practice of illegally distilling and distributing alcoholic beverages, often literally concealed in the leg of a boot while being transported. Run an image search on the keyword “bootleg” and you’ll probably see all sorts of suspicious-looking bootlegged products. But the way I want to speak of bootlegging is as a social act, a homage, and one that creates and celebrates a multiplicity of form. I’m referring in particular to the vibrant culture of music sharing in the 1970s that followed portable cassette tape recorders entering the market. These allowed fans to cheaply record live performances and share these recordings—also known as bootlegs.
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Most people think of bootlegs as cheap knock-off products that masquerade as the real deal; bootleg cigarettes, designer-label clothes, not-quite-right imitations of Disney products and the like. Bootlegging began during the prohibition era with the practice of illegally distilling and distributing alcoholic beverages, often literally concealed in the leg of a boot while being transported. Run an image search on the keyword “bootleg” and you’ll probably see all sorts of suspicious-looking products. But the way I want to speak of bootlegging is as a social act, a homage, and one that creates and celebrates a multiplicity of form. I’m referring in particular to the vibrant culture of music sharing in the 1970s that followed portable cassette tape recorders entering the market. These allowed fans to cheaply record live performances and share these recordings—also known as bootlegs.
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Image: A “bootlegger” concealing a flask of an illegally distributed alcoholic beverage in the leg of a boot during the Prohibition era
Publications acquire difference through reproduction; sometimes intentionally, always circumstantially. A printed book always ends up in the hands of at least one reader. It is transported, pages are dog-eared and annotated, time weathers the paper and cracks the spine. Multiply this by many readers, and each printed copy starts to accumulate its own traces, losing resemblance to the rest of the edition and acquiring its own particular countenance and provenance through use.
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Image: 1. Books are for use. The first law of S. R. R. Rangathan’s 5 Laws of Library Science, 1931
The jam band The Grateful Dead were followed around the United States by a legion of die-hard fans, proclaiming themselves “Deadheads”. Cheaply available cassette recorders allowed them to tape concerts and then share recordings amongst each other. Thinking of this, I’m reminded of John Cage’s motto, “Everything you do is music, and everywhere is the best seat.” Each position in the audience produces a slightly different recording, and this multiplicity of form connects the audience not only with the music, but with each other.
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There are files in the library that are of the same text, but they have travelled different paths to get there, accumulating difference through methods such as annotation and material transformation. And so, they have different materialities, lending weight to the argument that a text is not identical with itself; that there is no such thing as a unique, singular, original “work”, but instead many different versions of texts, born through the accidents of their creation.
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Image: “Deadheads” recording a live Grateful Dead concert, 1972
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The "bootleg library" is a pirate library I've set up that is available over the Hogeschool Rotterdam local network. It's basically calibre-web https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web at the moment, and I'm bootstrapping the instance (as opposed to developing the software before release) because I'm interested in what type of culture can develop around its use, and therefore what type of sociability comes from this type of library. If you find yourself near one of their buildings (and still have access to the network), you can visit the library at this address:
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http://145.24.131.15:20190/
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I think I might have mentioned the way in which I'm thinking about the library, which is kind of like a community garden. The collection is not very big (there's always lib gen, sci-hub et al if you just want to download a particular book), and I'm trying to highlight the embodied knowledge available within my local network of people by encouraging uploaders to tag the books with a reference of the referrer (the uploader themself or another person). Kind of like an ex-libris that lets you know something about the book if you know the person. Other than this rule, I'm also asking people to upload texts that they are familiar with, wish to share, and feel that they represent them in some way. This is with the aim of associating texts more closely with readers, rather than writers, and to therefore somewhat reduce the authoritarian position of the author.
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The library is also physical; so far I have created a small selection of printed books (all made at PZI), and have them available to be borrowed, read and annotated, as long as they are returned. I'm interested in what type of transformations may happen to the texts in this way, and whether the para-text that evolves could somehow become a part of new publications.
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material translations of texts
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If the library is a community garden, then the texts are the seeds, and the form of the books within it can mutate and change from generation to generation depending on the way the garden is tended, by myself or other gardeners. Starting with Burrough's idea of the written word as a virus that makes the spoken word possible, I'm exploring what can happen when texts are treated as biological elements that can grow and evolve. I'm thinking about this evolution as "material translations", not in a linguistic sense, but to see what happens when texts travel through different material representations.
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Which leads me to what I wanted to ask you about...
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I'm interested in exploring new ways of working with texts as a departure to the tool I'm most familiar with; the Adobe CS. Apart from weasyprint and flat https://xxyxyz.org/flat, I haven't worked with many more F/LOSS graphics software, but I'm quite interested in finding out more, and adding a material diversity to the community garden of a library I've made.
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I thought I'd ask you for some help with this as you are quite skilled, passionate and involved in using F/LOSS graphics, and could probably point me in the right direction in terms of workflow. First of all, are there any you'd recommend for laying out long documents? I'm also quite interested in ones that might be used to design layouts from texts available on Etherpad (another ambition of mine is to see if I can create publications from the pads we use).
This text has been written with the intention to be materialised in a very specific form; a set of A6-sized index cards, contained in a box. Please read it while holding the cards in your hands, shuffling and reordering them, making your own text as you read.
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These cards list the tasks performed on the site of contingencies, the bootleg library. Tasks are described on the obverse, and related images and references are on the reverse.
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Historically, the word “text” comes from the Proto-Indo-European word teks-, meaning “to weave, to fabricate, to make; make wicker or wattle framework”. The written word is a text, and so is a conversation, both represent the exchange of shared concepts woven into the fabric of communication. There is also an exchange between written and spoken texts; discussions which influence writing, and writing which sparks conversations.
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The digital library creates texts through its catalogue, where the metadata for each entry comprises a paratext[1] that not only adds meaning to the core text, but also influences how a reader will discover it in the collection by fields such as tags and description. Metadata which is downloaded and entered automatically comes from online commercial sources has a particular promotional tone. Those who write metadata should do so subjectively; descriptions based on personal significance represent the text and the readers, equivalently.
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The library is sustained through producing texts.
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Image: Papyrus, an early writing surface made from woven reeds
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↑Genette, G. (1997) Paratexts: thresholds of interpretation. Literature, culture, theory 20. Cambridge ; New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press.
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Samizdat publishers considered a printed text to be officially published if it came in an edition of at least 5 copies. The library considers this to be excessive, and reduces that number to 1. One copy of a text can be shared and enriched by the accumulated annotations of many readers. A one-to-many-publishing model distributes texts to the widest possible public. The library instead insists on a many-to-one model, drawing many readers to one text. Republishing the one text many times creates a multiplicity of form, and subsequently a multiplicity of publics in each instance.
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Image: Staff working at Publication Studio, London. Publication Studio is a federated publishing network with studios located worldwide. Books ordered from the shared catalog are printed and bound one-at-a-time by the closest studio. Differences in availability of paper and machinery at each studio means that the materiality of each instance of a printed text will vary depending on where and how the books are made.
The library is closed, the shelves are empty, the librarian has gone. All that is left is a set of index cards contained in a box. At the top of each card is a verb introducing the tasks performed within the space and duration of a particular, situated social infrastructure called the “bootleg library”. The reverse includes references and images that illustrate each task.
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This text was written with, by and for readers during library sessions. We wrote on cards by hand, we typed words in a collaborative writing environment. We wrote them together; humans and machines; texts were blended into a mix of keystrokes in changesets too complex, and dependencies too layered to determine singular authorship. These texts were never objects, always processes[1].
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Participation from readers became a vital element in the practice of librarianship. The library grew, and we sustained it through conversation and correspondence. We wrote together in threads and strings; and so we created and maintained a space for publication. In the journey from private to public collection, texts were intermingled and rematerialised, gaining provenance and diversification through use. The readers are in the pages of the books, in the metadata of the library and on these cards, where traces of their presence remain.
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This text will never be complete. It describes a particular, situated library, one that does not exist anymore, but resembles those that came before it and those that will succeed it. This set of cards is also a library, a collection organised into a structure that directs readers towards the interior, towards the texts it contains. This set is a book, a hyper-index, forever pointing outwards to other books, libraries, readers and writers. Text, library, book and index all come together in this particular material form to comprise a manual, a thing to be manipulated in the hands of readers.
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Cards invite shuffling, re-organising, flipping over, distributing, annotating, laying out. An A6 card like the one you’re holding now fits comfortably into the palm of one’s hand, and can be easily turned as it is gripped between the index finger and thumb.
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Cards have two sides. Arranged on a table, only one side is visible, and proximity determines connections. Held in the hands and flipped like a book, new relationships between the verso and recto pages emerge. The reader becomes the writer anew, determining what to keep or discard, what to edit or leave as is; the author of the sequence, connections and hierarchy between tasks.
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↑Barthes, R., ‘From Work to Text’, in Barthes, R. and Heath, S. (1987) Image, music, text. London: Fontana Press.
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/ b \ o / o \ t / l \ e / g \ l / i \ b / r \ a / r \ y /
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-the bootleg library
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-https://hub.xpub.nl/bootleglibrary
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-book sharing & annotation
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-calibre
-ebook manager - you can download this, run it on your computer and share books over a local network using the content server function
-https://calibre-ebook.com/
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-calibre-web
-web app that the bootleg library runs on (a fork of the open-source calibre software)
-https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web
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-Annotation on the web - the holy grail with lots of projects:
-https://beepb00p.xyz/annotating.html
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-also done very simply and effectively with genius:
-https://genius.com/
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-pirate/shadow/"extra-legal" libraries
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-Monoskop
-https://monoskop.org/Monoskop
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-Library Genesis (collection is HUGE and mirrored) - i usually use the russian site
-http://gen.lib.rus.ec/
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-Memory of the World
-https://library.memoryoftheworld.org/#/books/
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-aaaaarg (only accessible by members. simon can invite you - just send him an email)
-https://aaaaarg.fail/
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-ask for PDFs from people with institutional access
-group for informal PDF sharing through a social network
-https://www.facebook.com/groups/850609558335839/
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-Sci-Hub (this is mirrored too, try googling if the link is down):
-https://mg.scihub.ltd/
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-ubu-web
-kenneth goldsmith's baby - an archive of avant-garde cinema and writing
-http://ubu.com/
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-Leeszaal
-not an online pirate library, but a volunteer-run place in Rotterdam where you can borrow books, look up information, learn how to use LINUX, study or just read the newspaper. Books are not catalogued, and if you want to borrow one, just take it off the shelf and walk out with it :)
-https://www.leeszaalrotterdamwest.nl/
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-legal online libraries & archives
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-Project Gutenberg
-books are within the public domain (70+ years after death of the author), so free of copyright restrictions:
-https://www.gutenberg.org/
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-The Internet Archive
-hosts a collection of books and more, also has the wayback machine (snapshots of web pages going back to the 90s)
-https://archive.org/
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-projects & open letters in support of and about piracy/peeracy
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-In solidarity with Library Genesis and Sci-Hub
-an open letter calling for shadow librarians to come out of the shadows
-http://custodians.online/
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-Alexandra Elbakyan to Mr. Robert W. Sweet (presiding judge in the Elsevier vs Sci-Hub et al court case)
-https://torrentfreak.com/images/sci-hub-reply.pdf
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-and publishing
-http://andpublishing.org/
- The Piracy Project
- http://andpublishing.org/the-piracy-project/
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-loose thoughts from our conversation
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-misspellings on ebay - how to exploit this to find undiscovered items http://fatfingers.com
-bootlegged DVDs and PS1 games - "chipping" to play bootlegged games
-social capital accumulated from having a chipped console
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-The Pirate Book
-historical stories of piracy - warez, demoscene, music etc:
-https://hub.xpub.nl/bootleglibrary/read/290/pdf
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-selling unauthorised copies out of a car boot = "boot"legging?
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-why do we feel it's more threatening to pirate books than movies/music/games etc?
-where does the text reside?
-what if i read a book out loud and make a file on youtube - is it bootlegging?
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-can the library also have audio/visual media?
- yes - the library is running on open-source software, so definitely possible. this requires an upgrade of the computer and data storage
-what is more of a risk - a shared google drive of PDFs or the bootleglib?
- a shared google drive is more risky - the bootleg library has several security measures in place to keep it private
-will i get into trouble for using the bootleg library?
- haha - not very likely :)
-can readers communicate with each other through the bootleglib?
- not directly, but possible by adding links to etherpads (like this one) in the description fields
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-some interesting things to watch & read on archives, libraries, piracy and activism
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-things to read:
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- the science of piracy and the piracy of science by bodo balasz (an economist researching use of pirate libraries)
- Part 1: http://copyrightblog.kluweriplaw.com/2019/03/06/the-science-of-piracy-the-piracy-of-science-who-are-the-science-pirates-and-where-do-they-come-from-part-1/
- Part 2: http://copyrightblog.kluweriplaw.com/2019/03/21/the-science-of-piracy-the-piracy-of-science-who-are-the-science-pirates-and-where-do-they-come-from-part-2/
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- a view from elsewhere on authorship, copyright and creativity by eva weinmayr (of and publishing and the piracy project)
- https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mw-mediadesign/images/d/dd/Confronting_Authorship_Published_with_content_page--Whose_book_is_it_anyway.pdf
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- articles by shannon mattern on self-organised and "fugitive" libraries
- https://placesjournal.org/article/marginalia-little-libraries-in-the-urban-margins/
- https://placesjournal.org/article/fugitive-libraries/
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- interview with kate eichhorn, author of the archival turn in feminism
- https://criticalmargins.com/interview-with-kate-eichhorn-author-of-the-archival-turn-in-feminism-a204b02ae340
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-things to watch:
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- Digital Amnesia
- https://youtu.be/NdZxI3nFVJs
- "Our memory is dissipating. Hard drives only last five years, a web page is forever changing and there’s no machine left that reads 15-year old floppy disks. Digital data is vulnerable. Yet entire libraries are shredded and lost to budget cuts, because we assume everything can be found online."
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- The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz
- https://archive.org/details/TheInternetsOwnBoyTheStoryOfAaronSwartz
- "The Internet's Own Boy depicts the life of American computer programmer, writer, political organizer and Internet activist Aaron Swartz. It features interviews with his family and friends as well as the internet luminaries who worked with him. The film tells his story up to his eventual suicide after a legal battle, and explores the questions of access to information and civil liberties that drove his work."
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-King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard
-Polygondwanaland is free for everybody and you can do with what you.
-From the band's post accompanying links to different digital packs:
-"This album is FREE. Free as in, free. Free to download and if you wish, free to make copies.
-Make tapes, make CD’s, make records.
-[...]
-Ever wanted to start your own record label? GO for it! Employ your mates, press wax, pack boxes. We do not own this record. You do. Go forth, share, enjoy."
-https://www.discogs.com/King-Gizzard-And-The-Lizard-Wizard-Polygondwanaland/master/1268453
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-100 copies of the white album played at once
-https://thevinylfactory.com/news/artist-layers-100-unique-copies-of-the-beatles-white-album-for-original-vinyl-release/
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-royalty-free audio
-http://freesound.org
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-spotify scanning interface
-http://everynoise.com/
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-sharpest knife ever made from {insert substance here}
-https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg3qsVzHeUt5_cPpcRtoaJQ
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-Bootleg Britney / A bootleg CD bought at the market in Montenegro had 3 extra unpublished songs in comparison to the actual album on sale in the shops - what message was Britney sending me?! i <3 this story
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Printed: 19.11.19
-Dimensions: 155x235mm
-Cover stock: Ursus glossy white 210gsm
-Text stock: Bio Top 80gsm
-Binding: Perfect bound, cold glue
-Pages: 226pp
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This is another book where I took a text file and laid it out again in InDesign, like the copy of Dumbstruck that I bootlegged. However, this time I made a code to indicate the page numbering and text flow of the source publication. This was to provide comfortable, consistent tracking to the letterspacing - one of the issues with Dumbstruck was that, in an attempt to keep the text flow and page numbering the same, some paragraphs were too tightly, or too loosely kerned. I feel this is a more elegant solution, however, it might pose problems if someone else tried to do the same as I had (taking the text from a source publication and laying it out) as the code is now part of the text. The cover was made with glossy paper, and custom-cut vinyl stickers. In time these will probably come off, but that's conceptually sympathetic to the content of the book, which is about the transience of the voice.
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Code referring to text flow of the source publication
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Bootleg acknowledgement
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Spread: Book opens easily due to cold glue binding
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This text has been written with the intention to be materialised in a very specific form; a set of A6-sized index cards, contained in a box. Please read it while holding the cards in your hands, shuffling and reordering them, making your own text as you read.
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These cards list the tasks performed on the site of contingencies, the bootleg library. Tasks are described on the obverse, and related images and references are on the reverse.
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Many national libraries have acquisition programs in place with stringent, highly formalised procedures through which new texts enter the collection. Some countries require that an officially published book is donated to their national library by way of a system called “legal deposit”. Purchase of a commercial identifier such as an ISBN (International Standard Book Number) allows the book to be registered, so that other libraries that subsequently acquire the same text may share cataloguing details.
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The library makes no such demands. Books are acquired through informal means, in ways that are not regulated or legislated. Anyone may remove or add texts to the library.
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An administrator has authority to make modifications to the infrastructure of the library. Every registered user of the library is also an “admin”. With this responsibility, comes great power. An admin may delete user accounts, or take down the entire library if they wish. But they can also make registered accounts for other users, and choose to bestow the same privileges, or not. The library is open.
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Image: Characters representing read (r), write (w), and execute (x) permissions in UNIX and UNIX-like systems
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Amateur librarianship happens whenever texts are shared informally. An amateur (from French, meaning “one who loves, lover”) acts out of love (rather than motivated by prestige, or money); there is not often a conscious decision to be an amateur anything. Instead, we often see the word “amateur” as a negation or lack of professionalism. A rising imperative emerges, for amateurs to take up the task of librarianship. The 19th century model of the public library that spread throughout the U.K. and the U.S.A. was an exemplar of social democratic values. Such libraries are now under threat. So, sometimes in response, but often without thought of the legal consequences, amateur librarianship happens in small, quiet ways that are usually mundane; passing a USB drive around, emailing a link or a file. I thought you should read this.
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In order to find the unique reference (UUID) for your drive run the following command in the terminal :
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ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid/
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This will give you an output that should list your drive :
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The line will usually refer to “/sda” and in this example it is “sda1”. My ID is “989B-E900”. Note down yours.
-You would need to repeat this step if you wanted to use a different device as the UUID would be different.
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A mount point is a directory that will point to the contents of your flash drive. Create a suitable folder :
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sudo mkdir /media/usb
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I’m using “usb” but you can give it whatever name you like. Keep it short as it saves typing later on. Now we need to make sure the Pi user owns this folder :
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To manually mount the drive use the following command :
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sudo mount /dev/sda1 /media/usb -o uid=pi,gid=pi
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-This will mount the drive so that the ordinary Pi user can write to it. Omitting the “-o uid=pi,gid=pi” would mean you could only write to it using “sudo”.
-Now you can read, write and delete files using “/media/usb” as a destination or source without needing to use sudo.
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You don’t need to manually un-mount if you shutdown your Pi but if you need to remove the drive at any other time you should un-mount it first. Only the user that mounted the drive can un-mount it.
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umount /media/usb
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If you used the fstab file to auto-mount it you will need to use :
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sudo umount /media/usb
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If you are paying attention you will notice the command is “umount” NOT “unmount”!
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When you restart your Pi your mounts will be lost and you will need to repeat Step 4. If you want your USB drive to be mounted when the system starts you can edit the fstab file :
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The “nofail” option allows the boot process to proceed if the drive is not plugged in. The “noatime” option stops the file access time being updated every time a file is read from the USB stick. This helps improve performance.
-This is what my fstab file looks like:
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Make sure you set the correct UUID. Use CTRL-X followed by Y to save and exit the nano editor.
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Now reboot :
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sudo reboot
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Your USB drive should be auto-mounted and available as “/media/usb”.
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In the examples above I specified “vfat” as the file system of the device as it was formatted as FAT32. If you need to change the file system replace references of “vfat” with “ntfs-3g”, “ext3” or “ext4”.
-If you are using NTFS you will also need to install the following package :
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This technique suits my applications but the main disadvantage is that it is specific to a known USB device given we are using the device ID. However if you created a few mount points in advance you could manually mount a new device to a spare mount point without worrying about updating the fstab file.
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Marks left by readers are at times recognisable as annotation; underlines, asterisks and notes scribbled in the margins that all add something to the text. Taken a step further, annotation can include metadata (information about information), which is most commonly text that describes the author and subject, and bibliographic details needed for citation purposes. Collectively, these forms of annotation indicate the presence of readers, making them visible to each other. Annotation lives in close proximity to the text. When it is separated from the text, it becomes unfixed, losing its symbolic power to remind us that other readers have also been here.
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Image: Tracing paper bearing carbon-copied annotations from Marginal Conversations, a workshop first held by Simon Browne, Paloma García and Artemis Gryllaki at Leeszaal West Rotterdam, 20th June 2019
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The formal qualities of annotations are defined by the tools used to make them, and also the cultural uses of these. Given a pen, most people will write, although it is also possible to draw or use it in other ways. With a keyboard it seems most appropriate to type. With a mouse, one can click on things, and select them.
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What happens when these are retained, transformed and isolated from the source?
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Retained digital annotations are rare in the wild, but I found one PDF of Jorge Luis Borges "The Garden of Forking Paths" that had underlinings and highlighted text. The interesting thing is that these change appearance slightly depending on the e-reader software used to display the text.
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The first two spreads of the Borges PDF:
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-Digital annotations transcribed from a PDF of Jorge Luis Borges' "The Garden of Forking Paths"
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Another text that came pre-annotated was Ursula K Le Guin's "The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction". For this, I placed scans in a vector graphics program and digitised pen marks. I also included the text that was annotated with circles, underlines and lines in the margins.
-The first two spreads of the Le Guin PDF:
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-Hand-drawn annotations digitally transcribed from a PDF of Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction"
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Ursula K. Le Guin's short essay appears in a compilation called Dancing at the Edge of the World, which I've found impossible to find online through the usual pirate libraries such as Library Genesis, aaaaaarg.fail and Monoskop. Perhaps this points to a gender bias in what is perceived as knowledge (Le Guin was a woman wrote mostly science-fiction)? In lieu of not being able to find the compilation, I decided to print this book in a very small size (90x120mm) and retain the annotations from the PDF I found. I digitised them by making them into vectors, and printed the text and annotations in green. In this way I wanted to speculate on what would happen when a reader was confronted with annotations that seemed to be part of the source, not a para-text added after publication.
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Main question: How can annotation be useful to us, and a third party?
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Possible ways
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Keep text and annotations together
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scan and overlay transparencies (more like a graphical representation but perhaps not very readable)
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write, re-write, cut and paste the annotations in a bigger paper all together
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use the annotation bot (a digital tool)(it would be cool if you could underline, etc - yes! including graphic elements)
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if digital, create the possibility to turn on and off the annotations to keep the original text
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bind the pages into books and make a bootleg library with them
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Separate text and annotations (deconstruction / structure analysis)
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only underlined text (in many ways: lines, circles, waves...)
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list of questions, tags, notes + composition and mapping of them (different mapping techniques)
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historical timeline
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only drawings?
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free graphical interpretation
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Computer driven annotation
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scrape the text (words processing)
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pattern recognition
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delete all articles and implicit elements
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Combine the above possibilities
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overlay of analog annotations to represent "heat patterns" (parts of the text with lots of/little engagement), as well as a digital version that is more legible
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HOW DO I KNOW WHAT I AM READING? We are discussing form how do we talk about content?
-How do you make the content readable for others?
-How do you communicate what you're interpreting?
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While bootlegging makes a fairly faithful reproduction of a source publication, the degree of transformation is sometimes due to unintentional or uncontrollable factors, such as availability of the equipment and materials needed to make a close copy. At other times, more deliberate choices can be made concerning the transformed materiality of the bootleg.
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Economy, efficiency, and readability are the main concerns when bootlegging texts for the library. Economy often dictates that materials that are at hand are used—in the case of printed books for example, this often means defaulting to certain choices with paper, printing methods and binding. An efficient workflow is not too time-consuming. Although the most important thing is to have the text by any means necessary, we read best what we read most, and certain typographic concerns may become vital to the readability of the text.
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Being kind to the reader can involve adhering to typesetting conventions; including headers, footers and page numbers should the book be photocopied and pages subsequently separated from the others. Most importantly, a reasonable line length and wide margins will allow the book to be made in a way that ensures a comfortable reading experience and provides space for annotation.
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Image: A bootleg copy of My Mother Was A Computer by N. Katherine Hayles. The source PDF has been reimposed into a booklet, with reasonable line length (60-80 characters) and ample space for annotations
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I made this book with and for Luke (a friend), as a favour, and also to show him how to bootleg a book. I'd already redesigned the text, and printed it double-sided on laser paper. What he wanted to know how to bind books. Luke had been helping me out a lot with getting the bookscanner running, and it seemed like a nice way to repay him. The problem came when we tried to bind the book using the hot-glue machine, which was once again not working as it should and the result we got was less than optimal. So, I showed him how to notch-bind using cold glue, and he took the text block home with him to try out the technique himself, using a DIY book press made from two chopping boards. One the text block was dry, he brought it back to me to show him how to apply the cover. I'd already printed the cover on a piece of paper, but had been using it to write quick notes on in the interim. It's ironic, I'm surrounded by paper, but scrap paper can be hard to come by. Rather than printing the cover again, I decided to tear away all the areas I'd written notes on it, and then photocopy this with the lid open, leaving black where there was no paper. It was another impromptu, make-do decision, but one that lent an interesting mark - removal of all that is not necessary - and in line with the type of radical pedagogical approaches the author of the text was aiming at.
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Luke's DIY book press
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Front cover
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Spread
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Spine
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Back cover
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The book, left with keys I borrowed from Luke while staying with him and Alice in January, 2020
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I decided to print another copy of Deschooling Society for the physical bootleg library when the hot glue machine was working properly again. It was interesting to compare the differences between the two different binding methods - not something I usually see as I don't often bootleg more than one copy of a book.
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Front cover
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Spread
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Spread
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Spine
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Back cover
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Spines: First edition (top), second edition (bottom). The difference in cold vs hot glue is apparent here - hot glue ensures a smooth, square spine
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Back covers: First edition (left), second edition (right)
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Most people think of bootlegs as cheap knock-off products that masquerade as the real deal; bootleg cigarettes, designer-label clothes, not-quite-right imitations of Disney products and the like. Bootlegging began during the prohibition era with the practice of illegally distilling and distributing alcoholic beverages, often literally concealed in the leg of a boot while being transported. Run an image search on the keyword “bootleg” and you’ll probably see all sorts of suspicious-looking products. But the way I want to speak of bootlegging is as a social act, a homage, and one that creates and celebrates a multiplicity of form. I’m referring in particular to the vibrant culture of music sharing in the 1970s that followed portable cassette tape recorders entering the market. These allowed fans to cheaply record live performances and share these recordings—also known as bootlegs.
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Image: A “bootlegger” concealing a flask of an illegally distributed alcoholic beverage in the leg of a boot during the Prohibition era
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The physical bootleg library is housed in a disused champagne crate. It contains books that I have bootlegged myself, or ones that others have. It also contains books donated by visitors to wherever the library is (temporarily) installed. The library travels, and is part of bootleg library sessions held at PZI and at other locations.
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At Varia, Gouwstraat 3, with books distributed on table
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At the Library, Karel Doormanhof 45, ready to be unpacked
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At Onomatopee Projects, before the bootleg library session
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The IKEA trolley the physical bootleg library usually travels on. Biyi lent me the trolley, and in return, I bootlegged the IKEA logo to read AIKE (Biyi's husband's name)
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A text found in the wild often comes with visible and invisible artefacts. The visible ones come from bad OCR, with strange characters popping up in place of the ones you expect, such as a 1 instead of an l. The bane of the bootlegger is most definitely the line break or “soft return”, inserted by software that automatically breaks the line as you type. Screen-based formats such as EPUB don’t have the notion of a page, and flow text according to window size.
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You can either be methodical and remove each soft return manually, or use the powerful automated find/replace all option. A useful tactic is to find every instance of a full stop followed by a space where a line was intentionally broken by the human writer. Next, replace each full stop with an arbitrary but uncommon character, such as a dagger (†). Then, do another find/replace and remove every instance of a soft return and a space, and finally replace the uncommon character with a full stop, in one final find/change command.
-Another unwanted character that often appears is the hyphen, inserted where words break at the end of a line. Here the pruning of errant characters is trickier, and the best method is to find each instance and remove them manually. Running find/replace all can often remove necessary hyphens, such as in time ranges (e.g. 9-5) and compound adjectives (e.g. inter-dependent).
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In Al Sweigart's Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, there's a nice section on a Python library called PyPDF2 that allows you to work with the contents of PDFs. To begin with, I thought I'd try extracting text from a PDF of William S. Burrough's The Electronic Revolution. I chose this PDF as the only version I've found of it online is a 40pp document published by ubuclassics (which I suppose is the publishing house for ubuweb.com). There was no identifier other than this (no ISBN etc.), and it was impossible locating any other version online. What's more, the PDF had very small text, which was uncomfortable to read when I ran the booklet.sh script on it.
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I thought it would be worthwhile laying out this book again for print reading purposes, and the first step is to get the text from the PDF. Pandoc is usually my go to for extracting text, but it doesn't work with PDFs, so I tried PyPDF2.
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I began by copying a file called electronic_revolution.pdf to a folder, then in the terminal cd into that directory. Then I initiated the interactive python interpreter with this command:
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$ python3
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Next I wrote the following commands in Python 3 (comments above each line):
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# First, import the PyPDF2 module
->>> import PyPDF2
-# Then open electronic_revolution.pdf in read binary mode and store it in pdfFileObj
->>> pdfFileObj = open('electronic_revolution.pdf', 'rb')
-# To get a PdfFileReader object that rep- resents this PDF, call PyPDF2.PdfFileReader() and pass it pdfFileObj. Store this PdfFileReader object in pdfReader
->>> pdfReader = PyPDF2.PdfFileReader(pdfFileObj)
-# The total number of pages in the document is stored in the numPages attribute of a PdfFileReader object
->>> pdfReader.numPages
->>> 40
-# The PDF has 40 pages. To extract text from a page, you need to get a Page object, which represents a single page of a PDF, from a PdfFileReader object.
-# You can get a Page object by calling the getPage() method on a PdfFileReader object and passing it the page number of the page you’re interested in — in our case, 0
->>> pageObj = pdfReader.getPage(0)
-# Once you have your Page object, call its extractText() method to return a string of the page’s text
->>> pageObj.extractText()
->>> 'ubuclassics2005WILLIAM S. BURROUGHSTheElectronic\nRevolution'
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This returns the value for total page count, and the text for the first page (0). What I want to get is the text for the whole document. I have no idea how to do this!!!
-This doesn't work at all.
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With Rita & Pedro's help I managed to write a Python script that includes a for loop to extract text from the entire PDF:
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1 # imports the PyPDF2 module
- 2 importPyPDF2
- 3
- 4 filename=input("name of the file: ")
- 5
- 6 withopen(filename,'rb')aspdf_file,open('input.txt','w')astext_file:
- 7 read_pdf=PyPDF2.PdfFileReader(pdf_file)
- 8 number_of_pages=read_pdf.getNumPages()
- 9 forpage_numberinrange(number_of_pages):# use xrange in Py2
-10 page=read_pdf.getPage(page_number)
-11 page_content=page.extractText()
-12 text_file.write(page_content)
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The next step is to then begin cleaning up the text by removing the line-breaks. We wrote a simple shell script for this that runs the Python script, then a command to take out line breaks:
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Only problem is that the names of the txt files that are produced will all be "input.txt", which means that if you run this on more than one PDF, you'll have to move input.txt to another directory before running again, rename the file manually, or perhaps I could write another Python script that renames the file and include it in the shell script after the last line.
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The library is for all, and made by all. There is no singular embedded librarian, because everyone is a librarian, and the library is everywhere. I’m not interested in developing the “perfect” system in isolation and then dictating how it should be used, I’m interested in asking how people want to use systems, and developing them together. Technical development is ongoing in line with feedback from bootleg library sessions.
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Image: bootleg library session at Onomatopee Projects, Eindhoven, as part of Meeting Grounds, 6th March, 2020
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bootleg library session at Onomatopee Projects, 6th March, 2020
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/ b \ o / o \ t / l \ e / g \ l / i \ b / r \ a / r \ y /
- \ a / t \
-/ m \ e / e \ t / i \ n / g \ g / r \ o / u \ n / d \ s
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-the bootleg library
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-https://hub.xpub.nl/bootleglibrary
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-book sharing & annotation
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-calibre
-ebook manager - you can download this, run it on your computer and share books over a local network using the content server function
-https://calibre-ebook.com/
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-calibre-web
-web app that the bootleg library runs on (a fork of the open-source calibre software)
-https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web
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-Annotation on the web - the holy grail with lots of projects:
-https://beepb00p.xyz/annotating.html
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-also done very simply and effectively with genius:
-https://genius.com/
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-pirate/shadow/"extra-legal" libraries
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-Monoskop
-https://monoskop.org/Monoskop
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-Library Genesis (collection is HUGE and mirrored) - i usually use the russian site
-http://gen.lib.rus.ec/
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-Memory of the World
-https://library.memoryoftheworld.org/#/books/
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-aaaaarg (only accessible by members. simon can invite you - just send him an email)
-https://aaaaarg.fail/
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-ask for PDFs from people with institutional access
-group for informal PDF sharing through a social network
-https://www.facebook.com/groups/850609558335839/
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-Sci-Hub (this is mirrored too, try googling if the link is down):
-https://mg.scihub.ltd/
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-ubu-web
-kenneth goldsmith's baby - an archive of avant-garde cinema and writing
-http://ubu.com/
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-Leeszaal
-not an online pirate library, but a volunteer-run place in Rotterdam where you can borrow books, look up information, learn how to use LINUX, study or just read the newspaper. Books are not catalogued, and if you want to borrow one, just take it off the shelf and walk out with it :)
-https://www.leeszaalrotterdamwest.nl/
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-legal online libraries & archives
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-Project Gutenberg
-books are within the public domain (70+ years after death of the author), so free of copyright restrictions:
-https://www.gutenberg.org/
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-The Internet Archive
-hosts a collection of books and more, also has the wayback machine (snapshots of web pages going back to the 90s)
-https://archive.org/
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-projects & open letters in support of and about piracy/peeracy
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-In solidarity with Library Genesis and Sci-Hub
-an open letter calling for shadow librarians to come out of the shadows
-http://custodians.online/
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-Alexandra Elbakyan to Mr. Robert W. Sweet (presiding judge in the Elsevier vs Sci-Hub et al court case)
-https://torrentfreak.com/images/sci-hub-reply.pdf
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-and publishing
-http://andpublishing.org/
- The Piracy Project
- http://andpublishing.org/the-piracy-project/
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---------------------------------------------
-loose thoughts from our conversation
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-misspellings on ebay - how to exploit this to find undiscovered items http://fatfingers.com
-bootlegged DVDs and PS1 games - "chipping" to play bootlegged games
-social capital accumulated from having a chipped console
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-The Pirate Book
-historical stories of piracy - warez, demoscene, music etc:
-https://hub.xpub.nl/bootleglibrary/read/290/pdf
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-selling unauthorised copies out of a car boot = "boot"legging?
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-why do we feel it's more threatening to pirate books than movies/music/games etc?
-where does the text reside?
-what if i read a book out loud and make a file on youtube - is it bootlegging?
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-can the library also have audio/visual media?
- yes - the library is running on open-source software, so definitely possible. this requires an upgrade of the computer and data storage
-what is more of a risk - a shared google drive of PDFs or the bootleglib?
- a shared google drive is more risky - the bootleg library has several security measures in place to keep it private
-will i get into trouble for using the bootleg library?
- haha - not very likely :)
-can readers communicate with each other through the bootleglib?
- not directly, but possible by adding links to etherpads (like this one) in the description fields
---------------------------------------------
-some interesting things to watch & read on archives, libraries, piracy and activism
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-things to read:
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- the science of piracy and the piracy of science by bodo balasz (an economist researching use of pirate libraries)
- Part 1: http://copyrightblog.kluweriplaw.com/2019/03/06/the-science-of-piracy-the-piracy-of-science-who-are-the-science-pirates-and-where-do-they-come-from-part-1/
- Part 2: http://copyrightblog.kluweriplaw.com/2019/03/21/the-science-of-piracy-the-piracy-of-science-who-are-the-science-pirates-and-where-do-they-come-from-part-2/
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- a view from elsewhere on authorship, copyright and creativity by eva weinmayr (of and publishing and the piracy project)
- https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mw-mediadesign/images/d/dd/Confronting_Authorship_Published_with_content_page--Whose_book_is_it_anyway.pdf
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- articles by shannon mattern on self-organised and "fugitive" libraries
- https://placesjournal.org/article/marginalia-little-libraries-in-the-urban-margins/
- https://placesjournal.org/article/fugitive-libraries/
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- interview with kate eichhorn, author of the archival turn in feminism
- https://criticalmargins.com/interview-with-kate-eichhorn-author-of-the-archival-turn-in-feminism-a204b02ae340
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-things to watch:
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- Digital Amnesia
- https://youtu.be/NdZxI3nFVJs
- "Our memory is dissipating. Hard drives only last five years, a web page is forever changing and there’s no machine left that reads 15-year old floppy disks. Digital data is vulnerable. Yet entire libraries are shredded and lost to budget cuts, because we assume everything can be found online."
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- The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz
- https://archive.org/details/TheInternetsOwnBoyTheStoryOfAaronSwartz
- "The Internet's Own Boy depicts the life of American computer programmer, writer, political organizer and Internet activist Aaron Swartz. It features interviews with his family and friends as well as the internet luminaries who worked with him. The film tells his story up to his eventual suicide after a legal battle, and explores the questions of access to information and civil liberties that drove his work."
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---------------------------------------------
-King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard
-Polygondwanaland is free for everybody and you can do with what you.
-From the band's post accompanying links to different digital packs:
-"This album is FREE. Free as in, free. Free to download and if you wish, free to make copies.
-Make tapes, make CD’s, make records.
-[...]
-Ever wanted to start your own record label? GO for it! Employ your mates, press wax, pack boxes. We do not own this record. You do. Go forth, share, enjoy."
-https://www.discogs.com/King-Gizzard-And-The-Lizard-Wizard-Polygondwanaland/master/1268453
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-100 copies of the white album played at once
-https://thevinylfactory.com/news/artist-layers-100-unique-copies-of-the-beatles-white-album-for-original-vinyl-release/
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-royalty-free audio
-http://freesound.org
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-spotify scanning interface
-http://everynoise.com/
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-sharpest knife ever made from {insert substance here}
-https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg3qsVzHeUt5_cPpcRtoaJQ
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-Bootleg Britney / A bootleg CD bought at the market in Montenegro had 3 extra unpublished songs in comparison to the actual album on sale in the shops - what message was Britney sending me?! i <3 this story
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Most people I know prefer to read off paper. The arguments for the printed text usually are about exhaustion, e.g. “I get tired reading from a screen”, lack of retention, e.g. “It’s proven that people remember things they read on paper better than on screen”, and in the circles I tend to run in, a sentimentality pervades, nostalgic for the haptic experience that reading from printed books brings.
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We expect acceleration from digital technologies. The cultural significance of new media is bolstered through remediality, which is its refashioning through the lens of old media[1]. Skeuomorphic design brings us the texture of paper on a screen. Hayles argues for intermediality, the interpretations between, and the coexistence of all media, including printed and digital texts.[2]
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Digital text is fraught with trauma, underpinned by the possibility of fragmentation. Text that is to the reader fully searchable and copy-pasteable is also text that threatens to come apart. Text that is less of an object, and more a process, often not residing in any one place in a computer file system, assembled dynamically, “on-the-fly”. Printed text, by contrast, reassures us by way of its indelibility.
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Image: The physical bootleg library contained in a disused champagne crate, and the digital bootleg library running from a Raspberry Pi computer
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↑Bolter, J.D. and Grusin, R. (2003) Remediation: understanding new media. 6. Nachdr. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
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↑Hayles, N.K. (2005) My mother was a computer: digital subjects and literary texts. Chicago London: The University of Chicago Press.
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Text Laundrette is a workshop in which we use a home-made, DIY book scanner, and open-source software to scan, process, and add digital features to printed texts brought by the participants to the workshop. These are included in the “bootleg library”, a shadow library accessible over a local network.
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Shadow libraries operate outside of legal copyright frameworks, in response to decreased open access to knowledge. This workshop aims to extend our research on libraries, their sociability, and methods by which we can add provenance to texts included in public or private, legal or extra-legal collections.
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The workshop ran over 2 hours with invited guests from the academy. It was an ambitious workflow, but we managed to run through several iterations of watermarking, scanning, processing and uploading. The realisation of how much work is involved in digitising and processing texts was certainly a take-home for participants. An interesting moment occurred when uploading - who was the author of the altered text?
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This book took quite some time to lay out. The original publication exists as an EPUB. You have to buy it, and it's not available in this format from the usual pirate libraries, but I did find an HTML version on https://monoskop.org/media/text/feminist_art_manifestos/
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I ran pandoc on the HTML file to turn it into a .rtf so that I could lay it out in InDesign using this command:
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$ pandoc -s source.html -o new_source.rtf
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This retained italics and hyperlinks (which was super nice), but there were lots of line-breaks that I didn't need and had to remove manually as find/change in InDesign is indiscriminate...
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In some ways the digital book is superior to the printed version as you can click on the hyperlinks to visit the source pages of many of these texts, something which is obviously impossible in the printed version, although it does say where the manifestos can be found.
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The interesting thing about doing this as a book sprint is the speed at which you have to make design decisions. This makes the design quite minimal, and the only typographic conceit here was with a decision to use a variety of indentation styles, which refers to the multiplicity of feminist manifestos. The interesting thing for me about these texts is that they show many different artistic views of feminism which don't necessarily agree with each other.
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During the time I was laying out this publication, I was invited by Artemis to join her and Paloma in applying to present our Marginal Conversations workshop in Athens at the ETC (Eclectic Tech Conference) festival. We were all pretty excited about the prospect, however as it turned out, some of the organisers were unsure about me presenting a workshop as a cis-gendered hetero man. Although I was disappointed, I understood the reasoning, as due to the nature of this particular conference (which started as a way for women and queer, trans & non-binary folk to share skills outside of a patriarchal male-dominated tech culture. I was reassured that this was not the opinion of all of the organisers, but of some, however, they were trying to reach a compromise with me and each other. I found this an interesting sidenote to the publication I was producing, in which there is a plurality of views that co-exist.
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I decided to print a second edition of this book for two reasons; 1) someone had borrowed the first edition three months ago and it hadn't been returned, and 2) what's a books of Feminist Art Manifestos without any images?
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I spent quite some time tracking down images to use in the book. Oftentimes I couldn't find an image that directly corresponded to the writer/writers of each manifesto, which created an interesting opportunity to think about who is represented by each text. Sometimes it was an image of an artwork (if the manifesto was written by an artist), sometimes an image of a collective or the publications they produces, often a portrait of the author or authors, sometimes an image of the manifesto as it appeared in print originally. Each manifesto text is prefaced by an image - abutting the text of a previous manifesto. This creates an interesting connection between seemingly disparate elements and waves of feminist movements. The book was printed in the same size as the first edition, with a grey cover, and noticeably more pages due to the addition of so many colour images.
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Publications acquire difference through reproduction; sometimes intentionally, always circumstantially. A printed book always ends up in the hands of at least one reader. It is transported, pages are dog-eared and annotated, time weathers the paper and cracks the spine. Multiply this by many readers, and each printed copy starts to accumulate its own traces, losing resemblance to the rest of the edition and acquiring its own particular countenance and provenance through use.
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Image: 1. Books are for use.
-The first law of S. R. R. Rangathan’s 5 Laws of Library Science, 1931
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A reader who downloads and does not upload is a passive observer to the activities of the library. We prefer to be in the position of the downloader due to the legal penalties for uploading and redistributing copyrighted texts, which are far more severe than those for downloading. The library will not grow if all we do is take. A library is a collection of shared texts, and sharing is facilitated by both uploading and downloading.
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Reading: Bodó, Balázs (2019): The science of piracy, the piracy of science. Who are the science pirates and where do they come fromPart I + Part II
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Workshop with economist Bodo Balasz, whose research is on shadow libraries and the forces that drive them, taking the point of view that "if you do not understand the black market, you can not organize legality". Bodo's recent work is on the dataset of the biggest shadow libraries (which for certain reason, I won't name here). The most striking conclusions drawn from his analysis show that use of the shadow library has increased dramatically in the developing world, it is actually those in the privileged, richer countries that are using the service most, raising questions if cost competition is the driving factor of use of shadow libraries. Also examined are file formats, which reveals interesting facts about the duplication process involved in creating copies.
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The process differs historically between Eastern and Western countries due to cultural and technological differences. In the East (particularly in Russia and eastern bloc countries) texts were initially re-typed. This follows the tradition established in samizdat publishing of duplicating texts by hand. The need to have developed systems of private distribution was higher in former Soviet countries. In the West, most texts were photocopied or scanned initially, due to cheaper access to the technology.
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Bodo examines the dataset using a browser-based interactive python server. By running code on the csv file of the dataset, it is possible to establish trends and make inferences on the behaviour of the users of the shadow library. Certain problems may arise due to the metadata associated with each file - different character sets, errors, lack of information and "inaccurate" information can make some analyses difficult to pin down. Using interactive python, we did single variable analysis, and also two-dimensional analysis.
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I could only find this as a printed book available for purchase online, or to borrow from the closest library, which is the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague. So, I went to the KB in the Hague, registered a membership (costing 7,50 euro per year) and borrowed the book. I scanned the book on a photocopier back at PZI (it took about 40 mins and many apologies to those who wanted to use it), and then printed and bound it by hand using a cold glue binding technique. The file produced by scanning actually took longer to be transferred over the network than it did to scan the entire book. I optimised the file after receiving it, which produced splotchy text and images (in some places the print looked damaged by water). The cover was an impromptu decision - to use the same method. The copy was made in about 2 hours.
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Front cover: Bootleg (left) and source publication (right)
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Spine: Source publication
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Spine: Bootleg
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Spines: Source publication (left) and bootleg (right)
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Spread: Source publication (left) and bootleg (right)
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This book took about 40 hours to create, the longest time it's taken so far... I found a PDF on Lib Gen, but for some reason the OCR'd text was tracked quite tight making each line look like a very long word - this was even worse when printed. After a quick search on worldcat, I discovered that this book was available to be borrowed from the Royal Library in the Hague. Off I went to borrow the book. I planned to scan it using the bookscanner, but the cameras kept crashing after scanning half the 433 page book. So, I managed to extract the text using Calibre's book convert process from PDF > RTF. However, after placing the text in an InDesign layout, all of the numbers appeared as missing characters. From the looks of the PDF it seemed that these were perhaps from an Opentype font's custom stylistic set, which would explain why they weren't turning up in my system fonts. Also, in the index at the back of the book the numbers seemed to have the appearance of hyperlinks (when hovering over the hand icon appears) but when clicked, did absolutely nothing. So I began the rather painstaking process of laying out the book with exactly the same text flow and page numbers as the source. The work included removing headers and page numbers from the RTF, scanning all photos from the printed book, endlessly wordspacing paragraphs to make sure they fit where they should on each page, styling the text, removing manually written hyphenation (this was done programmatically, and ended up with a few words that were joined together in the case of examples like "re- and dis- associate" becoming reand disassociate") and the seemingly endless task of manually entering in EVERY number. At times it felt a bit masochistic, but I used this time to reflect on the process, thinking a lot about the changes I was making to preserve the form of the original. Ironically, this also involved a lot of forced line breaks, which would make the task of anyone who wanted to bootleg this book a bit more difficult (forced line breaks are the bane of the bootlegger). Another strange thought - I'm reading these books as I redesign them, but my reading happens on a more superficial level perhaps, meaning that I'm not absorbing the content fully, but reading it like a machine would as I look for anomalies and address them.
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Clara Balaguer asked me for a copy of this book, and it seemed like a good opportunity to try a new printing and binding process. I decided to print the book double-sided on A4 paper, as opposed to the previous method of 2-up imposed printing on A3 paper. I wasn't very satisfied with how the previous printing method had produced a "split" in the book due to the paper grain direction. Yin Yin Wong at PS Rotterdam had recommended printing double sided rather than 2-up to avoid this, so this was the technique I decided to try out. I also decided on hand-binding it with cold glue, a technique which I had recently learned. Cold glue binding is done with equipment and materials such as a hacksaw, scissors, medical gauze (or cheesecloth), brushes, PVA glue, bookbinding thread, a jig to hold the book in while notches are cut and the spine receives its initial gluing, and a book press to keep the book in overnight, which stops the book from warping due to the high water content of the PVA glue. Cold glue binding allows the book to lay open flat on a table, a benefit I was keen to apply to this edition of the book as I was dissatisfied by how tight the binding of the first edition was because I had used the hot glue binding machine, which takes much less time but for thick books can produce a lower quality result. I was quite pleased with how this book came out, however, when applying the cover I had to decide not to glue it to the spine. Cold glue binding results in a rough spine, and hot glue creates a smooth layer of glue that dries quickly, producing a smooth spine. The only way to avoid this is to not attach the cover to the spine if using cold glue.
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Bootlegged books front covers: Second edition (left) and first edition (right)
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Front covers: Source publication (left) and second edition bootleg (right)
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Beginning of image section: Source publication (left) and second edition bootleg (right). The second edition bootleg book lies open more easily due to the cold glue binding
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Spines: Source publication (left) and second edition bootleg (right)
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Back covers: Source publication (left) and second edition bootleg (right)
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As soon as a reader edits a text its materiality changes either unintentionally, or through more intentional methods, such as republishing in a different format to make the text more accessible to a wider public. Samizdat publishers often considered themselves editors, or typists (rather than authors) due to the unwanted attention and risk that this credit would bring. As they reproduced texts by hand, a slippery form of authorship evolved through human error and also particular idiosyncratic preferences for a new phrase, approximate translation or text structure. Vladimir Bukovsky summarised the process of self-publishing as “Samizdat: I write it myself, edit it myself, censor it myself, publish it myself, distribute it myself, and spend time in prison for it myself.” The responsibility these self-proclaimed editors took upon themselves by republishing dissident material bound them to the texts; entwined in their creation and distribution. When no writer wants to be an author, everyone becomes an editor.
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Image: Facsimile of A Chronicle of Current Events (Russian: Хро́ника теку́щих собы́тий), the longest-running Samizdat publication, (1968-1982)
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In November 2018, I experimented with a timed writing task using Etherpad, a collaborative realtime browser-based text editor. Etherpad automatically assigns authorship colours to users, and I wanted to explore how a text that I was writing, reading and editing over a specific time period could be visualised.
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The method was to write for one hour. I begin by writing a text about what I was doing (writing, reading and editing). For time constraints, I established writing periods of 3 minutes, and a rest period of 2 minutes. After 6 iterations, this shifted to 5 minutes for both respectively. I kept writing and opening up new private tabs in my browser to give each iteration new authorship colours. These are lost when exported, so I recreated the text and authorship colours to make visualisations.
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Each iteration is isolated in the following visualisations:
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21:10-21:15
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21:15-21:20
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21:20-21:25
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21:25-21:30
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21:30-21:35
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21:35-21:40
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21:40-21:50
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21:50-22:00
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22:00-22:10
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The authorship colours with text removed:
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The experiment showed me that editing is a way of writing, kind of like making growing a tree while making furniture from it. Whatever is written is there to be pruned and shaped into pieces that are joined together to form a supportive text structure. Etherpad makes this visible with its authorship colours, all the more so when it is used as it has been designed; collaboratively.
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In Al Sweigart's Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, there's a nice section on a Python library called PyPDF2 that allows you to work with the contents of PDFs. To begin with, I thought I'd try extracting text from a PDF of William S. Burrough's The Electronic Revolution. I chose this PDF as the only version I've found of it online is a 40pp document published by ubuclassics (which I suppose is the publishing house for ubuweb.com). There was no identifier other than this (no ISBN etc.), and it was impossible locating any other version online. What's more, the PDF had very small text, which was uncomfortable to read when I ran the booklet.sh script on it.
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I thought it would be worthwhile laying out this book again for print reading purposes, and the first step is to get the text from the PDF. Pandoc is usually my go to for extracting text, but it doesn't work with PDFs, so I tried PyPDF2.
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I began by copying a file called electronic_revolution.pdf to a folder, then in the terminal cd into that directory. Then I initiated the interactive python interpreter with this command:
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$ python3
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Next I wrote the following commands in Python 3 (comments above each line):
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# First, import the PyPDF2 module
->>> import PyPDF2
-# Then open electronic_revolution.pdf in read binary mode and store it in pdfFileObj
->>> pdfFileObj = open('electronic_revolution.pdf', 'rb')
-# To get a PdfFileReader object that rep- resents this PDF, call PyPDF2.PdfFileReader() and pass it pdfFileObj. Store this PdfFileReader object in pdfReader
->>> pdfReader = PyPDF2.PdfFileReader(pdfFileObj)
-# The total number of pages in the document is stored in the numPages attribute of a PdfFileReader object
->>> pdfReader.numPages
->>> 40
-# The PDF has 40 pages. To extract text from a page, you need to get a Page object, which represents a single page of a PDF, from a PdfFileReader object.
-# You can get a Page object by calling the getPage() method on a PdfFileReader object and passing it the page number of the page you’re interested in — in our case, 0
->>> pageObj = pdfReader.getPage(0)
-# Once you have your Page object, call its extractText() method to return a string of the page’s text
->>> pageObj.extractText()
->>> 'ubuclassics2005WILLIAM S. BURROUGHSTheElectronic\nRevolution'
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This returns the value for total page count, and the text for the first page (0). What I want to get is the text for the whole document. I have no idea how to do this!!!
-This doesn't work at all.
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With Rita & Pedro's help I managed to write a Python script that includes a for loop to extract text from the entire PDF:
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1 # imports the PyPDF2 module
- 2 importPyPDF2
- 3
- 4 filename=input("name of the file: ")
- 5
- 6 withopen(filename,'rb')aspdf_file,open('input.txt','w')astext_file:
- 7 read_pdf=PyPDF2.PdfFileReader(pdf_file)
- 8 number_of_pages=read_pdf.getNumPages()
- 9 forpage_numberinrange(number_of_pages):# use xrange in Py2
-10 page=read_pdf.getPage(page_number)
-11 page_content=page.extractText()
-12 text_file.write(page_content)
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The next step is to then begin cleaning up the text by removing the line-breaks. We wrote a simple shell script for this that runs the Python script, then a command to take out line breaks:
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Only problem is that the names of the txt files that are produced will all be "input.txt", which means that if you run this on more than one PDF, you'll have to move input.txt to another directory before running again, rename the file manually, or perhaps I could write another Python script that renames the file and include it in the shell script after the last line.
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curl is a command that can be used from the terminal to take text from a URL. It can be piped with software such as pandoc to convert the text to other formats, and in support of a workflow I'm starting to develop, this comes in quite handy.
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I'm writing text on the pad, and then converting it to markdown. This extra step isn't necessary (in fact it adds to the work) but I'm interested in using pads as multi-flow publishing tools in the future so I'm testing this out. Also, using a pad allows me to style the text simply using markdown rather than HTML.
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For example, this is a file I made from some notes on a Flusser interview about linear writing:
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I'm then storing the files in my git, which is public. Having texts in git allows me to use its versioning capabilities, allowing me to go back over old modified versions in the file tree - I can copy paste from these snippets that I may want to go back and retain in the future..
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Most often, acquisition requests are as mundane as someone asking if the library has a particular text. A quick search online produces a digital file as a result. The provenance of these texts is buried in the file paths of the uploader’s computer, and the computers before it. Texts are acquired by any means necessary, through a social network, or through a digital network of so-called “shadow libraries” and groups of sympathetic readers. It’s often surprising how fast an unknown fellow reader will respond to a request for a text via certain groups operating on social media websites. Type F to follow this post.
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11.12.19 - lunchmeeting #3, in the Research Station[edit]
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Mapping the library #1
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Mapping the library #2
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Mapping the library #3
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Wilma Knol (embedded librarian in the Research Station) invited me to a lunchmeeting, a series of informal hour-long open meetings based on a directive to "future-proof" the collection. Wilma is part of a group that is determining news ways for acquisitions to take place within the WdKA Research Station/Library. Other members of the group are ginger coons and Jojanneke Gijsen, both teachers at WdKA. The group have established certain directions and strategies, highlighting these interests:
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acquisition requests
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the legacy of the collection
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displaying and distributing the collection
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I'm interested to see if the bootleg library can be of assistance with this directive - especially in informing a bottom-up method of acquiring new books by looking at what is being read/downloaded/uploaded.
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Researching aaaaarg.fail, ubuweb & Project Gutenberg with Tancredi:[edit]
Content: What is in the library?
-How much? PDFs - a lot! (hard to see how many, but 26,000+ and counting...) theory and critical theory
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Users: Who is using / uploading / downloading?
-Used by researchers, academics, students, people interested in theory who can become members by invitation. Members of the site can upload and download, and request new titles through a messageboard.
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Catalog: What is the system? How is it organised? How about its ontology?
-Indexed, by "catalog" (listing by author name), "collection" (listing by topic), and also by "requests" (listing by new requests, most requested, unrequested, and everything - also with RSS feed)
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Infrastructure: What are technical specs? Software? Hardware?<
-Probably runs on self-hosted server - you access it through a browser
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Politics: What is the attitude?
-Kind of like a private club - invite only
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Economy: Sponsors? Donation? Advertising?<
-No advertising on site - no information about sponsors or donations on site either...
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Content : What is in the library? How much?
-(PDF, VIDEO, AUDIO...) art, media, theater... in the contest of avant-gard in 2011 over 7,500 artists and over 2500 full-length avant-garde films and videos
-Users: Who is using / uploading / downloading? editors + volunteers + users + artists
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Catalog: What is the system? How is it organised? How about its ontology?
-each section has an editor who brings to the site their area of expertise / structured as a research project, index with descriptions
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Infrastructure: What are technical specs? Software? Hardware?
-servers donated by several universities as a means of study
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Politics: What is the attitude?
-library which is ever-expanding in uncanny—and often uncategorizable—directions / no logo,advertise,donation / anti-institutional / Act as a museum
-alternative by invoking a gift economy of plentitude with a strong emphasis on global education
-Economy: Sponsors? Donation? Advertising? volunteering / no advertising / free download / autonomous no sponsors
-Law: How does it interface? no financial interest but educational approach. VS copyright
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Content: What is in the library? How much?
-Project Gutenberg started in 1971. Texts in the library are those that have entered the public domain after exceeding the statute of limitations (in 1971 it was 14 years after death of the author, then 28, now 50 years). The website offers 58,000+ free "eBooks" (ePUB, Kindle, HTML and plain text formats). The collection is described as being comprised of three core types of text, "light literature" (e.g. Alice In Wonderland), "heavy literature" (e.g. Shakespeare), and "references" (e.g. encyclopedias)
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Users: Who is using / uploading / downloading?
-Anyone can download without registering an account. Only the site admin can upload.
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Catalog: What is the system? How is it organised? How about its ontology?
-Indexed alphabetically by author, title, language, "special categories" and recent uploads. Also includes a search function based on U.S. Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), and Yahoo and Google search (using metadata)
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Infrastructure: What are technical specs? Software? Hardware?
-Runs off a wiki. Hosted by ibiblio.org ("one of the largest free information databases online"). Accessed through the browser.
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Politics: What is the attitude? Based on democratic principle of shared knowledge.
-Operates (mostly) within the law. Heavily affiliated, with sister organisations in many countries, as well as partnerships with many other libraries and organisations that provide software to help read eBooks.
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Economy: Sponsors? Donation? Advertising?
-Project Gutenberg began with a serendipitous grant to Michael Hart (founder of Project Gutenberg) of an operator's account with $100,000,000 of computer time in it in 1971. Now, donations are accepted, run by volunteers (also makes calls for volunteer help - "digitizing, proofreading and formatting, recording audio books, or reporting errors").
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Law: How does it interface?
-(mostly) Legally, as most texts are within the public domain.
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-A) DESCRIPTION: an abstract of what each shadow library is [Steve suggests: make this 300 words or so]
-B) QUESTIONS: what type of questions does it raise? (e.g. what type of assumptions are implicit in its ontology?)
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PROJECT GUTENBERG
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Abstract — Project Gutenberg, initiated in 1971 by Michael Hart, is the world's oldest digital library of "eBooks", that is, books that are available electronically as PDFs, HTML, ePUB and plain text format. The collection has more recently expanded to include audio books, and texts in a variety of languages other than English. On the wiki-based website www.gutenberg.org, more than 58,000 eBooks are indexed by author, title, language and "recently posted". The search function allows users to look for titles by US Library of Congress search terms, as well as by going through Google and Yahoo metadata. The majority of these books are within the public domain and therefore free from copyright restrictions, although undoubtedly there are some that are orphaned by subsequent changes to US copyright terms (which in most cases of published texts, is now 70 years after the death of the author). Due to this, as well as differences in copyright law internationally, the complete legal legitimacy of its collection is in question, despite careful attempts to comply with US copyright law. It is important to note that Project Gutenberg is a project, rather than a single library, with sister affiliations in many countries (Project Gutenberg Australia, Project Gutenberg Europe among many others). This, alongside its non-profit stance (Project Gutenberg accepts donations, and also calls for volunteer help with proofreading and digitization of books, as well as recording audio books) lends moral legitimacy to its online distribution of texts.
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Questions —
-Looks like a classic collection; the interface is classic; based on a wiki; speaks of legitimacy
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Who is responsible and what are they responsible for?This is all the stuff that's in the public domain...
-What could be the motivation to make such a library?
-What values does it communicate? Good. Air of legitimacy; “library of congress search terms” and google to collect information. On this way they seek legitimacy from the on-line and off-line agents.
-What do they mean 'a project'? (is this an agent of legitimacy?) Involves many people; projects into the future; mutable (not set in stone)
-What is it filtered out and what are the political implications of that?
-How does the codex form limit what is available?
-Who does the library serve? user friendly interface; Also limitations of content, classic collection
-Who is responsible and what are they responsible for?
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AAAAARG.FAIL
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Abstract — Out of the necessity for a library, for artist Sean Dockray's LA-based educational institution called "The Public School", aaaaarg.fail (formerly aaarg.org, then aaaarg.org) is a website that hosts a collection of mostly theory and critical theory texts, and an online forum for members. Access to the collection comes from registering an account (you must be invited by a member first). Members can upload and download texts, as well as request titles via the forum. The changes in the domain name for the library come from repeated copyright infringement allegations from publishers of works that have been made accessible on the site, including the Australian publisher Macmillan. The publisher hired Mark Taylor, a former music industry executive, who was instrumental in bringing forth a cease and desist order against aaarg.org. Dockray later called this "another case where university students are conceived of as consumers, as carriers of debt for everything from degrees to consumer electronics to intellectual property" (http://unprojects.org.au/magazine/issues/issue-4-2/the-future-and-the-public-school/ ).
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Questions —
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Who does the library serve? (who are the customers?) Intellectual snobs. You have to be invited
-Forum? What affordance does that give?Sociability? There is a set of manners
-The forum produces a text (a form of collective annotation); a discussion on the texts in the library. Because you can make requests it is much more personal. You can also select by "most requested", which means that a hierarchy of information is produced within the forum.(by the discussion of the members)
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How is it different if you can participate in discussing the content of a library, than just be a viewer-receiver of the content?
-Who is responsible and what are they responsible for?
-How is it different to be an exclusive member in order to have access to the content of a library, compared to have no restrictions in accessing it?
-How does the collection (and discourse around it) represent the members of the library?
-If the library is based on user requests, it's a mirror of the members interests/social status/credentials/ideologies/clout
-Does this platform require a certain degree of library literacy and research skills?
-Does the background of the librarians affect the content presented in a library?
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UBUWEB.COM
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Abstract — UbuWeb.com is a large web-based, free, non-commercial resource for avant-garde poetry, music, film, literature and more, founded in 1996 by poet Kenneth Goldsmith. It offers visual, concrete and sound poetry, expanding to include film and sound art mp3 archives. The site's architecture limits retrieval to keyword searching and browsing by media type and artist/project name. In addition, sustainability is a concern for this website as it was never intended to be a permanent archive. Still, there is no comparable commercial source for the content on UbuWeb so it is valuable as a resource for libraries to point users toward so long as librarians are aware of its limitations. It is a library which is ever-expanding in uncanny—and often uncategorizable—directions. Each section has an editor who brings to the site their area of expertise. UbuWeb is not n to any academic institution, instead relying on alliances of interest and benefiting from bandwidth donations from its partnerships with GreyLodge, WFMU, PennSound, The Electronic Poetry Center, The Center for Literary Computing, and ArtMob. UbuWeb was founded in response to the marginal distribution of crucial avant-garde material. It remains non-commercial and operates on a gift economy. UbuWeb ensures educational open access to out-of-print works that find a second life through digital art reprint while also representing the work of contemporaries. It addresses problems in the distribution of and access to intellectual materials.
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Questions —
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Who does the library serve?
-What could be the motivation to make such a library?
-What values does it communicate?
-How can the material available in a library shape the discourse around a particular field?
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Date of publication: March 2016
-Publisher: Print>Imprint
-ISBN: 9780646954691
-Dewey number: 028.9099451
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-From the books: SLV RBRR 000-099 is a publication that explores marks left in over 300 books by visitors to the 000-099 section of the State Library of Victoria (SLV) Redmond Barry Reading Room (RBRR). The tactile materiality of the publication is emphasised by its form; section-sewn, with an unglued spine, allowing it to incorporate other components of the publication; such as a zine (with a commissioned essay by Federico Antonini) tucked inside the front cover, and a collection of 4" x 6" photographs taken at the SLV which are randomly inserted between pages. Transcripts of sounds recorded in the RBRR appear as intermittent typographic spreads within the layout. On the cover of the book is a list of the terms we defined to categorise the types of marks discovered. The preface to the book is an essay I wrote on the changing role of libraries, and in the end-matter there is a tongue-in-cheek "bibliography" which gives publication details and a Dewey Decimal reference of each book that appears in the publication. The marks we catalogued include (but are not limited to) examples such as marginalia, underlined text, dog-ears, stains, wear and tear, and objects left within books, such as photographs, scraps of paper or letters to future readers.
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Front cover
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Inside front cover
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A defaced page from Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, held in the SLV rare books collection
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Sounds from the Redmond Barry Reading Room
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Spread with insert
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Zine with essay by Federico Antonini
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-The publication developed from a collaborative research project with graphic designer Masaki Miwa. This initially involved a time-consuming process in which we removed each book, inspected for marks, scanned results, and then identified, catalogued and inserted them into the layout of the publication. The process of identifying marks and ascribing meaning to them prompted questions of intent and conventions within mark-making. Other research included interviews with librarians at the SLV on marks within rare books. A key development from this research was the discovery of how mark-making can indicate provenance, (e.g. markings on a map which can determine that it was owned by Captain James Cook) or give certain historical value to books, that result in relocation to less publicly-accessible areas of the library. The photographs and transcriptions of sounds were included in order to give an impression (beyond the merely textual) of this particular area of the SLV. In order to contextualise our findings within a wider realm of public discourse on the social role of libraries, I wrote an essay on the contemporary shift from libraries acting as repositories of knowledge to active social spaces as collections are slowly being digitised. Federico Antonini's essay explores mark-making as a deliberate creative strategy in the design of artist's books, offering speculative answers to questions of intent and meaning around the marks we discovered in the SLV.
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The project began with an interest in this phenomenon, and curiosity about the possible intentions of mark-makers. Part of my own interest was from a typographic perspective, exploring the range of symbols used when marking texts. Through our research we became interested in this phenomenon of books being used as vehicles for communication by readers, and through categorising them and exploring commonalities in mark-making, attempt a kind of subjective taxonomy within the limited context of this section, at that particular time in history. Our interviews with SLV librarians and research into the shifting role of libraries prompted us to expand the scope of our publication beyond the small section of books we surveyed, and connect our research to a wider contemporary discourse on attitudes towards libraries. The publication was (perhaps ironically) acquired by the SLV, and now sits within its collection of artist's books.
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Date of publication: March 2016
-Publisher: Print>Imprint
-ISBN: 9780646954691
-Dewey number: 028.9099451
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-From the books: SLV RBRR 000-099 is a publication that explores marks left in over 300 books by visitors to the 000-099 section of the State Library of Victoria (SLV) Redmond Barry Reading Room (RBRR). The tactile materiality of the publication is emphasised by its form; section-sewn, with an unglued spine, allowing it to incorporate other components of the publication; such as a zine (with a commissioned essay by Federico Antonini) tucked inside the front cover, and a collection of 4" x 6" photographs taken at the SLV which are randomly inserted between pages. Transcripts of sounds recorded in the RBRR appear as intermittent typographic spreads within the layout. On the cover of the book is a list of the terms we defined to categorise the types of marks discovered. The preface to the book is an essay I wrote on the changing role of libraries, and in the end-matter there is a tongue-in-cheek "bibliography" which gives publication details and a Dewey Decimal reference of each book that appears in the publication. The marks we catalogued include (but are not limited to) examples such as marginalia, underlined text, dog-ears, stains, wear and tear, and objects left within books, such as photographs, scraps of paper or letters to future readers.
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Front cover
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Inside front cover
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A defaced page from Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, held in the SLV rare books collection
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Sounds from the Redmond Barry Reading Room
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Spread with insert
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Zine with essay by Federico Antonini
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-The publication developed from a collaborative research project with graphic designer Masaki Miwa. This initially involved a time-consuming process in which we removed each book, inspected for marks, scanned results, and then identified, catalogued and inserted them into the layout of the publication. The process of identifying marks and ascribing meaning to them prompted questions of intent and conventions within mark-making. Other research included interviews with librarians at the SLV on marks within rare books. A key development from this research was the discovery of how mark-making can indicate provenance, (e.g. markings on a map which can determine that it was owned by Captain James Cook) or give certain historical value to books, that result in relocation to less publicly-accessible areas of the library. The photographs and transcriptions of sounds were included in order to give an impression (beyond the merely textual) of this particular area of the SLV. In order to contextualise our findings within a wider realm of public discourse on the social role of libraries, I wrote an essay on the contemporary shift from libraries acting as repositories of knowledge to active social spaces as collections are slowly being digitised. Federico Antonini's essay explores mark-making as a deliberate creative strategy in the design of artist's books, offering speculative answers to questions of intent and meaning around the marks we discovered in the SLV.
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The project began with an interest in this phenomenon, and curiosity about the possible intentions of mark-makers. Part of my own interest was from a typographic perspective, exploring the range of symbols used when marking texts. Through our research we became interested in this phenomenon of books being used as vehicles for communication by readers, and through categorising them and exploring commonalities in mark-making, attempt a kind of subjective taxonomy within the limited context of this section, at that particular time in history. Our interviews with SLV librarians and research into the shifting role of libraries prompted us to expand the scope of our publication beyond the small section of books we surveyed, and connect our research to a wider contemporary discourse on attitudes towards libraries. The publication was (perhaps ironically) acquired by the SLV, and now sits within its collection of artist's books.
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A glossary is a list of terms defined in relation to the specificity of the text. Glossaries aid reading comprehension, and also establish the presence of the readers. Glossing (from Late Latin glossa "obsolete or foreign word") was a medieval technique of adding commentaries to the main text of illuminated manuscripts. Glossators would add small handwritten notes and illustrations in between the lines and in the margins. Reading between the lines opened the text up for various interpretations, and illustrations served as mnemonic aids to assist readers to recall information. [1]
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The texts written on these cards constitute a glossary which defines the tasks of the Contingent Librarian.
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Image: A glossed manuscript of a late-thirteenth-century Latin translation of a medical work by Hippocrates
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↑Hobart, M.E. and Schiffman, Z.S. (1998) Information ages: literacy, numeracy, and the computer revolution. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
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Main question: How can annotation be useful to us, and a third party?
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Possible ways
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Keep text and annotations together
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scan and overlay transparencies (more like a graphical representation but perhaps not very readable)
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write, re-write, cut and paste the annotations in a bigger paper all together
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use the annotation bot (a digital tool)(it would be cool if you could underline, etc - yes! including graphic elements)
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if digital, create the possibility to turn on and off the annotations to keep the original text
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bind the pages into books and make a bootleg library with them
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Separate text and annotations (deconstruction / structure analysis)
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only underlined text (in many ways: lines, circles, waves...)
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list of questions, tags, notes + composition and mapping of them (different mapping techniques)
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historical timeline
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only drawings?
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free graphical interpretation
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Computer driven annotation
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scrape the text (words processing)
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pattern recognition
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delete all articles and implicit elements
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Combine the above possibilities
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overlay of analog annotations to represent "heat patterns" (parts of the text with lots of/little engagement), as well as a digital version that is more legible
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HOW DO I KNOW WHAT I AM READING? We are discussing form how do we talk about content?
-How do you make the content readable for others?
-How do you communicate what you're interpreting?
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There are many different reasons why you might read something, but essentially, reading involves skimming (reading to get the main idea of a text) or scanning (looking for specific information in details). This often happens in tandem—skimming the catalogue to see what the interest of the library is, and then scanning to see if a particular text has been included—and has relations to other modes of information retrieval, e.g. browsing/searching.
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In 1977, while facing a skeptical audience in a Q & A session broadcast live on Australian television, Marshall McLuhan argued “the word read means to guess – look it up in the big dictionary. Reading is an activity of rapid guessing because any word has so many meanings – including the word reading – that to select one in a context of other words requires very rapid guessing. That’s why a good reader tends to be a very quick decision-maker.”[1] This is very true of human reading, where multiple interpretations lead to various equivalent understandings of a text, but false when applied to machine reading, which only operates with predefined ways of interpreting text.
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Image: "the word read means to guess" A quote from Marshall McLuhan during a live television broadcast, 1977
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We read texts, and write notes in the margins; usually in private, isolated from other readers. We come across texts with others' notes on them; the author unknown, their thoughts obscure. What happens when we share our notes, vocalise and perform them?
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In this workshop...we'll read, annotate and discuss an open letter which asks for pirate library practices to come out from the shadows. We'll read aloud and perform parts of the text, enriched by our doubts, sympathies, tensions and diverse understandings. We'll personalise the text, opening it up for collective conversations. Our voices will occupy the space and leave traces on the text and in the library.
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INTRODUCTION (5min)
-Meet each other: have a quick round of saying something about ourselves and what do we know about pirate/shadow libraries. Short description of the steps of the workshop and let people know we'll be recording.
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Overview of what happens in this workshop in one sentence:
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1st part: Reading/Annotating, heatmap
-2nd part: Discussion, Rehearsal of Performative reading and recording of performance.
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-Topic: pirate libraries - topic of special Issue 9
-Text: "In solidarity with Library Genesis & Sci-Hub" letter
-Aim: 2-3 sentences of what is the aim of this workshop. Why this collective reading-conversations matter?
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- We see "annotations" as a way to express our understandings/questions/comments/disagreements/ tensions/positions about what we read. So we can discuss about it and form a collective understanding of the text. Our aims are to:
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- open up a conversation about pirate libraries, through a deeper collective understanding of a specific text that refers to this topic (enrichment comes through collectively reading and annotating the text)
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- develop ways in which texts can become conversations through annotating together
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- make public what we have learned about pirate libraries and annotation, and to reflect on the public's response(s)
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-STEP 1: Reading/Annotating (15min) PALOMA
-Materials: "In Support of Library Genesis & Sci-Hub" English language letter (on A3 spread), A3 tracing paper, ballpoint pens (annotation pack)
-Participants: Individual
-Archiving step: collect tracing paper, carbon paper
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- We provide the solidarity letter in an A3 pack
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- Read the text individually
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- Annotate the text in English. (It will be traced through carbon paper to the tracing paper underneath.)
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-STEP 2: Heatmap and discussion through the annotations (20min) SIMON
-Materials: Same as Step 1
-Participants: Whole group/Small groups
-Archiving step: Photographs of annotated texts, discussion
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Create a "heatmap" of the text by placing tracing papers with annotations on top of each other, showing which areas are interesting/remarkable to others.
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We can focus in the most "annotated", thus "active", "interesting", "relevant" parts of the text. At the end of the heatmap stage we introduce the discussion by identifying common areas of annotation, and also listing things that need further definition. Why did you annotate this part? What is the "global north"? etc.
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Comment generally on the text, what was interesting? Did you make sense? Are there specific parts you want to discuss?
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Conclusions? Comments? Discuss the most commented.
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Discuss this experience and anything we want to discuss about pirate libraries, this text, our experiences.
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Collectively determine strategies to "amplify" specific parts of the texts that either
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-a) we all agree on
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b) we don't understand
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c) disagree on
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d) we want to develop further
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e) think are worth repeating/recording
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-STEP 3: Performative reading (20min) ARTEMIS
-Participants: All together (if more than 10, divide into two groups???)
-Materials: Annotated "In Support of Library Genesis & Sci-Hub" letter, audio recording device (ZOOM rented from WdKA shop/smartphone), (maybe speakers?)
-Archiving step: Voice recording
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Introduce by saying: "We are going to read aloud the text in turns, while also performing our annotations. Try to perform your comment to make your position/understanding of the text clear. If you have an annotation, please do or say something (e.g. interrupt, whisper, raise your hand, make a noise, use an accent, use intonation to convey emotion etc)."
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The text becomes a "play", a performance, a discussion between us
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The purpose is to activate a text, by transforming it into a conversation through spoken annotation
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This reading will be recorded (ask)
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Decide on an "interesting" way of performing and record that. It could be more than one language in this audio piece.
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-OUTPUT:
-At Leeszaal:
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Play the collective recording from speakers placed in shelves at Leeszaal (Bluetooth)
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Later:
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Printed version with the overlapping of individual comments - heatmap - pocket version???
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Printed URL on annotated tracing paper to direct readers to the online versions of the texts?
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Bookmark or some object (it can be the pocket version) to introduce it in some books in Leeszaal, understanding that as a way to spread the letter (like sowing seeds)
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POST-WORKSHOP MATERIAL:
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Transcription of the voice performance (we can be inspired by film transcriptions) - perhaps we could annotate this as well:
Writing “by hand” is how we most often think of the act. The hand is symbolically connected to the act of writing, to the extent that we still use icons of the hand-held utensils to represent it graphically—a ballpoint pen, a pencil, even an old-fashioned quill and nib, all often associated with letter-writing. Slowly, this iconography is being replaced by another symbol; the keyboard, signalling the contemporary dominance of typography on writing.
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Image: ‘Proper posture for writing with pen’, from Drucker, J. (1999) The alphabetic labyrinth: the letters in history and imagination. London: Thames & Hudson
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Printed: 20.12.19
-Dimensions: 190x260mm
-Cover stock: Heavy green stock (unknown brand) - around 210gsm
-Text stock: Laser 80gsm
-Binding: Perfect bound, hot glue
-Pages: 330pp
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Johanna Drucker's The Alphabetic Labyrinth is a book that traces the history and development of the alphabet. Full of diagrams and densely populated with these histories, it demands printing and reading in physical form. A PDF just won't do. I printed this from a PDF that I laid out quickly in InDesign using my trusty placemultiplePDFpages script. The cover was made on the photocopier, a technique I was well-acquainted with from my days as a teacher, where lessons would be literally cut and pasted together to be copied on the glass. The task that took the most time was making sure the pages would be printed at reasonable size, while economising on paper. For this reason, I wanted to print it double-sided on A4 paper with minimal excess. The annotations (interestingly, many in Greek - a coincidence as the book focuses for some time on development of the Greek alphabet) and artefacts from scanning were retained (such as darkened page edges), creating a materiality that reminds one the book is most definitely loved, copied, and shared.
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Inclusion and exclusion are not just processes that occur when books arrive in the library. They are recurring, procedural, practical actions executed throughout the library’s lifetime. It comes down to the issue of space quite rapidly. With too many books, certain brutal decisions may have to be made to retain or dispose of the surplus.
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The results of including and excluding are visible in the catalogue and classification system adopted by the library, defining the particular interests of the library.
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Inclusion also plays a part when considering how public or private the library is, and how its membership is formed. There are several layers of privilege (and accompanying responsibilities) that can be given, from anonymous guest, to registered user, to administrator. Users who have administrative privileges may add new users and bestow (or revoke) freedoms and responsibilities.
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Image: A membership card for the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the national library of the Netherlands
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Most books contain an index. Most books are also indexed in some type of cataloguing system, to present the collection and inter-relationships between the texts contained within, and those outside of the library. This set of cards is an unbound index, which can be reshuffled, added to and reduced as the reader pleases. Reducing a text to an index opens it up for the reader to complete it as they read, drawing on what they have read before and creating a mental network of associations. A book is a hyper-index, forever pointing outwards to other books, libraries, readers and writers. I use my index finger to trace over the text, moving down the page as my eyes scan for keywords.
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Image: Alejandro Cesarco, Index, exhibited at Witte de With Contemporary, September 2019-January 2020
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Hope A Olson's text "Mapping Beyond Dewey's Boundaries" on spatial representations in classification systems, explored through a project that attempted to cross-reference two classification systems - A Woman's Thesaurus and Dewey Decimal Classification by Mary Ellen S Capek. Stating that "classifications are locational systems" suggests that spatial representations can be used with various effect; describing, exposing, and when used as metaphors, shifting the discourse.
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1. Spatial representation of classification systems reveals the ideological conditions that form them.
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Olson refers to spatial representations of classification systems in the form of diagrams.
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The first diagram is one that shows distribution of subjects, with the idea of a mainstream core that diffuses towards the margins. The second is a Venn diagram that illustrates how "mainstream" or "core" descriptors actually eventuate in very small "cores" due to limitations by Boolean "ands'. Venn diagrams operate on the basis of duality - something is or isn't part of a set.
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2. The concepts of "paradoxical space" and "rhetorical space".
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Paradoxical space is described in a similar way to the paranodal; being "both inside and outside, center and margins".
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How to utilise a "paradoxical space"? The text seems to suggest focusing on connections, relationships between subjects rather than differences? What could an associative classification system look like?
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The space of a page is crucial in the printed format - the text block excludes the margin - clearly delineating what is recognized as authored, and what is not. Book printing has many terms to cut up a page into a layout - deciding on "safe areas" to print and areas to leave open. In my own experience, shaping the text block is the first consideration when laying out a page.
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However, some formats of digital books (e.g. EPUB) do not have the notion of a page. There is the space of the screen, but this is mutable, whereas a printed page is not.
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The library is a collection of texts and the readers collected around them. Nothing comes from nothing, everything comes from somewhere, something or someone. Authors are dependent on other texts, writers, and readers. I write this text using borrowed words. As a legal, economic and institutional construct[1], authorship is problematic; current publishing models see texts as the intellectual property of authors possessed with “originality”. This originality is a myth; each text is layered in dependencies.
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Image: An author signing a book
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↑Weinmayr, E., ‘Confronting Authorship, Constructing Practices (How Copyright is Destroying Collective Practice)’ in Jefferies, J. and Kember, S. (eds.) (2019) Whose Book is it Anyway?: A View from Elsewhere on Publishing, Copyright and Creativity. Open Book Publishers. doi:10.11647/OBP.0159
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Eva Weinmayr's Piracy Project invites submissions of pirated books. The books are collected in public places (e.g galleries, art book fairs) where visitors are available to read them.
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Of particular interest are the editorial decisions made in the pirating of the books. Copying of a book invites an inevitable comparison between the "source" and the "copy". It is not as straightforward as assuming a hierarchy based on chronology - such as in the case of a leaked manuscript - the "origin" may have been published after the "copy". Instead, a list of words describing the possible motivations are devised to examine the possible motivation for pirating:
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This reminds me of the list of words I devised for my FTB project - however my list was of names of types of "marks of use" made in books from a section of a public collection in a library. Using verbs instead of nouns is a subtle shift away from concrete definitions of modifications between the published book and its counterpart towards a actions that may have produced these modifications.
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Artemis & I examined two pirated books, speculating on the strategies behind their duplication and making notes and questions related to each one:
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Book 1: Teignmouth Electron - Tacita Dean
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Strategies: Translating, Caring, Reproducing, Bootlegging, Reformatting, Re-Editing, Adapting, Expanding, (re)focusing, fan working, homageing, engaging, fostering, crafting, adding value
-Notes & Questions: A caring reproduction from an independent editorial project, showing special value on the content. Seems that there is collaboration with the artist, but don't have permission from the previous publisher.
-Has an isbn number. It seems not like a pirate version but as an official published version.
-Making a choice between what should and shouldn't be translated - e.g. Space Oddity appears in both English and Spanish.
-The text is privileged over the images, and reproduction comes into play with the different printing methods. Photography as a visual medium that relies on reproduction.
-It's an adaption in that it drastically changes the format (and slightly changes the content) to meet a need (to connect with a larger audience of Spanish speakers), and can be seen as vastly different from the source.
-Is the translator the author? What happens with copyright in this case?
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Book 2: Shampoo by Robert Towne and Warren Beatty, silenced by K. Lassinaro
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Strategies: Silencing, Reducing, Redirecting, Reframing, Recontextualising,(re)Focusing, (Translating (from an aural/oral/visual source to a literate destination), Re-mediating, censoring, critiquing, deleting violating
-Notes & Questions: What is the source? Is it a film, or the manuscript? Is the manuscript published? We found it easily in the web. Is a manuscript a publication? Does this constitute fair use? The pirate edition makes space for the imagination of the reader to fill the gaps. The focus seems to be the "container bag" instead of the "content". The "source" was focusing in a visual experience, while the pirate version does the opposite. The dialogues don't matter / Critique on the content
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Invitations to join the library are made through private channels of communication; direct messages, personal emails with no-one cc’d or bcc’d, private conversations held in intimate spaces, small printed cards passed by hand. Everyone is welcome to join, but the library does not require everyone to be a member in order to operate.
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Image: A6 cards, invitations to use the bootleg library
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Date & Time:
-27.11.19: 10:20-11:50
-28.11.19: 10:00-11:00
-04.12.19: 10:00-11:30
-Location:
-04.128 (A small office in the drawing station, by the printer)
-Things to bring: a computer (or a USB drive) with some of your favourite texts on it, a cup for tea or coffee if you want some (there will be spare cups if needed)
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-bootleg library sessions
-During these sessions, we'll have an introduction to the bootleg library, and create user accounts. Once you have a user account you will have full access to useful features of the library, such as arranging the collection through public and private "shelves", as well as downloading and uploading texts. If we have time, we can discuss the things we're reading, and how we'd like to use this library. These sessions are free and open for all to attend, and tea, coffee and snacks will be provided.
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about the bootleg library
-The bootleg library is a local collection of texts, available in digital (mostly PDFs and EPUB) and physical (printed) form. The digital library is available over a local network, at this URL: http://145.24.131.15:20190. Much of the collection has been “bootlegged”, meaning that the books have been copied, modified, and redistributed, unauthorised, as fairly faithful reproductions of a source publication.
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The physical library is a growing collection of republished books, mostly made by Simon Browne (XPUB), sometimes donated by visitors. These books, currently stored in a box on a shelf in the Lens-Based studio, are available to be read, borrowed and annotated, with a condition that they are returned.
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The digital library runs on calibre-web https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web, a web interface for Calibre, which is open-source software for ebook management. Calibre allows storage and conversion of ebooks in many file formats, which can all be listed under the one catalogue entry, providing a diversity of formats for different reading needs; print, full text search, copy/paste, hyperlinked references, etc. The software also allows users to manually or automatically enter cataloguing details, and create and edit "shelves". These shelves are either public or private, so users may organise the collection together, and also create their own sections of books that are individually organised.
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The bootleg library has a smaller collection than many other libraries, but it is personalised, collective, and local. It has a curated collection of eclectic texts, individually uploaded and catalogued by readers who want to share them. Readers, and the texts they read, are represented in the library, and by way of alternative library practices this representation produces a certain kind of sociability. Through using this library, readers and texts become active participants in the collection. If you know the person you know something about the book, and vice-versa, or if you don't there is the opportunity to find out more.
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The conditions for uploading are that;
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the contributor is familiar with the text, and
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the contributor completes the metadata on each upload
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Most important are the description and page fields; these are completed subjectively. Texts are tagged with keywords that indicate the subject, such as “Media Theory”, “Fiction”, “Technical manuals” etc., and also (if applicable) the person who referred them, which can be the contributor, or another person e.g. “Amy’s books”, “Steve’s books”, “Simon’s books” etc. Anyone who is on the local network and knows the URL can download or upload texts, but only those with a user account will have access to its more useful features, such as the ability to create and edit public and private “shelves”, which is how the collection may be both collectively, and individually organised.
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During these workshops, we will engage in a variety of activities;
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creating user accounts
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collectively determining the development of desired features in the library
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uploading and cataloguing texts
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classifying texts in shelves, both public and private
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downloading, reading, annotating and discussing texts
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digitising printed matter, including scanning and OCR
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designing, printing and binding books for the physical bootleg library
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The Bootleg Library represents its readers through various strategies;
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a horizontal approach to classification through collective organisation of public shelves
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personalisation of the catalogue through subjective descriptions and tags, elevating the position of the reader in regard to texts
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ability to navigate the collection through the sociability of its users - if you know a person whose name appears as a tag in the metadata, you know something about the text, and vice-versa
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development of a collection and interface made by and for its readers, containing texts that are personally chosen and shared within our community
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The workshop sessions are open to all who are interested, and will be published on the media design calendar. Registration is not necessary, but please refer to the calendar entries for any other specific requirements for each workshop.
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All that I did was click a button and switch on the content server. The library was automatically assigned a dynamic IP address, followed by a colon and a port: 8080. Type http://145.131.24.139:8080 into a browser, and you’d arrive at the library, no problem. But you had to already be on the local network; you couldn’t access it from the outside. And the IP address could change without warning, as dynamic IPs often do.
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A sequence of digits is not nearly as memorable as a domain name. And paradoxically, we expect stability from a digital environment that is quite dynamic and in flux. Trust erodes at every extra click, every retyped URL. Accessibility is tantamount to existence. If you can’t access it, it doesn’t exist.
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8080 is for personally-run web servers. It’s called 8080 because it relates to port 80, the port that HTTP is served over. But ISPs regularly scan for HTTP requests including port 8080, to see if there is any illegal traffic occurring over the network, so it’s best to set it to a custom number (there are 65535 potential ports to use).
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The library is now accessible from the outside over a VPN, and the page is HTTP password-protected. On arrival at the URL enter the following user name and password.
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Image: Poster announcing the bootleg library, Piet Zwart Institute, July 2019
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You can easily create a unit file for calibre to run on boot on a modern (systemd) based Linux system. This means it will also restart after a crash. Create the file /etc/systemd/system/calibre-server.service with the contents shown below:
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The User and Group should be the same ones that own the files in the calibre library directory. It's generally not a good idea to run the server as root. Also change the path to the calibre library directory to suit your system.
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Machines can read text, and process it in complex ways. Code may contain instructions for a computer to read a file, so that its contents may be then used as part of a program. An example of this in practice is in the catalogue details of books in the library (title, author, description, publisher etc), which can be downloaded rather than manually written. This involves communication between systems to search their databases; for example, taking these details from another source, such as https://books.google.com or https://goodreads.com.
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Books can also be checked in and out of libraries by a variety of machine reading methods such as barcode scanning, or using RFID (radio-frequency identification) chips inserted into the cover.
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Image: An RFID tag; an object often contained within the cover of a public library book to track when it is checked in or out
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This text is being written on a QWERTY keyboard, through a browser, using a software called “Etherpad” that records every changeset—every typed key of the characters that are added or deleted. The software is logging these changes fast enough that it appears to be happening in real time. I can also go back through every previous changeset to older versions with the granularity of the individual character. This is the liminal space between texts; in split-seconds of processing where human writing is manipulated by machine writing.
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curl is a command that can be used from the terminal to take text from a URL. It can be piped with software such as pandoc to convert the text to other formats, and in support of a workflow I'm starting to develop, this comes in quite handy.
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I'm writing text on the pad, and then converting it to markdown. This extra step isn't necessary (in fact it adds to the work) but I'm interested in using pads as multi-flow publishing tools in the future so I'm testing this out. Also, using a pad allows me to style the text simply using markdown rather than HTML.
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For example, this is a file I made from some notes on a Flusser interview about linear writing:
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I'm then storing the files in my git, which is public. Having texts in git allows me to use its versioning capabilities, allowing me to go back over old modified versions in the file tree - I can copy paste from these snippets that I may want to go back and retain in the future...
-
The library depends on its public, just as the public depends on the library. Sharing of texts is the heart of library culture. A completely private collection lacks sociability. Libraries that operate outside of the law (shadow/extra-legal/pirate/+++) also depend on tactics to survive, such as password protection and invite-only systems for registering new users. In this context, publishing is not broadcasting, scattering seeds of information widely to encourage maximal distribution. The public sphere created by the library is limited by necessary measures designed to sustain it.
-
Image: Chained books at the medieval Hereford Library, an illustration from Streeter, B. H., (1931) The Chained Library; A Survey of Four Centuries in the Evolution of the English Library, B. Franklin : New York [1970]
-
Making something public, and making publics. Matthew Stadler, writer and co-founder of the federated publishing network Publication Studio, makes a distinction between publishing and publication. For Stadler, publication happens not only through sharing texts, but also “setting up the circumstance through which we can talk and debate them, together”.
-
Publishing survives through publication, which is the necessary creation and maintenance of the space created for a public; to read, to share texts, to discuss and publish them. Publication continues after the event of publishing.
-
Image: Still from What is Publication?, a talk by Matthew Stadler, writer and co-founder of the federated publishing network Publication Studio, available at https://vimeo.com/14888791
-
Matthew Stadler is a writer, and one of the founders of Publication Studio, a federated publishing house which operates worldwide. I met with him at Leeszaal, where we discussed our mutual interests in texts, reading, libraries and open access to knowledge. Matthew was able to give some valuable insights on what makes certain publishing models, (and libraries) successful, including Publication Studio, and Leeszaal, where he works as a volunteer. His response to my bootleg library was very encouraging. It affirmed some of the hypotheses I have proposed, and offered some insights that I found quite inspiring:
-
-
a successful publishing practice resembles an estuary, which is a fertile ecological environment formed by the confluence of saltwater, freshwater and minerals. The metaphor is extended to the practice of contingent librarianship, which doesn't opt for one stream of activity, but provides a meeting point of many
-
what I'm most interested in is readers, and shared the act of reading as the thing that binds together a library
-
the haptic experience of reading a printed book is fundamentally one of a circuit-based spatial relationship with the book - holding the verso with the left hand, and the recto with the right. In this way the body and the text form a loop
-
small, spur-of-the-moment actions, in response to immediate needs is most effective in establishing a collective publishing project; i.e. you look at what you have to do today, you print a book, tomorrow you develop the library, a little at a time, rather than as part of some grand scheme that can very quickly become oppressive and driven by ideology instead of a practical response to circumstances
-
As a writer, Matthew's interests are in the extension of the life of the book post-publication, and how it survives after it is published. There is quite a proliferation of "unofficially published" books made by artists and designers, but these are usually tied to an event: an artwork, a catalogue, a book launch; soon to be forgotten. For him (like myself), the visibility of readers supports the argument for a library's existence. This was the impetus behind a series of books published by Publication Studio, which were free to annotate using software called an.notate. Further to this interest, he co-wrote and published a book called Revolution: A Reader, which is a book made from annotations made on the topic of revolution. I showed him the system of annotation on the bootleg library, which at present is just a link to an etherpad in the description. He pointed out that while the etherpad is a fertile and dynamic collaborative writing environment, having annotations in a separate window to the text lacks fixidity, and proximity.
-
Matthew also brought up the topic of renumeration for publication - asking if I charged a fee for the services I offer. To me, it is not only unnecessary, but also contradictory to the type of culture the bootleg library should foster. I prefer to exchange bootlegged books for something else, and I'm printing and making them at very little material costs, only my time is expensive. I realise that this luxury is one I can afford only now, and that the question of money (as a necessary part of sustaining a publishing practice) will be an important one to address in the future.
-
I'm quite interested in the aspect of publication that Matthew champions; one that ensures the survival of a publication after the fanfare of the launch event. Thinking about the use of the text in 20, 30 years time gives a very different set of priorities to thinking about how it will be read as a "current" publication. The way texts are read, distributed, and most importantly shared, precipitates a form that must be durable, and suitable to the long-term needs of the public it is presented to.
-
The library collection is intentionally small; it does not wish to be everything to everyone. Focused library sessions are held regularly, and informally, with participants free to come and go as they please. The sessions do not require registration, and make no demands on participants. The result is often a small group of session attendees, who can offer personal insights and opinions in an intimate setting. It is more beneficial to the library’s development to have a conversation between a small number of participants than to lecture to a crowd.
-
Image: bootleg library session at Varia, A Collective-space for Everyday Technology, Rotterdam, 26th January, 2020
-
Date & Time:
-27.11.19: 10:20-11:50
-28.11.19: 10:00-11:00
-04.12.19: 10:00-11:30
-Location:
-04.128 (A small office in the drawing station, by the printer)
-Things to bring: a computer (or a USB drive) with some of your favourite texts on it, a cup for tea or coffee if you want some (there will be spare cups if needed)
-
-bootleg library sessions
-During these sessions, we'll have an introduction to the bootleg library, and create user accounts. Once you have a user account you will have full access to useful features of the library, such as arranging the collection through public and private "shelves", as well as downloading and uploading texts. If we have time, we can discuss the things we're reading, and how we'd like to use this library. These sessions are free and open for all to attend, and tea, coffee and snacks will be provided.
-
about the bootleg library
-The bootleg library is a local collection of texts, available in digital (mostly PDFs and EPUB) and physical (printed) form. The digital library is available over a local network, at this URL: http://145.24.131.15:20190. Much of the collection has been “bootlegged”, meaning that the books have been copied, modified, and redistributed, unauthorised, as fairly faithful reproductions of a source publication.
-
The physical library is a growing collection of republished books, mostly made by Simon Browne (XPUB), sometimes donated by visitors. These books, currently stored in a box on a shelf in the Lens-Based studio, are available to be read, borrowed and annotated, with a condition that they are returned.
-
The digital library runs on calibre-web https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web, a web interface for Calibre, which is open-source software for ebook management. Calibre allows storage and conversion of ebooks in many file formats, which can all be listed under the one catalogue entry, providing a diversity of formats for different reading needs; print, full text search, copy/paste, hyperlinked references, etc. The software also allows users to manually or automatically enter cataloguing details, and create and edit "shelves". These shelves are either public or private, so users may organise the collection together, and also create their own sections of books that are individually organised.
-
The bootleg library has a smaller collection than many other libraries, but it is personalised, collective, and local. It has a curated collection of eclectic texts, individually uploaded and catalogued by readers who want to share them. Readers, and the texts they read, are represented in the library, and by way of alternative library practices this representation produces a certain kind of sociability. Through using this library, readers and texts become active participants in the collection. If you know the person you know something about the book, and vice-versa, or if you don't there is the opportunity to find out more.
-
-
-
The conditions for uploading are that;
-
-
the contributor is familiar with the text, and
-
the contributor completes the metadata on each upload
-
Most important are the description and page fields; these are completed subjectively. Texts are tagged with keywords that indicate the subject, such as “Media Theory”, “Fiction”, “Technical manuals” etc., and also (if applicable) the person who referred them, which can be the contributor, or another person e.g. “Amy’s books”, “Steve’s books”, “Simon’s books” etc. Anyone who is on the local network and knows the URL can download or upload texts, but only those with a user account will have access to its more useful features, such as the ability to create and edit public and private “shelves”, which is how the collection may be both collectively, and individually organised.
-
During these workshops, we will engage in a variety of activities;
-
-
creating user accounts
-
collectively determining the development of desired features in the library
-
uploading and cataloguing texts
-
classifying texts in shelves, both public and private
-
downloading, reading, annotating and discussing texts
-
digitising printed matter, including scanning and OCR
-
designing, printing and binding books for the physical bootleg library
-
The Bootleg Library represents its readers through various strategies;
-
-
a horizontal approach to classification through collective organisation of public shelves
-
personalisation of the catalogue through subjective descriptions and tags, elevating the position of the reader in regard to texts
-
ability to navigate the collection through the sociability of its users - if you know a person whose name appears as a tag in the metadata, you know something about the text, and vice-versa
-
development of a collection and interface made by and for its readers, containing texts that are personally chosen and shared within our community
-
The workshop sessions are open to all who are interested, and will be published on the media design calendar. Registration is not necessary, but please refer to the calendar entries for any other specific requirements for each workshop.
-
booklet.sh for PDF imposition into a booklet[edit]
-
I found another way to do imposition using a script Michael wrote called booklet.sh, downloadable here: https://git.xpub.nl/murtaugh/95layouts
-It's a shell script that can run in the bin folder from the home directory, which allows you to run it wherever you are in the computer - you don't have to cd to the folder where the script is. To enable this, first you have to echo the path for the bin folder that the scripts are in. The command to run it from the terminal is:
-
-
booklet.sh source.pdf
-
-
It needs a few dependencies to run (mainly psutils).
-
-
Requirements: psutils, pdftk, python3 with reportlab (make_blank_pdf.py)
Note: Comment out or delete the last line to produce three .ps files - the first one is the source PDF, the second is the PDF imposed in the correct order, the third one is the imposed PDF pages on an A4 page. This works well if all you want to do is impose, print and fold. For cutting sheets you need to position the pages 2-up, centred on the page, which I can't quite figure out how to do...
-
The jam band The Grateful Dead were followed around the United States by a legion of die-hard fans, proclaiming themselves “Deadheads”. Cheaply available cassette recorders allowed them to tape concerts and then share recordings amongst each other. Thinking of this, I’m reminded of John Cage’s motto, “Everything you do is music, and everywhere is the best seat.” Each position in the audience produces a slightly different recording, and this multiplicity of form connects the audience not only with the music, but with each other.
-
There are files in the library that are of the same text, but they have travelled different paths to get there, accumulating difference through methods such as annotation and material transformation. And so, they have different materialities, lending weight to the argument that a text is not identical with itself; that there is no such thing as a unique, singular, original “work”, but instead many different versions of texts, born through the accidents of their creation.
-
Image: “Deadheads” recording a live Grateful Dead concert, 1972
-
“Deadheads” recording a live Grateful Dead concert, 1972
-
---
-title: notes on texts
-author: collective/Etherpad
----
-
-Notes on *Notes on Texts*, with Simon Browne, contingent librarian* at the bootleg library*
-
-## url to this editable pad
-<https://pad.xpub.nl/p/Notes_on_texts>
-
-## bootleg library
-+ <https://hub.xpub.nl/bootleglibrary>
-User: THENWHO
-Password: WASPHONE
-
-### we will use:
-* calibre-web, the software the bootleg library runs on
-<https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web>
-
-* Etherpad, a browser-based, realtime collaborative text editor
-<https://pad.xpub.nl>
-
-* Markdown, a lightweight markup language
-<https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/wiki/Markdown-Cheatsheet>
-<https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax>
-
-* Pandoc, a universal document converter
-<https://pandoc.org/>
-Installation guide:
-<https://pandoc.org/installing.html>
-
-### workflow summary:
-
-**1. upload to the bootleg library**<br />
-**2. select a PDF, choose a page from that text**<br />
-**3. annotate the page in a new etherpad document (use markdown for structure)**<br />
-**4. export to plain text from etherpad**<br />
-**5. convert .txt to .EPUB**<br />
-**6. upload to the bootleg library**<br />
-**7. paste URL of the pad you used**<br />
-
-### workflow steps in detail:
-
-**1. upload to the bootleg library**
-
-* Click 'upload'
-* Choose a text from your computer
-* Enter metadata, or download it
-* Click 'submit'
-
-
-**2. select a PDF, choose a page from that text**
-
-* Click on a catalogue entry to see the book details
-* Click on 'read in browser', choose 'pdf'
-* Part of what calibre web does is create URLs for each book in the library, for instance, Raymond Queneau, Exercises in Style is now referenceable as....
-
-<https://hub.xpub.nl/bootleglibrary/read/382/pdf>
-
-* Scroll to a page in the browser e-reader
-* Add an anchor to the URL with #page=17 (this will load the URL at pg 17)
-
-<https://hub.xpub.nl/bootleglibrary/read/382/pdf#page=17>
-
-
-**3. annotate the page in a new etherpad document (use markdown for structure)**
-
-* Make a new etherpad document* using <https://pad.xpub.nl>, name it anything you want
-* Add details for title and author following the example below. The title and author can be anything you want, but this metadata is required to make an EPUB, so make sure you enter something
-
-<code>
----
-title: Annotations on Exercises In Style
-author: collaborative/Etherpad
-date: 21/05/20
----
-</code>
-
-* Write your annotations, use markdown* if possible
-
-Cheatsheet available here: <https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/wiki/Markdown-Cheatsheet>
-
-### Quick Markdown guide
-
-* You can add URLs as hyperlinked text, for example with
-
- [Label text here](https://hub.xpub.nl/bootleglibrary)
-
- or
-
-* You can also add a URL like this
-
- <https://hub.xpub.nl/bootleglibrary>
-
-
-* Headings can be added like this:
-
-
- # h1
-
- ## h2
-
- ### h3
-
-
- and so on...
-
-
-* Emphasis can be added with <code>*single asterisks*</code>, bold with <code>**double asterisks**</code>
-
-
-* Add a heading, and the URL to the pdf, before exporting, for example
-
-<code>
-# Annotations on *Notation*
-
- [page 17](https://hub.xpub.nl/bootleglibrary/read/382/pdf#page=17)
-</code>
-
-**4. export to plain text from etherpad**
-
-* Click on the 'Import/Export from/to different file formats' option
-* Export current pad as: 'plain text' (the file will be saved as a .txt, and named after the pad)
-
-
-**5. convert .txt to .EPUB**
-
-* Using pandoc*, run this command in the terminal (swap out the file names)
-
-<code>
-pandoc --from markdown --to epub my_etherpad.txt -o annotations.epub
-</code>
-
-
-**6. upload to the bootleg library**
-
-* Click on the book you annotated to see the book details
-* Click on 'Edit metadata'
-* Scroll down, click on 'Upload Format'
-* Upload the EPUB you made to the same catalogue entry
-
-**7. paste URL of the pad you used:**
-
-https://pad.xpub.nl/p/exercises_in_style_annotations
-https://pad.xpub.nl/p/entreprecariat_annotations
-https://pad.xpub.nl/p/Annotations_On_The_End_of_Policing
-
-
-
-## other tools for annotation
-<https://linux.die.net/man/1/pdftk> (tool: stamp)
-
-<https://beepb00p.xyz/annotating.html> (annotating the web)
-
-<https://hypothes.is/><br />
-<https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mediadesign/User:Angeliki/X-LIB/Annotations><br />
-<https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mediadesign/File:Annotated_stein.jpg><br />
-
-
-## other references
-
-House of Leaves, Danielewski
-
-<https://www.katjarempel.de/project/ebookdossier.html>
-
-<http://www.kajsadahlberg.com/work/a-room-of-ones-own--a-thousand-libraries/>
-
Networking is not a dirty word. I’m not talking about networking as schmoozing, rubbing elbows with those you wish to impress, handing out business cards like there’s no tomorrow. I mean forming networks of one’s own[1], within which the library can take shape and survive. Maintaining these networks ensures that the space for publication is available.
-
We started with a reading of a text on centralised, decentralised, and distributed networks that included a diagram made by Paul Baran for the RAND corporation. This diagram displays classic ways to visualise these networks.
-
As part of the Infrastuctour, when we set up our homeservers, I worked with Artemis to create a visualisation of the dependencies involved setting them up.
-
I made a map of the location of homeservers and routers, including the other (non-XPUB) network users as well as situations where it was not possible for XPUB students to connect their server to their home router, and so had to depend on others. Manetta introduced me to Inca Quipu, a way that the Inca recorded numbers by tying knots in strings.
-
-
-
I connected a piece of string I'd tied knots in to represent my external IP address for my home server, as a way to visualise the idea of connecting and also the route that a client follows when connecting to my website, which is in reverse from the way I would display my IP.
-
I began collecting relevant texts to my research and creating html pages to store them on my website. This has been a useful way to develop my web design knowledge and skills as well as provide theoretical basis for the research I'm undertaking into network topologies.
-
-
-Tung-Hui Hu: Truckstops on the Information Superhighway
-https://issue.xpub.nl/08/Research/b-e-e-t.r-o-o-t.net/truckstops_on_the_information_superhighway.html
-
These texts introduced me to alternative models for mapping topologies such as "klein worms", referred to in both Hui (2015) and Rand's (1970) texts. Klien worms are based on the klein bottle, which falls into the category of "topologically impossible" objects (such as moebius strips etc.).
-
-
The concept of paranode (as suggested in Constant's Feminist Server Manifesto, and further explored by Zach Blas) was intriguing, and I resolved to keep this in mind when mapping network topologies. I see the paranode as both a disruptive concept (the thing that isn't there?), also not related to physical devices (established as nodes, but instead on social and conceptual relations between people and the world). I took initial references from the SI concept of the derive as a way to rethink autonomy in public space.
-
The author defines the paranodal in this way: the space between nodes; the space that is not dead, but very much alive.
-
The author also uses Ranciere's terminology, saying: the paranodal is "the part of those who have no part", where we experience what it is to be outside of the network while still being related to it.
-
I began recording some of my thoughts around the concept of contingent autonomy and how it relates to mapping. These refer to the map/territory problem, which sees a 1:1 map as redundant (and therefore useless) and also Hakim Bey's Temporary Autonomous Zone concept (introduced to me by Tancre), where the 1:1 map is the only possible way for someone to have autonomy.
-https://pad.xpub.nl/p/map_thoughts
-
This script applies transformations to the image before running OCR, resulting in a clearer result:
-
-
-
# import the necessary packages
-#from PIL
-import Image
-import pytesseract
-import argparse
-import cv2
-import os
-
-# construct the argument parse and parse the arguments
-ap = argparse.ArgumentParser()
-ap.add_argument("-i", "--image", required=True,
- help="path to input image to be OCR'd")
-ap.add_argument("-p", "--preprocess", type=str, default="thresh",
- help="type of preprocessing to be done")
-args = vars(ap.parse_args())
-
-# load the example image and convert it to grayscale
-image = cv2.imread(args["image"])
-gray = cv2.cvtColor(image, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
-
-# check to see if we should apply thresholding to preprocess the
-# image
-if args["preprocess"] == "thresh":
- gray = cv2.threshold(gray, 0, 255,
- cv2.THRESH_BINARY | cv2.THRESH_OTSU)[1]
-
-# make a check to see if median blurring should be done to remove
-# noise
-elif args["preprocess"] == "blur":
- gray = cv2.medianBlur(gray, 3)
-
-# write the grayscale image to disk as a temporary file so we can
-# apply OCR to it
-filename = "{}.png".format(os.getpid())
-cv2.imwrite(filename, gray)
-
-# load the image as a PIL/Pillow image, apply OCR, and then delete
-# the temporary file
-text = pytesseract.image_to_string(Image.open(filename))
-os.remove(filename)
-print(text)
-
-# show the output images
-cv2.imshow("Image", image)
-cv2.imshow("Output", gray)
-cv2.waitKey(0)
-
Open-source means exactly that; the source code is open for anyone to copy, modify and distribute it. The library is running on the open-source software Calibre, and is accessed through a browser using calibre-web, a web-app for ebooks stored in a Calibre database. It’s important that the library software is open-source, as this empowers us to own and modify it to suit our particular needs and interests. Technology and culture exist in a dynamic interplay, shaping and being shaped by each other.[1]
-
The notion of open-source can be extended to books as well; already there is the “public domain” (works that are outside of the bounds of copyright law, and therefore fair game) and “fair use”, which allows works to be used without asking for permission from the copyright owner, for the purposes of commentary, criticism and parody. In addressing the accessibility needed for a true knowledge commons to be protected, copyright laws are flawed to begin with as they assume that knowledge is private property.
-
Image: Screenshot of calibre-web interface
-
-
-
↑Hobart, M.E. and Schiffman, Z.S. (1998) Information ages: literacy, numeracy, and the computer revolution. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
-
1. There is a lot of redundancy on the "categories" page. Categories are defined by tags - which are written subjectively, or downloaded from existing data on the uploaded books. There should be a distinction between categorising texts, and tagging them.
-
2. Tags are case-sensitive, leading to multiple entries of the same tag (e.g. Media Theory vs Media theory vs media theory)
-
-
-
-
1. Create a series of general categories, and then tags can exist as sub-categories. Further to this, can tags also be used dynamically? E.g. being able to highlight more popular tags? Tagging people?
-
1. We noticed that if an article is uploaded from JSTOR, the book automatically takes the JSTOR logo as the cover. Is this because it is watermarked on the first page of the PDF?
-
-
-
1. Could watermarking be a way to make covers of future uploaded PDFs?
-
1. Upload cover from local drive - currently only accepts jpegs, and the field remains empty after you choose a jpeg to upload
-
2. "Submit" button vs "Upload format" button - a bit confusing because of placement, similarity of meaning between "submit" and "upload"
-3. "Get" metadata is ambiguous
-4. Not possible to create shelves while in book view, limiting the functionality. Being able to create a shelf while looking at a book would be a more immediate use of the shelves
-5. At the moment, it's not possible to see who uploaded what. This limits the sociality of the site - it might be a nice way to recommend other texts if we can see who uploaded them
-6. If you click on a shelf, you get the option to download its contents - this is currently done one-by-one.
-7. No ability to change username at present - what if people want to use a handle rather than their real name, but don't think about this when making their account?
-8. Journal articles - how do you enter a season, e.g. "Autumn, 1977"?
-9. At present, there is no ability to see the whole collection without filtering - e.g. you can only see by "recently added", "read" or "unread" etc. What if you want to see the entire collection?
-
-
-
-
-
1. Allow png to be accepted, and make it clearer within the interface that the cover image has been uploaded (perhaps with a thumbnail of it?)
-
2. Create a clear distinction between uploading a new format of the same text, and submitting metadata, e.g. "upload", and "add new format"
-3. Change "get" for "download"
-4. Create this functionality
-5. Implement a feature in book view that recommmends books that are related, and/or recommends the reader who uploaded the book
-6. Include an option to download everything on a shelf
-7. Create this functionality
-8. Create this functionality
-9. Implement a feature allowing user to browse everything without filtering
-
a) what purpose does annotation serve (in your case)?
-
Annotations in the form of accumulative traces of reader's interactions with texts underline the sociability of libraries - not just collections of knowledge but discourse around them; [How?] dispels notions of the singular, authority and property in favour of collectivity and plurality and highlights the social construction of knowledge
-
b) what does it do for the reader (in your case)?
-
Simon: Annotation affirms the idea that a text is part of a discourse - not in isolation from other texts/writers - and that knowledge is socially constructed. Annotation is a way for a reader to become visible to others and part of this discourse. It avoids authorship, and singular notions of knowledge production.
-
c) what does it do for the annotators (in your case)?
-
Simon: In my case, the annotators are the readers. Annotation exists as an action in response to the text, or to existing annotations. It can be idiosyncratic, and readable only to the annotator, therefore revealing (some) elements of how that particular person interprets the text. But, more often there are unspoken conventions to the types of annotations typically used, e.g. underlining, highlighting, circling, asterisks, dots etc. These can be defined by the technical limitations of the technology used, or linguistic (and typographic) conventions. This commonality begins to create a shared vocabulary through which readers read each other's responses to texts (here "read" can mean interpret, or access, like a file).
-
YOUR PROJECT
-look at your project descriptions and use them as a basis to make a plan
-
-
define your aim [see above]
-
what needs to be done?
-
make a timetable
-
what needs to be developed further?
-
who can help you? and how?
-
consider how you can organise your upcoming methods sessions (5 & 19 June) so they can help you realise your aim.
-
General question: what is the interface to your part the project. OR How do you invite people in to your project?
-
02.12.19 The nomadic physical bootleg library[edit]
-
The physical bootleg library is a collection of books, mostly made at PZI by myself and other students, or donated by visitors to PZI. The books are kept in a repurposed champagne crate, usually stored on a shelf in the Lens-Based studio. The only condition for borrowing books is that they are returned at some point. The dimensions of the box introduce certain constraints on the size and quantity of books contained within. The box is portable, allowing it to be placed in many locations:
-
-
-
-
-
-
In the LB studio (its usual location)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
On top of the water fountain on Level 4
-
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-
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In the kitchen on Level 4
-
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By the printer on Level 2
-
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On top of the letterboxes on Level 2
-
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At the desk in the Research Station where you borrow/return books
-
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On a bookshelf in the Research Station
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On a table in the main entrance to WdKA Wijnhaven building
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On top of some signage in the WdKA Wijnhaven building
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On a table in the De Willem cafeteria
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In an elevator in the WdKA Wijnhaven building
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The portability of the box means that it could be an interesting container & receptacle for libraries that travel - I'm quite interested in the possibility of using the box to transport and store both printed and digital books, especially in temporary library situations (on hotspotted Raspberry Pi for example) that could be used in worksessions at various locations.
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Historically, the word “text” comes from the Proto-Indo-European word teks-, meaning “to weave, to fabricate, to make; make wicker or wattle framework”. The written word is a text, and so is a conversation, both represent the exchange of shared concepts woven into the fabric of communication. There is also an exchange between written and spoken texts; discussions which influence writing, and writing which sparks conversations.
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The digital library creates texts through its catalogue, where the metadata for each entry comprises a paratext[1] that not only adds meaning to the core text, but also influences how a reader will discover it in the collection by fields such as tags and description. Metadata which is downloaded and entered automatically comes from online commercial sources has a particular promotional tone. Those who write metadata should do so subjectively; descriptions based on personal significance represent the text and the readers, equivalently.
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The library is sustained through producing texts.
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Image: Papyrus, an early writing surface made from woven reeds
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↑Genette, G. (1997) Paratexts: thresholds of interpretation. Literature, culture, theory 20. Cambridge ; New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press.
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a) what purpose does annotation serve (in your case)?
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Annotations in the form of accumulative traces of reader's interactions with texts underline the sociability of libraries - not just collections of knowledge but discourse around them; [How?] dispels notions of the singular, authority and property in favour of collectivity and plurality and highlights the social construction of knowledge
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b) what does it do for the reader (in your case)?
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Simon: Annotation affirms the idea that a text is part of a discourse - not in isolation from other texts/writers - and that knowledge is socially constructed. Annotation is a way for a reader to become visible to others and part of this discourse. It avoids authorship, and singular notions of knowledge production.
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c) what does it do for the annotators (in your case)?
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Simon: In my case, the annotators are the readers. Annotation exists as an action in response to the text, or to existing annotations. It can be idiosyncratic, and readable only to the annotator, therefore revealing (some) elements of how that particular person interprets the text. But, more often there are unspoken conventions to the types of annotations typically used, e.g. underlining, highlighting, circling, asterisks, dots etc. These can be defined by the technical limitations of the technology used, or linguistic (and typographic) conventions. This commonality begins to create a shared vocabulary through which readers read each other's responses to texts (here "read" can mean interpret, or access, like a file).
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YOUR PROJECT
-look at your project descriptions and use them as a basis to make a plan
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define your aim [see above]
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what needs to be done?
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make a timetable
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what needs to be developed further?
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who can help you? and how?
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consider how you can organise your upcoming methods sessions (5 & 19 June) so they can help you realise your aim.
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General question: what is the interface to your part the project. OR How do you invite people in to your project?
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In order to give an appraisal of the necessity for professionalism within librarianship, first the concept of “professional” must be unpacked. Professional in what sense? The most generic definition of being able to profess a skill is the first that comes to mind. This seems hardly a thing to argue against, as the particular skills of professional librarians are certainly called for in most cases. If we take another generic assumption that the profession of a librarian revolves around the mores of making information accessible, then this invites questions about associations between moral behaviour and professionalism. All this aside, what I can say is that professional librarians are not seriously threatened by the amateur librarians, operating from a distance. The threat comes from much closer for them; budget cuts that cripple and close their libraries, policies driven by the encyclopedic expectation that digital volumes of data inspire.[1]
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Image: A makeshift library checkout card, usually placed in a pocket in the back of a book
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↑Murray, J.H. (1998) Hamlet on the holodeck: the future of narrative in cyberspace. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
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Session at the Rietveld Library, with Eva Weinmayr, An Mertens, Martino Morandi, Anita Burato, Lieven Lahaye, & XPUB1.
-Central to the session was a presentation on the Rietveld's cataloguing system, which employs open-source software and also a semi-permanent library.
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The Rietveld Library uses Evergreen open-source software to catalogue its books. They have developed it with the aim of making the infrastructure of the library cataloguing system more visible. This in line with workshops with students to address the fact that students use both analog and digital books, as well as many files, docs etc that are usually disorganised.
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The EPUB format offers a lot of potential in its structure - composed of HTML files, and stored in folders according to chapter - offers a lot of potential in its structure to "bring books together" or to make "a book of a book". Based on Ivan Illich's Tools for Conviviality, Rietveld librarians have republished books by scanning, OCR processing and converting to EPUB.
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splotr (semi-permanent library of the rietveld[edit]
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splotr (Calibre server running on a Raspberry Pi) is a small repository that is connected to the main catalogue of the library. This allows students to gather digital files in a device that is accessible over a local network, and associate them with files and books in the more stable, "permanent" catalogue.
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Content: What is in the library?
-How much? PDFs - a lot! (hard to see how many, but 26,000+ and counting...) theory and critical theory
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Users: Who is using / uploading / downloading?
-Used by researchers, academics, students, people interested in theory who can become members by invitation. Members of the site can upload and download, and request new titles through a messageboard.
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Catalog: What is the system? How is it organised? How about its ontology?
-Indexed, by "catalog" (listing by author name), "collection" (listing by topic), and also by "requests" (listing by new requests, most requested, unrequested, and everything - also with RSS feed)
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Infrastructure: What are technical specs? Software? Hardware?<
-Probably runs on self-hosted server - you access it through a browser
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Politics: What is the attitude?
-Kind of like a private club - invite only
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Economy: Sponsors? Donation? Advertising?<
-No advertising on site - no information about sponsors or donations on site either...
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Content : What is in the library? How much?
-(PDF, VIDEO, AUDIO...) art, media, theater... in the contest of avant-gard in 2011 over 7,500 artists and over 2500 full-length avant-garde films and videos
-Users: Who is using / uploading / downloading? editors + volunteers + users + artists
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Catalog: What is the system? How is it organised? How about its ontology?
-each section has an editor who brings to the site their area of expertise / structured as a research project, index with descriptions
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Infrastructure: What are technical specs? Software? Hardware?
-servers donated by several universities as a means of study
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Politics: What is the attitude?
-library which is ever-expanding in uncanny—and often uncategorizable—directions / no logo,advertise,donation / anti-institutional / Act as a museum
-alternative by invoking a gift economy of plentitude with a strong emphasis on global education
-Economy: Sponsors? Donation? Advertising? volunteering / no advertising / free download / autonomous no sponsors
-Law: How does it interface? no financial interest but educational approach. VS copyright
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Content: What is in the library? How much?
-Project Gutenberg started in 1971. Texts in the library are those that have entered the public domain after exceeding the statute of limitations (in 1971 it was 14 years after death of the author, then 28, now 50 years). The website offers 58,000+ free "eBooks" (ePUB, Kindle, HTML and plain text formats). The collection is described as being comprised of three core types of text, "light literature" (e.g. Alice In Wonderland), "heavy literature" (e.g. Shakespeare), and "references" (e.g. encyclopedias)
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Users: Who is using / uploading / downloading?
-Anyone can download without registering an account. Only the site admin can upload.
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Catalog: What is the system? How is it organised? How about its ontology?
-Indexed alphabetically by author, title, language, "special categories" and recent uploads. Also includes a search function based on U.S. Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), and Yahoo and Google search (using metadata)
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Infrastructure: What are technical specs? Software? Hardware?
-Runs off a wiki. Hosted by ibiblio.org ("one of the largest free information databases online"). Accessed through the browser.
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Politics: What is the attitude? Based on democratic principle of shared knowledge.
-Operates (mostly) within the law. Heavily affiliated, with sister organisations in many countries, as well as partnerships with many other libraries and organisations that provide software to help read eBooks.
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Economy: Sponsors? Donation? Advertising?
-Project Gutenberg began with a serendipitous grant to Michael Hart (founder of Project Gutenberg) of an operator's account with $100,000,000 of computer time in it in 1971. Now, donations are accepted, run by volunteers (also makes calls for volunteer help - "digitizing, proofreading and formatting, recording audio books, or reporting errors").
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Law: How does it interface?
-(mostly) Legally, as most texts are within the public domain.
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-A) DESCRIPTION: an abstract of what each shadow library is [Steve suggests: make this 300 words or so]
-B) QUESTIONS: what type of questions does it raise? (e.g. what type of assumptions are implicit in its ontology?)
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PROJECT GUTENBERG
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Abstract — Project Gutenberg, initiated in 1971 by Michael Hart, is the world's oldest digital library of "eBooks", that is, books that are available electronically as PDFs, HTML, ePUB and plain text format. The collection has more recently expanded to include audio books, and texts in a variety of languages other than English. On the wiki-based website www.gutenberg.org, more than 58,000 eBooks are indexed by author, title, language and "recently posted". The search function allows users to look for titles by US Library of Congress search terms, as well as by going through Google and Yahoo metadata. The majority of these books are within the public domain and therefore free from copyright restrictions, although undoubtedly there are some that are orphaned by subsequent changes to US copyright terms (which in most cases of published texts, is now 70 years after the death of the author). Due to this, as well as differences in copyright law internationally, the complete legal legitimacy of its collection is in question, despite careful attempts to comply with US copyright law. It is important to note that Project Gutenberg is a project, rather than a single library, with sister affiliations in many countries (Project Gutenberg Australia, Project Gutenberg Europe among many others). This, alongside its non-profit stance (Project Gutenberg accepts donations, and also calls for volunteer help with proofreading and digitization of books, as well as recording audio books) lends moral legitimacy to its online distribution of texts.
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Questions —
-Looks like a classic collection; the interface is classic; based on a wiki; speaks of legitimacy
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Who is responsible and what are they responsible for?This is all the stuff that's in the public domain...
-What could be the motivation to make such a library?
-What values does it communicate? Good. Air of legitimacy; “library of congress search terms” and google to collect information. On this way they seek legitimacy from the on-line and off-line agents.
-What do they mean 'a project'? (is this an agent of legitimacy?) Involves many people; projects into the future; mutable (not set in stone)
-What is it filtered out and what are the political implications of that?
-How does the codex form limit what is available?
-Who does the library serve? user friendly interface; Also limitations of content, classic collection
-Who is responsible and what are they responsible for?
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AAAAARG.FAIL
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Abstract — Out of the necessity for a library, for artist Sean Dockray's LA-based educational institution called "The Public School", aaaaarg.fail (formerly aaarg.org, then aaaarg.org) is a website that hosts a collection of mostly theory and critical theory texts, and an online forum for members. Access to the collection comes from registering an account (you must be invited by a member first). Members can upload and download texts, as well as request titles via the forum. The changes in the domain name for the library come from repeated copyright infringement allegations from publishers of works that have been made accessible on the site, including the Australian publisher Macmillan. The publisher hired Mark Taylor, a former music industry executive, who was instrumental in bringing forth a cease and desist order against aaarg.org. Dockray later called this "another case where university students are conceived of as consumers, as carriers of debt for everything from degrees to consumer electronics to intellectual property" (http://unprojects.org.au/magazine/issues/issue-4-2/the-future-and-the-public-school/ ).
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Questions —
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Who does the library serve? (who are the customers?) Intellectual snobs. You have to be invited
-Forum? What affordance does that give?Sociability? There is a set of manners
-The forum produces a text (a form of collective annotation); a discussion on the texts in the library. Because you can make requests it is much more personal. You can also select by "most requested", which means that a hierarchy of information is produced within the forum.(by the discussion of the members)
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How is it different if you can participate in discussing the content of a library, than just be a viewer-receiver of the content?
-Who is responsible and what are they responsible for?
-How is it different to be an exclusive member in order to have access to the content of a library, compared to have no restrictions in accessing it?
-How does the collection (and discourse around it) represent the members of the library?
-If the library is based on user requests, it's a mirror of the members interests/social status/credentials/ideologies/clout
-Does this platform require a certain degree of library literacy and research skills?
-Does the background of the librarians affect the content presented in a library?
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UBUWEB.COM
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Abstract — UbuWeb.com is a large web-based, free, non-commercial resource for avant-garde poetry, music, film, literature and more, founded in 1996 by poet Kenneth Goldsmith. It offers visual, concrete and sound poetry, expanding to include film and sound art mp3 archives. The site's architecture limits retrieval to keyword searching and browsing by media type and artist/project name. In addition, sustainability is a concern for this website as it was never intended to be a permanent archive. Still, there is no comparable commercial source for the content on UbuWeb so it is valuable as a resource for libraries to point users toward so long as librarians are aware of its limitations. It is a library which is ever-expanding in uncanny—and often uncategorizable—directions. Each section has an editor who brings to the site their area of expertise. UbuWeb is not n to any academic institution, instead relying on alliances of interest and benefiting from bandwidth donations from its partnerships with GreyLodge, WFMU, PennSound, The Electronic Poetry Center, The Center for Literary Computing, and ArtMob. UbuWeb was founded in response to the marginal distribution of crucial avant-garde material. It remains non-commercial and operates on a gift economy. UbuWeb ensures educational open access to out-of-print works that find a second life through digital art reprint while also representing the work of contemporaries. It addresses problems in the distribution of and access to intellectual materials.
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Questions —
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Who does the library serve?
-What could be the motivation to make such a library?
-What values does it communicate?
-How can the material available in a library shape the discourse around a particular field?
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Information, in the form of descriptions that abstract themselves from the flux of common experience, is owned by private individuals or companies. Information is property, under the law. But laws should reflect the interests of the public. The “public interest” for individuals to profit from their (and other’s) labour competes against another more public, public interest, one which sees information as common property, or one that rejects any notion of information having proprietary substance. The word “information” is related to both the Latin verb informare meaning “‘to shape’, ‘to form an idea of’, or ‘to describe’, and its cognates from the substantive “forma”, which was used meaning ‘character’, ‘form’, ‘nature’, ‘kind’, and ‘manner’”[1].
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Description seems to be the primary function of this word “information”, giving shape to experience; the very stuff of language and communication. Information has a social interest. It follows then that the most beneficial use of information would be one that serves the social good. The collective, social act of sharing information should not be trumped by individual financial interests. Never trust a corporation to do a librarian’s job.
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Image: Headquarters of The Internet Archive, San Francisco, USA
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↑Hobart, M.E. and Schiffman, Z.S. (1998) Information ages: literacy, numeracy, and the computer revolution. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
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Headquarters of The Internet Archive, San Francisco, USA
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Koninglijke Bibliotheek (Royal Library), The Hague[edit]
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On a Monday morning I took a train to the Hague, where the Koninglijke Bibliotheek, Nationale bibliotheek van Nederland, is located. I was spurred on to visit after looking for a book that Steve recommended, which apparently was available in the collection of the Royal Library when I looked through Worldcat.
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On arrival at the Royal Library, I went straight to the reception. I asked "Is this the Royal Library?" and the receptionist replied "It's up there", pointing upstairs, "But you need a pass to enter".
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"Ok, can I get a pass there?"
-"Yes, but you have to put your coat and bag downstairs in a locker".
-"Ok, thanks".
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It wasn't a very warm reception. After locking my things away, I went upstairs to the front desk of the library, where I met a more helpful staff member, who patiently explained to me that I needed to register online at a computer "over there", and that I also needed a form of ID (no problem), and something with my address on it (small problem as I didn't have anything). Most of the collection is held in stacks and must be reserved to be read. There were a lot of rules to be observed, including a reading room in which computers were not allowed (the click-clacking of typing was an issue), and although the staff member could reserve the books I needed, I couldn't take them home until my address had been verified.
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He explained:
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"If you reserve before 8:30 they'll be there at 10:00, if you reserve before 10:30 they'll be there at 1:00. And if you reserve before 1:30, they'll be there at 3:00."
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Cool. I registered online, then paid an annual membership fee (usually 15 euros, but as I am a student it was 7.50). It seemed quite strange that a national library charged for membership, and I was curious as to why.
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I left, and returned the next day to collect the two books I had reserved. At the front desk was a different staff member, who carefully explained where I needed to go to pick up my books. When I got to the collection desk, a rather flustered librarian told me that the system was down. She had my books on a shelf, but had to check to see if I could take them home or not (most of the collection can not be taken outside of the library). Thankfully she improvised an old-fashioned solution by writing down my membership details and the call number of each book. It turned out that I could take the books home. I left as fast as I could, keen to get back to school where I could scan the books and liberate them from the Royal Library.
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Main question: How can annotation be useful to us, and a third party?
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Possible ways
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Keep text and annotations together
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scan and overlay transparencies (more like a graphical representation but perhaps not very readable)
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write, re-write, cut and paste the annotations in a bigger paper all together
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use the annotation bot (a digital tool)(it would be cool if you could underline, etc - yes! including graphic elements)
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if digital, create the possibility to turn on and off the annotations to keep the original text
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bind the pages into books and make a bootleg library with them
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Separate text and annotations (deconstruction / structure analysis)
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only underlined text (in many ways: lines, circles, waves...)
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list of questions, tags, notes + composition and mapping of them (different mapping techniques)
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historical timeline
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only drawings?
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free graphical interpretation
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Computer driven annotation
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scrape the text (words processing)
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pattern recognition
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delete all articles and implicit elements
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Combine the above possibilities
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overlay of analog annotations to represent "heat patterns" (parts of the text with lots of/little engagement), as well as a digital version that is more legible
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HOW DO I KNOW WHAT I AM READING? We are discussing form how do we talk about content?
-How do you make the content readable for others?
-How do you communicate what you're interpreting?
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a) what purpose does annotation serve (in your case)?
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Annotations in the form of accumulative traces of reader's interactions with texts underline the sociability of libraries - not just collections of knowledge but discourse around them; [How?] dispels notions of the singular, authority and property in favour of collectivity and plurality and highlights the social construction of knowledge
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b) what does it do for the reader (in your case)?
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Simon: Annotation affirms the idea that a text is part of a discourse - not in isolation from other texts/writers - and that knowledge is socially constructed. Annotation is a way for a reader to become visible to others and part of this discourse. It avoids authorship, and singular notions of knowledge production.
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c) what does it do for the annotators (in your case)?
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Simon: In my case, the annotators are the readers. Annotation exists as an action in response to the text, or to existing annotations. It can be idiosyncratic, and readable only to the annotator, therefore revealing (some) elements of how that particular person interprets the text. But, more often there are unspoken conventions to the types of annotations typically used, e.g. underlining, highlighting, circling, asterisks, dots etc. These can be defined by the technical limitations of the technology used, or linguistic (and typographic) conventions. This commonality begins to create a shared vocabulary through which readers read each other's responses to texts (here "read" can mean interpret, or access, like a file).
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YOUR PROJECT
-look at your project descriptions and use them as a basis to make a plan
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define your aim [see above]
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what needs to be done?
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make a timetable
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what needs to be developed further?
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who can help you? and how?
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consider how you can organise your upcoming methods sessions (5 & 19 June) so they can help you realise your aim.
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General question: what is the interface to your part the project. OR How do you invite people in to your project?
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- identifying and naming (typo)graphical annotation methods, transcribe them to various media (digital and analog), translating/transcribing each other's systems
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- what happens when an action (e.g. writing, drawing) becomes a thing (e.g. a signature, a direction), or when a thing (e.g. a word/annotation) becomes an action (e.g. a performance)?
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- can accumulated traces of readership allow users of pirate libraries to be visible but maintain anonymity, therefore consolidating the argument for legitimacy?
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-Practical ideas for workshop(s):
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analog (printed) texts:
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transcribing:
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- identify and examine various systems of notation (music manuscripts, stage directions from a play/film, choreographic score for dance)
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- transcribe these between different media (e.g. stage directions for a PDF, choreographic score for a printout of an essay)
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-translating:
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- identify various analog methods of annotating texts (using pens etc.), and name them
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- use one (or more) systems to annotate a text
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-performing:
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- collective performance of texts with annotations - how do readers read/perform these annotations?
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-digital texts:
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digitising:
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- choose an annotated page from a book (if at Leeszaal), scan it and use Tesseract to OCR the page
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- explore the output html of the page, and see what happens to the annotations
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-retaining:
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- using provided, annotated PDFs (e.g. Borges - Garden of Forking Paths, Le Guin - Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction) - see how annotations can be retained, accumulated
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to establish lexicon(s) of graphic annotation, ways to identify and define these, and to translate them (e.g. from analogue to digital, from writer to reader)
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new knowledge?
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(possibly) using tools (such as OCR) to establish interpretations of graphic annotations, ways to retain these traces (or translations of them) when texts are digitised, (i'd reallly like to develop some tools for this), new/different semantic understandings of annotations shared by participants
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role of annotation?
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to discover what is common or diverse in our experience of reading (and annotating) texts, and also to examine the sociability around these texts - annotation as a way of comprehending not just texts but also those who read them
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Meet each other: have a quick round of saying something about ourselves and what do we know about pirate/shadow libraries. Short description of the steps of the workshop and let people know we'll be recording.
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Overview of what happens in this workshop in one sentence:
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1st part: Reading/Annotating, heatmap
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2nd part: Discussion, Rehearsal of Performative reading and recording of performance.
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-Topic: pirate libraries - topic of special Issue 9
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Text: "In solidarity with Library Genesis & Sci-Hub" letter
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Aim: 2-3 sentences of what is the aim of this workshop. Why this collective reading-conversations matter?
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- We see "annotations" as a way to express our understandings/questions/comments/disagreements/ tensions/positions about what we read. So we can discuss about it and form a collective understanding of the text. Our aims are to:
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- open up a conversation about pirate libraries, through a deeper collective understanding of a specific text that refers to this topic (enrichment comes through collectively reading and annotating the text)
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- develop ways in which texts can become conversations through annotating together
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- make public what we have learned about pirate libraries and annotation, and to reflect on the public's response(s)
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Materials: "In Support of Library Genesis & Sci-Hub" English language letter (on A3 spread), A3 tracing paper, ballpoint pens (annotation pack)
-Participants: Individual
-Archiving step: collect tracing paper, carbon paper
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- We provide the solidarity letter in an A3 pack
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- Read the text individually
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- Annotate the text (It will be traced through carbon paper to the tracing paper underneath.)
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STEP 2: Heatmap and discussion through the annotations (20min)[edit]
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Materials: Same as Step 1
-Participants: Whole group
-Archiving step: Photographs of annotated texts and discussion
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- Create a "heatmap" of the text by placing tracing papers with annotations on top of each other, showing which areas are interesting/remarkable to others.
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- We can focus in the most "annotated", thus "active", "interesting", "relevant" parts of the text. At the end of the heatmap stage we introduce the discussion by identifying common areas of annotation, and also listing things that need further definition. Why did you annotate this part? What is the "global north"? etc.
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- Comment generally on the text, what was interesting? Did you make sense? Are there specific parts you want to discuss?
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- Conclusions? Comments? Discuss the most commented.
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- Discuss this experience and anything we want to discuss about pirate libraries, this text, our experiences.
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- Collectively determine strategies to "amplify" specific parts of the texts that either
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Participants: All together (if more than 10, divide into two groups???)
-Materials: Annotated "In Support of Library Genesis & Sci-Hub" letter, audio recording device (ZOOM rented from WdKA shop/smartphone), (maybe speakers?)
-Archiving step: Voice recording
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- Introduce by saying: "We are going to read aloud the text in turns, while also performing our annotations. Try to perform your comment to make your position/understanding of the text clear. If you have an annotation, please do or say something (e.g. interrupt, raise your hand, make a noise, use an accent, use intonation to convey emotion etc)."
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The text becomes a "play", a performance, a discussion between us
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- The purpose is to activate a text, by transforming it into a conversation through spoken annotation
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- This reading will be recorded (ask if this is ok)
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- Decide on an "interesting" way of performing and record that. It could be more than one language in this audio piece.
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- Play the collective recording from speakers placed in shelves at Leeszaal (Bluetooth)
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Later:
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- Printed version with the overlapping of individual comments - heatmap - pocket version???
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- Printed URL on annotated tracing paper to direct readers to the online versions of the texts?
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- Bookmark or some object (it can be the pocket version) to introduce it in some books in Leeszaal, understanding that as a way to spread the letter (like sowing seeds)
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- possibility of providing the solidarity letter in different languages? http://custodians.online/
-- providing two texts with different positions can be polarising rather than producing conversation
-- demonstration of the "performative reading" can illustrate different positions e.g. position of the authors, the publishers (thinking about loss of profits), how can the annotations reflect this
-- how do you annotate for dissent (e.g. using different colours etc) - heatmap stage doesn't really show position (perspective), what ways of annotating could draw out these perspectives?
-- find ways to make the texts into a conversation - "how do you generate conversation through annotation?"
-- we'll run the same task twice - how can this become a conversation between the two groups?
-- don’t obsess over producing a fixed/predetermined output in the session (if it means risking losing time for discussion & feedback)
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- Work on the production of the folder/pack (carbon paper/tracing paper) that we give to participants
-- Work on the collection of references to introduce the annotation topic and produce it (if it's finally a physical object)
-- Tools that we need: Scanner, voice recording , speakers
-- How to develop the heatmap as an output for the collective annotations (can we automatize the process??)
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In the spring and summer of 2019 we developed The Library Is Open, a publication which focuses on the operations, actions, and roles of legal and extra-legal libraries. Central to this project is the community that forms around a collection of texts – the custodians of the collection and the readers.
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The Library Is Open is the result of the third iteration of Interfacing the Law, an ongoing research project between XPUB and Constant (BE), which explores issues around extra-legal libraries, software and legal interfaces and intellectual property. Led by our guest editor Femke Snelting, we participated in many activities which were organised by invited guests:
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With Bodó Balázs, an economist and researcher on shadow libraries, we analysed the gargantuan dataset of Library Genesis, to determine trends which indicate access to texts and the social, geo-political and economic aspects at play .
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With Anita Burato and Martino Morandi at the Rietveld Library in Amsterdam, we discovered the subjectivity of subjects and thorny issues of classification and representation .
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With other readers, we deepened our understandings of texts through collective annotations.
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With artist and researcher Eva Weinmayr, who introduced us to The Piracy Project, we examined the possible motivations and differences between pirated books and their "source".
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With open-source software such as Tesseract, pdftk, and LibreOffice (and many others) we explored the technical processes used during the creation of pirate libraries, and the hidden labour involved in this.
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With fellow pirates, we considered the multiplicity of roles and activities involved in maintaining various libraries, such as Monoskop, Libgen, Aaaaaarg, Sci-Hub, Memory of the World, Project Gutenberg, +++.
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With Dušan Barok, the administrator of Monoskop and an alumnus of the Piet Zwart Institute, we discovered how Monoskop was initiated and how it has changed over time.
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-The variety of our collective sessions, and the practical exercises we performed led us to organise an afternoon of three workshops that directly address the active role of piracy, rather than simply talking about it. Encouraging small, informal, collective actions, we wanted to challenge the ordinary, hierarchical presentation of research projects in the academic context, and individual notions of authorship.
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When choosing a suitable venue for our event, we decided to ask Leeszaal (in Dutch "Reading Hall") to host our workshops. Situated in a busy, multicultural area of Rotterdam, Leeszaal exemplifies many values we sympathise with, particularly open access to knowledge, and a focus on the community that uses the space, not just for reading but for many other social purposes. These values we recognise (somewhat nostalgically) as reminiscent of public libraries of yesteryear. However, the landscape today is quite different, with huge online commercial repositories of texts (e.g. JSTOR), protected by paywalls which limit access to them, and in response the emergence of "shadow libraries".
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-In the following pages we invite you to wander through the dilemmas, outcomes and reflections that came out of our three different workshops, and interviews with people whose work is at the centre of the issues that each workshop uncovers.
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-Knowledge In Action explores the roles and activities within libraries, such as selection and inclusion of books. Interview with: Dubravka Sekulić & Leeszaal staff.
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Blurry Boundaries reveals the hidden processes and labour between the publishing and distribution of physical and digital books. Interview with: Dušan Barok.
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Marginal Conversations highlights the sociality of texts, and how they can become conversations through collective reading, annotation and performance. Interview with: Marcell Mars & Tomislav Medak.
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Although literacy is the ability to read and write, an illiterate person is often described as not being able to read, rather than write. This is because the receptive skill of reading precedes the productive skill of writing. We write in response to the information we receive. Reading requires a command of the language the text is produced in, as well as a capacity to store this information in a durable medium; a book, a file, a tape, and so on.
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Media theorist Friedrich Kittler said that, historically, reading functioned as “hallucinating a meaning between the lines”[1]. This hallucination was exemplified by poetry, whereby the poet intended to induce in the reader into a state of shock with words. Kittler argued that the harnessing of electricity was the end of such hallucinations; as soon as optical and acoustic data could be electronically stored, we no longer needed our memory, and the realm of the dead was no longer in written words. The gramophone, typewriter and film produced new ways of writing and reading texts.
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Image: Reading-and-writing-at-the-same-time, diagrammed in The Principles of Psychology, William James (1890)
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↑Kittler, F.A. (2012) Literature, media, information systems: essays. Critical voices in art, theory and culture. Johnston, J. (ed.). London New York: Routledge.
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Reading and writing are interdependent; a written text exists to be read, and is based on a history of reading comprehension and processing, from the early stages of literacy (developing ability to recognise separate characters), to reading complex texts that become references for things we write. In an operational sense, we also read what we write, as we’re writing it. So, the process of writing is combined with reading, and both gestures can be found in another word that blends the two acts together: editing.Writing, reading, editing; growing a tree while making a chair from its wood to sit on.
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Image: Simon Browne, timed writing/editing experiment using Etherpad, collaborative text-editing software, 2018. The bars at the top indicate separate durations of 5-minute writing, and 3-minute editing periods
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Timed writing/editing experiment using Etherpad, collaborative text-editing software, 2018
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Slide 1: read, write, execute
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Slide 2: legible vs readable
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Slide 3: People read best what they read most
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Slide 4: An annotated book
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Slide 5: From the Books
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Slide 6: DDC 000-099; Generalities
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Slide 7: State Library of Victoria, Redmond Barry Reading Room
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Slide 8: Traces of use
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Slide 9: The Library is Open
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Slide 10: Marginal Conversations workshop
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Slide 11: Annotation pack
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Slide 12: Performing annotations
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Slide 13: Script from Marginal Conversations
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Slide 14: Talking Clock (2015)
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Slide 15: The Remington Standard Type-Writer
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Slide 16: QWERTY layout
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Slide 17: T Y P E W R I T E R
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Slide 18: Douglas Englebart's "Mother of all demos"
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Slide 19: Englebart's keyboard with mouse
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Slide 20: Etherpad instance
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Slide 21: Etherpad experiments
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Slide 22: editorial, technical, social dimensions of text
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Slide 1: read, write, execute
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In computing, read, write, and execute are permissions that can be given to files by an administrator to user accounts, which specify how data can be used:
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read permissions allow you to read a file
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write permissions allow you to change it, but not to run it
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execute permissions allow you to run a file
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You are most likely familiar with the "read-only" permission.
-For example, a document with read-only permissions given to a user means that user can only read the document, and can't edit it.
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I have chosen this title because for this presentation I want to focus on how the contingencies offered by interfaces for reading and writing produce a certain kind of reading or writing, and also a certain kind of reader or writer.
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My main interest in this presentation is to describe through several examples, the political dynamics and particular affordances of different interfaces and sites for publication, and the subsequent techno-sociologial effects these have through the way they visualise reading, writing and making things public.
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Interfaces for reading and writing are almost always visually-oriented, and their technical conditions determine how textual information is organised and processed.
-This promotes and encourages certain ways of writing and reading.
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I will present examples from my own practice as an artist and graphic designer, and also some historical examples from computer science and engineering.
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Beginning with the field of type design and typography, I want to talk about ideas of legibility and readability, which often precede notions of how written language should be visualised in graphic form.
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Slide 2: legible vs readable
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Put simply:
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legible = clear enough to read
-readable = being easy or enjoyable to read
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Often someone will use illegibility as an excuse to argue against the use of a particular font or typeface. Physical limitations are certainly a factor in deciding how type should be shaped, down to the micro-level that scrutiny of readability brings, where enjoyment is hampered by exhausted eyes. A file can also be made readable by changing permissions. Allowing a file to be read has many other implications apart from the obvious visibility of content.
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Slide 3: People read best what they read most
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There's a famous dictum in typographic history that states "People read best what they read most"
-This means that what is deemed "readable" is only so because of the prevalence of a particular font. And so, preference for certain fonts may derive from how commonplace they are within the reading environments we encounter them.
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This statement was a call to arms for multiplicity of form in type design, to challenge this tendency for form to become flattened and homogenous in the name of "readability", but it also maintains that the way information is presented becomes monolithic, having its own, enclosed logic that is exclusionary to other systems or ways of doing.
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The eye adjusts to expect certain things it has seen before, and this idea of "easy to read" is trainable, to a certain extent. We might think that a certain font is "neutral", this is because it has become invisible to us, and it is invisible to us because it is everywhere. It therefore doesn't stand out in a way that other typefaces do.
-So the main point I will try to make in this presentation is that the particular interfaces we commonly use for reading and writing train us to read and write in certain ways, ways which we will become efficient within.
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When we shift to a different writing or reading interface, there is an adjustment, a period of discomfort as we adapt.
-We approach new interfaces through the lens of the one that preceded it, always likening it to what we are familiar with.
-The new interface presents new limitations, and also offer new, unexpected possibilities for how we imagine ourselves as participatory subjects, engaging with the text.
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The discourse around reading and writing interfaces is vast, and I do not expect to be able to cover it comprehensively in this presentation.
-I can only hope to present a small overview on these interfaces, and how they visualise language, and in turn, how they create a new subjectivity in the reader or writer.
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Slide 4: An annotated book
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First, let's look at the book as a reading interface. What we call a "book" is most often a stack of pages that are fixed at one edge to form a spine.
-Reading a book is a haptic experience; the sense of touch is in many ways just as important as the sense of vision.
-Alongside this strong tactile interaction is also the inclination for a reader to engage with the text by writing directly onto the page.
-The interface of a printed book invites writing, in fact the very first books were written by hand.
-It is not uncommon to come across another reader's notes, annotations scribbled in the margins of a book.
-Annotation is primarily a strategy of reading comprehension, and there are many activities that fall under the umbrella of "annotation", including highlighting, underlining, glossing (which is writing explicatory texts that define unfamiliar phrases or words), as well as how pages are manipulated to mark text, for example, making a bookmark by folding the corner of a page in what is often called in English a "dog-ear".
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Despite these annotations are made at different times, by different people unbeknownst to each other, their methods are often consistent with each other. Their annotations also often serve the same purpose, as a reformatting of the text that is read. So the function is sometimes editorial; highlighting or underlining is a way of drawing attention to part of the text that is relevant to the person who is reading it, giving them a way to return to it when scanning through at a later time.
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Annotation also has a social function; inscribe the presence of reader within a book. The book then becomes a vehicle for a social paratext, one that lives alongside the source text, one that can be commented on by others. Sometimes these paratexts separate from the source and become texts of their own. Glossaries come from the practices established by medieval glossators, who wrote explanations of Roman law between the lines of manuscripts. The first dictionaries served a similar purpose.
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Books held in public collections have travelled different paths through the hands of different readers. They acquire provenance and their own particular history through how they are used. A book printed, bound and distributed in an edition of many books, a multiple with the ambition to present its text as singular, becomes diversified through its use
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From the Books is a research project conducted together with graphic designer Masaki Miwa. Together, we collected scans of any traces of use we found in a section of books from a public library in Melbourne, Australia. We then categorised them and made a catalogue which we self-published.
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Slide 6: DDC 000-099; Generalities
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These books come from a section of a specific reading room in a specific library; the 000-099 section of the Redmond Barry Reading Room, at the State Library of Victoria. In Dewey Decimal Classification, 000-099 is titled "generalities", including books about bibliographic practices as well computer and information science, and also manuscripts and rare books; kind of a meta section on the library and how it organises information.
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Slide 7: State Library of Victoria, Redmond Barry Reading Room
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The SLV is a very social place; visitors use the free wifi for study, and international students often use it to call their families overseas. Others do language lessons there and gather in social groups to share skills.
-It's not a sacred or quiet like a church, more like a train station in terms of its noise and activity. The SLV forecourt is a customary meeting place, people eat lunch there on the grass, on Sundays it is a speaker's corner, protestors gather there for demonstrations.
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It illustrates well that public libraries do more than just make knowledge accessible, they also produce sociality. This sociality is reflected by the tendency for businesses to open in the periphery and capitalise on this foot traffic, or those that adopt library-like structures and practices (for example, cafes that offer free wifi or cosy nooks to read)
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Here in Rotterdam this is also present - Starbucks has opened a store at the Bibliotheek Rotterdam, there is a cafe above Rotterdam Centraal Station that houses part of the same collection. There's even a cafe called "The Library" at Mathenesserplein
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Slide 8: Traces of use
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Here are some examples of traces of use we found in the section of books we explored. We categorised them semantically under the following headings:
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ACCIDENTAL DOG-EAR
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ANNOTATION
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ASTERISK
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BOOK PRICE
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BOOKMARK
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CIRCLED TEXT
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CREASED PAGE
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CROSS
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DEAD ANT
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DOG-EAR
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ERASER RUBBING
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ERRATA
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FINGERPRINT
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FOLD
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HANDWRITTEN LETTER
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INK BLOT
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LIBRARY DOCUMENT
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LIFTED PRINT
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LINE
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LOOSE PAGE
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NOTEPAPER BOOKMARK
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NOTES
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PAGES REMOVED
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POST-IT NOTE
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RECEIPT BOOKMARK
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REPLACED IMAGE
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SCUFF
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SMUDGE
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SQUIGGLE
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STAIN
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STRIKETHROUGH
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TICK
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TORN PAGE
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TORN PAPER BOOKMARK
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UNDERLINING
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WARPED PAGE
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WEAR AND TEAR
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The traces were largely mundane, but revealed a consensus of mark-making and annotation. We also found readers intentionally using the book as a vehicle to pass messages to other readers, such as a handwritten note someone had deliberately placed in a book.
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This interest in annotation as a visualisation of reader's interaction with texts was developed further with a thematic project called "The Library is Open", conducted by Experimental Publishing in 2019. The Library Is Open was an afternoon of workshops in which we made visible the operations of libraries, including municipal, academic, and importantly, so-called "Shadow" libraries, which are ones that operate outside of legality, illegally distributing pirated copies of books.
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Slide 9: The Library is Open
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As part of "The Library is Open", I conducted a workshop called "Marginal Conversations" with two classmates, Artemis Gryllaki and Paloma Garcia.
-We held our workshop at a volunteer-run space in the inner west of Rotterdam, called "Leeszaal Rotterdam West".
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Leezaal is a kind of 'reading room', a library that does not catalogue its books, nor record when they are borrowed. Anyone may pick up a book and walk out the door.
-The initiative began in 2013 when small local libraries in Rotterdam began to close, and the initators asked their local community two questions; 1) Do we need a library?, and 2) How can you contribute?
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Leeszaal offers a safe space for members of the local community to gather, to learn languages and share skills, to read newspapers, learn how to use computers, use the internet, watch YouTube or just hang out. It's not a traditional library in any sense, but is sympathetic to many of the social democratic values of open access to knowlegde that public libraries embody.
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Slide 10: Marginal Conversations workshop
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Marginal Conversations focused on reading and annotating together, and performing our annotations. We read and annotated an open letter called "In Solidarity with Library Genesis and Sci-Hub".
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This letter asks for pirate library practices to come out of the shadows, a bold move and demand for legitimacy and visibility
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Slide 11: Annotation pack
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We made an annotation kit that contained the letter, a layer of carbon paper, and a sheet of translucent tracing paper. After reading and annotating the letter, we could compare our annotations by overlaying the tracing paper to create "heat maps" that established common areas of interest.
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Slide 12: Performing annotations
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Then we rehearsed and performed our annotations, taking turns to read the letter while others reacted with their annotations.
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Slide 13: Script from Marginal Conversations
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We made a recording of this performance, and then transcribed it into a script.
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The flipping back and forth between oral and literate productions of texts is a strategy to discover the slippages in the memory of texts that occur when transcribing. Early media theory was particularly concerned with the gap between orality and literacy, and the effect writing has on the problem of memory. Writing as a technology had a considerable effect on how we think about memory and how we form cultural narratives. The view of memory as a container within which information can be stored is very much a post-literate idea, from this also comes the the notion of "verbatim" or "word perfect". This is because what is said can be recorded in written words and stored in a text, which can be checked against for discrepancies. Pre-literate cultures think of memory instead as commemorative, a communal act of remembering together through oral storytelling traditions.
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Without a writing system in which memory can be stored and retrieved, events and narratives are seen as cyclical, and the notion of things "in their place" is ascribed to external forces like the seasons, the weather and time.
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This is a work I made in 2015, called Talking Clock. I was interested in using the mechanism of a clock to produce language, including "real" and also "potential" words.
-I made a spreadsheet to work out the best combinations of letters to use on the flip cards, plotting combinations of letters, and mapped words I knew existed, words which were possible (following linguistic conventions), and words which were unlikely. In total I produced 72 cards, 12 for the left side of the clock (one for each hour in a 12-hour cycle), and 60 for the right side (one for each minute).
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The clock displays, or "prints" 1440 words every day (1 per minute). It's very noisy, making a loud click every time a card flips over. It's very difficult to tell the time as the sequence of numbers are replaced by a different system of letters, but it's possible at least to know that the hour has changed, with a little time spent with the clock.
-There is a sense that the machine is writing the words, but they have been pre-selected by a human, myself.
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When we encounter a new word in English, it's not always possible to know how to say it, especially in English, which has different standards, and borrows words from many other languages, so spelling and pronunciation are very different sometimes. This leads to the fluidity of "potential words". Because they isn't yet a consensus on their use, there also is no consensus on their pronunciation.
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Slide 15: The Remington Standard Type-Writer
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The earliest transcription machines were ones that humans operated, becoming the transcriber.
-This lead to the invention of machines like typewriters, and practices like stenography, which were used in court cases to record proceedings.
-The need to type quickly, to keep up pace with speech and to record spoken language "verbatim" lead to the design of interfaces and systems that trained operators to use them efficiently
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In the late 19th century came the emergence of typewriters, such as this one that was produced by the American company Remington.
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Slide 16: QWERTY layout
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The layout of keys (now known as the QWERTY layout) was invented by Christopher Latham Sholes, who wanted to keep the typebars from clashing when the operator typed quickly.
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He sold his design to the Remington Company, a typewriter manufacturer, who popularised it, selling their machine alongside typing courses that trained writers to use the layout, purporting it to be the best for rapid typing.
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The QWERTY arrangement of the original Remington typewriter has remained virtually universal since the 1890s, even though more efficient arrangements have been developed. There is no particular reason why this convention has taken such a strong hold. Technological advances in machinery and electronics have rendered the problem Sholes was trying to solve redundant, but still it persists. If you've ever had to use a non-QWERTY keyboard, you may struggle.
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Slide 17: T Y P E W R I T E R
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Reportedly the Remington Company also liked its product name, "type-writer," to appear acrostically in the top row.
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Fast-forward to December 9, 1968, and computer engineer Douglas Englebart gave what is now known as "the mother of all demos" at a San Francisco computer conference.
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Slide 18: Douglas Englebart's "Mother of all demos"
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He presented a demonstration that includes many features of computer engineering and publishing that we now take for granted, including the mouse, video conferencing, the modern desktop-style user interface, word processing and collaborative text-editing.
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Slide 19: Englebart's keyboard with mouse
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About 26 mins into the presentation Englebart says "I don't know why we call it a mouse...it started that way and we never did change it."
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While the mouse is a useful tool in modern desktop-style graphic user interfaces, text editors and computer terminal windows utilise the keys and forgo the use of a mouse.
-Text editors are used for a variety of writing applications, for example programming, and writing text documents, without the need to style it graphically.
-Most computer operating systems come with a text-editing program as part of the basic package of software (e.g. Mac has "TextEdit" and Windows has "notepad"). These programs are usually used by a single user at one time.
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Some environments, such as the one Englebart demonstrates, are collaborative, allowing many users to write together in realtime.
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Slide 20: Etherpad instance
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I'd like to talk about a collaborative writing environment that exemplifies the editorial, technical and social dimensions of text; the open-source software Etherpad. This software is a manifestation of what Englebart demonstrated in 1968, and through its interface and technical configuration offers an interesting twist on the notion of public space and the public it creates.
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You can install etherpad-lite on a server, and host the software for yourself or others to use
-although most pads aren't indexed by search englines, they are 100% public, and editable to anyone who knows their URL.
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It's a very dynamic writing environment, and environment in the sense of the combinations of technical conditions of hardware and software, and how users operate within it every key you press is recorded (including deletions), building a mind-boggling database in the background which you can track in the version history, import/export text.
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The software automatically assigns authorship colours, users can change them and give themselves user names or remain "unnamed". Authorship in etherpad is blurry from the level of the user, but crystal clear from the level of the system administrator (can easily run searches on IP addresses).
-Interesting social protocols emerge from collaborative use of pads concerning conviviality (not so much spell-checking or correction). Misspelling is transgressive and signals the speller's marginal status, either preeducated, uneducated, or sloppy. Ignoring misspelling in favour of transcription, recording what is said quickly introduces a type of collective, consensual authorship.
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New users react with either enthusiasm or suspicion - to the enthusiasts, it's exciting to collaborate in realtime, to others it's just a bit too public, everything you type can be seen as you type it.
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Slide 21: Etherpad experiments
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Here is a series of solo experiments I conducted with Etherpad, where I wrote and edited text within constrained periods of time. Etherpad offers the potential for very quick visualisations of the writing and editing process through its autmoatically assigned authorship colours.
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I was interested in seeing what happened when I visualised the writing and editing process. I wrote as multiple users, opening up a new tab in a private window each time and tricking the software into thinking I was a new writer, so it gave me new authorship colours.
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This was a timed task, beginning with writing periods of 3 minutes, and a rest of 2 minutes. After 4 iterations, this shifts to 5 minutes for both respectively. I found I needed a bit more time as the text began to grow.
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This experiment showed me that editing is a form of writing, like growing a tree and making furniture from it at the same time.
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Slide 22: editorial, technical, social dimensions of text
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At the beginning of this presentation I described my interest in text and its overlapping dimensions; editorial, technical and social.
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I will go into a bit more detail now to explain further:
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editorial: text is a sequence. A line of characters and spaces, the particular order that the writer sets these in. Text becomes an object, a carrier of thoughts and feelings, something that can be sent back and forth between participants in a conversation.
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technical: text is a process. Messages and files that we share are text-based. A computer runs on software, programmed in encoded text, often the same characters that flicker before your eyes. Texts can be assembled on-the-fly as a machine reads scripts and writes output in response to input.
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social: text is a framework. The English word "text" has roots in the Proto-Indo-European word teks-, meaning “to weave, to fabricate, to make; make wicker or wattle framework”. A piece of writing is a text, and so is a conversation; texts represent the exchange of shared concepts (words, signs, representations) woven into a fabric of communication. There is also an exchange between written and spoken texts; oral discussions which prompt writing, and writing which sparks conversations. Texts elicit further texts.
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Etherpad exemplifies all three of these dimensions. The interface allows readers to become writers, and text editors, themselves. It uses the technicality of text-based software to record what is written, or deleted there in a process that is recorded in the version history. And when used collaboratively (which is what it is designed for, it creates a framework of shared concepts that come together into the one textual fabric.
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What is important about this, as well as other open-source tools for reading and writing is that they offer the potential for us to develop our own particular ways of reading and writing. There is a lot more effort that is needed in order to not just read and write, but to also determine our own definitions of what is most readable, writeable and executeable.
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An app that makes aphoristic sentences to print and display in the work space. Its use is not limited to this space, but this is taken as a departure point for testing. The app borrows from a selection of words within a limited syntax and creates new meanings in the process.
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Inspiration comes from ideas of syntactic ambiguity and lexical ambiguity, which are areas of linguistic study interested in sentences that may be read in several different ways. Ambiguity comes from both lexical and syntactic diversity, put simply, the range of diversity in both the meanings that words can point to, and also how the construction of a sentence influences a diversity of readings.
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This particular sentence uses the word "buffalo" as 3 discrete components:
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1. A proper noun (meaning the city of Buffalo in upstate New York).
-2. A verb (meaning to bully - an uncommon spoken use, but familiar to North American English speakers)
-3. A common noun (meaning a kind of bison indigenous to certain parts of North America)
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A fluent speaker of a language parses the components of an utterance, often adding contextually implied meanings that may be common in their vernacular. So the sentence (particularly in the North American town of Buffalo) can be read as:
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-Buffalobuffalo (Buffalo from the town of Buffalo)
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Buffalobuffalo [that] (other buffalo from Buffalo) buffalo (bully)
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[themselves] buffalo (bully)
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Buffalobuffalo (buffalo from Buffalo)
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This is but one of many extrapolations that can be made from the combination of words in this sentence. Other readings include:
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Buffalo buffalo (the animals called "buffalo" from the city of Buffalo) [that] Buffalo buffalo buffalo (that the animals from the city bully) buffalo Buffalo buffalo (are bullying these animals from that city).
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[Those] buffalo(es) from Buffalo [that are intimidated by] buffalo(es) from Buffalo intimidate buffalo(es) from Buffalo.
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Bison from Buffalo, New York, who are intimidated by other bison in their community, also happen to intimidate other bison in their community.
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The buffalo from Buffalo who are buffaloed by buffalo from Buffalo, buffalo (verb) other buffalo from Buffalo.
Examples of this are diverse, including famous sentences such as Noam Chomsky's famous "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously".
-This type of sentence (as well as many other examples) introduce the idea of syntactic ambiguity. Chomsky's sentence has correct grammar - all the components are there - but it has no apparent meaning.
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Regular Strategies is an app that produces sentences based on random modelling of sentences. Each sentence has the same grammatical structure, each part of speech has the same function in the parse tree. An idea is to perhaps allow users to input values specific to their circumstances, and from this generate the affirmations. These can then be printed to the workplace (either as a screensaver, or as a poster).
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A perfect-bound book is typically made with cold glue (such as polyvinyl acetate), or glue that melts at high temperatures. The benefit of cold glue is that it allows the book to lie flat when opened, as the spine is flexible. Cold-glue bound books can be made by hand with quite rudimentary equipment. All you need is a printed text block and cover, a press, a piece of gauze or cheesecloth for the spine, and a brush to apply the glue to it. This takes a lot of time, practice, skill and patience to do by hand, but machines for cold-glue binding are hard to find.
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Hot-glue binding machines can bind a book in less than 3 minutes, usually. Just be sure to set wider than normal margins before printing (I usually go for between 8 and 12mm for good measure) and make sure the book isn’t uncomfortably small. The minimum size should be considered in relation to the reader’s hands, how they grip the book and turn the pages, and how much effort will be needed to hold the book open in order to read it.
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Image: A hot-glue bound book held open with one hand
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This book took about 40 hours to create, the longest time it's taken so far... I found a PDF on Lib Gen, but for some reason the OCR'd text was tracked quite tight making each line look like a very long word - this was even worse when printed. After a quick search on worldcat, I discovered that this book was available to be borrowed from the Royal Library in the Hague. Off I went to borrow the book. I planned to scan it using the bookscanner, but the cameras kept crashing after scanning half the 433 page book. So, I managed to extract the text using Calibre's book convert process from PDF > RTF. However, after placing the text in an InDesign layout, all of the numbers appeared as missing characters. From the looks of the PDF it seemed that these were perhaps from an Opentype font's custom stylistic set, which would explain why they weren't turning up in my system fonts. Also, in the index at the back of the book the numbers seemed to have the appearance of hyperlinks (when hovering over the hand icon appears) but when clicked, did absolutely nothing. So I began the rather painstaking process of laying out the book with exactly the same text flow and page numbers as the source. The work included removing headers and page numbers from the RTF, scanning all photos from the printed book, endlessly wordspacing paragraphs to make sure they fit where they should on each page, styling the text, removing manually written hyphenation (this was done programmatically, and ended up with a few words that were joined together in the case of examples like "re- and dis- associate" becoming reand disassociate") and the seemingly endless task of manually entering in EVERY number. At times it felt a bit masochistic, but I used this time to reflect on the process, thinking a lot about the changes I was making to preserve the form of the original. Ironically, this also involved a lot of forced line breaks, which would make the task of anyone who wanted to bootleg this book a bit more difficult (forced line breaks are the bane of the bootlegger). Another strange thought - I'm reading these books as I redesign them, but my reading happens on a more superficial level perhaps, meaning that I'm not absorbing the content fully, but reading it like a machine would as I look for anomalies and address them.
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Clara Balaguer asked me for a copy of this book, and it seemed like a good opportunity to try a new printing and binding process. I decided to print the book double-sided on A4 paper, as opposed to the previous method of 2-up imposed printing on A3 paper. I wasn't very satisfied with how the previous printing method had produced a "split" in the book due to the paper grain direction. Yin Yin Wong at PS Rotterdam had recommended printing double sided rather than 2-up to avoid this, so this was the technique I decided to try out. I also decided on hand-binding it with cold glue, a technique which I had recently learned. Cold glue binding is done with equipment and materials such as a hacksaw, scissors, medical gauze (or cheesecloth), brushes, PVA glue, bookbinding thread, a jig to hold the book in while notches are cut and the spine receives its initial gluing, and a book press to keep the book in overnight, which stops the book from warping due to the high water content of the PVA glue. Cold glue binding allows the book to lay open flat on a table, a benefit I was keen to apply to this edition of the book as I was dissatisfied by how tight the binding of the first edition was because I had used the hot glue binding machine, which takes much less time but for thick books can produce a lower quality result. I was quite pleased with how this book came out, however, when applying the cover I had to decide not to glue it to the spine. Cold glue binding results in a rough spine, and hot glue creates a smooth layer of glue that dries quickly, producing a smooth spine. The only way to avoid this is to not attach the cover to the spine if using cold glue.
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Bootlegged books front covers: Second edition (left) and first edition (right)
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Front covers: Source publication (left) and second edition bootleg (right)
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Beginning of image section: Source publication (left) and second edition bootleg (right). The second edition bootleg book lies open more easily due to the cold glue binding
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Spines: Source publication (left) and second edition bootleg (right)
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Back covers: Source publication (left) and second edition bootleg (right)
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The simplest solution is to just print the source publication, but sometimes you might want to lay the text out again using a different format, font or layout, for reasons not worth going into in detail here. This means either the original text flow and page numbers should be the same, or there must be some references in the bootleg to the source publication.
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Some observations and methods:
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1) Justified text saves space and gives much more control over where to break the page.
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2) The most basic reference system is to include an index that specifies which page in the source publication matches the bootleg. However, this is not so useful when setting text for a page (e.g. PDF), and more useful for EPUBs, which don’t have the notion of a page.
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Inserting page numbers directly into the text can indicate where the page breaks in the source publication. This is quite time consuming, but it allows you a lot of freedom to differ between fonts, page and type size, text-block dimensions and page count.
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Image: A page from a bootleg of Mladen Dolar’s A Voice and Nothing More, implementing new page numbers to mark the page breaks of the source publication
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Printed: 19.11.19
-Dimensions: 155x235mm
-Cover stock: Ursus glossy white 210gsm
-Text stock: Bio Top 80gsm
-Binding: Perfect bound, cold glue
-Pages: 226pp
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This is another book where I took a text file and laid it out again in InDesign, like the copy of Dumbstruck that I bootlegged. However, this time I made a code to indicate the page numbering and text flow of the source publication. This was to provide comfortable, consistent tracking to the letterspacing - one of the issues with Dumbstruck was that, in an attempt to keep the text flow and page numbering the same, some paragraphs were too tightly, or too loosely kerned. I feel this is a more elegant solution, however, it might pose problems if someone else tried to do the same as I had (taking the text from a source publication and laying it out) as the code is now part of the text. The cover was made with glossy paper, and custom-cut vinyl stickers. In time these will probably come off, but that's conceptually sympathetic to the content of the book, which is about the transience of the voice.
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Front cover, with white vinyl text and graphics
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Spine
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Code referring to text flow of the source publication
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Bootleg acknowledgement
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Spread: Book opens easily due to cold glue binding
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Making a printed book involves selection of paper stock and decisions on how to economise with the printing method. Often this calls for text to be imposed, 2-up, double-sided, into a booklet. Booklets are useful for thin, staple-bound books, less than 64 pages of ordinary 80gsm paper.
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A text block of 2-up imposed spreads is cut in the middle first, then the two halves are joined together like a sandwich. Turning a single page document into a 2-up imposed PDF also imposes a constraint. There is no other way to create the text block. So, a book made in this way will result in a visible “split”, and the pages will naturally fall open where the two halves were joined.
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This is because most commercially bought paper comes with the grain direction aligned with the long edge, not the short edge. The solution is to print pages, not spreads, 1-up, double sided on a page. If you can find a printer that takes sheets of paper smaller than A4 (such as A5) this is perfect, if not, you may have to concede the loss that comes from trimming down to a smaller than A5 size. Although this may seem just a superficial concern, the book will not be split, making for a materiality that emphasises the unity of the text.
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Image: (clockwise from top left): imposition from a single-page PDF into a booklet, anatomy of a book, a spread
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Premise: I will write my own script(s) to impose pages from a source PDF:
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The aim is to write a Python script to automate the process by iterating recursively over pages in a PDF. These will be called in Python as subprocesses using the subprocess module.
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23.09.19
-I'm working out which commands to use from the command line. The process should be as follows:
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#burst the source PDF, keep the name of the source plus page number (-%d)
- $ pdftk source.pdf burst output source-%d.pdf
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Results:
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To identify the size of a single burst page in pixels, this is the command I used:
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$ identify Carrier_burst-1.pdf
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which returns this information:
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Carrier_burst-1.pdf PDF 398x591 398x591+0+0 16-bit sRGB 19486B 0.000u 0:00.009
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26.09.19
-Then for the next step, resizing each page to fit 2-up on an A4. It's easy enough to reduce to 50% if the original is A4, but in other formats it's a bit trickier...
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#resize the resulting burst single page PDF (this only does one - needs Python loop to iterate recursively)
- $ magick mogrify -resize 50% new_source.pdf
- #or to resize to specific pixel dimensions such as 256x256
- $ magick mogrify -resize 256x256 new_source.pdf
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After resizing to 50%, the identify command returns these values:
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Carrier_burst-1.pdf PDF 199x296 199x296+0+0 16-bit sRGB 51910B 0.000u 0:00.000
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27.09.19
-The next steps are these:
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#impose 2up on a page using imagemagick montage command
- #assemble imposed PDFs into a single file
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pdfimpose is a python library that does imposition. It's quite easy and powerful, though again it is not quite set up for cutting pages. I found some Python code, which creates an imposed PDF in a 2x2 format, with folds to be made first vertically, then horizontally:
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booklet.sh for PDF imposition into a booklet[edit]
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I found another way to do imposition using a script Michael wrote called booklet.sh, downloadable here: https://git.xpub.nl/murtaugh/95layouts
-It's a shell script that can run in the bin folder from the home directory, which allows you to run it wherever you are in the computer - you don't have to cd to the folder where the script is. To enable this, first you have to echo the path for the bin folder that the scripts are in. The command to run it from the terminal is:
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booklet.sh source.pdf
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It needs a few dependencies to run (mainly psutils).
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Requirements: psutils, pdftk, python3 with reportlab (make_blank_pdf.py)
Note: Comment out or delete the last line to produce three .ps files - the first one is the source PDF, the second is the PDF imposed in the correct order, the third one is the imposed PDF pages on an A4 page. This works well if all you want to do is impose, print and fold. For cutting sheets you need to position the pages 2-up, centred on the page, which I can't quite figure out how to do...
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Samizdat publishers considered a printed text to be officially published if it came in an edition of at least 5 copies. The library considers this to be excessive, and reduces that number to 1. One copy of a text can be shared and enriched by the accumulated annotations of many readers. A one-to-many-publishing model distributes texts to the widest possible public. The library instead insists on a many-to-one model, drawing many readers to one text. Republishing the one text many times creates a multiplicity of form, and subsequently a multiplicity of publics in each instance.
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Image: Staff working at Publication Studio, London. Publication Studio is a federated publishing network with studios located worldwide. Books ordered from the shared catalog are printed and bound one-at-a-time by the closest studio. Differences in availability of paper and machinery at each studio means that the materiality of each instance of a printed text will vary depending on where and how the books are made.
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02.12.19 The nomadic physical bootleg library[edit]
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The physical bootleg library is a collection of books, mostly made at PZI by myself and other students, or donated by visitors to PZI. The books are kept in a repurposed champagne crate, usually stored on a shelf in the Lens-Based studio. The only condition for borrowing books is that they are returned at some point. The dimensions of the box introduce certain constraints on the size and quantity of books contained within. The box is portable, allowing it to be placed in many locations:
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In the LB studio (its usual location)
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On top of the water fountain on Level 4
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In the kitchen on Level 4
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By the printer on Level 2
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On top of the letterboxes on Level 2
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At the desk in the Research Station where you borrow/return books
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On a bookshelf in the Research Station
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On a table in the main entrance to WdKA Wijnhaven building
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On top of some signage in the WdKA Wijnhaven building
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On a table in the De Willem cafeteria
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In an elevator in the WdKA Wijnhaven building
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The portability of the box means that it could be an interesting container & receptacle for libraries that travel - I'm quite interested in the possibility of using the box to transport and store both printed and digital books, especially in temporary library situations (on hotspotted Raspberry Pi for example) that could be used in worksessions at various locations.
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Academic research requires citation, and inevitably this means referring to a quote from a book, located on a particular page. Citation allows readers to locate the reference efficiently. For this to happen, the reader must be able to find the text easily by searching for it in a catalogue system. Often books will include cataloguing information in the front matter, and for citation purposes this can be retained in a bootlegged book.
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Digital files don’t always come with text that is suitable for print, particularly when the text is kerned too tightly or too loosely, or when bad OCR (Optical Character Recognition) returns characters that are not actually in the source publication. Sometimes a dark mark on a page will be interpreted as a character by OCR software. In these cases the text may need to be set again using a different format, font and page layout.
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Image: A bootleg copy of The Open Work by Umberto Eco. Optical Character Recognition software has mistakenly rendered the page number (page 80) as the word “So”
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This script applies transformations to the image before running OCR, resulting in a clearer result:
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# import the necessary packages
-#from PIL
-import Image
-import pytesseract
-import argparse
-import cv2
-import os
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-# construct the argument parse and parse the arguments
-ap = argparse.ArgumentParser()
-ap.add_argument("-i", "--image", required=True,
- help="path to input image to be OCR'd")
-ap.add_argument("-p", "--preprocess", type=str, default="thresh",
- help="type of preprocessing to be done")
-args = vars(ap.parse_args())
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-# load the example image and convert it to grayscale
-image = cv2.imread(args["image"])
-gray = cv2.cvtColor(image, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
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-# check to see if we should apply thresholding to preprocess the
-# image
-if args["preprocess"] == "thresh":
- gray = cv2.threshold(gray, 0, 255,
- cv2.THRESH_BINARY | cv2.THRESH_OTSU)[1]
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-# make a check to see if median blurring should be done to remove
-# noise
-elif args["preprocess"] == "blur":
- gray = cv2.medianBlur(gray, 3)
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-# write the grayscale image to disk as a temporary file so we can
-# apply OCR to it
-filename = "{}.png".format(os.getpid())
-cv2.imwrite(filename, gray)
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-# load the image as a PIL/Pillow image, apply OCR, and then delete
-# the temporary file
-text = pytesseract.image_to_string(Image.open(filename))
-os.remove(filename)
-print(text)
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-# show the output images
-cv2.imshow("Image", image)
-cv2.imshow("Output", gray)
-cv2.waitKey(0)
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The formal qualities of annotations are defined by the tools used to make them, and also the cultural uses of these. Given a pen, most people will write, although it is also possible to draw or use it in other ways. With a keyboard it seems most appropriate to type. With a mouse, one can click on things, and select them.
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What happens when these are retained, transformed and isolated from the source?
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These are rare, but I found one PDF of Jorge Luis Borges "The Garden of Forking Paths" that had underlinings and highlighted text. The interesting thing is that these change appearance slightly depending on the e-reader software used to display the text.
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-Digital annotations on a pdf of Jorge Luis Borges' "The Garden of Forking Paths"
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Another text that came pre-annotated was Ursula K Le Guin's "The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction". For this, I placed scans in a vector graphics program and digitised pen marks. I also included the text that was annotated with circles, underlines and lines in the margins.
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-Hand-drawn annotations on a pdf of Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction"
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A basic definition of a library, because it's called for, because we've moved so far from it being simply a collection of books:
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A library retains:
-* a collection of texts
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-A library produces:
-* sociability
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-A library gives access to:
-* knowledge
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Each statement declares the verb and object predicated by the subject of "A library". What if these objects were exchanged between these sentences?
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So
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It becomes
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A library retains sociability, produces a collection of texts, and gives access to knowledge.
-A library retains knowledge, produces sociability, and gives access to a collection of texts.
-A library retains a collection of texts, produces knowledge, and gives access to sociability.
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Perspectives on current and potential libraries[edit]
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By changing parts of speech (the verb and its object), we can imagine different scenarios that potential (and current) libraries can play out. For example:
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A library retains knowledge
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Retention of knowledge points towards the desire to acquire information that has high value; intellectual, social, practical etc.
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produces a collection of texts
-What are the texts that can be produced? Metadata, annotations and marginalia, infrastructural interfaces for readers (signage, an index, a classification system)
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and gives access to sociability
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How does the library give access to sociability? What are the necessary actions for sociability to become accessible, and what are the limits to accessibility?
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Scanning is reading for particular details (such as names and numbers) by running one’s eyes over every word in a line. Sometimes I find myself using my index finger to guide my eyes when scanning a printed text. With a computer and full-text search capabilities, control-f helps find instances of a particular word or phrase.
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Scanning is also a way to process printed matter so that it may be electronically archived, modified and distributed. A bookscanner is the tool of choice for many archivists. It has two cameras, one to capture the odd pages, and one for the even pages. Most bookscanners consist of a system of pulleys which allow the book to be raised to two perpendicular sheets of glass, laying the pages flat and ensuring the focus is correct. It’s quite a workout, and is usually reserved for books which are difficult to find in digital format. Essentially the bookscanner takes two photographs, one each for the even and odd sides of a spread. So the sequence goes; flip, click click, flip, click click, and so on, and so on. Next, these images must go through a variety of processes to produce a digital book; rotating, cropping to the size of the page, merging into a single PDF. Ultimately, the most useful digital books include a digital text layer generated by OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software, making the text searchable and copy/pasteable.
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I tried using the Bookscanner, built as part of Special Issue 5 OuNuPo. The Bookscanner needed a few adjustments before it was ready to use. The documentation is rather limited, but the software is set up so that it is quite easy to work out how to use it.
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The scanner takes photos of even and odd pages, from cameras mounted above the glass. First, you have to mount a drive in which the scanned images will be stored. Then, you can adjust the zoom, and shutter speed. I found it impossible to take an image of only the page, so I will need to crop out everything around it in the future.
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I scanned a book, and made jpegs of each page. The pages are oriented from the camera's perspective, like so:
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Next, I ran a script that does OCR on jpegs that Pedro, Tancre and Bo made for their workshop Blurry Boundaries as part of Special Issue 9: The Library Is Open. This created two PDFs, with OCR. The next step will to be to work out how to rotate the images 90 degrees to the correct orientation, (clockwise for the odd pages, anti-clockwise for the even pages), and crop the images.
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The difference between these two depends on the interface, and its seductive (or stoic) effect. The way users are affected also depends on the hierarchy of information presented, and interfaces that limit how that information is retrieved. For example, the screen, keyboard, and mouse make up the interface of the library when viewed on a desktop computer. On a smartphone, only the screen and keyboard comprise the interface. Given a mouse, a user may be more liable to pinpoint or target information. Some features are more conducive to searching, like a search bar, some more to browsing, like a scroll bar. The library can be accessed through a browser, just type hub.xpub.nl/bootleglibrary into the search bar.
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Image: A mouse, keyboard and collaborative text-editing demonstrated in Douglas Englebart’s “Mother of All Demos”, 1968
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A mouse, keyboard and collaborative text-editing demonstrated in Douglas Englebart’s “Mother of All Demos”, 1968
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Slide 1: read, write, execute
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Slide 2: legible vs readable
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Slide 3: People read best what they read most
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Slide 4: An annotated book
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Slide 5: From the Books
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Slide 6: DDC 000-099; Generalities
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Slide 7: State Library of Victoria, Redmond Barry Reading Room
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Slide 8: Traces of use
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Slide 9: The Library is Open
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Slide 10: Marginal Conversations workshop
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Slide 11: Annotation pack
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Slide 12: Performing annotations
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Slide 13: Script from Marginal Conversations
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Slide 14: Talking Clock (2015)
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Slide 15: The Remington Standard Type-Writer
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Slide 16: QWERTY layout
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Slide 17: T Y P E W R I T E R
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Slide 18: Douglas Englebart's "Mother of all demos"
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Slide 19: Englebart's keyboard with mouse
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Slide 20: Etherpad instance
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Slide 21: Etherpad experiments
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Slide 22: editorial, technical, social dimensions of text
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Slide 1: read, write, execute
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In computing, read, write, and execute are permissions that can be given to files by an administrator to user accounts, which specify how data can be used:
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read permissions allow you to read a file
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write permissions allow you to change it, but not to run it
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execute permissions allow you to run a file
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You are most likely familiar with the "read-only" permission.
-For example, a document with read-only permissions given to a user means that user can only read the document, and can't edit it.
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I have chosen this title because for this presentation I want to focus on how the contingencies offered by interfaces for reading and writing produce a certain kind of reading or writing, and also a certain kind of reader or writer.
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My main interest in this presentation is to describe through several examples, the political dynamics and particular affordances of different interfaces and sites for publication, and the subsequent techno-sociologial effects these have through the way they visualise reading, writing and making things public.
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Interfaces for reading and writing are almost always visually-oriented, and their technical conditions determine how textual information is organised and processed.
-This promotes and encourages certain ways of writing and reading.
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I will present examples from my own practice as an artist and graphic designer, and also some historical examples from computer science and engineering.
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Beginning with the field of type design and typography, I want to talk about ideas of legibility and readability, which often precede notions of how written language should be visualised in graphic form.
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Slide 2: legible vs readable
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Put simply:
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legible = clear enough to read
-readable = being easy or enjoyable to read
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Often someone will use illegibility as an excuse to argue against the use of a particular font or typeface. Physical limitations are certainly a factor in deciding how type should be shaped, down to the micro-level that scrutiny of readability brings, where enjoyment is hampered by exhausted eyes. A file can also be made readable by changing permissions. Allowing a file to be read has many other implications apart from the obvious visibility of content.
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Slide 3: People read best what they read most
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There's a famous dictum in typographic history that states "People read best what they read most"
-This means that what is deemed "readable" is only so because of the prevalence of a particular font. And so, preference for certain fonts may derive from how commonplace they are within the reading environments we encounter them.
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This statement was a call to arms for multiplicity of form in type design, to challenge this tendency for form to become flattened and homogenous in the name of "readability", but it also maintains that the way information is presented becomes monolithic, having its own, enclosed logic that is exclusionary to other systems or ways of doing.
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The eye adjusts to expect certain things it has seen before, and this idea of "easy to read" is trainable, to a certain extent. We might think that a certain font is "neutral", this is because it has become invisible to us, and it is invisible to us because it is everywhere. It therefore doesn't stand out in a way that other typefaces do.
-So the main point I will try to make in this presentation is that the particular interfaces we commonly use for reading and writing train us to read and write in certain ways, ways which we will become efficient within.
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When we shift to a different writing or reading interface, there is an adjustment, a period of discomfort as we adapt.
-We approach new interfaces through the lens of the one that preceded it, always likening it to what we are familiar with.
-The new interface presents new limitations, and also offer new, unexpected possibilities for how we imagine ourselves as participatory subjects, engaging with the text.
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The discourse around reading and writing interfaces is vast, and I do not expect to be able to cover it comprehensively in this presentation.
-I can only hope to present a small overview on these interfaces, and how they visualise language, and in turn, how they create a new subjectivity in the reader or writer.
-
-
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Slide 4: An annotated book
-
-
First, let's look at the book as a reading interface. What we call a "book" is most often a stack of pages that are fixed at one edge to form a spine.
-Reading a book is a haptic experience; the sense of touch is in many ways just as important as the sense of vision.
-Alongside this strong tactile interaction is also the inclination for a reader to engage with the text by writing directly onto the page.
-The interface of a printed book invites writing, in fact the very first books were written by hand.
-It is not uncommon to come across another reader's notes, annotations scribbled in the margins of a book.
-Annotation is primarily a strategy of reading comprehension, and there are many activities that fall under the umbrella of "annotation", including highlighting, underlining, glossing (which is writing explicatory texts that define unfamiliar phrases or words), as well as how pages are manipulated to mark text, for example, making a bookmark by folding the corner of a page in what is often called in English a "dog-ear".
-
Despite these annotations are made at different times, by different people unbeknownst to each other, their methods are often consistent with each other. Their annotations also often serve the same purpose, as a reformatting of the text that is read. So the function is sometimes editorial; highlighting or underlining is a way of drawing attention to part of the text that is relevant to the person who is reading it, giving them a way to return to it when scanning through at a later time.
-
Annotation also has a social function; inscribe the presence of reader within a book. The book then becomes a vehicle for a social paratext, one that lives alongside the source text, one that can be commented on by others. Sometimes these paratexts separate from the source and become texts of their own. Glossaries come from the practices established by medieval glossators, who wrote explanations of Roman law between the lines of manuscripts. The first dictionaries served a similar purpose.
-
Books held in public collections have travelled different paths through the hands of different readers. They acquire provenance and their own particular history through how they are used. A book printed, bound and distributed in an edition of many books, a multiple with the ambition to present its text as singular, becomes diversified through its use
-
From the Books is a research project conducted together with graphic designer Masaki Miwa. Together, we collected scans of any traces of use we found in a section of books from a public library in Melbourne, Australia. We then categorised them and made a catalogue which we self-published.
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Slide 6: DDC 000-099; Generalities
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These books come from a section of a specific reading room in a specific library; the 000-099 section of the Redmond Barry Reading Room, at the State Library of Victoria. In Dewey Decimal Classification, 000-099 is titled "generalities", including books about bibliographic practices as well computer and information science, and also manuscripts and rare books; kind of a meta section on the library and how it organises information.
-
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Slide 7: State Library of Victoria, Redmond Barry Reading Room
-
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The SLV is a very social place; visitors use the free wifi for study, and international students often use it to call their families overseas. Others do language lessons there and gather in social groups to share skills.
-It's not a sacred or quiet like a church, more like a train station in terms of its noise and activity. The SLV forecourt is a customary meeting place, people eat lunch there on the grass, on Sundays it is a speaker's corner, protestors gather there for demonstrations.
-
It illustrates well that public libraries do more than just make knowledge accessible, they also produce sociality. This sociality is reflected by the tendency for businesses to open in the periphery and capitalise on this foot traffic, or those that adopt library-like structures and practices (for example, cafes that offer free wifi or cosy nooks to read)
-
Here in Rotterdam this is also present - Starbucks has opened a store at the Bibliotheek Rotterdam, there is a cafe above Rotterdam Centraal Station that houses part of the same collection. There's even a cafe called "The Library" at Mathenesserplein
-
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Slide 8: Traces of use
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Here are some examples of traces of use we found in the section of books we explored. We categorised them semantically under the following headings:
-
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ACCIDENTAL DOG-EAR
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ANNOTATION
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ASTERISK
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BOOK PRICE
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BOOKMARK
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CIRCLED TEXT
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CREASED PAGE
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CROSS
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DEAD ANT
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DOG-EAR
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ERASER RUBBING
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ERRATA
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FINGERPRINT
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FOLD
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HANDWRITTEN LETTER
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INK BLOT
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LIBRARY DOCUMENT
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LIFTED PRINT
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LINE
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LOOSE PAGE
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NOTEPAPER BOOKMARK
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NOTES
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PAGES REMOVED
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POST-IT NOTE
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RECEIPT BOOKMARK
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REPLACED IMAGE
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SCUFF
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SMUDGE
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SQUIGGLE
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STAIN
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STRIKETHROUGH
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TICK
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TORN PAGE
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TORN PAPER BOOKMARK
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UNDERLINING
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WARPED PAGE
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WEAR AND TEAR
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The traces were largely mundane, but revealed a consensus of mark-making and annotation. We also found readers intentionally using the book as a vehicle to pass messages to other readers, such as a handwritten note someone had deliberately placed in a book.
-
This interest in annotation as a visualisation of reader's interaction with texts was developed further with a thematic project called "The Library is Open", conducted by Experimental Publishing in 2019. The Library Is Open was an afternoon of workshops in which we made visible the operations of libraries, including municipal, academic, and importantly, so-called "Shadow" libraries, which are ones that operate outside of legality, illegally distributing pirated copies of books.
-
-
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Slide 9: The Library is Open
-
-
As part of "The Library is Open", I conducted a workshop called "Marginal Conversations" with two classmates, Artemis Gryllaki and Paloma Garcia.
-We held our workshop at a volunteer-run space in the inner west of Rotterdam, called "Leeszaal Rotterdam West".
-
Leezaal is a kind of 'reading room', a library that does not catalogue its books, nor record when they are borrowed. Anyone may pick up a book and walk out the door.
-The initiative began in 2013 when small local libraries in Rotterdam began to close, and the initators asked their local community two questions; 1) Do we need a library?, and 2) How can you contribute?
-
Leeszaal offers a safe space for members of the local community to gather, to learn languages and share skills, to read newspapers, learn how to use computers, use the internet, watch YouTube or just hang out. It's not a traditional library in any sense, but is sympathetic to many of the social democratic values of open access to knowlegde that public libraries embody.
-
-
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Slide 10: Marginal Conversations workshop
-
-
Marginal Conversations focused on reading and annotating together, and performing our annotations. We read and annotated an open letter called "In Solidarity with Library Genesis and Sci-Hub".
-
This letter asks for pirate library practices to come out of the shadows, a bold move and demand for legitimacy and visibility
-
-
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Slide 11: Annotation pack
-
-
We made an annotation kit that contained the letter, a layer of carbon paper, and a sheet of translucent tracing paper. After reading and annotating the letter, we could compare our annotations by overlaying the tracing paper to create "heat maps" that established common areas of interest.
-
-
-
Slide 12: Performing annotations
-
-
Then we rehearsed and performed our annotations, taking turns to read the letter while others reacted with their annotations.
-
-
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Slide 13: Script from Marginal Conversations
-
-
We made a recording of this performance, and then transcribed it into a script.
-
The flipping back and forth between oral and literate productions of texts is a strategy to discover the slippages in the memory of texts that occur when transcribing. Early media theory was particularly concerned with the gap between orality and literacy, and the effect writing has on the problem of memory. Writing as a technology had a considerable effect on how we think about memory and how we form cultural narratives. The view of memory as a container within which information can be stored is very much a post-literate idea, from this also comes the the notion of "verbatim" or "word perfect". This is because what is said can be recorded in written words and stored in a text, which can be checked against for discrepancies. Pre-literate cultures think of memory instead as commemorative, a communal act of remembering together through oral storytelling traditions.
-
Without a writing system in which memory can be stored and retrieved, events and narratives are seen as cyclical, and the notion of things "in their place" is ascribed to external forces like the seasons, the weather and time.
-
This is a work I made in 2015, called Talking Clock. I was interested in using the mechanism of a clock to produce language, including "real" and also "potential" words.
-I made a spreadsheet to work out the best combinations of letters to use on the flip cards, plotting combinations of letters, and mapped words I knew existed, words which were possible (following linguistic conventions), and words which were unlikely. In total I produced 72 cards, 12 for the left side of the clock (one for each hour in a 12-hour cycle), and 60 for the right side (one for each minute).
-
The clock displays, or "prints" 1440 words every day (1 per minute). It's very noisy, making a loud click every time a card flips over. It's very difficult to tell the time as the sequence of numbers are replaced by a different system of letters, but it's possible at least to know that the hour has changed, with a little time spent with the clock.
-There is a sense that the machine is writing the words, but they have been pre-selected by a human, myself.
-
When we encounter a new word in English, it's not always possible to know how to say it, especially in English, which has different standards, and borrows words from many other languages, so spelling and pronunciation are very different sometimes. This leads to the fluidity of "potential words". Because they isn't yet a consensus on their use, there also is no consensus on their pronunciation.
-
-
-
Slide 15: The Remington Standard Type-Writer
-
-
The earliest transcription machines were ones that humans operated, becoming the transcriber.
-This lead to the invention of machines like typewriters, and practices like stenography, which were used in court cases to record proceedings.
-The need to type quickly, to keep up pace with speech and to record spoken language "verbatim" lead to the design of interfaces and systems that trained operators to use them efficiently
-
In the late 19th century came the emergence of typewriters, such as this one that was produced by the American company Remington.
-
-
-
Slide 16: QWERTY layout
-
-
The layout of keys (now known as the QWERTY layout) was invented by Christopher Latham Sholes, who wanted to keep the typebars from clashing when the operator typed quickly.
-
He sold his design to the Remington Company, a typewriter manufacturer, who popularised it, selling their machine alongside typing courses that trained writers to use the layout, purporting it to be the best for rapid typing.
-
The QWERTY arrangement of the original Remington typewriter has remained virtually universal since the 1890s, even though more efficient arrangements have been developed. There is no particular reason why this convention has taken such a strong hold. Technological advances in machinery and electronics have rendered the problem Sholes was trying to solve redundant, but still it persists. If you've ever had to use a non-QWERTY keyboard, you may struggle.
-
-
-
Slide 17: T Y P E W R I T E R
-
-
Reportedly the Remington Company also liked its product name, "type-writer," to appear acrostically in the top row.
-
Fast-forward to December 9, 1968, and computer engineer Douglas Englebart gave what is now known as "the mother of all demos" at a San Francisco computer conference.
-
-
-
Slide 18: Douglas Englebart's "Mother of all demos"
-
-
He presented a demonstration that includes many features of computer engineering and publishing that we now take for granted, including the mouse, video conferencing, the modern desktop-style user interface, word processing and collaborative text-editing.
-
-
-
Slide 19: Englebart's keyboard with mouse
-
-
About 26 mins into the presentation Englebart says "I don't know why we call it a mouse...it started that way and we never did change it."
-
While the mouse is a useful tool in modern desktop-style graphic user interfaces, text editors and computer terminal windows utilise the keys and forgo the use of a mouse.
-Text editors are used for a variety of writing applications, for example programming, and writing text documents, without the need to style it graphically.
-Most computer operating systems come with a text-editing program as part of the basic package of software (e.g. Mac has "TextEdit" and Windows has "notepad"). These programs are usually used by a single user at one time.
-
Some environments, such as the one Englebart demonstrates, are collaborative, allowing many users to write together in realtime.
-
-
-
Slide 20: Etherpad instance
-
-
-
I'd like to talk about a collaborative writing environment that exemplifies the editorial, technical and social dimensions of text; the open-source software Etherpad. This software is a manifestation of what Englebart demonstrated in 1968, and through its interface and technical configuration offers an interesting twist on the notion of public space and the public it creates.
-
You can install etherpad-lite on a server, and host the software for yourself or others to use
-although most pads aren't indexed by search englines, they are 100% public, and editable to anyone who knows their URL.
-
It's a very dynamic writing environment, and environment in the sense of the combinations of technical conditions of hardware and software, and how users operate within it every key you press is recorded (including deletions), building a mind-boggling database in the background which you can track in the version history, import/export text.
-
The software automatically assigns authorship colours, users can change them and give themselves user names or remain "unnamed". Authorship in etherpad is blurry from the level of the user, but crystal clear from the level of the system administrator (can easily run searches on IP addresses).
-Interesting social protocols emerge from collaborative use of pads concerning conviviality (not so much spell-checking or correction). Misspelling is transgressive and signals the speller's marginal status, either preeducated, uneducated, or sloppy. Ignoring misspelling in favour of transcription, recording what is said quickly introduces a type of collective, consensual authorship.
-
New users react with either enthusiasm or suspicion - to the enthusiasts, it's exciting to collaborate in realtime, to others it's just a bit too public, everything you type can be seen as you type it.
-
-
-
Slide 21: Etherpad experiments
-
-
Here is a series of solo experiments I conducted with Etherpad, where I wrote and edited text within constrained periods of time. Etherpad offers the potential for very quick visualisations of the writing and editing process through its autmoatically assigned authorship colours.
-
I was interested in seeing what happened when I visualised the writing and editing process. I wrote as multiple users, opening up a new tab in a private window each time and tricking the software into thinking I was a new writer, so it gave me new authorship colours.
-
This was a timed task, beginning with writing periods of 3 minutes, and a rest of 2 minutes. After 4 iterations, this shifts to 5 minutes for both respectively. I found I needed a bit more time as the text began to grow.
-
This experiment showed me that editing is a form of writing, like growing a tree and making furniture from it at the same time.
-
-
-
Slide 22: editorial, technical, social dimensions of text
-
-
At the beginning of this presentation I described my interest in text and its overlapping dimensions; editorial, technical and social.
-
I will go into a bit more detail now to explain further:
-
-
editorial: text is a sequence. A line of characters and spaces, the particular order that the writer sets these in. Text becomes an object, a carrier of thoughts and feelings, something that can be sent back and forth between participants in a conversation.
-
technical: text is a process. Messages and files that we share are text-based. A computer runs on software, programmed in encoded text, often the same characters that flicker before your eyes. Texts can be assembled on-the-fly as a machine reads scripts and writes output in response to input.
-
social: text is a framework. The English word "text" has roots in the Proto-Indo-European word teks-, meaning “to weave, to fabricate, to make; make wicker or wattle framework”. A piece of writing is a text, and so is a conversation; texts represent the exchange of shared concepts (words, signs, representations) woven into a fabric of communication. There is also an exchange between written and spoken texts; oral discussions which prompt writing, and writing which sparks conversations. Texts elicit further texts.
-
Etherpad exemplifies all three of these dimensions. The interface allows readers to become writers, and text editors, themselves. It uses the technicality of text-based software to record what is written, or deleted there in a process that is recorded in the version history. And when used collaboratively (which is what it is designed for, it creates a framework of shared concepts that come together into the one textual fabric.
-
What is important about this, as well as other open-source tools for reading and writing is that they offer the potential for us to develop our own particular ways of reading and writing. There is a lot more effort that is needed in order to not just read and write, but to also determine our own definitions of what is most readable, writeable and executeable.
-
Skimming is reading for the main meaning of a text, reading between the lines in a semi-distracted state. A way to get the gist of a text quickly, flipping pages, jumping pages with the spacebar, infinitely scrolling. Just like skimming stones over water, the eyes jump in saccades over the surface of the text.
-
Many prefer to read from paper than from a screen. Who hasn’t heard complaints that reading from a screen is tiring, especially when you just want the gist of a text? Sometimes online articles are accompanied by information about how long it will take to read them. Estimated reading time 6 mins. Max word count 400-600 words.
-
Reading comprehension relies on the twin skills of skimming and scanning, often done together. Depending on what the function of the text is, one skill will be used more than the other. It would be foolish to skim a contract without reading the small print carefully. And if you don’t skim a newspaper article to get the gist of it, scanning for details is meaningless.
-
Image: A reader highlights text while skim-reading in order to improve retention and to create a hierarchy in a text, applying a style that can be efficiently scanned for at a future time
-
A reader highlights text while skim-reading in order to improve retention and to create a hierarchy in a text
-
installing chdk firmware for the bookscanner[edit]
-
From a framapad made by erg
-
-
https://annuel.framapad.org/p/ergbookscan
-
-*ERG BOOK SCAN*
-
-Doc de base:
-http://diybookscanner.org/archivist/
-
-Doc pour erg:
-https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZFgxLRWM-amLoyrPdKVwJJwBGfQBsEq3rNSjX41_mL4/edit
-
-
-Budget:
-https://lite.framacalc.org/ergbookscan
-
-
-Fourniseurs :
-bois
- Gédé boishttp://www.gedebois.be/
- Lochten & Germeaux http://www.lochten.be/
-
-verre
-- vitrerie Defise — Rue de Mérode 459, 1190 Forest — 02 537 20 24
-- https://fr.glassolutions.be/fr-be/planiclear
-
-ce qu'il manque:
-
-velcro
-2x poulies de 5 cm de diamètre: Industrial product chaussée de Ruisbroek
-
-le verre : vitrerie Defise - rue de Mérode 1190
-4mm rodé d'un coté à 45°
-
-électiricite:
-cable 220v
-prise
-
-
-
-
- https://www.brico.be/fr
- https://www.youbuild-mpro.be
- https://www.gamma.be/fr
- https://www.lochten.be/
- https://www.hubo.be/fr.html
- https://www.mr-bricolage.be
-
-
-software
-
-notes from PZ: https://pad.xpub.nl/p/bookscanner-software
-
-Install piscan on SD:
- https://github.com/Tenrec-Builders/pi-scan
- https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/installation/installing-images/linux.md
-
-Prepare SD cards for camera:
- https://chdk.fandom.com/wiki/Prepare_your_SD_card
- CHDK instructions
-
- Download the correct firmware according to your camera model
-
- http://www.mighty-hoernsche.de/
-
- Method 2 - Using CHDK itself to make the SD card bootable.
-
- Start out with your SD Card Lock switch in the unlocked position (the small slide switch on the side of the card - see picture above - make sure it is in the unlocked position to start this process.)
-
- Low level format the card in camera using the camera's built-in card format menu selection. Warning : any images on the card will be erased at this point.
-
- Remove the card from your camera and put it into the SD card reader of your PC.
-
- The card should now contain a single FAT32 partition. If you are using a large SD card, please make sure your camera did not format the card as exFAT - see warning note at start of this section. You may need to use something like FAT32 Format to reformat the card in your PC if so.
-
- Now please check again (by looking at the properties of your card in an SD card reader in your PC) to ensure that your card is formatted either FAT16 or FAT 32 - and not exFAT!
-
- Unpack the appropriate build of CHDK for your camera and firmware version directly to the card (including all subdirectories).
-
- With the Card Lock switch still in the unlocked position put the card back into your camera.
-
- Turn on your camera by pressing the Play button (or using the Play switch on some cameras). Do not start the camera with the On/Off switch or this process will not work.
-
- Reset factory settings on the camera in order to enable the firmware update setting (if it's not there already)
-
- Start CHDK manually by selecting the Firmware Update option in the Canon menus.
-
- After the CHDK logo briefly displays, start CHDK by using the <ALT> key sequence for your camera.
-
- Enter the CHDK menu (press play button and then MENU for the CHDK menu), and select Miscellaneous stuff -'> SD Card' -> Make Card Bootable
-
- Turn your camera off, write protect the SD card by moving the little switch on the side of the card to the lockedposition, insert the card back into your camera. Note that CHDK will cause the camera to ignore the lock switch so that you can take pictures normally.
-
-adjust the cameras:
- http://tenrec.builders/archivist/camera-guide.html
-
-laptop, python 2.7 requirements
-Cython
-pip install git+https://github.com/kivy/kivy.git@master
-dbus-python
-chdkptp.py
-pygame
-
-
-luarocks install chdkptp
-
-
I wanted to read this collection of essays by Flusser during the holidays. Steve had sent me a link to an interview with Flusser in which he described the "magic" of linear writing and subsequent technologies, and I wanted to read more. I very quickly bootlegged this book by printing the PDF on the last day school was open for the year. In my haste, however, I trimmed the bottom edge a bit too close. It's still fine (at least the page numbers weren't cut off), but I wish I hadn't been in such a rush. The cover was made quickly at the photocopier as well, a no-frills effort.
-
The library is closed, the shelves are empty, the librarian has gone. All that is left is a set of index cards contained in a box. At the top of each card is a verb introducing the tasks performed within the space and duration of a particular, situated social infrastructure called the “bootleg library”. The reverse includes references and images that illustrate each task.
-
This text was written with, by and for readers during library sessions. We wrote on cards by hand, we typed words in a collaborative writing environment. We wrote them together; humans and machines; texts were blended into a mix of keystrokes in changesets too complex, and dependencies too layered to determine singular authorship. These texts were never objects, always processes[1].
-
Participation from readers became a vital element in the practice of librarianship. The library grew, and we sustained it through conversation and correspondence. We wrote together in threads and strings; and so we created and maintained a space for publication. In the journey from private to public collection, texts were intermingled and rematerialised, gaining provenance and diversification through use. The readers are in the pages of the books, in the metadata of the library and on these cards, where traces of their presence remain.
-
This text will never be complete. It describes a particular, situated library, one that does not exist anymore, but resembles those that came before it and those that will succeed it. This set of cards is also a library, a collection organised into a structure that directs readers towards the interior, towards the texts it contains. This set is a book, a hyper-index, forever pointing outwards to other books, libraries, readers and writers. Text, library, book and index all come together in this particular material form to comprise a manual, a thing to be manipulated in the hands of readers.
-
Cards invite shuffling, re-organising, flipping over, distributing, annotating, laying out. An A6 card like the one you’re holding now fits comfortably into the palm of one’s hand, and can be easily turned as it is gripped between the index finger and thumb.
-
Cards have two sides. Arranged on a table, only one side is visible, and proximity determines connections. Held in the hands and flipped like a book, new relationships between the verso and recto pages emerge. The reader becomes the writer anew, determining what to keep or discard, what to edit or leave as is; the author of the sequence, connections and hierarchy between tasks.
-
-
-
↑Barthes, R., ‘From Work to Text’, in Barthes, R. and Heath, S. (1987) Image, music, text. London: Fontana Press.
-
This text has been written with the intention to be materialised in a very specific form; a set of A6-sized index cards, contained in a box. Please read it while holding the cards in your hands, shuffling and reordering them, making your own text as you read.
-
These cards list the tasks performed on the site of contingencies, the bootleg library. Tasks are described on the obverse, and related images and references are on the reverse.
-
The library is closed, the shelves are empty, the librarian has gone. All that is left is a set of index cards contained in a box. At the top of each card is a verb introducing the tasks performed within the space and duration of a particular, situated social infrastructure called the “bootleg library”. The reverse includes references and images that illustrate each task.
-
This text was written with, by and for readers during library sessions. We wrote on cards by hand, we typed words in a collaborative writing environment. We wrote them together; humans and machines; texts were blended into a mix of keystrokes in changesets too complex, and dependencies too layered to determine singular authorship. These texts were never objects, always processes[1].
-
Participation from readers became a vital element in the practice of librarianship. The library grew, and we sustained it through conversation and correspondence. We wrote together in threads and strings; and so we created and maintained a space for publication. In the journey from private to public collection, texts were intermingled and rematerialised, gaining provenance and diversification through use. The readers are in the pages of the books, in the metadata of the library and on these cards, where traces of their presence remain.
-
This text will never be complete. It describes a particular, situated library, one that does not exist anymore, but resembles those that came before it and those that will succeed it. This set of cards is also a library, a collection organised into a structure that directs readers towards the interior, towards the texts it contains. This set is a book, a hyper-index, forever pointing outwards to other books, libraries, readers and writers. Text, library, book and index all come together in this particular material form to comprise a manual, a thing to be manipulated in the hands of readers.
-
Cards invite shuffling, re-organising, flipping over, distributing, annotating, laying out. An A6 card like the one you’re holding now fits comfortably into the palm of one’s hand, and can be easily turned as it is gripped between the index finger and thumb.
-
Cards have two sides. Arranged on a table, only one side is visible, and proximity determines connections. Held in the hands and flipped like a book, new relationships between the verso and recto pages emerge. The reader becomes the writer anew, determining what to keep or discard, what to edit or leave as is; the author of the sequence, connections and hierarchy between tasks.
-
-
-
↑Barthes, R., ‘From Work to Text’, in Barthes, R. and Heath, S. (1987) Image, music, text. London: Fontana Press.
-
Many national libraries have acquisition programs in place with stringent, highly formalised procedures through which new texts enter the collection. Some countries require that an officially published book is donated to their national library by way of a system called “legal deposit”. Purchase of a commercial identifier such as an ISBN (International Standard Book Number) allows the book to be registered, so that other libraries that subsequently acquire the same text may share cataloguing details.
-
The library makes no such demands. Books are acquired through informal means, in ways that are not regulated or legislated. Anyone may remove or add texts to the library.
-
Most often, acquisition requests are as mundane as someone asking if the library has a particular text. A quick search online produces a digital file as a result. The provenance of these texts is buried in the file paths of the uploader’s computer, and the computers before it. Texts are acquired by any means necessary, through a social network, or through a digital network of so-called “shadow libraries” and groups of sympathetic readers. It’s often surprising how fast an unknown fellow reader will respond to a request for a text via certain groups operating on social media websites. Type F to follow this post.
-
The digital collection is formed from individual uploads made by readers who care to share. Uploading takes time—a precious commodity for many readers—and each upload is a deliberate action, not an afterthought. Fostering a culture of uploading requires a decentralised network of readers, and likewise, librarians. A different notion of librarianship is required; the librarian is not the central hub of access to knowledge, but each reader should be a librarian, with the ability to produce, recommend and request texts from others.
-
A reader who downloads and does not upload is a passive observer to the activities of the library. We prefer to be in the position of the downloader due to the legal penalties for uploading and redistributing copyrighted texts, which are far more severe than those for downloading. The library will not grow if all we do is take. A library is a collection of shared texts, and sharing is facilitated by both uploading and downloading.
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Most people think of bootlegs as cheap knock-off products that masquerade as the real deal; bootleg cigarettes, designer-label clothes, not-quite-right imitations of Disney products and the like. Bootlegging began during the prohibition era with the practice of illegally distilling and distributing alcoholic beverages, often literally concealed in the leg of a boot while being transported. Run an image search on the keyword “bootleg” and you’ll probably see all sorts of suspicious-looking products. But the way I want to speak of bootlegging is as a social act, a homage, and one that creates and celebrates a multiplicity of form. I’m referring in particular to the vibrant culture of music sharing in the 1970s that followed portable cassette tape recorders entering the market. These allowed fans to cheaply record live performances and share these recordings—also known as bootlegs.
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Image: A “bootlegger” concealing a flask of an illegally distributed alcoholic beverage in the leg of a boot during the Prohibition era
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While bootlegging makes a fairly faithful reproduction of a source publication, the degree of transformation is sometimes due to unintentional or uncontrollable factors, such as availability of the equipment and materials needed to make a close copy. At other times, more deliberate choices can be made concerning the transformed materiality of the bootleg.
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Economy, efficiency, and readability are the main concerns when bootlegging texts for the library. Economy often dictates that materials that are at hand are used—in the case of printed books for example, this often means defaulting to certain choices with paper, printing methods and binding. An efficient workflow is not too time-consuming. Although the most important thing is to have the text by any means necessary, we read best what we read most, and certain typographic concerns may become vital to the readability of the text.
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Being kind to the reader can involve adhering to typesetting conventions; including headers, footers and page numbers should the book be photocopied and pages subsequently separated from the others. Most importantly, a reasonable line length and wide margins will allow the book to be made in a way that ensures a comfortable reading experience and provides space for annotation.
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Image: A bootleg copy of My Mother Was A Computer by N. Katherine Hayles. The source PDF has been reimposed into a booklet, with reasonable line length (60-80 characters) and ample space for annotations
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Publications acquire difference through reproduction; sometimes intentionally, always circumstantially. A printed book always ends up in the hands of at least one reader. It is transported, pages are dog-eared and annotated, time weathers the paper and cracks the spine. Multiply this by many readers, and each printed copy starts to accumulate its own traces, losing resemblance to the rest of the edition and acquiring its own particular countenance and provenance through use.
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Image: 1. Books are for use.
-The first law of S. R. R. Rangathan’s 5 Laws of Library Science, 1931
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The jam band The Grateful Dead were followed around the United States by a legion of die-hard fans, proclaiming themselves “Deadheads”. Cheaply available cassette recorders allowed them to tape concerts and then share recordings amongst each other. Thinking of this, I’m reminded of John Cage’s motto, “Everything you do is music, and everywhere is the best seat.” Each position in the audience produces a slightly different recording, and this multiplicity of form connects the audience not only with the music, but with each other.
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There are files in the library that are of the same text, but they have travelled different paths to get there, accumulating difference through methods such as annotation and material transformation. And so, they have different materialities, lending weight to the argument that a text is not identical with itself; that there is no such thing as a unique, singular, original “work”, but instead many different versions of texts, born through the accidents of their creation.
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Image: “Deadheads” recording a live Grateful Dead concert, 1972
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Samizdat publishers considered a printed text to be officially published if it came in an edition of at least 5 copies. The library considers this to be excessive, and reduces that number to 1. One copy of a text can be shared and enriched by the accumulated annotations of many readers. A one-to-many-publishing model distributes texts to the widest possible public. The library instead insists on a many-to-one model, drawing many readers to one text. Republishing the one text many times creates a multiplicity of form, and subsequently a multiplicity of publics in each instance.
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Image: Staff working at Publication Studio, London. Publication Studio is a federated publishing network with studios located worldwide. Books ordered from the shared catalog are printed and bound one-at-a-time by the closest studio. Differences in availability of paper and machinery at each studio means that the materiality of each instance of a printed text will vary depending on where and how the books are made.
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A text found in the wild often comes with visible and invisible artefacts. The visible ones come from bad OCR, with strange characters popping up in place of the ones you expect, such as a 1 instead of an l. The bane of the bootlegger is most definitely the line break or “soft return”, inserted by software that automatically breaks the line as you type. Screen-based formats such as EPUB don’t have the notion of a page, and flow text according to window size.
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You can either be methodical and remove each soft return manually, or use the powerful automated find/replace all option. A useful tactic is to find every instance of a full stop followed by a space where a line was intentionally broken by the human writer. Next, replace each full stop with an arbitrary but uncommon character, such as a dagger (†). Then, do another find/replace and remove every instance of a soft return and a space, and finally replace the uncommon character with a full stop, in one final find/change command.
-Another unwanted character that often appears is the hyphen, inserted where words break at the end of a line. Here the pruning of errant characters is trickier, and the best method is to find each instance and remove them manually. Running find/replace all can often remove necessary hyphens, such as in time ranges (e.g. 9-5) and compound adjectives (e.g. inter-dependent).
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As soon as a reader edits a text its materiality changes either unintentionally, or through more intentional methods, such as republishing in a different format to make the text more accessible to a wider public. Samizdat publishers often considered themselves editors, or typists (rather than authors) due to the unwanted attention and risk that this credit would bring. As they reproduced texts by hand, a slippery form of authorship evolved through human error and also particular idiosyncratic preferences for a new phrase, approximate translation or text structure. Vladimir Bukovsky summarised the process of self-publishing as “Samizdat: I write it myself, edit it myself, censor it myself, publish it myself, distribute it myself, and spend time in prison for it myself.” The responsibility these self-proclaimed editors took upon themselves by republishing dissident material bound them to the texts; entwined in their creation and distribution. When no writer wants to be an author, everyone becomes an editor.
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Image: Facsimile of A Chronicle of Current Events (Russian: Хро́ника теку́щих собы́тий), the longest-running Samizdat publication, (1968-1982)
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The simplest solution is to just print the source publication, but sometimes you might want to lay the text out again using a different format, font or layout, for reasons not worth going into in detail here. This means either the original text flow and page numbers should be the same, or there must be some references in the bootleg to the source publication.
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Some observations and methods:
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1) Justified text saves space and gives much more control over where to break the page.
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2) The most basic reference system is to include an index that specifies which page in the source publication matches the bootleg. However, this is not so useful when setting text for a page (e.g. PDF), and more useful for EPUBs, which don’t have the notion of a page.
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Inserting page numbers directly into the text can indicate where the page breaks in the source publication. This is quite time consuming, but it allows you a lot of freedom to differ between fonts, page and type size, text-block dimensions and page count.
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Image: A page from a bootleg of Mladen Dolar’s A Voice and Nothing More, implementing new page numbers to mark the page breaks of the source publication
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Making a printed book involves selection of paper stock and decisions on how to economise with the printing method. Often this calls for text to be imposed, 2-up, double-sided, into a booklet. Booklets are useful for thin, staple-bound books, less than 64 pages of ordinary 80gsm paper.
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A text block of 2-up imposed spreads is cut in the middle first, then the two halves are joined together like a sandwich. Turning a single page document into a 2-up imposed PDF also imposes a constraint. There is no other way to create the text block. So, a book made in this way will result in a visible “split”, and the pages will naturally fall open where the two halves were joined.
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This is because most commercially bought paper comes with the grain direction aligned with the long edge, not the short edge. The solution is to print pages, not spreads, 1-up, double sided on a page. If you can find a printer that takes sheets of paper smaller than A4 (such as A5) this is perfect, if not, you may have to concede the loss that comes from trimming down to a smaller than A5 size. Although this may seem just a superficial concern, the book will not be split, making for a materiality that emphasises the unity of the text.
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Image: (clockwise from top left): imposition from a single-page PDF into a booklet, anatomy of a book, a spread
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Academic research requires citation, and inevitably this means referring to a quote from a book, located on a particular page. Citation allows readers to locate the reference efficiently. For this to happen, the reader must be able to find the text easily by searching for it in a catalogue system. Often books will include cataloguing information in the front matter, and for citation purposes this can be retained in a bootlegged book.
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Digital files don’t always come with text that is suitable for print, particularly when the text is kerned too tightly or too loosely, or when bad OCR (Optical Character Recognition) returns characters that are not actually in the source publication. Sometimes a dark mark on a page will be interpreted as a character by OCR software. In these cases the text may need to be set again using a different format, font and page layout.
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Image: A bootleg copy of The Open Work by Umberto Eco. Optical Character Recognition software has mistakenly rendered the page number (page 80) as the word “So”
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A perfect-bound book is typically made with cold glue (such as polyvinyl acetate), or glue that melts at high temperatures. The benefit of cold glue is that it allows the book to lie flat when opened, as the spine is flexible. Cold-glue bound books can be made by hand with quite rudimentary equipment. All you need is a printed text block and cover, a press, a piece of gauze or cheesecloth for the spine, and a brush to apply the glue to it. This takes a lot of time, practice, skill and patience to do by hand, but machines for cold-glue binding are hard to find.
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Hot-glue binding machines can bind a book in less than 3 minutes, usually. Just be sure to set wider than normal margins before printing (I usually go for between 8 and 12mm for good measure) and make sure the book isn’t uncomfortably small. The minimum size should be considered in relation to the reader’s hands, how they grip the book and turn the pages, and how much effort will be needed to hold the book open in order to read it.
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Image: A hot-glue bound book held open with one hand
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Most people I know prefer to read off paper. The arguments for the printed text usually are about exhaustion, e.g. “I get tired reading from a screen”, lack of retention, e.g. “It’s proven that people remember things they read on paper better than on screen”, and in the circles I tend to run in, a sentimentality pervades, nostalgic for the haptic experience that reading from printed books brings.
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We expect acceleration from digital technologies. The cultural significance of new media is bolstered through remediality, which is its refashioning through the lens of old media[1]. Skeuomorphic design brings us the texture of paper on a screen. Hayles argues for intermediality, the interpretations between, and the coexistence of all media, including printed and digital texts.[2]
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Digital text is fraught with trauma, underpinned by the possibility of fragmentation. Text that is to the reader fully searchable and copy-pasteable is also text that threatens to come apart. Text that is less of an object, and more a process, often not residing in any one place in a computer file system, assembled dynamically, “on-the-fly”. Printed text, by contrast, reassures us by way of its indelibility.
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Image: The physical bootleg library contained in a disused champagne crate, and the digital bootleg library running from a Raspberry Pi computer
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↑Bolter, J.D. and Grusin, R. (2003) Remediation: understanding new media. 6. Nachdr. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
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↑Hayles, N.K. (2005) My mother was a computer: digital subjects and literary texts. Chicago London: The University of Chicago Press.
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Historically, the word “text” comes from the Proto-Indo-European word teks-, meaning “to weave, to fabricate, to make; make wicker or wattle framework”. The written word is a text, and so is a conversation, both represent the exchange of shared concepts woven into the fabric of communication. There is also an exchange between written and spoken texts; discussions which influence writing, and writing which sparks conversations.
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The digital library creates texts through its catalogue, where the metadata for each entry comprises a paratext[1] that not only adds meaning to the core text, but also influences how a reader will discover it in the collection by fields such as tags and description. Metadata which is downloaded and entered automatically comes from online commercial sources has a particular promotional tone. Those who write metadata should do so subjectively; descriptions based on personal significance represent the text and the readers, equivalently.
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The library is sustained through producing texts.
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Image: Papyrus, an early writing surface made from woven reeds
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↑Genette, G. (1997) Paratexts: thresholds of interpretation. Literature, culture, theory 20. Cambridge ; New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press.
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Marks left by readers are at times recognisable as annotation; underlines, asterisks and notes scribbled in the margins that all add something to the text. Taken a step further, annotation can include metadata (information about information), which is most commonly text that describes the author and subject, and bibliographic details needed for citation purposes. Collectively, these forms of annotation indicate the presence of readers, making them visible to each other. Annotation lives in close proximity to the text. When it is separated from the text, it becomes unfixed, losing its symbolic power to remind us that other readers have also been here.
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Image: Tracing paper bearing carbon-copied annotations from Marginal Conversations, a workshop first held by Simon Browne, Paloma García and Artemis Gryllaki at Leeszaal West Rotterdam, 20th June 2019
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A glossary is a list of terms defined in relation to the specificity of the text. Glossaries aid reading comprehension, and also establish the presence of the readers. Glossing (from Late Latin glossa "obsolete or foreign word") was a medieval technique of adding commentaries to the main text of illuminated manuscripts. Glossators would add small handwritten notes and illustrations in between the lines and in the margins. Reading between the lines opened the text up for various interpretations, and illustrations served as mnemonic aids to assist readers to recall information. [1]
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The texts written on these cards constitute a glossary which defines the tasks of the Contingent Librarian.
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Image: A glossed manuscript of a late-thirteenth-century Latin translation of a medical work by Hippocrates
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↑Hobart, M.E. and Schiffman, Z.S. (1998) Information ages: literacy, numeracy, and the computer revolution. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
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What makes up a text depends on perspective and overlapping dimensions of text; editorial, technical and social.
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The editorial dimension; a sequence. A line of characters and spaces, the particular order that the writer sets these in. Text becomes an object, a carrier of thoughts and feelings, something that can be sent back and forth between participants in a conversation.
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The technical dimension; a process. Cybertexts and “ergodic literature” require non-trivial effort to read[1]. Examples of this are MUDs (multi-user dungeons/domains/dimensions), which are real-time virtual worlds in which the players construct the story on-the-fly, and Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves[2], a printed novel that defies a linear narrative structure through its cybertextual materiality.
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The social dimension; a framework, a network of texts that elicit further texts.
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The library is a collection of texts; not just books, but also files, metadata, scripts and the processes that determine how they are used, and the readers who use them.
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Image: A spread from Danielewski’s House of Leaves
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↑Aarseth, E.J. (1997) Cybertext: perspectives on ergodic literature. Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press.
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↑Danielewski, M.Z. (2000) Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of leaves. 2nd ed. New York: Pantheon Books.
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Inclusion and exclusion are not just processes that occur when books arrive in the library. They are recurring, procedural, practical actions executed throughout the library’s lifetime. It comes down to the issue of space quite rapidly. With too many books, certain brutal decisions may have to be made to retain or dispose of the surplus.
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The results of including and excluding are visible in the catalogue and classification system adopted by the library, defining the particular interests of the library.
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Inclusion also plays a part when considering how public or private the library is, and how its membership is formed. There are several layers of privilege (and accompanying responsibilities) that can be given, from anonymous guest, to registered user, to administrator. Users who have administrative privileges may add new users and bestow (or revoke) freedoms and responsibilities.
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Image: A membership card for the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the national library of the Netherlands
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An administrator has authority to make modifications to the infrastructure of the library. Every registered user of the library is also an “admin”. With this responsibility, comes great power. An admin may delete user accounts, or take down the entire library if they wish. But they can also make registered accounts for other users, and choose to bestow the same privileges, or not. The library is open.
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Image: Characters representing read (r), write (w), and execute (x) permissions in UNIX and UNIX-like systems
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Most books contain an index. Most books are also indexed in some type of cataloguing system, to present the collection and inter-relationships between the texts contained within, and those outside of the library. This set of cards is an unbound index, which can be reshuffled, added to and reduced as the reader pleases. Reducing a text to an index opens it up for the reader to complete it as they read, drawing on what they have read before and creating a mental network of associations. A book is a hyper-index, forever pointing outwards to other books, libraries, readers and writers. I use my index finger to trace over the text, moving down the page as my eyes scan for keywords.
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Image: Alejandro Cesarco, Index, exhibited at Witte de With Contemporary, September 2019-January 2020
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The library depends on its public, just as the public depends on the library. Sharing of texts is the heart of library culture. A completely private collection lacks sociability. Libraries that operate outside of the law (shadow/extra-legal/pirate/+++) also depend on tactics to survive, such as password protection and invite-only systems for registering new users. In this context, publishing is not broadcasting, scattering seeds of information widely to encourage maximal distribution. The public sphere created by the library is limited by necessary measures designed to sustain it.
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Image: Chained books at the medieval Hereford Library, an illustration from Streeter, B. H., (1931) The Chained Library; A Survey of Four Centuries in the Evolution of the English Library, B. Franklin : New York [1970]
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Invitations to join the library are made through private channels of communication; direct messages, personal emails with no-one cc’d or bcc’d, private conversations held in intimate spaces, small printed cards passed by hand. Everyone is welcome to join, but the library does not require everyone to be a member in order to operate.
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Image: A6 cards, invitations to use the bootleg library
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Making something public, and making publics. Matthew Stadler, writer and co-founder of the federated publishing network Publication Studio, makes a distinction between publishing and publication. For Stadler, publication happens not only through sharing texts, but also “setting up the circumstance through which we can talk and debate them, together”.
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Publishing survives through publication, which is the necessary creation and maintenance of the space created for a public; to read, to share texts, to discuss and publish them. Publication continues after the event of publishing.
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Image: Still from What is Publication?, a talk by Matthew Stadler, writer and co-founder of the federated publishing network Publication Studio, available at https://vimeo.com/14888791
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All that I did was click a button and switch on the content server. The library was automatically assigned a dynamic IP address, followed by a colon and a port: 8080. Type http://145.131.24.139:8080 into a browser, and you’d arrive at the library, no problem. But you had to already be on the local network; you couldn’t access it from the outside. And the IP address could change without warning, as dynamic IPs often do.
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A sequence of digits is not nearly as memorable as a domain name. And paradoxically, we expect stability from a digital environment that is quite dynamic and in flux. Trust erodes at every extra click, every retyped URL. Accessibility is tantamount to existence. If you can’t access it, it doesn’t exist.
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8080 is for personally-run web servers. It’s called 8080 because it relates to port 80, the port that HTTP is served over. But ISPs regularly scan for HTTP requests including port 8080, to see if there is any illegal traffic occurring over the network, so it’s best to set it to a custom number (there are 65535 potential ports to use).
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The library is now accessible from the outside over a VPN, and the page is HTTP password-protected. On arrival at the URL enter the following user name and password.
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Image: Poster announcing the bootleg library, Piet Zwart Institute, July 2019
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The library operates outside of legal boundaries that see knowledge as private property. As such, it requires protection from those that wish it to cease and desist. Invitations to join the library are made through personal correspondence and printed matter, in the form of A3 sized posters, and A6 sized cards, like the very one you’re reading right now. Handing a printed card with login details to an interested reader is an act of trust. The card, a pocket-sized object made with care and attention which is passed from hand to hand, engenders a certain kind of intimacy, as opposed to the brute act of spamming a mailinglist.
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Image: A6 card, obverse and reverse, announcing the first bootleg library sessions, Piet Zwart Institute, December 2019
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Networking is not a dirty word. I’m not talking about networking as schmoozing, rubbing elbows with those you wish to impress, handing out business cards like there’s no tomorrow. I mean forming networks of one’s own[1], within which the library can take shape and survive. Maintaining these networks ensures that the space for publication is available.
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The library collection is intentionally small; it does not wish to be everything to everyone. Focused library sessions are held regularly, and informally, with participants free to come and go as they please. The sessions do not require registration, and make no demands on participants. The result is often a small group of session attendees, who can offer personal insights and opinions in an intimate setting. It is more beneficial to the library’s development to have a conversation between a small number of participants than to lecture to a crowd.
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Image: bootleg library session at Varia, A Collective-space for Everyday Technology, Rotterdam, 26th January, 2020
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The library is for all, and made by all. There is no singular embedded librarian, because everyone is a librarian, and the library is everywhere. I’m not interested in developing the “perfect” system in isolation and then dictating how it should be used, I’m interested in asking how people want to use systems, and developing them together. Technical development is ongoing in line with feedback from bootleg library sessions.
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Image: bootleg library session at Onomatopee Projects, Eindhoven, as part of Meeting Grounds, 6th March, 2020
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Open-source means exactly that; the source code is open for anyone to copy, modify and distribute it. The library is running on the open-source software Calibre, and is accessed through a browser using calibre-web, a web-app for ebooks stored in a Calibre database. It’s important that the library software is open-source, as this empowers us to own and modify it to suit our particular needs and interests. Technology and culture exist in a dynamic interplay, shaping and being shaped by each other.[1]
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The notion of open-source can be extended to books as well; already there is the “public domain” (works that are outside of the bounds of copyright law, and therefore fair game) and “fair use”, which allows works to be used without asking for permission from the copyright owner, for the purposes of commentary, criticism and parody. In addressing the accessibility needed for a true knowledge commons to be protected, copyright laws are flawed to begin with as they assume that knowledge is private property.
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Image: Screenshot of calibre-web interface
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↑Hobart, M.E. and Schiffman, Z.S. (1998) Information ages: literacy, numeracy, and the computer revolution. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
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The library is a collection of texts and the readers collected around them. Nothing comes from nothing, everything comes from somewhere, something or someone. Authors are dependent on other texts, writers, and readers. I write this text using borrowed words. As a legal, economic and institutional construct[1], authorship is problematic; current publishing models see texts as the intellectual property of authors possessed with “originality”. This originality is a myth; each text is layered in dependencies.
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Image: An author signing a book
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↑Weinmayr, E., ‘Confronting Authorship, Constructing Practices (How Copyright is Destroying Collective Practice)’ in Jefferies, J. and Kember, S. (eds.) (2019) Whose Book is it Anyway?: A View from Elsewhere on Publishing, Copyright and Creativity. Open Book Publishers. doi:10.11647/OBP.0159
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Information, in the form of descriptions that abstract themselves from the flux of common experience, is owned by private individuals or companies. Information is property, under the law. But laws should reflect the interests of the public. The “public interest” for individuals to profit from their (and other’s) labour competes against another more public, public interest, one which sees information as common property, or one that rejects any notion of information having proprietary substance. The word “information” is related to both the Latin verb informare meaning “‘to shape’, ‘to form an idea of’, or ‘to describe’, and its cognates from the substantive “forma”, which was used meaning ‘character’, ‘form’, ‘nature’, ‘kind’, and ‘manner’”[1].
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Description seems to be the primary function of this word “information”, giving shape to experience; the very stuff of language and communication. Information has a social interest. It follows then that the most beneficial use of information would be one that serves the social good. The collective, social act of sharing information should not be trumped by individual financial interests. Never trust a corporation to do a librarian’s job.
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Image: Headquarters of The Internet Archive, San Francisco, USA
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↑Hobart, M.E. and Schiffman, Z.S. (1998) Information ages: literacy, numeracy, and the computer revolution. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
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In order to give an appraisal of the necessity for professionalism within librarianship, first the concept of “professional” must be unpacked. Professional in what sense? The most generic definition of being able to profess a skill is the first that comes to mind. This seems hardly a thing to argue against, as the particular skills of professional librarians are certainly called for in most cases. If we take another generic assumption that the profession of a librarian revolves around the mores of making information accessible, then this invites questions about associations between moral behaviour and professionalism. All this aside, what I can say is that professional librarians are not seriously threatened by the amateur librarians, operating from a distance. The threat comes from much closer for them; budget cuts that cripple and close their libraries, policies driven by the encyclopedic expectation that digital volumes of data inspire.[1]
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Image: A makeshift library checkout card, usually placed in a pocket in the back of a book
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↑Murray, J.H. (1998) Hamlet on the holodeck: the future of narrative in cyberspace. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
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Amateur librarianship happens whenever texts are shared informally. An amateur (from French, meaning “one who loves, lover”) acts out of love (rather than motivated by prestige, or money); there is not often a conscious decision to be an amateur anything. Instead, we often see the word “amateur” as a negation or lack of professionalism. A rising imperative emerges, for amateurs to take up the task of librarianship. The 19th century model of the public library that spread throughout the U.K. and the U.S.A. was an exemplar of social democratic values. Such libraries are now under threat. So, sometimes in response, but often without thought of the legal consequences, amateur librarianship happens in small, quiet ways that are usually mundane; passing a USB drive around, emailing a link or a file. I thought you should read this.
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Reading and writing are interdependent; a written text exists to be read, and is based on a history of reading comprehension and processing, from the early stages of literacy (developing ability to recognise separate characters), to reading complex texts that become references for things we write. In an operational sense, we also read what we write, as we’re writing it. So, the process of writing is combined with reading, and both gestures can be found in another word that blends the two acts together: editing.Writing, reading, editing; growing a tree while making a chair from its wood to sit on.
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Image: Simon Browne, timed writing/editing experiment using Etherpad, collaborative text-editing software, 2018. The bars at the top indicate separate durations of 5-minute writing, and 3-minute editing periods
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Although literacy is the ability to read and write, an illiterate person is often described as not being able to read, rather than write. This is because the receptive skill of reading precedes the productive skill of writing. We write in response to the information we receive. Reading requires a command of the language the text is produced in, as well as a capacity to store this information in a durable medium; a book, a file, a tape, and so on.
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Media theorist Friedrich Kittler said that, historically, reading functioned as “hallucinating a meaning between the lines”[1]. This hallucination was exemplified by poetry, whereby the poet intended to induce in the reader into a state of shock with words. Kittler argued that the harnessing of electricity was the end of such hallucinations; as soon as optical and acoustic data could be electronically stored, we no longer needed our memory, and the realm of the dead was no longer in written words. The gramophone, typewriter and film produced new ways of writing and reading texts.
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Image: Reading-and-writing-at-the-same-time, diagrammed in The Principles of Psychology, William James (1890)
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↑Kittler, F.A. (2012) Literature, media, information systems: essays. Critical voices in art, theory and culture. Johnston, J. (ed.). London New York: Routledge.
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Reading comprehension relies on the twin skills of skimming and scanning, often done together. Depending on what the function of the text is, one skill will be used more than the other. It would be foolish to skim a contract without reading the small print carefully. And if you don’t skim a newspaper article to get the gist of it, scanning for details is meaningless.
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Image: A reader highlights text while skim-reading in order to improve retention and to create a hierarchy in a text, applying a style that can be efficiently scanned for at a future time
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There are many different reasons why you might read something, but essentially, reading involves skimming (reading to get the main idea of a text) or scanning (looking for specific information in details). This often happens in tandem—skimming the catalogue to see what the interest of the library is, and then scanning to see if a particular text has been included—and has relations to other modes of information retrieval, e.g. browsing/searching.
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In 1977, while facing a skeptical audience in a Q & A session broadcast live on Australian television, Marshall McLuhan argued “the word read means to guess – look it up in the big dictionary. Reading is an activity of rapid guessing because any word has so many meanings – including the word reading – that to select one in a context of other words requires very rapid guessing. That’s why a good reader tends to be a very quick decision-maker.”[1] This is very true of human reading, where multiple interpretations lead to various equivalent understandings of a text, but false when applied to machine reading, which only operates with predefined ways of interpreting text.
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Image: "the word read means to guess" A quote from Marshall McLuhan during a live television broadcast, 1977
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Skimming is reading for the main meaning of a text, reading between the lines in a semi-distracted state. A way to get the gist of a text quickly, flipping pages, jumping pages with the spacebar, infinitely scrolling. Just like skimming stones over water, the eyes jump in saccades over the surface of the text.
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Many prefer to read from paper than from a screen. Who hasn’t heard complaints that reading from a screen is tiring, especially when you just want the gist of a text? Sometimes online articles are accompanied by information about how long it will take to read them. Estimated reading time 6 mins. Max word count 400-600 words.
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Machines can read text, and process it in complex ways. Code may contain instructions for a computer to read a file, so that its contents may be then used as part of a program. An example of this in practice is in the catalogue details of books in the library (title, author, description, publisher etc), which can be downloaded rather than manually written. This involves communication between systems to search their databases; for example, taking these details from another source, such as https://books.google.com or https://goodreads.com.
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Books can also be checked in and out of libraries by a variety of machine reading methods such as barcode scanning, or using RFID (radio-frequency identification) chips inserted into the cover.
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Image: An RFID tag; an object often contained within the cover of a public library book to track when it is checked in or out
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Scanning is reading for particular details (such as names and numbers) by running one’s eyes over every word in a line. Sometimes I find myself using my index finger to guide my eyes when scanning a printed text. With a computer and full-text search capabilities, control-f helps find instances of a particular word or phrase.
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Scanning is also a way to process printed matter so that it may be electronically archived, modified and distributed. A bookscanner is the tool of choice for many archivists. It has two cameras, one to capture the odd pages, and one for the even pages. Most bookscanners consist of a system of pulleys which allow the book to be raised to two perpendicular sheets of glass, laying the pages flat and ensuring the focus is correct. It’s quite a workout, and is usually reserved for books which are difficult to find in digital format. Essentially the bookscanner takes two photographs, one each for the even and odd sides of a spread. So the sequence goes; flip, click click, flip, click click, and so on, and so on. Next, these images must go through a variety of processes to produce a digital book; rotating, cropping to the size of the page, merging into a single PDF. Ultimately, the most useful digital books include a digital text layer generated by OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software, making the text searchable and copy/pasteable.
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Writing is a technology which transforms cultures, particularly from pre-literate perceptions of memory as a commemorative act bound to the flux of human experience, to post-literate thinking of it as containers within which to store information. The invention of the Greek alphabet, with its introduction of letters representing vowels[1], connected speech with a form of its material representation. This technological development resonates with how we perceive oral communication—thinking of spoken language through the lens of literacy; as discrete, easily divisible units, like printed words punctuated by neat spaces. It all falls apart when speech-to-text transcription software “doesn’t work” (meaning that it works in ways that we do not expect). The result is that speech, essentially the long continuous sounds that we make with our mouths, tongues, teeth, lips and throat, comes out as gobbledygook on the screen.
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Writing is a fundamental part of the library. Not only in the written texts it contains, but also in the texts it produces; metadata (information such as author, title, subject, description, publisher, etc), annotations made by readers, readers made by readers, correspondence between the users about the texts, which form a dialectical synopsis. The library is sustained through producing texts which argue for its legitimacy by representing the readers who use it.
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Image: Very early Greek abecedariums, inscriptions of the alphabet in order, typically used as a practice exercise in learning writing, from Drucker, J. (1999) The alphabetic labyrinth: the letters in history and imagination. London: Thames & Hudson
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↑Hobart, M.E. and Schiffman, Z.S. (1998) Information ages: literacy, numeracy, and the computer revolution. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
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According to the philosopher Vilém Flusser, history—in the traditional sense of a record of events—begins with writing. As such, writing created a linear, historical consciousness. This allowed us to see events as part of a process that is manipulable by humans, outside of divine intervention. Before the technology of writing, a propriocentric notion of the world dominated human consciousness; perceived through the senses, immediate and without what we think of as history, which comes from the ability to store memory in texts. Flusser adds that “Those who use texts to understand the world, those who ‘conceive’ it, mean a world with a linear structure”.[1]
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In pre-literate cultures, such as in Ancient Greece, songs were stitched together into rhapsodies.[2] Before literacy, texts existed as oratories, plays, epics, proclamations and dialogues; mostly oral forms. The nature of text is to knit together communication. In literate cultures texts become textiles, tapestries that form cultural narratives.
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Image: The Rosetta Stone, a tablet discovered in 1799, inscribed with three versions of a decree written in Ancient Egyptian and Ancient Greek
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↑Vilém Flusser ‘The Future of Writing’, from Flusser, V. and Ströhl, A. (2002) Writings. Electronic mediations v. 6. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
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↑Ong, W.J. and Hartley, J. (2012) Orality and literacy: the technologizing of the word. Orality and literacy. 30th anniversary ed.; 3rd ed. London ; New York: Routledge.
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Writing “by hand” is how we most often think of the act. The hand is symbolically connected to the act of writing, to the extent that we still use icons of the hand-held utensils to represent it graphically—a ballpoint pen, a pencil, even an old-fashioned quill and nib, all often associated with letter-writing. Slowly, this iconography is being replaced by another symbol; the keyboard, signalling the contemporary dominance of typography on writing.
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Image: ‘Proper posture for writing with pen’, from Drucker, J. (1999) The alphabetic labyrinth: the letters in history and imagination. London: Thames & Hudson
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It wasn’t handwriting that drove forward the technology of writing into the modern era, but type. Moveable type expanded the publishing capabilities of text from a one-to-one to one-to-many model. In the late 19th century hot-typesetting machines melted pieces of aluminium and cast them into type, in order to be re-used and repeated. Input for these machines was often entered on a keyboard, which produced a perforated paper tape, a common early data storage medium. A distinguishing feature of these early typesetting machines was the ability to iterate processes by storing information in a reusable format.
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For the keyboard, iteration operates at another level, the keys. The keyboard has its roots in moveable type, which produced “typing”, or using a discrete set of components that could be rearranged in infinite combinations. From iteration comes automation; “typewriters”, which emerged onto the market around the same time as the phonograph, were often advertised as a product that enabled “automatic writing”.
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Image: The first commercially-produced typewriter, the Hansen Writing Ball, from Kittler, F.A. (1990) Discourse networks 1800/1900. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press
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This text is being written on a QWERTY keyboard, through a browser, using a software called “Etherpad” that records every changeset—every typed key of the characters that are added or deleted. The software is logging these changes fast enough that it appears to be happening in real time. I can also go back through every previous changeset to older versions with the granularity of the individual character. This is the liminal space between texts; in split-seconds of processing where human writing is manipulated by machine writing.
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The difference between these two depends on the interface, and its seductive (or stoic) effect. The way users are affected also depends on the hierarchy of information presented, and interfaces that limit how that information is retrieved. For example, the screen, keyboard, and mouse make up the interface of the library when viewed on a desktop computer. On a smartphone, only the screen and keyboard comprise the interface. Given a mouse, a user may be more liable to pinpoint or target information. Some features are more conducive to searching, like a search bar, some more to browsing, like a scroll bar. The library can be accessed through a browser, just type hub.xpub.nl/bootleglibrary into the search bar.
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Image: A mouse, keyboard and collaborative text-editing demonstrated in Douglas Englebart’s “Mother of All Demos”, 1968
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According to the philosopher Vilém Flusser, history—in the traditional sense of a record of events—begins with writing. As such, writing created a linear, historical consciousness. This allowed us to see events as part of a process that is manipulable by humans, outside of divine intervention. Before the technology of writing, a propriocentric notion of the world dominated human consciousness; perceived through the senses, immediate and without what we think of as history, which comes from the ability to store memory in texts. Flusser adds that “Those who use texts to understand the world, those who ‘conceive’ it, mean a world with a linear structure”.[1]
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In pre-literate cultures, such as in Ancient Greece, songs were stitched together into rhapsodies.[2] Before literacy, texts existed as oratories, plays, epics, proclamations and dialogues; mostly oral forms. The nature of text is to knit together communication. In literate cultures texts become textiles, tapestries that form cultural narratives.
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Image: The Rosetta Stone, a tablet discovered in 1799, inscribed with three versions of a decree written in Ancient Egyptian and Ancient Greek
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↑Vilém Flusser ‘The Future of Writing’, from Flusser, V. and Ströhl, A. (2002) Writings. Electronic mediations v. 6. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
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↑Ong, W.J. and Hartley, J. (2012) Orality and literacy: the technologizing of the word. Orality and literacy. 30th anniversary ed.; 3rd ed. London ; New York: Routledge.
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Typologies of traces of use identified from a previous project called From the Books, which explored books from the 000-099 section of the Redmond Barry Reading Room in the State Library of Victoria.
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ACCIDENTAL DOG-EAR
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ANNOTATION
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ASTERISK
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BOOK PRICE
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BOOKMARK
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CIRCLED TEXT
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CREASED PAGE
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CROSS
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DEAD ANT
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DOG-EAR
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ERASER RUBBING
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ERRATA
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FINGERPRINT
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FOLD
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HANDWRITTEN LETTER
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INK BLOT
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LIBRARY DOCUMENT
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LIFTED PRINT
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LINE
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LOOSE PAGE
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NOTEPAPER BOOKMARK
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NOTES
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PAGES REMOVED
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POST-IT NOTE
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RECEIPT BOOKMARK
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REPLACED IMAGE
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SCUFF
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SMUDGE
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SQUIGGLE
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STAIN
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STRIKETHROUGH
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TICK
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TORN PAGE
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TORN PAPER BOOKMARK
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UNDERLINING
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WARPED PAGE
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WEAR AND TEAR
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These formed a loose classification system that indexed these books not by bibliographic reference, but by the frequency of occurrence, taking a "bag of words" approach.
-Problems that arose were linguistic - it was difficult assigning a word to an example as this already had some assumption of intention (e.g. a doodle as an intentional drawing vs squiggle as unintentional drawing).
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My approach was one of identification based on nouns, which presented problems in describing the traces we found and the possible intention (or lack of intention) in their making. To what extent could the noun communicate what had happened? Nouns point towards things affected by actions. In a sense, to name something is to own it, and things become property much more easily than actions.
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Text Laundrette is a workshop in which we use a home-made, DIY book scanner, and open-source software to scan, process, and add digital features to printed texts brought by the participants to the workshop. These are included in the “bootleg library”, a shadow library accessible over a local network.
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Shadow libraries operate outside of legal copyright frameworks, in response to decreased open access to knowledge. This workshop aims to extend our research on libraries, their sociability, and methods by which we can add provenance to texts included in public or private, legal or extra-legal collections.
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The physical bootleg library is housed in a disused champagne crate. It contains books that I have bootlegged myself, or ones that others have. It also contains books donated by visitors to wherever the library is (temporarily) installed. The library travels, and is part of bootleg library sessions held at PZI and at other locations.
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At Varia, Gouwstraat 3, with books distributed on table
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At the Library, Karel Doormanhof 45, ready to be unpacked
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At Onomatopee Projects, before the bootleg library session
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The IKEA trolley the physical bootleg library usually travels on. Biyi lent me the trolley, and in return, I bootlegged the IKEA logo to read AIKE (Biyi's husband's name)
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The library operates outside of legal boundaries that see knowledge as private property. As such, it requires protection from those that wish it to cease and desist. Invitations to join the library are made through personal correspondence and printed matter, in the form of A3 sized posters, and A6 sized cards, like the very one you’re reading right now. Handing a printed card with login details to an interested reader is an act of trust. The card, a pocket-sized object made with care and attention which is passed from hand to hand, engenders a certain kind of intimacy, as opposed to the brute act of spamming a mailinglist.
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Image: A6 card, obverse and reverse, announcing the first bootleg library sessions, Piet Zwart Institute, December 2019
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The first bootleg library sessions were held in Wijnhaven 61, a building that houses several of the Piet Zwart Institute Master's Departments, including XPUB, Lens-Based, MIARD, and the Master in Arts Education. The building also is home to many bachelor students, and stations where students can prototype work. I decided to run introduction sessions in a small room in the drawing station. I advertised these sessions with posters and flyers, distributed throughout Wijnhaven 61 and the adjacent Blaak building. Sessions were organised as a come-as-you-are basis, running for half-hour intervals, but with an open invitation for attendees to stay as long as they liked. The initial purpose of these sessions was to acquaint attendees with the digital bootleg library, explore the interface, and create registered user accounts. There was also another purpose of meeting with other readers to discuss texts we were reading, and how we gained access to them. I kept an Etherpad document open for each session, where I could take notes on what was discussed.
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It wasn’t handwriting that drove forward the technology of writing into the modern era, but type. Moveable type expanded the publishing capabilities of text from a one-to-one to one-to-many model. In the late 19th century hot-typesetting machines melted pieces of aluminium and cast them into type, in order to be re-used and repeated. Input for these machines was often entered on a keyboard, which produced a perforated paper tape, a common early data storage medium. A distinguishing feature of these early typesetting machines was the ability to iterate processes by storing information in a reusable format.
-
For the keyboard, iteration operates at another level, the keys. The keyboard has its roots in moveable type, which produced “typing”, or using a discrete set of components that could be rearranged in infinite combinations. From iteration comes automation; “typewriters”, which emerged onto the market around the same time as the phonograph, were often advertised as a product that enabled “automatic writing”.
-
Image: The first commercially-produced typewriter, the Hansen Writing Ball, from Kittler, F.A. (1990) Discourse networks 1800/1900. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press
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The first commercially-produced typewriter, the Hansen Writing Ball
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Setting up a calibre-web content server on an RPi[edit]
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From a pad session:
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-bootleg library: http://145.24.131.15:20190/
-Username: guest
-Password: thelibraryisopen
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-Setting up a headless Calibre server
-http://linuxphilia.blogspot.com/2012/06/my-wife-and-i-like-to-read-books-on-go.html
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-Turning raspbeery pi to ebook server:
-https://opensource.com/article/17/6/raspberrypi-ebook-server
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-ctl + z to suspend a session in terminal, fg to rejoin
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-usbmount: automatically mounts USB mass storage devices (typically USB pens) when they are plugged in, and unmounts them when they are removed.
-but it didn't work ;(
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-https://www.raspberrypi-spy.co.uk/2014/05/how-to-mount-a-usb-flash-disk-on-the-raspberry-pi/
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-init.d and service files
-generating a /etc/init.d/calibre file, and paste bash script from line 6 to file.
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-what is init.d?
-read on:
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- https://bash.cyberciti.biz/guide//etc/init.d
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- https://www.ghacks.net/2009/04/04/get-to-know-linux-the-etcinitd-directory/
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- https://askubuntu.com/questions/5039/what-is-the-difference-between-etc-init-and-etc-init-d
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- https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/20357/how-can-i-make-a-script-in-etc-init-d-start-at-boot
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- http://linux-tutorial.info/modules.php?name=ManPage&sec=7&manpage=init.d
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-what is daemon?
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- http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/daemon.3.html
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-https://askubuntu.com/questions/666423/run-script-at-startup-in-etc-init-d#666480
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-sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/calibre
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-sudo update-rc.d calibre defaults
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-other than init.d there is systemd, which is supposed to be faster
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-sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/calibre.service
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-[Unit]
-Description=Calibre.
-After=syslog.target network.target
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-[Service]
-Type=simple
-User=pi
-Group=pi
-WorkingDirectory=/home/pi
-ExecStart=/usr/bin/nodejs /opt/etherpad/node_modules/ep_etherpad-lite/node/server.js
-Restart=always
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-[Install]
-WantedBy=multi-user.target
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-sudo service ~insert program
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-installed calibre web!
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-also check out
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- http://internet-in-a-box.org/
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- https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web
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What makes up a text depends on perspective and overlapping dimensions of text; editorial, technical and social.
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The editorial dimension; a sequence. A line of characters and spaces, the particular order that the writer sets these in. Text becomes an object, a carrier of thoughts and feelings, something that can be sent back and forth between participants in a conversation.
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The technical dimension; a process. Cybertexts and “ergodic literature” require non-trivial effort to read[1]. Examples of this are MUDs (multi-user dungeons/domains/dimensions), which are real-time virtual worlds in which the players construct the story on-the-fly, and Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves[2], a printed novel that defies a linear narrative structure through its cybertextual materiality.
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The social dimension; a framework, a network of texts that elicit further texts.
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The library is a collection of texts; not just books, but also files, metadata, scripts and the processes that determine how they are used, and the readers who use them.
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Image: A spread from Danielewski’s House of Leaves
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↑Aarseth, E.J. (1997) Cybertext: perspectives on ergodic literature. Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press.
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↑Danielewski, M.Z. (2000) Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of leaves. 2nd ed. New York: Pantheon Books.
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text, tbc is an essay written as a contribution to a publication, as part of Onomatopee's Meeting Grounds public program. In this essay I describe my interest in text's overlapping dimensions: the editorial, technical and social. The text is performed through the use of Etherpad: as a writing environment to create the text, a software to reflect on, and a live editable document which anyone may edit, if they know the URL.
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The essay below, text, tbc, lives in a pad on a server hosted by Experimental Publishing (XPUB), at the Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam.
-This a live text, welcome to be edited by anyone. However, in the interests of transparency and care towards yourself and others, please be aware of the following:
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VISIBILITY:
-This pad isn't indexed by search engines, but it is 100% public to anyone who knows its URL.
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PRIVACY:
-This pad is not encrypted, meaning that it is not private. Anyone who can access the server can also see its content.
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RETENTION:
-Text can change, rapidly and in real time, making this a dynamic, but ultimately unstable environment. Make backups regularly if you wish to keep copies.
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ACCESSIBILITY:
-Pads can go down for many reasons, such as scheduled server maintenance, unforeseen events, and of course, human error. It is impossible to determine the identity of an author and XPUB does not respond to pad retrieval requests.
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CONVIVIALITY:
-Please be as respectful and supportive towards other reader/writers as possible. Don't delete anything, just add.
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-text, tbc
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Text flies in an endless stream before your eyes. News reports, longform articles, facts and figures, documents and messages sent at all hours of the day and night; it is always daylight somewhere in the world and there is always something new to report. You see text, but you don't have the time to carefully read and absorb it. You have never read or written so much. Your phone buzzes with the input and output of messages and notifications. You are exhausted by the letters, numbers, punctuation, and spaces that make up what is usually called “text”.
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But the overwhelming presence of text is not felt just in the material form of its characters, or the spaces between them. It resides in text's overlapping dimensions and resulting viewpoints and how these influence practices of reading and writing.
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The editorial dimension; text is a sequence. A line of characters and spaces, the particular order that the writer sets these in. Text becomes an object, a carrier of thoughts and feelings, something that can be sent back and forth between participants in a conversation.
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The technical dimension; text is a process. Messages and files that we share are text-based. A computer runs on software, programmed in encoded text, often the same characters that flicker before your eyes. Texts can be assembled on-the-fly as a machine reads scripts and writes output in response to input.
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The social dimension; text is a framework. The English word "text" has roots in the Proto-Indo-European word teks-, meaning “to weave, to fabricate, to make; make wicker or wattle framework”. A piece of writing is a text, and so is a conversation; texts represent the exchange of shared concepts (words, signs, representations) woven into a fabric of communication. There is also an exchange between written and spoken texts; oral discussions which prompt writing, and writing which sparks conversations. Texts elicit further texts.
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I’m typing this now using a self-hosted, open-source, browser-based, realtime, collaborative text-editing software called Etherpad. Etherpad is many things, as you can probably tell by the string of adjectives in my previous sentence. The pad, as it is colloquially (somewhat affectionately) known by many users, has its own peculiar twist on online public space and subsequently, the public it makes. An environment; a combination of particular conditions set by hardware and software that determine how a user operates within it. The pad is an unstable, dynamic environment open to participation, often without notions of consistency in formatting, or singularity in authorship. For a start, anyone who knows the URL can edit what is written here. This text could easily become an unruly wall built without convention, just sitting there in the browser. And though you, dear readers, may also become writers, you will barely recognise each other as authors.
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Some of you will choose a username, some will remain unnamed by default. I often call myself karen eliot (all lowercase), a shared pen name favoured by the Neoists, an art movement famous for creating multiple definitions of itself. karen eliot is everyone and no-one, and on the pad, so am I. In collaborative writing sessions, what I type becomes intermingled with the writings of others until I can hardly say it is mine any more; copy-pasted, deleted, overwritten, rephrased, paraphrased and line-edited to the nth degree. As authorship colours and names change at whim, it's almost impossible for writers to know who is who unless you go back through the version history and/or sleuth the chat section for clues. But it's hardly important when the purpose is to write together.
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Sometimes I use it to write by myself, typing into the pad as the server records a mind-boggling database of every key I press, every action I undo. I slide back in time through this text (the one you're reading) to see revisions in the version history. So far the only author there is myself, although all anyone needs to do is type (even a space), and they will automatically join karen eliot as a listed co-author. Add multiple users at multiple keyboards, all free to edit autonomously, and the writing starts to become definitively less a work of singular authorship, and more a woven multiplicity of perspectives.
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Often the pad serves as a note-taking accompaniment to a spoken conversation, transcribing each other's words, turning our speech into text. Fingers typing rapidly, trying to keep up with the pace of dictation will make mistakes. In response, a distinct protocol develops in support of diverse ways of reading and writing. Spell-checking is often unnecessary; writers may mis-type, but ultimately, their/they're/there spelling isn't a concern as long as it doesn't get in the way of communication. I'm reminded of Samizdat publishers, who eschewed the title of "author" in favour of “typist” or “editor” due to the unwanted attention and risk it would bring to themselves and their dissident republications of censored books. Editing, typing, reproducing texts by hand; all of this encourages a slippery form of authorship through human error and idiosyncratic preferences for a new phrase, sense-for-sense translation or structure. When no writer is the discernible author, everyone becomes a text editor.
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The pad exemplifies the editorial, technical and social dimensions of text. New editors respond with reactions that range from eager enthusiasm to shy suspicion. For some, the pad seems too public, too immediate, too dynamic. What we type, delete, mis-type or mis-spell is there for all to see as we do it. But for the enthusiasts, individually-coloured sentences quickly proliferate into multicoloured streams of collaborative writing. For all its dynamic energy and realtime nature, the pad generates an aura of calm. It's not a feed which must be scrolled, there are no read receipts and no-one can be left on seen. Indeed, nothing can be sent or unsent, nor for that matter, unseen. There are no notifications, it doesn't buzz in the middle of the night. When I come back to it a day or so later, a new text has evolved. There are no other readers or writers there now, only myself, karen eliot. I pause, taking the time to read and absorb it.
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—Simon Browne, Rotterdam, April 2020
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With special thanks to Steve Rushton and Michael Murtaugh.
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The digital collection is formed from individual uploads made by readers who care to share. Uploading takes time—a precious commodity for many readers—and each upload is a deliberate action, not an afterthought. Fostering a culture of uploading requires a decentralised network of readers, and likewise, librarians. A different notion of librarianship is required; the librarian is not the central hub of access to knowledge, but each reader should be a librarian, with the ability to produce, recommend and request texts from others.
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To enable, start, stop, or check the status of the nginx web server, a service file is needed. To create one in a systemd Linux distribution, make this file:
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/lib/systemd/system/nginx.service
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with the following contents:
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# Stop dance for nginx
-# =======================
-#
-# ExecStop sends SIGSTOP (graceful stop) to the nginx process.
-# If, after 5s (--retry QUIT/5) nginx is still running, systemd takes control
-# and sends SIGTERM (fast shutdown) to the main process.
-# After another 5s (TimeoutStopSec=5), and if nginx is alive, systemd sends
-# SIGKILL to all the remaining processes in the process group (KillMode=mixed).
-#
-# nginx signals reference doc:
-# http://nginx.org/en/docs/control.html
-#
-[Unit]
-Description=A high performance web server and a reverse proxy server
-Documentation=man:nginx(8)
-After=network.target nss-lookup.target
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-[Service]
-Type=forking
-PIDFile=/run/nginx.pid
-ExecStartPre=/usr/sbin/nginx -t -q -g 'daemon on; master_process on;'
-ExecStart=/usr/sbin/nginx -g 'daemon on; master_process on;'
-ExecReload=/usr/sbin/nginx -g 'daemon on; master_process on;' -s reload
-ExecStop=-/sbin/start-stop-daemon --quiet --stop --retry QUIT/5 --pidfile /run/nginx.pid
-TimeoutStopSec=5
-KillMode=mixed
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-[Install]
-WantedBy=multi-user.target
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I tried using the Bookscanner, built as part of Special Issue 5 OuNuPo. The Bookscanner needed a few adjustments before it was ready to use. The documentation is rather limited, but the software is set up so that it is quite easy to work out how to use it.
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The scanner takes photos of even and odd pages, from cameras mounted above the glass. First, you have to mount a drive in which the scanned images will be stored. Then, you can adjust the zoom, and shutter speed. I found it impossible to take an image of only the page, so I will need to crop out everything around it in the future.
-
I scanned a book, and made jpegs of each page. The pages are oriented from the camera's perspective, like so:
-
-
-
Next, I ran a script that does OCR on jpegs that Pedro, Tancre and Bo made for their workshop Blurry Boundaries as part of Special Issue 9: The Library Is Open. This created two PDFs, with OCR. The next step will to be to work out how to rotate the images 90 degrees to the correct orientation, (clockwise for the odd pages, anti-clockwise for the even pages), and crop the images.
-
Writing is a technology which transforms cultures, particularly from pre-literate perceptions of memory as a commemorative act bound to the flux of human experience, to post-literate thinking of it as containers within which to store information. The invention of the Greek alphabet, with its introduction of letters representing vowels[1], connected speech with a form of its material representation. This technological development resonates with how we perceive oral communication—thinking of spoken language through the lens of literacy; as discrete, easily divisible units, like printed words punctuated by neat spaces. It all falls apart when speech-to-text transcription software “doesn’t work” (meaning that it works in ways that we do not expect). The result is that speech, essentially the long continuous sounds that we make with our mouths, tongues, teeth, lips and throat, comes out as gobbledygook on the screen.
-
Writing is a fundamental part of the library. Not only in the written texts it contains, but also in the texts it produces; metadata (information such as author, title, subject, description, publisher, etc), annotations made by readers, readers made by readers, correspondence between the users about the texts, which form a dialectical synopsis. The library is sustained through producing texts which argue for its legitimacy by representing the readers who use it.
-
Image: Very early Greek abecedariums, inscriptions of the alphabet in order, typically used as a practice exercise in learning writing, from Drucker, J. (1999) The alphabetic labyrinth: the letters in history and imagination. London: Thames & Hudson
-
-
-
↑Hobart, M.E. and Schiffman, Z.S. (1998) Information ages: literacy, numeracy, and the computer revolution. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
-
Borges - "The Don Quixote of Pierre Menard" - the recreation of Don Quixote (even though word-for-word) is a different work due to the cultural context it was produced in
-
the transformation of a print document into an electronic text is a form of translation "media translation"
-
Dene Grigar in Mutability, Medium & Character - "something is gained as well as lost in translation"
-
our notions of textuality are shot through with assumptions specific to print
editors think it makes sense to talk about a text, separate from its physical embodiment in an artifact
-
Peter Shillingsburg: a text is "the actual order of words and punctuation as contained in any one physical form, such as manuscript, proof or book"
-
problems with this: the text remains the same though the signs for it are different
-
later definition from Shillingsburg: a text is "a compound of matter, concept and execution"
-
thinking of a text as the order of words and punctuation is print-centric, also presumes the text resides at one location
-
in texts assembled on the fly, the text as actual order of words and punctuation does not exist in data files
-
text comes into existence as a process
-
Shillingsburg's definition fails to account for qualities such as colour, font size and shape, and page placement, not to mention electronic-specific effects such as animation, mouseovers, instantaneous linking
-
Platonic definition of a "work" creates "a desire to suppress unruliness and multiplicity in order to converge on an ideal "work"
-
Translating texts into electronic documents - TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) community arrived at the principle of OHCO (ordered hierarchy of content objects)
-
Mats Dahlström: the markup of a text is "a theory of this text, and a general markup language is a general theory or conception of text"
-
Three positions within the text encoding community
-
OHCO: a text consists of a hierarchical set of objects (such as chapters, sections, subsections, paragraphs and sentences), a Platonist perspective
-
pluralism: a text consists of not just one hierarchy, but several interpenetrating hierarchies (e.g. a verse drama which can be parsed as sentences or metrical lines), epistemologically, texts are systems of ordered hierarchies, DTDs (document type definitions) were designed to introduce more flexibility into the system
-
antirealism (Renear): "text does not preexist encoding as a stable ontological object but is brought into existence through implicit assumptions actualized through encoding procedures". Pichler: "Our aim in transcription is not to represent as accurately as possible the originals, but rather to prepare from the original another text so as to serve as accurately as possible certain interests in the text." Ambiguities: Which certain interests?
-
All three positions focus almost exclusively on linguistic codes, allowing them to leave the document as physical artefact out of the discussion
-
Although the editors of the William Blake Archive recognise the book as a physical object, they implicitly understand the bibliographic in terms of the visual
-
The feel and smell of a book cannot be reproduced in digital codes
-
Choices about which aspects to encode (in the William Blake Archive) are heavily weighted towards the linguistic rather than the bibliographic
-
"There are only physical objects such as books and computers, foci of attention, and codes that entrain attention and organize material operations. Since no print books can be completely encoded into digital media, we should think about correspondences rather than ontologies, entraining processes rather than isolated objects, and codes moving in coordinated fashion across representational media rather than mapping one object onto another."
-
Physicality, Materiality and Embodied Textuality (pg 97)[edit]
-
editors seek to separate the work from its physical instantiation
-
Jerome McGann in Radiant Textuality writes of experiments in failure dubbed "deformations"
Transcription (and partial redaction) of a pad used to draft a text for printed matter and digital publicity of the event.
-
flyer side 1 (main text)
-
-
-
bootleg library sessions
-
where?
-varia, a collective-space for everyday technology (gouwstraat 3)
-
when?
-sunday, 26.01.20, 11:00-17:00 (ongoing sessions, you can come or go anytime)
-
what to bring?
-a computer and some of your favourite ebooks (PDF, EPUB, whatever)
-
what will we do?
-we’ll have an introduction to the “bootleg library”, which is a shared digital and physical library of bootlegged texts. let’s make user accounts, download and upload some texts, talk about what we’re reading and how we like to organise our bookshelves, and together discuss ways the library can develop.
-
flyer side 2 (more info)
-
-
-
about the bootleg library
-the bootleg library is a digital, and physical collection of texts. the library consists of bootlegged texts, not in the sense of cheap knock-offs, but instead as unauthorised, fairly faithful reproductions of source publications. development of the library is ongoing, in line with feedback given during sessions.
-
the physical library is a growing collection of republished books, currently stored in an old champagne case. most of these are bootlegged by library members, some donated by visitors. the digital library (running on the open-source software calibre-web) is available at this URL:
-
hub.xpub.nl/bootleglibrary
-
then enter in the following login details:
-
user: {redacted}
-password: {redacted}
-
user accounts
-registered users can access all of the features of the library, including creating and editing public and private “shelves”, which are ways to organise the collection together, or individually. user account registrations can be made at bootleg library sessions, or by request (send an email to simon at redacted@gmail.com).
-
the current collection
-the bootleg library is small but growing, individually uploaded and catalogued by readers who are motivated simply by the desire to share the texts they read. and so the collection represents the readers interests, which range from critical theory to feminisms to literature to technical manuals and zines (and a lot more).
-
waar?
-varia, een collectieve ruimte voor alledaagse technologie (gouwstraat 3)
-
wanneer?
-zondag 26.01.20, 11:00-17:00 (doorlopend, je kan op ieder moment aansluiten)
-
wat mee te nemen?
-een computer en een paar van je favoriete digitale boeken (PDF, EPUB, wat dan ook)
-
wat gaan we doen?
-er zal een introductie over de “bootleg library” zijn, een gedeelde digitale en fysieke bibliotheek met “bootlegged” teksten. we kunnen gebruikersaccounts maken, teksten up- en downloaden, gesprekken hebben over hetgene dat we lezen of over hoe we onze eigen boekenplanken organiseren, en samen een gesprek voeren over mogelijke ontwikkelingen van deze bibliotheek.
-
flyer side 2 (more info)
-
-
-
over de “bootleg library”
-de “bootleg library” is een digitale en fysieke collectie van teksten. deze bibliotheek bestaat uit “bootlegged” teksten. dit zijn geen goedkope aftreksels, maar ongeautoriseerde, vrij precieze reproducties van orginele publicaties. de bibliotheek is in ontwikkeling, en laat zich sturen door de gesprekken die tijdens sessies worden gevoerd.
-
de fysieke bibliotheek is een groeiende collectie van hergepubliceerde boeken, op dit moment opgeslagen in een oude champagne doos. het grootste deel van deze publicaties zijn “bootlegs” van leden van de bibliotheek, anderen zijn gedoneerd door bezoekers. de digitale bibliotheek (die draait op het open source software project calibre-web) is te vinden op:
-
hub.xpub.nl/bootleglibrary
-
daar kun je de volgende login gegevens invoeren:
-
user: {geredigeerd}
-password: {geredigeerd}
-
gebruikersaccounts
-geregistreerde gebruikers kunnen alle functies van de bibliotheek gebruiken, zoals het maken en aanpassen van publieke en persoonlijke “planken”, een instrument om collecties samen of individueel te beheren. gebruikersaccounts kunnen gemaakt worden tijdens “bootleg library” sessies, of op aanvraag (send an email to simon at geredigeerd@gmail.com).
-
de huidige collectie
-the “bootleg library” is klein maar groeiende, individueel geupload en beheerd door lezers die simpelweg gemotiveerd zijn om teksten te delen die zij lezen. de collectie reflecteert daardoor de interesse van haar lezers, wat variëert van kritische theorie tot feminismes tot literatuur tot technische handleidingen en zines (en nog veel meer).
-
The first bootleg library sessions were held in Wijnhaven 61, a building that houses several of the Piet Zwart Institute Master's Departments, including XPUB, Lens-Based, MIARD, and the Master in Arts Education. The building also is home to many bachelor students, and stations where students can prototype work. I decided to run introduction sessions in a small room in the drawing station. I advertised these sessions with posters and flyers, distributed throughout Wijnhaven 61 and the adjacent Blaak building. Sessions were organised as a come-as-you-are basis, running for half-hour intervals, but with an open invitation for attendees to stay as long as they liked. The initial purpose of these sessions was to acquaint attendees with the digital bootleg library, explore the interface, and create registered user accounts. There was also another purpose of meeting with other readers to discuss texts we were reading, and how we gained access to them. I kept an Etherpad document open for each session, where I could take notes on what was discussed.
-
Varia is a collective-space in Gouwstraat, Rotterdam. On the last Sunday of each month they open their doors to the public to read books from their library and repair electronics, in what is known as the L.E.D (Library & Electronic Depot). I held a bootleg library session at the first L.E.D., which ended up being a sunny, relaxing afternoon sitting on cushions, discussing bootlegs, scanning, piracy, and the type of strategies that the physical bootleg library could employ.
-
This bootleg library session was held in a new space at Karel Doormanhof 45, called "The Library". The building is home to studios for Piet Zwart Institute MA Fine Arts participants. The first hour of the session was initially only attended by one other participant, and then others arrived. All told, there session was attended by 5 participants, including myself. The attendees interests were well reflected in the type fo texts we discussed and shared - literary theory, writing, 60s counterculture, the occult and magick. This was the first time I used the Tasks of the Contingent Librarian cards - these were distributed over the table, and put on offer for participants to choose and begin conversations about the various tasks I had been writing about; e.g. reading/writing, skimming/scanning, bootlegging, reprinting, uploading/downloading etc. This provided an easy entry point for participants to approach the topic of bootlegging and the contingencies this type of library offered.
-
Meeting Grounds is a public program organised by Onomatopee Projects, a Dutch publisher and cultural space in Eindhoven. This bootleg library session was held in Eindhoven at Onomatopee HQ as part of Meeting Grounds. It was attended by a group of friends, who were all of similar ages. After we cooked lunch together, I invited participants to explore the printed books in the physical bootleg library, and also the A6 cards I had been producing for my thesis Tasks of the Contingent Librarian. I hoped these would spark conversation about our experiences of sharing files and piracy. The participants wrote notes in a pad as they made user accounts for the digital library, and personal anecdotes came out of our experiences of filesharing during our formative years, bootlegged Britney Spears cds and "chipped" game consoles that could play bootlegged games. Some quite interesting questions arose about our attitudes towards piracy, for example the difference in moral perspective between pirating books, and pirating films. I distributed some blank index cards for participants to write their thoughts on - some of them drew pictures, others stayed within the lines and wrote about texts they would like to download and upload. The interface of the card is a low entry point into being able to contribute texts without speaking out and interrupting a conversation, something I'd like to explore in the future. The cards provide feedback, and then become part of the index.
-
/ b \ o / o \ t / l \ e / g \ l / i \ b / r \ a / r \ y /
- \ a / t \
-/ m \ e / e \ t / i \ n / g \ g / r \ o / u \ n / d \ s
-
--------------------------------------------
-the bootleg library
-
-https://hub.xpub.nl/bootleglibrary
-
--------------------------------------------
-book sharing & annotation
-
-calibre
-ebook manager - you can download this, run it on your computer and share books over a local network using the content server function
-https://calibre-ebook.com/
-
-calibre-web
-web app that the bootleg library runs on (a fork of the open-source calibre software)
-https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web
-
-Annotation on the web - the holy grail with lots of projects:
-https://beepb00p.xyz/annotating.html
-
-also done very simply and effectively with genius:
-https://genius.com/
-
--------------------------------------------
-pirate/shadow/"extra-legal" libraries
-
-Monoskop
-https://monoskop.org/Monoskop
-
-Library Genesis (collection is HUGE and mirrored) - i usually use the russian site
-http://gen.lib.rus.ec/
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-Memory of the World
-https://library.memoryoftheworld.org/#/books/
-
-aaaaarg (only accessible by members. simon can invite you - just send him an email)
-https://aaaaarg.fail/
-
-ask for PDFs from people with institutional access
-group for informal PDF sharing through a social network
-https://www.facebook.com/groups/850609558335839/
-
-Sci-Hub (this is mirrored too, try googling if the link is down):
-https://mg.scihub.ltd/
-
-ubu-web
-kenneth goldsmith's baby - an archive of avant-garde cinema and writing
-http://ubu.com/
-
-Leeszaal
-not an online pirate library, but a volunteer-run place in Rotterdam where you can borrow books, look up information, learn how to use LINUX, study or just read the newspaper. Books are not catalogued, and if you want to borrow one, just take it off the shelf and walk out with it :)
-https://www.leeszaalrotterdamwest.nl/
-
--------------------------------------------
-legal online libraries & archives
-
-Project Gutenberg
-books are within the public domain (70+ years after death of the author), so free of copyright restrictions:
-https://www.gutenberg.org/
-
-The Internet Archive
-hosts a collection of books and more, also has the wayback machine (snapshots of web pages going back to the 90s)
-https://archive.org/
-
---------------------------------------------
-projects & open letters in support of and about piracy/peeracy
-
-In solidarity with Library Genesis and Sci-Hub
-an open letter calling for shadow librarians to come out of the shadows
-http://custodians.online/
-
-Alexandra Elbakyan to Mr. Robert W. Sweet (presiding judge in the Elsevier vs Sci-Hub et al court case)
-https://torrentfreak.com/images/sci-hub-reply.pdf
-
-and publishing
-http://andpublishing.org/
- The Piracy Project
- http://andpublishing.org/the-piracy-project/
-
---------------------------------------------
-loose thoughts from our conversation
-
-misspellings on ebay - how to exploit this to find undiscovered items http://fatfingers.com
-bootlegged DVDs and PS1 games - "chipping" to play bootlegged games
-social capital accumulated from having a chipped console
-
-The Pirate Book
-historical stories of piracy - warez, demoscene, music etc:
-https://hub.xpub.nl/bootleglibrary/read/290/pdf
-
-selling unauthorised copies out of a car boot = "boot"legging?
-
-why do we feel it's more threatening to pirate books than movies/music/games etc?
-where does the text reside?
-what if i read a book out loud and make a file on youtube - is it bootlegging?
-
-can the library also have audio/visual media?
- yes - the library is running on open-source software, so definitely possible. this requires an upgrade of the computer and data storage
-what is more of a risk - a shared google drive of PDFs or the bootleglib?
- a shared google drive is more risky - the bootleg library has several security measures in place to keep it private
-will i get into trouble for using the bootleg library?
- haha - not very likely :)
-can readers communicate with each other through the bootleglib?
- not directly, but possible by adding links to etherpads (like this one) in the description fields
---------------------------------------------
-some interesting things to watch & read on archives, libraries, piracy and activism
-
-things to read:
-
- the science of piracy and the piracy of science by bodo balasz (an economist researching use of pirate libraries)
- Part 1: http://copyrightblog.kluweriplaw.com/2019/03/06/the-science-of-piracy-the-piracy-of-science-who-are-the-science-pirates-and-where-do-they-come-from-part-1/
- Part 2: http://copyrightblog.kluweriplaw.com/2019/03/21/the-science-of-piracy-the-piracy-of-science-who-are-the-science-pirates-and-where-do-they-come-from-part-2/
-
- a view from elsewhere on authorship, copyright and creativity by eva weinmayr (of and publishing and the piracy project)
- https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mw-mediadesign/images/d/dd/Confronting_Authorship_Published_with_content_page--Whose_book_is_it_anyway.pdf
-
- articles by shannon mattern on self-organised and "fugitive" libraries
- https://placesjournal.org/article/marginalia-little-libraries-in-the-urban-margins/
- https://placesjournal.org/article/fugitive-libraries/
-
- interview with kate eichhorn, author of the archival turn in feminism
- https://criticalmargins.com/interview-with-kate-eichhorn-author-of-the-archival-turn-in-feminism-a204b02ae340
-
-things to watch:
-
- Digital Amnesia
- https://youtu.be/NdZxI3nFVJs
- "Our memory is dissipating. Hard drives only last five years, a web page is forever changing and there’s no machine left that reads 15-year old floppy disks. Digital data is vulnerable. Yet entire libraries are shredded and lost to budget cuts, because we assume everything can be found online."
-
- The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz
- https://archive.org/details/TheInternetsOwnBoyTheStoryOfAaronSwartz
- "The Internet's Own Boy depicts the life of American computer programmer, writer, political organizer and Internet activist Aaron Swartz. It features interviews with his family and friends as well as the internet luminaries who worked with him. The film tells his story up to his eventual suicide after a legal battle, and explores the questions of access to information and civil liberties that drove his work."
-
---------------------------------------------
-King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard
-Polygondwanaland is free for everybody and you can do with what you.
-From the band's post accompanying links to different digital packs:
-"This album is FREE. Free as in, free. Free to download and if you wish, free to make copies.
-Make tapes, make CD’s, make records.
-[...]
-Ever wanted to start your own record label? GO for it! Employ your mates, press wax, pack boxes. We do not own this record. You do. Go forth, share, enjoy."
-https://www.discogs.com/King-Gizzard-And-The-Lizard-Wizard-Polygondwanaland/master/1268453
-
-100 copies of the white album played at once
-https://thevinylfactory.com/news/artist-layers-100-unique-copies-of-the-beatles-white-album-for-original-vinyl-release/
-
-royalty-free audio
-http://freesound.org
-
-spotify scanning interface
-http://everynoise.com/
-
-sharpest knife ever made from {insert substance here}
-https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg3qsVzHeUt5_cPpcRtoaJQ
-
-
-Bootleg Britney / A bootleg CD bought at the market in Montenegro had 3 extra unpublished songs in comparison to the actual album on sale in the shops - what message was Britney sending me?! i <3 this story
-
-
bootleg library at Art Meets Radical Openness 21.05.20[edit]
Bootleg Library Session: Notes on Texts
-The bootleg library is a particular, situated social infrastructure that operates from the understanding that the library is a collection of texts and readers. A reciprocal, self-reflexive relationship between the texts the readers produce, and the readers produced by the collection drives the sociability of the library. The bootleg library celebrates idiosyncrasy, and resists the singularity of the text.
-
A bootleg is an unauthorised copy of a source publication; bootlegging is a strategy by which texts acquire multiplicity of form and informal distribution methods, representing readers and connecting them with each other.
-
Abstract of session
-Notes on Texts is a session that annotates a library. It understands reading and writing to be fundamental library practices, and asks how new reader/writers may participate in producing texts that both describe the collection and represent themselves. This session will be centred around the *bootleg library*, a shared digital and physical collection
-of republished texts. Bootlegs; unauthorised copies of source publications that represent ourselves, our multiplicity and our shared interests. A library; a collection of texts and also the readers collected around them.
-
Previous bootleg library sessions have been moments to meet in various spaces with the people who frequent them, discuss things we read, add to the collection, and offer each other contingencies through the texts we share.
-
For this session we'll meet online in a web conference, in the digital bootleg library, and in a realtime collaborative text-editing environment. We'll explore how being together in- and out of sync and the mediums and techniques we use will shape the texts we share.
-
You are invited to experiment with annotation to produce texts by new readers (and writers), imagining ways that we can guide each other towards the things we read. What type of contingencies can we offer each other at our meeting and throughout AMRO2020, using the particular, situated social infrastructure the *bootleg library* maintains? How can we enrich texts through our annotations, and what kind of new texts can we produce through our notes?
-
Requirements
-The bootleg library has grown through individual contributions of a vast variety of texts. The collection includes many texts on critical feminist and media theory, literature, sound art, as well as technical manuals, but the collection is not exclusive to these interests. There is no set criteria for texts that can be included. Please come to this session with any ebooks that you are familiar with, are representative of your interests, and which you would like to share.
-
This session will focus specifically on annotation. Please prepare annotation(s) on the text(s) you'd like to include in the library.
-
File formats
-The bootleg library runs on calibre-web https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web , and supports a wide range of file formats, including .pdf, .epub, .mobi, .docx, .odt, .rtf, .txt, .mp3, .mp4a, .cbr, .cbz, .cbt, and many more.
-
We planned to meet in an online web conference, in an Etherpad and in the digital bootleg library. This was tricky, given that many of us were meeting for the first time, and we didn't have the same visual cues to work with. After a brief tutorial, we went through the library and added annotations in a pad. This has been transposed here
-
The basic workflow was:
-
pdf > pad > markdown > pandoc > EPUB > library
-
We chose a page from a PDF in the library to annotate, then wrote on pad, collaboratively. Markdown was added to create basic structure (this was especially important for the hyperlinks), and then we exported a .txt file from the pad. This was then run through pandoc with the following command:
-
bootleg library sessions at WdKA
-
-27.11.19
-10:20-10:50, 10:50-11:20, 11:20-11:50
-Attendees: Simon, Mia, Angeliki
-
-multiple languages?
-possibly hard to find in their native language e.g. slovene PDFs
-
-šum magazine: http://sumrevija.si/en/
-
-shelves:
- buttons! red button is very attractive
- download everything at once in a shelf?
-
-categories - and sub-categories?
-tags and categories separate?
-categories chosen by drop-down, tags individually decided
-temporality, personal aspect of tags e.g. #trending
-tags become keywords
-
-+ recently added
-+ hot books
-
-from book view - can you make a new shelf there?
-related books in book view - e.g. you may also like (and can be related to tags/categories)
-
-Simon's favourite pirate libraries
-https://aaaaarg.fail/ (by invitation only)
-https://library.memoryoftheworld.org/
-https://monoskop.org/Monoskop
-http://gen.lib.rus.ec/
-
-bootleg library link & link to pad on the main page of the wiki?
-
-journal articles - how do you enter in autumn 1977 in publishing date?
-
-case sensitivity for tags?
-
-JSTOR watermarking - how do we remove this/ use our own watermarks?
-
-Martino knows how to remove watermarks
-https://piratebox.cc/
-
-remove watermark from pdf: https://superuser.com/questions/448519/how-to-remove-watermark-from-pdf-using-pdftk
- sed -e "s/watermarktextstring/ /g" <input.pdf >unwatermarked.pdf && pdftk unwatermarked.pdf output fixed.pdf && mv fixed.pdf unwatermarked.pdf
-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
-28.11.19
-10:00-10:30, 10:30-11:00
-Attendees: Simon, Ugo
-
-French language texts - classic & contemporary social sciences from University of Quebec
-http://classiques.uqac.ca
-
-Collective Memory - Maurice Halbwachs
-Georg Simmel - The Philosophy of Money
-
-Google Scholar for academic texts?
-
-https://scholar.google.com/
-
-Descriptions for non-English books, not in English?
-
-date of publication - had to click on 2/1/1925 to enter 1/1/1925!!!
-
-"Upload Format" vs Submit button - a bit confusing at the moment
-
-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
-04.12.19
-10:00-10:30, 10:30-11:00
-Attendees: Simon, Sonia, Wilma
-
-Sonia - using Zotero a lot at the moment, likes writing tags
-
-library loaded in French on Chrome!
-
-uploading - can't upload large files!!!
-
-Categories:
- difficult with tagging people - hard to remember who the reference was
-
-At some point people will look for specific things, when the collection grows
-
-How do I browse everything?
-
-LB is very self-directed
-
-Finding contemporary references is hard - easy to find Susan Sontag, Flusser, but what about today?
-
-found references through other books - e.g. non-human photography > anthropology of tourism
-not often through people
-
-it's about having a space to have conversations - reading groups etc
-
-focus group classes: what is artistic research?
-
-Wilma Knol (librarian at Research Station), ginger koons, Jojanneke Gijsen
-
-memory of the library - remembering student through books they borrowed
-e.g. painters who borrowed Phillip Guston books
-
-From 12-1 December 11th in the library
-"make a sustainable library for the future" directive from management - inclusivity
-Cataloguing
-
-library thing - open source library
-https://www.librarything.com/
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The bootleg library runs on a Raspberry Pi (RPi) single-board computer. The operating system of the RPi is stored on an SD card, that must be "flashed" with an "image" of the operating system in order to boot the computer.
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There are various distributions you can choose from, depending on how you want to use the computer. This page from the Raspberry Pi documentation gives a good guide on how to install an operating system image on an SD card using Raspberry Pi Imager, or manually. For the bootleg library, I initially installed Buster-lite, and then eventually switched to a plain-text environment because it was lighter.
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I used software called balena etcher, but you can also attempt to install a distribution using the dreaded dd command to convert and copy the exact image on to the SD card. dd is sometimes referred to as the "disk destroyer", so use with caution.
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In order to find the unique reference (UUID) for your drive run the following command in the terminal :
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ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid/
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This will give you an output that should list your drive :
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The line will usually refer to “/sda” and in this example it is “sda1”. My ID is “989B-E900”. Note down yours.
-You would need to repeat this step if you wanted to use a different device as the UUID would be different.
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A mount point is a directory that will point to the contents of your flash drive. Create a suitable folder :
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sudo mkdir /media/usb
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I’m using “usb” but you can give it whatever name you like. Keep it short as it saves typing later on. Now we need to make sure the Pi user owns this folder :
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To manually mount the drive use the following command :
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sudo mount /dev/sda1 /media/usb -o uid=pi,gid=pi
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-This will mount the drive so that the ordinary Pi user can write to it. Omitting the “-o uid=pi,gid=pi” would mean you could only write to it using “sudo”.
-Now you can read, write and delete files using “/media/usb” as a destination or source without needing to use sudo.
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You don’t need to manually un-mount if you shutdown your Pi but if you need to remove the drive at any other time you should un-mount it first. Only the user that mounted the drive can un-mount it.
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umount /media/usb
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If you used the fstab file to auto-mount it you will need to use :
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sudo umount /media/usb
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If you are paying attention you will notice the command is “umount” NOT “unmount”!
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When you restart your Pi your mounts will be lost and you will need to repeat Step 4. If you want your USB drive to be mounted when the system starts you can edit the fstab file :
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The “nofail” option allows the boot process to proceed if the drive is not plugged in. The “noatime” option stops the file access time being updated every time a file is read from the USB stick. This helps improve performance.
-This is what my fstab file looks like:
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Make sure you set the correct UUID. Use CTRL-X followed by Y to save and exit the nano editor.
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Now reboot :
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sudo reboot
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Your USB drive should be auto-mounted and available as “/media/usb”.
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In the examples above I specified “vfat” as the file system of the device as it was formatted as FAT32. If you need to change the file system replace references of “vfat” with “ntfs-3g”, “ext3” or “ext4”.
-If you are using NTFS you will also need to install the following package :
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This technique suits my applications but the main disadvantage is that it is specific to a known USB device given we are using the device ID. However if you created a few mount points in advance you could manually mount a new device to a spare mount point without worrying about updating the fstab file.
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You can easily create a unit file for calibre to run on boot on a modern (systemd) based Linux system. This means it will also restart after a crash. Create the file /etc/systemd/system/calibre-server.service with the contents shown below:
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The User and Group should be the same ones that own the files in the calibre library directory. It's generally not a good idea to run the server as root. Also change the path to the calibre library directory to suit your system.
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The calibre server does not need a running X server, but it does need the X libraries installed as some components it uses link against them.
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The calibre server also supports systemd socket activation, so you can use that, if needed, as well.
-This is the configuration for calibre-web to listen on localhost:
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To enable, start, stop, or check the status of the nginx web server, a service file is needed. To create one in a systemd Linux distribution, make this file:
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/lib/systemd/system/nginx.service
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with the following contents:
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# Stop dance for nginx
-# =======================
-#
-# ExecStop sends SIGSTOP (graceful stop) to the nginx process.
-# If, after 5s (--retry QUIT/5) nginx is still running, systemd takes control
-# and sends SIGTERM (fast shutdown) to the main process.
-# After another 5s (TimeoutStopSec=5), and if nginx is alive, systemd sends
-# SIGKILL to all the remaining processes in the process group (KillMode=mixed).
-#
-# nginx signals reference doc:
-# http://nginx.org/en/docs/control.html
-#
-[Unit]
-Description=A high performance web server and a reverse proxy server
-Documentation=man:nginx(8)
-After=network.target nss-lookup.target
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-[Service]
-Type=forking
-PIDFile=/run/nginx.pid
-ExecStartPre=/usr/sbin/nginx -t -q -g 'daemon on; master_process on;'
-ExecStart=/usr/sbin/nginx -g 'daemon on; master_process on;'
-ExecReload=/usr/sbin/nginx -g 'daemon on; master_process on;' -s reload
-ExecStop=-/sbin/start-stop-daemon --quiet --stop --retry QUIT/5 --pidfile /run/nginx.pid
-TimeoutStopSec=5
-KillMode=mixed
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-[Install]
-WantedBy=multi-user.target
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In November 2018, I experimented with a timed writing task using Etherpad, a collaborative realtime browser-based text editor. Etherpad automatically assigns authorship colours to users, and I wanted to explore how a text that I was writing, reading and editing over a specific time period could be visualised.
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The method was to write for one hour. I begin by writing a text about what I was doing (writing, reading and editing). For time constraints, I established writing periods of 3 minutes, and a rest period of 2 minutes. After 6 iterations, this shifted to 5 minutes for both respectively. I kept writing and opening up new private tabs in my browser to give each iteration new authorship colours. These are lost when exported, so I recreated the text and authorship colours to make visualisations.
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Each iteration is isolated in the following visualisations:
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21:10-21:15
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21:15-21:20
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21:20-21:25
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21:25-21:30
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21:30-21:35
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21:35-21:40
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21:40-21:50
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21:50-22:00
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22:00-22:10
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The authorship colours with text removed:
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The experiment showed me that editing is a way of writing, kind of like making growing a tree while making furniture from it. Whatever is written is there to be pruned and shaped into pieces that are joined together to form a supportive text structure. Etherpad makes this visible with its authorship colours, all the more so when it is used as it has been designed; collaboratively.
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This text has been edited with the intention to be published in a very specific form; a hyperlinked index of the tasks of the contingent librarian. These tasks, performed on the site of contingencies, the bootleg library, are described on the obverse, and related images and links to snippets are on the reverse.
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Please read it while flipping through, shuffling and reordering them, making your own text as you read.
To enable, start, stop, or check the status of the nginx web server, a service file is needed. To create one in a systemd Linux distribution, make this file:
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/lib/systemd/system/nginx.service
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with the following contents:
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# Stop dance for nginx
-# =======================
-#
-# ExecStop sends SIGSTOP (graceful stop) to the nginx process.
-# If, after 5s (--retry QUIT/5) nginx is still running, systemd takes control
-# and sends SIGTERM (fast shutdown) to the main process.
-# After another 5s (TimeoutStopSec=5), and if nginx is alive, systemd sends
-# SIGKILL to all the remaining processes in the process group (KillMode=mixed).
-#
-# nginx signals reference doc:
-# http://nginx.org/en/docs/control.html
-#
-[Unit]
-Description=A high performance web server and a reverse proxy server
-Documentation=man:nginx(8)
-After=network.target nss-lookup.target
-
-[Service]
-Type=forking
-PIDFile=/run/nginx.pid
-ExecStartPre=/usr/sbin/nginx -t -q -g 'daemon on; master_process on;'
-ExecStart=/usr/sbin/nginx -g 'daemon on; master_process on;'
-ExecReload=/usr/sbin/nginx -g 'daemon on; master_process on;' -s reload
-ExecStop=-/sbin/start-stop-daemon --quiet --stop --retry QUIT/5 --pidfile /run/nginx.pid
-TimeoutStopSec=5
-KillMode=mixed
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-[Install]
-WantedBy=multi-user.target
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The physical bootleg library is housed in a disused champagne crate. It contains books that I have bootlegged myself, or ones that others have. It also contains books donated by visitors to wherever the library is (temporarily) installed. The library travels, and is part of bootleg library sessions held at PZI and at other locations.
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At Varia, Gouwstraat 3, with books distributed on table
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At the Library, Karel Doormanhof 45, ready to be unpacked
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At Onomatopee Projects, before the bootleg library session
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The IKEA trolley the physical bootleg library usually travels on. Biyi lent me the trolley, and in return, I bootlegged the IKEA logo to read AIKE (Biyi's husband's name)
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This book took quite some time to lay out. The original publication exists as an EPUB. You have to buy it, and it's not available in this format from the usual pirate libraries, but I did find an HTML version on https://monoskop.org/media/text/feminist_art_manifestos/
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I ran pandoc on the HTML file to turn it into a .rtf so that I could lay it out in InDesign using this command:
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$ pandoc -s source.html -o new_source.rtf
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This retained italics and hyperlinks (which was super nice), but there were lots of line-breaks that I didn't need and had to remove manually as find/change in InDesign is indiscriminate...
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In some ways the digital book is superior to the printed version as you can click on the hyperlinks to visit the source pages of many of these texts, something which is obviously impossible in the printed version, although it does say where the manifestos can be found.
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The interesting thing about doing this as a book sprint is the speed at which you have to make design decisions. This makes the design quite minimal, and the only typographic conceit here was with a decision to use a variety of indentation styles, which refers to the multiplicity of feminist manifestos. The interesting thing for me about these texts is that they show many different artistic views of feminism which don't necessarily agree with each other.
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During the time I was laying out this publication, I was invited by Artemis to join her and Paloma in applying to present our Marginal Conversations workshop in Athens at the ETC (Eclectic Tech Conference) festival. We were all pretty excited about the prospect, however as it turned out, some of the organisers were unsure about me presenting a workshop as a cis-gendered hetero man. Although I was disappointed, I understood the reasoning, as due to the nature of this particular conference (which started as a way for women and queer, trans & non-binary folk to share skills outside of a patriarchal male-dominated tech culture. I was reassured that this was not the opinion of all of the organisers, but of some, however, they were trying to reach a compromise with me and each other. I found this an interesting sidenote to the publication I was producing, in which there is a plurality of views that co-exist.
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I decided to print a second edition of this book for two reasons; 1) someone had borrowed the first edition three months ago and it hadn't been returned, and 2) what's a books of Feminist Art Manifestos without any images?
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I spent quite some time tracking down images to use in the book. Oftentimes I couldn't find an image that directly corresponded to the writer/writers of each manifesto, which created an interesting opportunity to think about who is represented by each text. Sometimes it was an image of an artwork (if the manifesto was written by an artist), sometimes an image of a collective or the publications they produces, often a portrait of the author or authors, sometimes an image of the manifesto as it appeared in print originally. Each manifesto text is prefaced by an image - abutting the text of a previous manifesto. This creates an interesting connection between seemingly disparate elements and waves of feminist movements. The book was printed in the same size as the first edition, with a grey cover, and noticeably more pages due to the addition of so many colour images.
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One of my favourite novels for its striking descriptions of colour. Written by "the other Murakami" (not Haruki). This was a relatively easy case of taking the text from an EPUB I found online. Again, the most tedious thing was removing the soft returns. Once I got through that, I decided to reflect the episodic nature of the novel by beginning every section with a drop cap. Another design decision was in the format - as it is originally a Japanese novel, I wanted to use a specific novel size common in Japan of 112x172mm. The blue square on the cover is a post-it note that I photocopied in single colour - blue; an impromptu decision. The cartridge was running out, which produced a very transparent blue.
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Front cover
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Spread: Sections introduced with drop capitals
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Back cover
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Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection[edit]
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Printed: 19.09.19
-Dimensions: 130x180mm
-Cover stock: Heavy green stock (unknown brand) - around 210gsm
-Text stock: Bio Top 80gsm
-Binding: Perfect bound (hot glue)
-Pages: 331pp
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Artemis messaged me asking if I was in the studio, and if I could find a book of Steve's that was about how the internet makes it seem like we're connected, though we're not. I found Steve's copy, but as Artemis was still in Greece I did a quick search online to see if I could find a digital version. The only one I could find was an EPUB, which I converted to an RTF using pandoc.
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This book took quite a while to produce as it was important that the page numbers matched the original publication (for citation purposes), so I painstakingly set the text to the same line count and flow as the original publication. I also included the Library of Congress bibliographic details for this purpose.
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THE MANUAL (How To Have A Number One The Easy Way) is a rather tongue-in-cheek guide to how to write a hit pop song, made by members of the KLF (Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty), who had a hit song in 1988 with Doctorin' the Tardis. This is a printed book made from a .txt file, found online, and still bearing the file path from the directory it came from as well as date and time of creation. I retained these details for this printed book (only substituting actual numbers for page number and page count) in reference to the provenance of the file, and to be clear about the raw nature of its origin. As a .txt, it doesn't contain any styling or italics and I wanted to retain this crudeness in the design.
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Ursula K. Le Guin's short essay appears in a compilation called Dancing at the Edge of the World, which I've found impossible to find online through the usual pirate libraries such as Library Genesis, aaaaaarg.fail and Monoskop. Perhaps this points to a gender bias in what is perceived as knowledge (Le Guin was a woman wrote mostly science-fiction)? In lieu of not being able to find the compilation, I decided to print this book in a very small size (90x120mm) and retain the annotations from the PDF I found. I digitised them by making them into vectors, and printed the text and annotations in green. In this way I wanted to speculate on what would happen when a reader was confronted with annotations that seemed to be part of the source, not a para-text added after publication.
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The Electronic Revolution is an essay by William S. Burroughs, in which he outlines his radical concepts of the cut-up, and the written word as a virus that makes the spoken word possible. The text was introduced to me by Florian Cramer in a seminar on media activism, networks, and mail art that he delivered last year as part of Special Issue 9: The Network We (de)Served. Both of these ideas can be applied to what I'm doing with this bootleg library - reformatting and annotating texts as a way to create conversations around them. I found a pdf of the text on ubuweb, where it was published under their ubuclassics imprint. This was devoid of any other publication details that usually accompany "official" publications, such as date of publication, identifier etc. The text was also riddled with punctuation and spelling errors, which I decided to keep in the bootlegged print publication. There were no italics so I used a font I had ripped from a Canadian calendar featuring Eskimo drawings and Inuit script - the font looked like a grotesque (Helvetica?) and had a low contrast, and was only available in regular (no italics) so it was usable for this design. I set the text in a symmetrical layout with large margins at either side, and decided on a suitable large scale format for more relaxed reading.
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Front cover
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Spread: Ample margins for annotation
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"Language is a virus"
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Bootleg acknowledgment
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Dumbstruck—A Cultural History of Ventriloquism[edit]
This book took about 40 hours to create, the longest time it's taken so far... I found a PDF on Lib Gen, but for some reason the OCR'd text was tracked quite tight making each line look like a very long word - this was even worse when printed. After a quick search on worldcat, I discovered that this book was available to be borrowed from the Royal Library in the Hague. Off I went to borrow the book. I planned to scan it using the bookscanner, but the cameras kept crashing after scanning half the 433 page book. So, I managed to extract the text using Calibre's book convert process from PDF > RTF. However, after placing the text in an InDesign layout, all of the numbers appeared as missing characters. From the looks of the PDF it seemed that these were perhaps from an Opentype font's custom stylistic set, which would explain why they weren't turning up in my system fonts. Also, in the index at the back of the book the numbers seemed to have the appearance of hyperlinks (when hovering over the hand icon appears) but when clicked, did absolutely nothing. So I began the rather painstaking process of laying out the book with exactly the same text flow and page numbers as the source. The work included removing headers and page numbers from the RTF, scanning all photos from the printed book, endlessly wordspacing paragraphs to make sure they fit where they should on each page, styling the text, removing manually written hyphenation (this was done programmatically, and ended up with a few words that were joined together in the case of examples like "re- and dis- associate" becoming reand disassociate") and the seemingly endless task of manually entering in EVERY number. At times it felt a bit masochistic, but I used this time to reflect on the process, thinking a lot about the changes I was making to preserve the form of the original. Ironically, this also involved a lot of forced line breaks, which would make the task of anyone who wanted to bootleg this book a bit more difficult (forced line breaks are the bane of the bootlegger). Another strange thought - I'm reading these books as I redesign them, but my reading happens on a more superficial level perhaps, meaning that I'm not absorbing the content fully, but reading it like a machine would as I look for anomalies and address them.
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Clara Balaguer asked me for a copy of this book, and it seemed like a good opportunity to try a new printing and binding process. I decided to print the book double-sided on A4 paper, as opposed to the previous method of 2-up imposed printing on A3 paper. I wasn't very satisfied with how the previous printing method had produced a "split" in the book due to the paper grain direction. Yin Yin Wong at PS Rotterdam had recommended printing double sided rather than 2-up to avoid this, so this was the technique I decided to try out. I also decided on hand-binding it with cold glue, a technique which I had recently learned. Cold glue binding is done with equipment and materials such as a hacksaw, scissors, medical gauze (or cheesecloth), brushes, PVA glue, bookbinding thread, a jig to hold the book in while notches are cut and the spine receives its initial gluing, and a book press to keep the book in overnight, which stops the book from warping due to the high water content of the PVA glue. Cold glue binding allows the book to lay open flat on a table, a benefit I was keen to apply to this edition of the book as I was dissatisfied by how tight the binding of the first edition was because I had used the hot glue binding machine, which takes much less time but for thick books can produce a lower quality result. I was quite pleased with how this book came out, however, when applying the cover I had to decide not to glue it to the spine. Cold glue binding results in a rough spine, and hot glue creates a smooth layer of glue that dries quickly, producing a smooth spine. The only way to avoid this is to not attach the cover to the spine if using cold glue.
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Bootlegged books front covers: Second edition (left) and first edition (right)
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Front covers: Source publication (left) and second edition bootleg (right)
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Beginning of image section: Source publication (left) and second edition bootleg (right). The second edition bootleg book lies open more easily due to the cold glue binding
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Spines: Source publication (left) and second edition bootleg (right)
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Back covers: Source publication (left) and second edition bootleg (right)
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A reprint of Ted Nelson's Literary Machines - a small booklet in which Nelson outlines his ideas for Project Xanadu, hypermedia and hypertext. I found this on Monoskop as an OCR'd PDF. What was interesting was how the traces of the scan persisted in the PDF - the dark edges around the pages, the bend of the paper on the glass, the warping in text from moving the paper while scanning. I simply re-imposed these pages onto a new document (of a different size), creating margins around the text and retaining these visual traces. The cover was made simply from taking each page marker, cropping it to the width of the margins (while retaining the dark edges) and stacking them on top of each other.
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Impromptu front cover, with page numbers stacked on top of each other
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Spread: Pages 3 & 4
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Spread: Pages 6 & 7
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Spread: Pages 13 (in the PDF as a half page) & 14
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Printed: 19.11.19
-Dimensions: 155x235mm
-Cover stock: Ursus glossy white 210gsm
-Text stock: Bio Top 80gsm
-Binding: Perfect bound, cold glue
-Pages: 226pp
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This is another book where I took a text file and laid it out again in InDesign, like the copy of Dumbstruck that I bootlegged. However, this time I made a code to indicate the page numbering and text flow of the source publication. This was to provide comfortable, consistent tracking to the letterspacing - one of the issues with Dumbstruck was that, in an attempt to keep the text flow and page numbering the same, some paragraphs were too tightly, or too loosely kerned. I feel this is a more elegant solution, however, it might pose problems if someone else tried to do the same as I had (taking the text from a source publication and laying it out) as the code is now part of the text. The cover was made with glossy paper, and custom-cut vinyl stickers. In time these will probably come off, but that's conceptually sympathetic to the content of the book, which is about the transience of the voice.
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Front cover, with white vinyl text and graphics
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Spine
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Code referring to text flow of the source publication
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Bootleg acknowledgement
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Spread: Book opens easily due to cold glue binding
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Information ages : literacy, numeracy, and the computer revolution[edit]
I could only find this as a printed book available for purchase online, or to borrow from the closest library, which is the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague. So, I went to the KB in the Hague, registered a membership (costing 7,50 euro per year) and borrowed the book. I scanned the book on a photocopier back at PZI (it took about 40 mins and many apologies to those who wanted to use it), and then printed and bound it by hand using a cold glue binding technique. The file produced by scanning actually took longer to be transferred over the network than it did to scan the entire book. I optimised the file after receiving it, which produced splotchy text and images (in some places the print looked damaged by water). The cover was an impromptu decision - to use the same method. The copy was made in about 2 hours.
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Front cover: Bootleg (left) and source publication (right)
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Spine: Source publication
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Spine: Bootleg
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Spines: Source publication (left) and bootleg (right)
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Spread: Source publication (left) and bootleg (right)
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This book was made quite quickly - by using a script in InDesign to place a multi-page PDF into a blank document. The cover was also made quickly, on the photocopier. The economy of speed produces what looks like a poor image zine aesthetic. This is becoming an interesting methodology for me - making books quickly by any means necessary. I just want the printed text, in a format that is going to be somewhat durable - detailed typographic consideration is hardly applicable here.
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Printed: 16.12.19
-Dimensions: 130x210mm
-Cover stock: 3mm Kraft board with Clairefontaine Trophee (white) 210gsm glued on
-Text stock: Laser 80gsm
-Binding: Perfect bound, cold glue with book binding tape
-Pages: 108pp
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I printed this book from a PDF found on aaaarg.fail. Tancredi had told me about Borges short story "The Library of Babel", which is contained in this anthology. Norman di Giovanni, the translator worked with Borges on quite a large selection of his works. Ultimately he was given a cease and desist order from Borges' estate. This PDF has been redesigned and bootlegged by a user at aaaaarg, with a nice sensibility (and respect) for producing a well-designed text. I wanted to try a different method for attaching the cover for this book, one I had seen before but never figured out how to do. I first bound the text block with cold glue, then I attached a strip of book binding tape to reinforce it. Then, I glued the printed front and back cover sheets to two thick pieces of kraft board for the cover. Finally, these thick boards were glued to the first and last pages of the book. It produced a strong binding, but unfortunately the covers warped, despite having left the book in the press immediately after gluing. At the Publication Station, Kim said that the way to remedy this is to glue paper on both sides of the kraft board, which is quite absorbent, and will easily warp with PVA. Gluing paper to both sides evens out the warp, which will want to pull in the direction of the glue.
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Printed: 17.12.19
-Dimensions: 131x216mm
-Cover stock: Clairefontaine Trophee (white) 210gsm
-Text stock: Laser 80gsm
-Binding: Perfect bound, cold glue with book tape on spine
-Pages: 214pp
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Espen Aarseth's Cybertext is a book that found its way towards me through a couple of other sources - first of all Tancredi recommended I read it, then I came across it when reading Writing Machines by N. Katherine Hayles. Aarseth's PhD dissertation proposes the idea of "cybertexts", which are part of the genre of what he calls "ergodic literature". In a nutshell, these are texts which require "non-trivial effort" to read. These texts are in both printed form (e.g. Danielewski's House of Leaves) and also in digital form (the book contains a section on MUDs - Multi User Domains - which are large gaming environments in which texts (both in the sense of software, and also narratives) are assembled on the fly. I printed this from the PDF, retaining all the marks that had come from its scanning, then bound it with cold glue and a strip of book binding tape on the spine for extra strength.
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Front cover
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Spread, with annotations from the PDF
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Spread, with dark marks around edges from the scan
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Printed: 20.12.19
-Dimensions: 190x260mm
-Cover stock: Heavy green stock (unknown brand) - around 210gsm
-Text stock: Laser 80gsm
-Binding: Perfect bound, hot glue
-Pages: 330pp
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Johanna Drucker's The Alphabetic Labyrinth is a book that traces the history and development of the alphabet. Full of diagrams and densely populated with these histories, it demands printing and reading in physical form. A PDF just won't do. I printed this from a PDF that I laid out quickly in InDesign using my trusty placemultiplePDFpages script. The cover was made on the photocopier, a technique I was well-acquainted with from my days as a teacher, where lessons would be literally cut and pasted together to be copied on the glass. The task that took the most time was making sure the pages would be printed at reasonable size, while economising on paper. For this reason, I wanted to print it double-sided on A4 paper with minimal excess. The annotations (interestingly, many in Greek - a coincidence as the book focuses for some time on development of the Greek alphabet) and artefacts from scanning were retained (such as darkened page edges), creating a materiality that reminds one the book is most definitely loved, copied, and shared.
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Printed: 20.12.19
-Dimensions: 123x180mm
-Cover stock: Heavy pink stock (unknown brand) - around 210gsm
-Text stock: Laser 80gsm
-Binding: Perfect bound, hot glue
-Pages: 322pp
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I had a PDF of Umberto Eco's The Open Work that I wanted to read, but hadn't got round to it. Such a vast, sprawling text needs to be read and digested slowly, so I decided to print the PDF. Unfortunately, the file I had was a scan of spreads, not pages, so after placing all the pages in InDesign I had to make sure that each page of the file corresponded to each page of the book. I used a dark line at the centre of each page to align with the edge of the pages in the InDesign file. Little did I know or realise at the time that this was an artefact from OCR, and that the text was riddled with such quirks that at times made the text almost unreadable. This happens sometimes if you edit a PDF in a program such as Adobe Acrobat Pro, which includes the option to run OCR all over the document. However, this function doesn't just layer an invisible txt over the images in the PDF, it replaces the images with a text file, in a font (or fonts) specified by the editor. I think that is what happened here, because on printing I discovered that a multitude of artefacts resulting from this technique - unreadable lines, characters that most likely were interpretations of marks and smudges, and a change in font every three or four pages, making for a text that had what seemed to be multiple personalities. This would be a great design approach for such a text - which is about participatory processes making up an art work - but most likely just a happy accident. The cover was made on the photocopier, simply by cutting text from the PDF, pasting and copying it to a heavy sheet of pink paper.
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I wanted to read this collection of essays by Flusser during the holidays. Steve had sent me a link to an interview with Flusser in which he described the "magic" of linear writing and subsequent technologies, and I wanted to read more. I very quickly bootlegged this book by printing the PDF on the last day school was open for the year. In my haste, however, I trimmed the bottom edge a bit too close. It's still fine (at least the page numbers weren't cut off), but I wish I hadn't been in such a rush. The cover was made quickly at the photocopier as well, a no-frills effort.
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I made this book with and for Luke (a friend), as a favour, and also to show him how to bootleg a book. I'd already redesigned the text, and printed it double-sided on laser paper. What he wanted to know how to bind books. Luke had been helping me out a lot with getting the bookscanner running, and it seemed like a nice way to repay him. The problem came when we tried to bind the book using the hot-glue machine, which was once again not working as it should and the result we got was less than optimal. So, I showed him how to notch-bind using cold glue, and he took the text block home with him to try out the technique himself, using a DIY book press made from two chopping boards. One the text block was dry, he brought it back to me to show him how to apply the cover. I'd already printed the cover on a piece of paper, but had been using it to write quick notes on in the interim. It's ironic, I'm surrounded by paper, but scrap paper can be hard to come by. Rather than printing the cover again, I decided to tear away all the areas I'd written notes on it, and then photocopy this with the lid open, leaving black where there was no paper. It was another impromptu, make-do decision, but one that lent an interesting mark - removal of all that is not necessary - and in line with the type of radical pedagogical approaches the author of the text was aiming at.
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Luke's DIY book press
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Front cover
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Spread
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Spine
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Back cover
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The book, left with keys I borrowed from Luke while staying with him and Alice in January, 2020
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I decided to print another copy of Deschooling Society for the physical bootleg library when the hot glue machine was working properly again. It was interesting to compare the differences between the two different binding methods - not something I usually see as I don't often bootleg more than one copy of a book.
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Front cover
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Spread
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Spread
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Spine
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Back cover
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Spines: First edition (top), second edition (bottom). The difference in cold vs hot glue is apparent here - hot glue ensures a smooth, square spine
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Back covers: First edition (left), second edition (right)
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A copy of Guevara's Guerilla Warfare, printed with/for Luke. We made the cover on the photocopier, make-do style. The text refers to Guevara's system of annotating - a pity the PDF I had wasn't available in colour. The text block was bound with cold glue, after trimming to the spine edge. The equations on the text block are ones I typically write down on the text block so that I don't have to do them at the guillotine, which is always busy and therefore stressful and easy to make a mistake.
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The equation I follow goes something like this:
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First cut: (page height - book height) / 2 + book height
- Second cut: book height
- Third cut: book width
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Front cover
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Spread
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Guevara's annotations
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Detail of anti-tank tactics
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Spine
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The cold-glue bound text-block, ready to have cover applied and trimmed to size. Equations for trim sizes and cut sequence (see above) written in bleed area
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text, tbc is an essay written as a contribution to a publication, as part of Onomatopee's Meeting Grounds public program. In this essay I describe my interest in text's overlapping dimensions: the editorial, technical and social. The text is performed through the use of Etherpad: as a writing environment to create the text, a software to reflect on, and a live editable document which anyone may edit, if they know the URL.
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The essay below, text, tbc, lives in a pad on a server hosted by Experimental Publishing (XPUB), at the Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam.
-This a live text, welcome to be edited by anyone. However, in the interests of transparency and care towards yourself and others, please be aware of the following:
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VISIBILITY:
-This pad isn't indexed by search engines, but it is 100% public to anyone who knows its URL.
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PRIVACY:
-This pad is not encrypted, meaning that it is not private. Anyone who can access the server can also see its content.
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RETENTION:
-Text can change, rapidly and in real time, making this a dynamic, but ultimately unstable environment. Make backups regularly if you wish to keep copies.
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ACCESSIBILITY:
-Pads can go down for many reasons, such as scheduled server maintenance, unforeseen events, and of course, human error. It is impossible to determine the identity of an author and XPUB does not respond to pad retrieval requests.
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CONVIVIALITY:
-Please be as respectful and supportive towards other reader/writers as possible. Don't delete anything, just add.
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-text, tbc
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Text flies in an endless stream before your eyes. News reports, longform articles, facts and figures, documents and messages sent at all hours of the day and night; it is always daylight somewhere in the world and there is always something new to report. You see text, but you don't have the time to carefully read and absorb it. You have never read or written so much. Your phone buzzes with the input and output of messages and notifications. You are exhausted by the letters, numbers, punctuation, and spaces that make up what is usually called “text”.
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But the overwhelming presence of text is not felt just in the material form of its characters, or the spaces between them. It resides in text's overlapping dimensions and resulting viewpoints and how these influence practices of reading and writing.
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The editorial dimension; text is a sequence. A line of characters and spaces, the particular order that the writer sets these in. Text becomes an object, a carrier of thoughts and feelings, something that can be sent back and forth between participants in a conversation.
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The technical dimension; text is a process. Messages and files that we share are text-based. A computer runs on software, programmed in encoded text, often the same characters that flicker before your eyes. Texts can be assembled on-the-fly as a machine reads scripts and writes output in response to input.
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The social dimension; text is a framework. The English word "text" has roots in the Proto-Indo-European word teks-, meaning “to weave, to fabricate, to make; make wicker or wattle framework”. A piece of writing is a text, and so is a conversation; texts represent the exchange of shared concepts (words, signs, representations) woven into a fabric of communication. There is also an exchange between written and spoken texts; oral discussions which prompt writing, and writing which sparks conversations. Texts elicit further texts.
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I’m typing this now using a self-hosted, open-source, browser-based, realtime, collaborative text-editing software called Etherpad. Etherpad is many things, as you can probably tell by the string of adjectives in my previous sentence. The pad, as it is colloquially (somewhat affectionately) known by many users, has its own peculiar twist on online public space and subsequently, the public it makes. An environment; a combination of particular conditions set by hardware and software that determine how a user operates within it. The pad is an unstable, dynamic environment open to participation, often without notions of consistency in formatting, or singularity in authorship. For a start, anyone who knows the URL can edit what is written here. This text could easily become an unruly wall built without convention, just sitting there in the browser. And though you, dear readers, may also become writers, you will barely recognise each other as authors.
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Some of you will choose a username, some will remain unnamed by default. I often call myself karen eliot (all lowercase), a shared pen name favoured by the Neoists, an art movement famous for creating multiple definitions of itself. karen eliot is everyone and no-one, and on the pad, so am I. In collaborative writing sessions, what I type becomes intermingled with the writings of others until I can hardly say it is mine any more; copy-pasted, deleted, overwritten, rephrased, paraphrased and line-edited to the nth degree. As authorship colours and names change at whim, it's almost impossible for writers to know who is who unless you go back through the version history and/or sleuth the chat section for clues. But it's hardly important when the purpose is to write together.
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Sometimes I use it to write by myself, typing into the pad as the server records a mind-boggling database of every key I press, every action I undo. I slide back in time through this text (the one you're reading) to see revisions in the version history. So far the only author there is myself, although all anyone needs to do is type (even a space), and they will automatically join karen eliot as a listed co-author. Add multiple users at multiple keyboards, all free to edit autonomously, and the writing starts to become definitively less a work of singular authorship, and more a woven multiplicity of perspectives.
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-Often the pad serves as a note-taking accompaniment to a spoken conversation, transcribing each other's words, turning our speech into text. Fingers typing rapidly, trying to keep up with the pace of dictation will make mistakes. In response, a distinct protocol develops in support of diverse ways of reading and writing. Spell-checking is often unnecessary; writers may mis-type, but ultimately, their/they're/there spelling isn't a concern as long as it doesn't get in the way of communication. I'm reminded of Samizdat publishers, who eschewed the title of "author" in favour of “typist” or “editor” due to the unwanted attention and risk it would bring to themselves and their dissident republications of censored books. Editing, typing, reproducing texts by hand; all of this encourages a slippery form of authorship through human error and idiosyncratic preferences for a new phrase, sense-for-sense translation or structure. When no writer is the discernible author, everyone becomes a text editor.
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The pad exemplifies the editorial, technical and social dimensions of text. New editors respond with reactions that range from eager enthusiasm to shy suspicion. For some, the pad seems too public, too immediate, too dynamic. What we type, delete, mis-type or mis-spell is there for all to see as we do it. But for the enthusiasts, individually-coloured sentences quickly proliferate into multicoloured streams of collaborative writing. For all its dynamic energy and realtime nature, the pad generates an aura of calm. It's not a feed which must be scrolled, there are no read receipts and no-one can be left on seen. Indeed, nothing can be sent or unsent, nor for that matter, unseen. There are no notifications, it doesn't buzz in the middle of the night. When I come back to it a day or so later, a new text has evolved. There are no other readers or writers there now, only myself, karen eliot. I pause, taking the time to read and absorb it.
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—Simon Browne, Rotterdam, April 2020
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With special thanks to Steve Rushton and Michael Murtaugh.
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/ b \ o / o \ t / l \ e / g \ l / i \ b / r \ a / r \ y /
- \ a / t \
-/ m \ e / e \ t / i \ n / g \ g / r \ o / u \ n / d \ s
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-the bootleg library
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-https://hub.xpub.nl/bootleglibrary
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-book sharing & annotation
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-calibre
-ebook manager - you can download this, run it on your computer and share books over a local network using the content server function
-https://calibre-ebook.com/
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-calibre-web
-web app that the bootleg library runs on (a fork of the open-source calibre software)
-https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web
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-Annotation on the web - the holy grail with lots of projects:
-https://beepb00p.xyz/annotating.html
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-also done very simply and effectively with genius:
-https://genius.com/
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-pirate/shadow/"extra-legal" libraries
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-Monoskop
-https://monoskop.org/Monoskop
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-Library Genesis (collection is HUGE and mirrored) - i usually use the russian site
-http://gen.lib.rus.ec/
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-Memory of the World
-https://library.memoryoftheworld.org/#/books/
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-aaaaarg (only accessible by members. simon can invite you - just send him an email)
-https://aaaaarg.fail/
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-ask for PDFs from people with institutional access
-group for informal PDF sharing through a social network
-https://www.facebook.com/groups/850609558335839/
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-Sci-Hub (this is mirrored too, try googling if the link is down):
-https://mg.scihub.ltd/
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-ubu-web
-kenneth goldsmith's baby - an archive of avant-garde cinema and writing
-http://ubu.com/
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-Leeszaal
-not an online pirate library, but a volunteer-run place in Rotterdam where you can borrow books, look up information, learn how to use LINUX, study or just read the newspaper. Books are not catalogued, and if you want to borrow one, just take it off the shelf and walk out with it :)
-https://www.leeszaalrotterdamwest.nl/
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-legal online libraries & archives
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-Project Gutenberg
-books are within the public domain (70+ years after death of the author), so free of copyright restrictions:
-https://www.gutenberg.org/
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-The Internet Archive
-hosts a collection of books and more, also has the wayback machine (snapshots of web pages going back to the 90s)
-https://archive.org/
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---------------------------------------------
-projects & open letters in support of and about piracy/peeracy
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-In solidarity with Library Genesis and Sci-Hub
-an open letter calling for shadow librarians to come out of the shadows
-http://custodians.online/
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-Alexandra Elbakyan to Mr. Robert W. Sweet (presiding judge in the Elsevier vs Sci-Hub et al court case)
-https://torrentfreak.com/images/sci-hub-reply.pdf
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-and publishing
-http://andpublishing.org/
- The Piracy Project
- http://andpublishing.org/the-piracy-project/
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---------------------------------------------
-loose thoughts from our conversation
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-misspellings on ebay - how to exploit this to find undiscovered items http://fatfingers.com
-bootlegged DVDs and PS1 games - "chipping" to play bootlegged games
-social capital accumulated from having a chipped console
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-The Pirate Book
-historical stories of piracy - warez, demoscene, music etc:
-https://hub.xpub.nl/bootleglibrary/read/290/pdf
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-selling unauthorised copies out of a car boot = "boot"legging?
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-why do we feel it's more threatening to pirate books than movies/music/games etc?
-where does the text reside?
-what if i read a book out loud and make a file on youtube - is it bootlegging?
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-can the library also have audio/visual media?
- yes - the library is running on open-source software, so definitely possible. this requires an upgrade of the computer and data storage
-what is more of a risk - a shared google drive of PDFs or the bootleglib?
- a shared google drive is more risky - the bootleg library has several security measures in place to keep it private
-will i get into trouble for using the bootleg library?
- haha - not very likely :)
-can readers communicate with each other through the bootleglib?
- not directly, but possible by adding links to etherpads (like this one) in the description fields
---------------------------------------------
-some interesting things to watch & read on archives, libraries, piracy and activism
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-things to read:
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- the science of piracy and the piracy of science by bodo balasz (an economist researching use of pirate libraries)
- Part 1: http://copyrightblog.kluweriplaw.com/2019/03/06/the-science-of-piracy-the-piracy-of-science-who-are-the-science-pirates-and-where-do-they-come-from-part-1/
- Part 2: http://copyrightblog.kluweriplaw.com/2019/03/21/the-science-of-piracy-the-piracy-of-science-who-are-the-science-pirates-and-where-do-they-come-from-part-2/
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- a view from elsewhere on authorship, copyright and creativity by eva weinmayr (of and publishing and the piracy project)
- https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mw-mediadesign/images/d/dd/Confronting_Authorship_Published_with_content_page--Whose_book_is_it_anyway.pdf
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- articles by shannon mattern on self-organised and "fugitive" libraries
- https://placesjournal.org/article/marginalia-little-libraries-in-the-urban-margins/
- https://placesjournal.org/article/fugitive-libraries/
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- interview with kate eichhorn, author of the archival turn in feminism
- https://criticalmargins.com/interview-with-kate-eichhorn-author-of-the-archival-turn-in-feminism-a204b02ae340
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-things to watch:
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- Digital Amnesia
- https://youtu.be/NdZxI3nFVJs
- "Our memory is dissipating. Hard drives only last five years, a web page is forever changing and there’s no machine left that reads 15-year old floppy disks. Digital data is vulnerable. Yet entire libraries are shredded and lost to budget cuts, because we assume everything can be found online."
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- The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz
- https://archive.org/details/TheInternetsOwnBoyTheStoryOfAaronSwartz
- "The Internet's Own Boy depicts the life of American computer programmer, writer, political organizer and Internet activist Aaron Swartz. It features interviews with his family and friends as well as the internet luminaries who worked with him. The film tells his story up to his eventual suicide after a legal battle, and explores the questions of access to information and civil liberties that drove his work."
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---------------------------------------------
-King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard
-Polygondwanaland is free for everybody and you can do with what you.
-From the band's post accompanying links to different digital packs:
-"This album is FREE. Free as in, free. Free to download and if you wish, free to make copies.
-Make tapes, make CD’s, make records.
-[...]
-Ever wanted to start your own record label? GO for it! Employ your mates, press wax, pack boxes. We do not own this record. You do. Go forth, share, enjoy."
-https://www.discogs.com/King-Gizzard-And-The-Lizard-Wizard-Polygondwanaland/master/1268453
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-100 copies of the white album played at once
-https://thevinylfactory.com/news/artist-layers-100-unique-copies-of-the-beatles-white-album-for-original-vinyl-release/
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-royalty-free audio
-http://freesound.org
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-spotify scanning interface
-http://everynoise.com/
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-sharpest knife ever made from {insert substance here}
-https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg3qsVzHeUt5_cPpcRtoaJQ
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-Bootleg Britney / A bootleg CD bought at the market in Montenegro had 3 extra unpublished songs in comparison to the actual album on sale in the shops - what message was Britney sending me?! i <3 this story
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Printed: 19.11.19
-Dimensions: 155x235mm
-Cover stock: Ursus glossy white 210gsm
-Text stock: Bio Top 80gsm
-Binding: Perfect bound, cold glue
-Pages: 226pp
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This is another book where I took a text file and laid it out again in InDesign, like the copy of Dumbstruck that I bootlegged. However, this time I made a code to indicate the page numbering and text flow of the source publication. This was to provide comfortable, consistent tracking to the letterspacing - one of the issues with Dumbstruck was that, in an attempt to keep the text flow and page numbering the same, some paragraphs were too tightly, or too loosely kerned. I feel this is a more elegant solution, however, it might pose problems if someone else tried to do the same as I had (taking the text from a source publication and laying it out) as the code is now part of the text. The cover was made with glossy paper, and custom-cut vinyl stickers. In time these will probably come off, but that's conceptually sympathetic to the content of the book, which is about the transience of the voice.
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Front cover, with white vinyl text and graphics
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Spine
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Code referring to text flow of the source publication
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Bootleg acknowledgement
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Spread: Book opens easily due to cold glue binding
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This text has been written with the intention to be materialised in a very specific form; a set of A6-sized index cards, contained in a box. Please read it while holding the cards in your hands, shuffling and reordering them, making your own text as you read.
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These cards list the tasks performed on the site of contingencies, the bootleg library. Tasks are described on the obverse, and related images and references are on the reverse.
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Many national libraries have acquisition programs in place with stringent, highly formalised procedures through which new texts enter the collection. Some countries require that an officially published book is donated to their national library by way of a system called “legal deposit”. Purchase of a commercial identifier such as an ISBN (International Standard Book Number) allows the book to be registered, so that other libraries that subsequently acquire the same text may share cataloguing details.
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The library makes no such demands. Books are acquired through informal means, in ways that are not regulated or legislated. Anyone may remove or add texts to the library.
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An administrator has authority to make modifications to the infrastructure of the library. Every registered user of the library is also an “admin”. With this responsibility, comes great power. An admin may delete user accounts, or take down the entire library if they wish. But they can also make registered accounts for other users, and choose to bestow the same privileges, or not. The library is open.
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Image: Characters representing read (r), write (w), and execute (x) permissions in UNIX and UNIX-like systems
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Amateur librarianship happens whenever texts are shared informally. An amateur (from French, meaning “one who loves, lover”) acts out of love (rather than motivated by prestige, or money); there is not often a conscious decision to be an amateur anything. Instead, we often see the word “amateur” as a negation or lack of professionalism. A rising imperative emerges, for amateurs to take up the task of librarianship. The 19th century model of the public library that spread throughout the U.K. and the U.S.A. was an exemplar of social democratic values. Such libraries are now under threat. So, sometimes in response, but often without thought of the legal consequences, amateur librarianship happens in small, quiet ways that are usually mundane; passing a USB drive around, emailing a link or a file. I thought you should read this.
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In order to find the unique reference (UUID) for your drive run the following command in the terminal :
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ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid/
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This will give you an output that should list your drive :
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The line will usually refer to “/sda” and in this example it is “sda1”. My ID is “989B-E900”. Note down yours.
-You would need to repeat this step if you wanted to use a different device as the UUID would be different.
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A mount point is a directory that will point to the contents of your flash drive. Create a suitable folder :
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sudo mkdir /media/usb
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I’m using “usb” but you can give it whatever name you like. Keep it short as it saves typing later on. Now we need to make sure the Pi user owns this folder :
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To manually mount the drive use the following command :
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sudo mount /dev/sda1 /media/usb -o uid=pi,gid=pi
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-This will mount the drive so that the ordinary Pi user can write to it. Omitting the “-o uid=pi,gid=pi” would mean you could only write to it using “sudo”.
-Now you can read, write and delete files using “/media/usb” as a destination or source without needing to use sudo.
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You don’t need to manually un-mount if you shutdown your Pi but if you need to remove the drive at any other time you should un-mount it first. Only the user that mounted the drive can un-mount it.
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umount /media/usb
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If you used the fstab file to auto-mount it you will need to use :
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sudo umount /media/usb
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If you are paying attention you will notice the command is “umount” NOT “unmount”!
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When you restart your Pi your mounts will be lost and you will need to repeat Step 4. If you want your USB drive to be mounted when the system starts you can edit the fstab file :
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The “nofail” option allows the boot process to proceed if the drive is not plugged in. The “noatime” option stops the file access time being updated every time a file is read from the USB stick. This helps improve performance.
-This is what my fstab file looks like:
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Make sure you set the correct UUID. Use CTRL-X followed by Y to save and exit the nano editor.
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Now reboot :
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sudo reboot
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Your USB drive should be auto-mounted and available as “/media/usb”.
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In the examples above I specified “vfat” as the file system of the device as it was formatted as FAT32. If you need to change the file system replace references of “vfat” with “ntfs-3g”, “ext3” or “ext4”.
-If you are using NTFS you will also need to install the following package :
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This technique suits my applications but the main disadvantage is that it is specific to a known USB device given we are using the device ID. However if you created a few mount points in advance you could manually mount a new device to a spare mount point without worrying about updating the fstab file.
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Marks left by readers are at times recognisable as annotation; underlines, asterisks and notes scribbled in the margins that all add something to the text. Taken a step further, annotation can include metadata (information about information), which is most commonly text that describes the author and subject, and bibliographic details needed for citation purposes. Collectively, these forms of annotation indicate the presence of readers, making them visible to each other. Annotation lives in close proximity to the text. When it is separated from the text, it becomes unfixed, losing its symbolic power to remind us that other readers have also been here.
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Image: Tracing paper bearing carbon-copied annotations from Marginal Conversations, a workshop first held by Simon Browne, Paloma García and Artemis Gryllaki at Leeszaal West Rotterdam, 20th June 2019
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The formal qualities of annotations are defined by the tools used to make them, and also the cultural uses of these. Given a pen, most people will write, although it is also possible to draw or use it in other ways. With a keyboard it seems most appropriate to type. With a mouse, one can click on things, and select them.
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What happens when these are retained, transformed and isolated from the source?
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Retained digital annotations are rare in the wild, but I found one PDF of Jorge Luis Borges "The Garden of Forking Paths" that had underlinings and highlighted text. The interesting thing is that these change appearance slightly depending on the e-reader software used to display the text.
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The first two spreads of the Borges PDF:
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-Digital annotations transcribed from a PDF of Jorge Luis Borges' "The Garden of Forking Paths"
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Another text that came pre-annotated was Ursula K Le Guin's "The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction". For this, I placed scans in a vector graphics program and digitised pen marks. I also included the text that was annotated with circles, underlines and lines in the margins.
-The first two spreads of the Le Guin PDF:
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-Hand-drawn annotations digitally transcribed from a PDF of Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction"
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Ursula K. Le Guin's short essay appears in a compilation called Dancing at the Edge of the World, which I've found impossible to find online through the usual pirate libraries such as Library Genesis, aaaaaarg.fail and Monoskop. Perhaps this points to a gender bias in what is perceived as knowledge (Le Guin was a woman wrote mostly science-fiction)? In lieu of not being able to find the compilation, I decided to print this book in a very small size (90x120mm) and retain the annotations from the PDF I found. I digitised them by making them into vectors, and printed the text and annotations in green. In this way I wanted to speculate on what would happen when a reader was confronted with annotations that seemed to be part of the source, not a para-text added after publication.
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Main question: How can annotation be useful to us, and a third party?
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Possible ways
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Keep text and annotations together
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scan and overlay transparencies (more like a graphical representation but perhaps not very readable)
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write, re-write, cut and paste the annotations in a bigger paper all together
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use the annotation bot (a digital tool)(it would be cool if you could underline, etc - yes! including graphic elements)
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if digital, create the possibility to turn on and off the annotations to keep the original text
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bind the pages into books and make a bootleg library with them
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Separate text and annotations (deconstruction / structure analysis)
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only underlined text (in many ways: lines, circles, waves...)
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list of questions, tags, notes + composition and mapping of them (different mapping techniques)
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historical timeline
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only drawings?
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free graphical interpretation
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Computer driven annotation
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scrape the text (words processing)
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pattern recognition
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delete all articles and implicit elements
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Combine the above possibilities
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overlay of analog annotations to represent "heat patterns" (parts of the text with lots of/little engagement), as well as a digital version that is more legible
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HOW DO I KNOW WHAT I AM READING? We are discussing form how do we talk about content?
-How do you make the content readable for others?
-How do you communicate what you're interpreting?
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While bootlegging makes a fairly faithful reproduction of a source publication, the degree of transformation is sometimes due to unintentional or uncontrollable factors, such as availability of the equipment and materials needed to make a close copy. At other times, more deliberate choices can be made concerning the transformed materiality of the bootleg.
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Economy, efficiency, and readability are the main concerns when bootlegging texts for the library. Economy often dictates that materials that are at hand are used—in the case of printed books for example, this often means defaulting to certain choices with paper, printing methods and binding. An efficient workflow is not too time-consuming. Although the most important thing is to have the text by any means necessary, we read best what we read most, and certain typographic concerns may become vital to the readability of the text.
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Being kind to the reader can involve adhering to typesetting conventions; including headers, footers and page numbers should the book be photocopied and pages subsequently separated from the others. Most importantly, a reasonable line length and wide margins will allow the book to be made in a way that ensures a comfortable reading experience and provides space for annotation.
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Image: A bootleg copy of My Mother Was A Computer by N. Katherine Hayles. The source PDF has been reimposed into a booklet, with reasonable line length (60-80 characters) and ample space for annotations
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I made this book with and for Luke (a friend), as a favour, and also to show him how to bootleg a book. I'd already redesigned the text, and printed it double-sided on laser paper. What he wanted to know how to bind books. Luke had been helping me out a lot with getting the bookscanner running, and it seemed like a nice way to repay him. The problem came when we tried to bind the book using the hot-glue machine, which was once again not working as it should and the result we got was less than optimal. So, I showed him how to notch-bind using cold glue, and he took the text block home with him to try out the technique himself, using a DIY book press made from two chopping boards. One the text block was dry, he brought it back to me to show him how to apply the cover. I'd already printed the cover on a piece of paper, but had been using it to write quick notes on in the interim. It's ironic, I'm surrounded by paper, but scrap paper can be hard to come by. Rather than printing the cover again, I decided to tear away all the areas I'd written notes on it, and then photocopy this with the lid open, leaving black where there was no paper. It was another impromptu, make-do decision, but one that lent an interesting mark - removal of all that is not necessary - and in line with the type of radical pedagogical approaches the author of the text was aiming at.
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Luke's DIY book press
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Front cover
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Spread
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Spine
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Back cover
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The book, left with keys I borrowed from Luke while staying with him and Alice in January, 2020
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I decided to print another copy of Deschooling Society for the physical bootleg library when the hot glue machine was working properly again. It was interesting to compare the differences between the two different binding methods - not something I usually see as I don't often bootleg more than one copy of a book.
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Front cover
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Spread
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Spread
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Spine
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Back cover
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Spines: First edition (top), second edition (bottom). The difference in cold vs hot glue is apparent here - hot glue ensures a smooth, square spine
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Back covers: First edition (left), second edition (right)
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Most people think of bootlegs as cheap knock-off products that masquerade as the real deal; bootleg cigarettes, designer-label clothes, not-quite-right imitations of Disney products and the like. Bootlegging began during the prohibition era with the practice of illegally distilling and distributing alcoholic beverages, often literally concealed in the leg of a boot while being transported. Run an image search on the keyword “bootleg” and you’ll probably see all sorts of suspicious-looking products. But the way I want to speak of bootlegging is as a social act, a homage, and one that creates and celebrates a multiplicity of form. I’m referring in particular to the vibrant culture of music sharing in the 1970s that followed portable cassette tape recorders entering the market. These allowed fans to cheaply record live performances and share these recordings—also known as bootlegs.
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Image: A “bootlegger” concealing a flask of an illegally distributed alcoholic beverage in the leg of a boot during the Prohibition era
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The physical bootleg library is housed in a disused champagne crate. It contains books that I have bootlegged myself, or ones that others have. It also contains books donated by visitors to wherever the library is (temporarily) installed. The library travels, and is part of bootleg library sessions held at PZI and at other locations.
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At Varia, Gouwstraat 3, with books distributed on table
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At the Library, Karel Doormanhof 45, ready to be unpacked
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At Onomatopee Projects, before the bootleg library session
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The IKEA trolley the physical bootleg library usually travels on. Biyi lent me the trolley, and in return, I bootlegged the IKEA logo to read AIKE (Biyi's husband's name)
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A text found in the wild often comes with visible and invisible artefacts. The visible ones come from bad OCR, with strange characters popping up in place of the ones you expect, such as a 1 instead of an l. The bane of the bootlegger is most definitely the line break or “soft return”, inserted by software that automatically breaks the line as you type. Screen-based formats such as EPUB don’t have the notion of a page, and flow text according to window size.
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You can either be methodical and remove each soft return manually, or use the powerful automated find/replace all option. A useful tactic is to find every instance of a full stop followed by a space where a line was intentionally broken by the human writer. Next, replace each full stop with an arbitrary but uncommon character, such as a dagger (†). Then, do another find/replace and remove every instance of a soft return and a space, and finally replace the uncommon character with a full stop, in one final find/change command.
-Another unwanted character that often appears is the hyphen, inserted where words break at the end of a line. Here the pruning of errant characters is trickier, and the best method is to find each instance and remove them manually. Running find/replace all can often remove necessary hyphens, such as in time ranges (e.g. 9-5) and compound adjectives (e.g. inter-dependent).
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In Al Sweigart's Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, there's a nice section on a Python library called PyPDF2 that allows you to work with the contents of PDFs. To begin with, I thought I'd try extracting text from a PDF of William S. Burrough's The Electronic Revolution. I chose this PDF as the only version I've found of it online is a 40pp document published by ubuclassics (which I suppose is the publishing house for ubuweb.com). There was no identifier other than this (no ISBN etc.), and it was impossible locating any other version online. What's more, the PDF had very small text, which was uncomfortable to read when I ran the booklet.sh script on it.
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I thought it would be worthwhile laying out this book again for print reading purposes, and the first step is to get the text from the PDF. Pandoc is usually my go to for extracting text, but it doesn't work with PDFs, so I tried PyPDF2.
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I began by copying a file called electronic_revolution.pdf to a folder, then in the terminal cd into that directory. Then I initiated the interactive python interpreter with this command:
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$ python3
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Next I wrote the following commands in Python 3 (comments above each line):
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# First, import the PyPDF2 module
->>> import PyPDF2
-# Then open electronic_revolution.pdf in read binary mode and store it in pdfFileObj
->>> pdfFileObj = open('electronic_revolution.pdf', 'rb')
-# To get a PdfFileReader object that rep- resents this PDF, call PyPDF2.PdfFileReader() and pass it pdfFileObj. Store this PdfFileReader object in pdfReader
->>> pdfReader = PyPDF2.PdfFileReader(pdfFileObj)
-# The total number of pages in the document is stored in the numPages attribute of a PdfFileReader object
->>> pdfReader.numPages
->>> 40
-# The PDF has 40 pages. To extract text from a page, you need to get a Page object, which represents a single page of a PDF, from a PdfFileReader object.
-# You can get a Page object by calling the getPage() method on a PdfFileReader object and passing it the page number of the page you’re interested in — in our case, 0
->>> pageObj = pdfReader.getPage(0)
-# Once you have your Page object, call its extractText() method to return a string of the page’s text
->>> pageObj.extractText()
->>> 'ubuclassics2005WILLIAM S. BURROUGHSTheElectronic\nRevolution'
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This returns the value for total page count, and the text for the first page (0). What I want to get is the text for the whole document. I have no idea how to do this!!!
-This doesn't work at all.
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With Rita & Pedro's help I managed to write a Python script that includes a for loop to extract text from the entire PDF:
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1 # imports the PyPDF2 module
- 2 importPyPDF2
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- 4 filename=input("name of the file: ")
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- 6 withopen(filename,'rb')aspdf_file,open('input.txt','w')astext_file:
- 7 read_pdf=PyPDF2.PdfFileReader(pdf_file)
- 8 number_of_pages=read_pdf.getNumPages()
- 9 forpage_numberinrange(number_of_pages):# use xrange in Py2
-10 page=read_pdf.getPage(page_number)
-11 page_content=page.extractText()
-12 text_file.write(page_content)
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The next step is to then begin cleaning up the text by removing the line-breaks. We wrote a simple shell script for this that runs the Python script, then a command to take out line breaks:
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Only problem is that the names of the txt files that are produced will all be "input.txt", which means that if you run this on more than one PDF, you'll have to move input.txt to another directory before running again, rename the file manually, or perhaps I could write another Python script that renames the file and include it in the shell script after the last line.
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The library is for all, and made by all. There is no singular embedded librarian, because everyone is a librarian, and the library is everywhere. I’m not interested in developing the “perfect” system in isolation and then dictating how it should be used, I’m interested in asking how people want to use systems, and developing them together. Technical development is ongoing in line with feedback from bootleg library sessions.
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Image: bootleg library session at Onomatopee Projects, Eindhoven, as part of Meeting Grounds, 6th March, 2020
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bootleg library session at Onomatopee Projects, 6th March, 2020
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/ b \ o / o \ t / l \ e / g \ l / i \ b / r \ a / r \ y /
- \ a / t \
-/ m \ e / e \ t / i \ n / g \ g / r \ o / u \ n / d \ s
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-the bootleg library
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-https://hub.xpub.nl/bootleglibrary
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-book sharing & annotation
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-calibre
-ebook manager - you can download this, run it on your computer and share books over a local network using the content server function
-https://calibre-ebook.com/
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-calibre-web
-web app that the bootleg library runs on (a fork of the open-source calibre software)
-https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web
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-Annotation on the web - the holy grail with lots of projects:
-https://beepb00p.xyz/annotating.html
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-also done very simply and effectively with genius:
-https://genius.com/
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-pirate/shadow/"extra-legal" libraries
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-Monoskop
-https://monoskop.org/Monoskop
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-Library Genesis (collection is HUGE and mirrored) - i usually use the russian site
-http://gen.lib.rus.ec/
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-Memory of the World
-https://library.memoryoftheworld.org/#/books/
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-aaaaarg (only accessible by members. simon can invite you - just send him an email)
-https://aaaaarg.fail/
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-ask for PDFs from people with institutional access
-group for informal PDF sharing through a social network
-https://www.facebook.com/groups/850609558335839/
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-Sci-Hub (this is mirrored too, try googling if the link is down):
-https://mg.scihub.ltd/
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-ubu-web
-kenneth goldsmith's baby - an archive of avant-garde cinema and writing
-http://ubu.com/
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-Leeszaal
-not an online pirate library, but a volunteer-run place in Rotterdam where you can borrow books, look up information, learn how to use LINUX, study or just read the newspaper. Books are not catalogued, and if you want to borrow one, just take it off the shelf and walk out with it :)
-https://www.leeszaalrotterdamwest.nl/
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-legal online libraries & archives
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-Project Gutenberg
-books are within the public domain (70+ years after death of the author), so free of copyright restrictions:
-https://www.gutenberg.org/
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-The Internet Archive
-hosts a collection of books and more, also has the wayback machine (snapshots of web pages going back to the 90s)
-https://archive.org/
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-projects & open letters in support of and about piracy/peeracy
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-In solidarity with Library Genesis and Sci-Hub
-an open letter calling for shadow librarians to come out of the shadows
-http://custodians.online/
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-Alexandra Elbakyan to Mr. Robert W. Sweet (presiding judge in the Elsevier vs Sci-Hub et al court case)
-https://torrentfreak.com/images/sci-hub-reply.pdf
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-and publishing
-http://andpublishing.org/
- The Piracy Project
- http://andpublishing.org/the-piracy-project/
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-loose thoughts from our conversation
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-misspellings on ebay - how to exploit this to find undiscovered items http://fatfingers.com
-bootlegged DVDs and PS1 games - "chipping" to play bootlegged games
-social capital accumulated from having a chipped console
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-The Pirate Book
-historical stories of piracy - warez, demoscene, music etc:
-https://hub.xpub.nl/bootleglibrary/read/290/pdf
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-selling unauthorised copies out of a car boot = "boot"legging?
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-why do we feel it's more threatening to pirate books than movies/music/games etc?
-where does the text reside?
-what if i read a book out loud and make a file on youtube - is it bootlegging?
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-can the library also have audio/visual media?
- yes - the library is running on open-source software, so definitely possible. this requires an upgrade of the computer and data storage
-what is more of a risk - a shared google drive of PDFs or the bootleglib?
- a shared google drive is more risky - the bootleg library has several security measures in place to keep it private
-will i get into trouble for using the bootleg library?
- haha - not very likely :)
-can readers communicate with each other through the bootleglib?
- not directly, but possible by adding links to etherpads (like this one) in the description fields
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-some interesting things to watch & read on archives, libraries, piracy and activism
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-things to read:
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- the science of piracy and the piracy of science by bodo balasz (an economist researching use of pirate libraries)
- Part 1: http://copyrightblog.kluweriplaw.com/2019/03/06/the-science-of-piracy-the-piracy-of-science-who-are-the-science-pirates-and-where-do-they-come-from-part-1/
- Part 2: http://copyrightblog.kluweriplaw.com/2019/03/21/the-science-of-piracy-the-piracy-of-science-who-are-the-science-pirates-and-where-do-they-come-from-part-2/
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- a view from elsewhere on authorship, copyright and creativity by eva weinmayr (of and publishing and the piracy project)
- https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mw-mediadesign/images/d/dd/Confronting_Authorship_Published_with_content_page--Whose_book_is_it_anyway.pdf
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- articles by shannon mattern on self-organised and "fugitive" libraries
- https://placesjournal.org/article/marginalia-little-libraries-in-the-urban-margins/
- https://placesjournal.org/article/fugitive-libraries/
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- interview with kate eichhorn, author of the archival turn in feminism
- https://criticalmargins.com/interview-with-kate-eichhorn-author-of-the-archival-turn-in-feminism-a204b02ae340
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-things to watch:
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- Digital Amnesia
- https://youtu.be/NdZxI3nFVJs
- "Our memory is dissipating. Hard drives only last five years, a web page is forever changing and there’s no machine left that reads 15-year old floppy disks. Digital data is vulnerable. Yet entire libraries are shredded and lost to budget cuts, because we assume everything can be found online."
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- The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz
- https://archive.org/details/TheInternetsOwnBoyTheStoryOfAaronSwartz
- "The Internet's Own Boy depicts the life of American computer programmer, writer, political organizer and Internet activist Aaron Swartz. It features interviews with his family and friends as well as the internet luminaries who worked with him. The film tells his story up to his eventual suicide after a legal battle, and explores the questions of access to information and civil liberties that drove his work."
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-King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard
-Polygondwanaland is free for everybody and you can do with what you.
-From the band's post accompanying links to different digital packs:
-"This album is FREE. Free as in, free. Free to download and if you wish, free to make copies.
-Make tapes, make CD’s, make records.
-[...]
-Ever wanted to start your own record label? GO for it! Employ your mates, press wax, pack boxes. We do not own this record. You do. Go forth, share, enjoy."
-https://www.discogs.com/King-Gizzard-And-The-Lizard-Wizard-Polygondwanaland/master/1268453
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-100 copies of the white album played at once
-https://thevinylfactory.com/news/artist-layers-100-unique-copies-of-the-beatles-white-album-for-original-vinyl-release/
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-royalty-free audio
-http://freesound.org
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-spotify scanning interface
-http://everynoise.com/
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-sharpest knife ever made from {insert substance here}
-https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg3qsVzHeUt5_cPpcRtoaJQ
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-Bootleg Britney / A bootleg CD bought at the market in Montenegro had 3 extra unpublished songs in comparison to the actual album on sale in the shops - what message was Britney sending me?! i <3 this story
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Most people I know prefer to read off paper. The arguments for the printed text usually are about exhaustion, e.g. “I get tired reading from a screen”, lack of retention, e.g. “It’s proven that people remember things they read on paper better than on screen”, and in the circles I tend to run in, a sentimentality pervades, nostalgic for the haptic experience that reading from printed books brings.
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We expect acceleration from digital technologies. The cultural significance of new media is bolstered through remediality, which is its refashioning through the lens of old media[1]. Skeuomorphic design brings us the texture of paper on a screen. Hayles argues for intermediality, the interpretations between, and the coexistence of all media, including printed and digital texts.[2]
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Digital text is fraught with trauma, underpinned by the possibility of fragmentation. Text that is to the reader fully searchable and copy-pasteable is also text that threatens to come apart. Text that is less of an object, and more a process, often not residing in any one place in a computer file system, assembled dynamically, “on-the-fly”. Printed text, by contrast, reassures us by way of its indelibility.
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Image: The physical bootleg library contained in a disused champagne crate, and the digital bootleg library running from a Raspberry Pi computer
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↑Bolter, J.D. and Grusin, R. (2003) Remediation: understanding new media. 6. Nachdr. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
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↑Hayles, N.K. (2005) My mother was a computer: digital subjects and literary texts. Chicago London: The University of Chicago Press.
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Text Laundrette is a workshop in which we use a home-made, DIY book scanner, and open-source software to scan, process, and add digital features to printed texts brought by the participants to the workshop. These are included in the “bootleg library”, a shadow library accessible over a local network.
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Shadow libraries operate outside of legal copyright frameworks, in response to decreased open access to knowledge. This workshop aims to extend our research on libraries, their sociability, and methods by which we can add provenance to texts included in public or private, legal or extra-legal collections.
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The workshop ran over 2 hours with invited guests from the academy. It was an ambitious workflow, but we managed to run through several iterations of watermarking, scanning, processing and uploading. The realisation of how much work is involved in digitising and processing texts was certainly a take-home for participants. An interesting moment occurred when uploading - who was the author of the altered text?
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This book took quite some time to lay out. The original publication exists as an EPUB. You have to buy it, and it's not available in this format from the usual pirate libraries, but I did find an HTML version on https://monoskop.org/media/text/feminist_art_manifestos/
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I ran pandoc on the HTML file to turn it into a .rtf so that I could lay it out in InDesign using this command:
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$ pandoc -s source.html -o new_source.rtf
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This retained italics and hyperlinks (which was super nice), but there were lots of line-breaks that I didn't need and had to remove manually as find/change in InDesign is indiscriminate...
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In some ways the digital book is superior to the printed version as you can click on the hyperlinks to visit the source pages of many of these texts, something which is obviously impossible in the printed version, although it does say where the manifestos can be found.
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The interesting thing about doing this as a book sprint is the speed at which you have to make design decisions. This makes the design quite minimal, and the only typographic conceit here was with a decision to use a variety of indentation styles, which refers to the multiplicity of feminist manifestos. The interesting thing for me about these texts is that they show many different artistic views of feminism which don't necessarily agree with each other.
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During the time I was laying out this publication, I was invited by Artemis to join her and Paloma in applying to present our Marginal Conversations workshop in Athens at the ETC (Eclectic Tech Conference) festival. We were all pretty excited about the prospect, however as it turned out, some of the organisers were unsure about me presenting a workshop as a cis-gendered hetero man. Although I was disappointed, I understood the reasoning, as due to the nature of this particular conference (which started as a way for women and queer, trans & non-binary folk to share skills outside of a patriarchal male-dominated tech culture. I was reassured that this was not the opinion of all of the organisers, but of some, however, they were trying to reach a compromise with me and each other. I found this an interesting sidenote to the publication I was producing, in which there is a plurality of views that co-exist.
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I decided to print a second edition of this book for two reasons; 1) someone had borrowed the first edition three months ago and it hadn't been returned, and 2) what's a books of Feminist Art Manifestos without any images?
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I spent quite some time tracking down images to use in the book. Oftentimes I couldn't find an image that directly corresponded to the writer/writers of each manifesto, which created an interesting opportunity to think about who is represented by each text. Sometimes it was an image of an artwork (if the manifesto was written by an artist), sometimes an image of a collective or the publications they produces, often a portrait of the author or authors, sometimes an image of the manifesto as it appeared in print originally. Each manifesto text is prefaced by an image - abutting the text of a previous manifesto. This creates an interesting connection between seemingly disparate elements and waves of feminist movements. The book was printed in the same size as the first edition, with a grey cover, and noticeably more pages due to the addition of so many colour images.
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Publications acquire difference through reproduction; sometimes intentionally, always circumstantially. A printed book always ends up in the hands of at least one reader. It is transported, pages are dog-eared and annotated, time weathers the paper and cracks the spine. Multiply this by many readers, and each printed copy starts to accumulate its own traces, losing resemblance to the rest of the edition and acquiring its own particular countenance and provenance through use.
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Image: 1. Books are for use.
-The first law of S. R. R. Rangathan’s 5 Laws of Library Science, 1931
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A reader who downloads and does not upload is a passive observer to the activities of the library. We prefer to be in the position of the downloader due to the legal penalties for uploading and redistributing copyrighted texts, which are far more severe than those for downloading. The library will not grow if all we do is take. A library is a collection of shared texts, and sharing is facilitated by both uploading and downloading.
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Reading: Bodó, Balázs (2019): The science of piracy, the piracy of science. Who are the science pirates and where do they come fromPart I + Part II
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Workshop with economist Bodo Balasz, whose research is on shadow libraries and the forces that drive them, taking the point of view that "if you do not understand the black market, you can not organize legality". Bodo's recent work is on the dataset of the biggest shadow libraries (which for certain reason, I won't name here). The most striking conclusions drawn from his analysis show that use of the shadow library has increased dramatically in the developing world, it is actually those in the privileged, richer countries that are using the service most, raising questions if cost competition is the driving factor of use of shadow libraries. Also examined are file formats, which reveals interesting facts about the duplication process involved in creating copies.
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The process differs historically between Eastern and Western countries due to cultural and technological differences. In the East (particularly in Russia and eastern bloc countries) texts were initially re-typed. This follows the tradition established in samizdat publishing of duplicating texts by hand. The need to have developed systems of private distribution was higher in former Soviet countries. In the West, most texts were photocopied or scanned initially, due to cheaper access to the technology.
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Bodo examines the dataset using a browser-based interactive python server. By running code on the csv file of the dataset, it is possible to establish trends and make inferences on the behaviour of the users of the shadow library. Certain problems may arise due to the metadata associated with each file - different character sets, errors, lack of information and "inaccurate" information can make some analyses difficult to pin down. Using interactive python, we did single variable analysis, and also two-dimensional analysis.
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I could only find this as a printed book available for purchase online, or to borrow from the closest library, which is the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague. So, I went to the KB in the Hague, registered a membership (costing 7,50 euro per year) and borrowed the book. I scanned the book on a photocopier back at PZI (it took about 40 mins and many apologies to those who wanted to use it), and then printed and bound it by hand using a cold glue binding technique. The file produced by scanning actually took longer to be transferred over the network than it did to scan the entire book. I optimised the file after receiving it, which produced splotchy text and images (in some places the print looked damaged by water). The cover was an impromptu decision - to use the same method. The copy was made in about 2 hours.
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Front cover: Bootleg (left) and source publication (right)
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Spine: Source publication
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Spine: Bootleg
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Spines: Source publication (left) and bootleg (right)
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Spread: Source publication (left) and bootleg (right)
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This book took about 40 hours to create, the longest time it's taken so far... I found a PDF on Lib Gen, but for some reason the OCR'd text was tracked quite tight making each line look like a very long word - this was even worse when printed. After a quick search on worldcat, I discovered that this book was available to be borrowed from the Royal Library in the Hague. Off I went to borrow the book. I planned to scan it using the bookscanner, but the cameras kept crashing after scanning half the 433 page book. So, I managed to extract the text using Calibre's book convert process from PDF > RTF. However, after placing the text in an InDesign layout, all of the numbers appeared as missing characters. From the looks of the PDF it seemed that these were perhaps from an Opentype font's custom stylistic set, which would explain why they weren't turning up in my system fonts. Also, in the index at the back of the book the numbers seemed to have the appearance of hyperlinks (when hovering over the hand icon appears) but when clicked, did absolutely nothing. So I began the rather painstaking process of laying out the book with exactly the same text flow and page numbers as the source. The work included removing headers and page numbers from the RTF, scanning all photos from the printed book, endlessly wordspacing paragraphs to make sure they fit where they should on each page, styling the text, removing manually written hyphenation (this was done programmatically, and ended up with a few words that were joined together in the case of examples like "re- and dis- associate" becoming reand disassociate") and the seemingly endless task of manually entering in EVERY number. At times it felt a bit masochistic, but I used this time to reflect on the process, thinking a lot about the changes I was making to preserve the form of the original. Ironically, this also involved a lot of forced line breaks, which would make the task of anyone who wanted to bootleg this book a bit more difficult (forced line breaks are the bane of the bootlegger). Another strange thought - I'm reading these books as I redesign them, but my reading happens on a more superficial level perhaps, meaning that I'm not absorbing the content fully, but reading it like a machine would as I look for anomalies and address them.
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Clara Balaguer asked me for a copy of this book, and it seemed like a good opportunity to try a new printing and binding process. I decided to print the book double-sided on A4 paper, as opposed to the previous method of 2-up imposed printing on A3 paper. I wasn't very satisfied with how the previous printing method had produced a "split" in the book due to the paper grain direction. Yin Yin Wong at PS Rotterdam had recommended printing double sided rather than 2-up to avoid this, so this was the technique I decided to try out. I also decided on hand-binding it with cold glue, a technique which I had recently learned. Cold glue binding is done with equipment and materials such as a hacksaw, scissors, medical gauze (or cheesecloth), brushes, PVA glue, bookbinding thread, a jig to hold the book in while notches are cut and the spine receives its initial gluing, and a book press to keep the book in overnight, which stops the book from warping due to the high water content of the PVA glue. Cold glue binding allows the book to lay open flat on a table, a benefit I was keen to apply to this edition of the book as I was dissatisfied by how tight the binding of the first edition was because I had used the hot glue binding machine, which takes much less time but for thick books can produce a lower quality result. I was quite pleased with how this book came out, however, when applying the cover I had to decide not to glue it to the spine. Cold glue binding results in a rough spine, and hot glue creates a smooth layer of glue that dries quickly, producing a smooth spine. The only way to avoid this is to not attach the cover to the spine if using cold glue.
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Bootlegged books front covers: Second edition (left) and first edition (right)
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Front covers: Source publication (left) and second edition bootleg (right)
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Beginning of image section: Source publication (left) and second edition bootleg (right). The second edition bootleg book lies open more easily due to the cold glue binding
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Spines: Source publication (left) and second edition bootleg (right)
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Back covers: Source publication (left) and second edition bootleg (right)
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As soon as a reader edits a text its materiality changes either unintentionally, or through more intentional methods, such as republishing in a different format to make the text more accessible to a wider public. Samizdat publishers often considered themselves editors, or typists (rather than authors) due to the unwanted attention and risk that this credit would bring. As they reproduced texts by hand, a slippery form of authorship evolved through human error and also particular idiosyncratic preferences for a new phrase, approximate translation or text structure. Vladimir Bukovsky summarised the process of self-publishing as “Samizdat: I write it myself, edit it myself, censor it myself, publish it myself, distribute it myself, and spend time in prison for it myself.” The responsibility these self-proclaimed editors took upon themselves by republishing dissident material bound them to the texts; entwined in their creation and distribution. When no writer wants to be an author, everyone becomes an editor.
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Image: Facsimile of A Chronicle of Current Events (Russian: Хро́ника теку́щих собы́тий), the longest-running Samizdat publication, (1968-1982)
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In November 2018, I experimented with a timed writing task using Etherpad, a collaborative realtime browser-based text editor. Etherpad automatically assigns authorship colours to users, and I wanted to explore how a text that I was writing, reading and editing over a specific time period could be visualised.
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The method was to write for one hour. I begin by writing a text about what I was doing (writing, reading and editing). For time constraints, I established writing periods of 3 minutes, and a rest period of 2 minutes. After 6 iterations, this shifted to 5 minutes for both respectively. I kept writing and opening up new private tabs in my browser to give each iteration new authorship colours. These are lost when exported, so I recreated the text and authorship colours to make visualisations.
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Each iteration is isolated in the following visualisations:
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21:10-21:15
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21:15-21:20
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21:20-21:25
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21:25-21:30
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21:30-21:35
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21:35-21:40
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21:40-21:50
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21:50-22:00
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22:00-22:10
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The authorship colours with text removed:
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The experiment showed me that editing is a way of writing, kind of like making growing a tree while making furniture from it. Whatever is written is there to be pruned and shaped into pieces that are joined together to form a supportive text structure. Etherpad makes this visible with its authorship colours, all the more so when it is used as it has been designed; collaboratively.
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In Al Sweigart's Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, there's a nice section on a Python library called PyPDF2 that allows you to work with the contents of PDFs. To begin with, I thought I'd try extracting text from a PDF of William S. Burrough's The Electronic Revolution. I chose this PDF as the only version I've found of it online is a 40pp document published by ubuclassics (which I suppose is the publishing house for ubuweb.com). There was no identifier other than this (no ISBN etc.), and it was impossible locating any other version online. What's more, the PDF had very small text, which was uncomfortable to read when I ran the booklet.sh script on it.
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I thought it would be worthwhile laying out this book again for print reading purposes, and the first step is to get the text from the PDF. Pandoc is usually my go to for extracting text, but it doesn't work with PDFs, so I tried PyPDF2.
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I began by copying a file called electronic_revolution.pdf to a folder, then in the terminal cd into that directory. Then I initiated the interactive python interpreter with this command:
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$ python3
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Next I wrote the following commands in Python 3 (comments above each line):
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# First, import the PyPDF2 module
->>> import PyPDF2
-# Then open electronic_revolution.pdf in read binary mode and store it in pdfFileObj
->>> pdfFileObj = open('electronic_revolution.pdf', 'rb')
-# To get a PdfFileReader object that rep- resents this PDF, call PyPDF2.PdfFileReader() and pass it pdfFileObj. Store this PdfFileReader object in pdfReader
->>> pdfReader = PyPDF2.PdfFileReader(pdfFileObj)
-# The total number of pages in the document is stored in the numPages attribute of a PdfFileReader object
->>> pdfReader.numPages
->>> 40
-# The PDF has 40 pages. To extract text from a page, you need to get a Page object, which represents a single page of a PDF, from a PdfFileReader object.
-# You can get a Page object by calling the getPage() method on a PdfFileReader object and passing it the page number of the page you’re interested in — in our case, 0
->>> pageObj = pdfReader.getPage(0)
-# Once you have your Page object, call its extractText() method to return a string of the page’s text
->>> pageObj.extractText()
->>> 'ubuclassics2005WILLIAM S. BURROUGHSTheElectronic\nRevolution'
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This returns the value for total page count, and the text for the first page (0). What I want to get is the text for the whole document. I have no idea how to do this!!!
-This doesn't work at all.
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With Rita & Pedro's help I managed to write a Python script that includes a for loop to extract text from the entire PDF:
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1 # imports the PyPDF2 module
- 2 importPyPDF2
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- 4 filename=input("name of the file: ")
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- 6 withopen(filename,'rb')aspdf_file,open('input.txt','w')astext_file:
- 7 read_pdf=PyPDF2.PdfFileReader(pdf_file)
- 8 number_of_pages=read_pdf.getNumPages()
- 9 forpage_numberinrange(number_of_pages):# use xrange in Py2
-10 page=read_pdf.getPage(page_number)
-11 page_content=page.extractText()
-12 text_file.write(page_content)
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The next step is to then begin cleaning up the text by removing the line-breaks. We wrote a simple shell script for this that runs the Python script, then a command to take out line breaks:
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Only problem is that the names of the txt files that are produced will all be "input.txt", which means that if you run this on more than one PDF, you'll have to move input.txt to another directory before running again, rename the file manually, or perhaps I could write another Python script that renames the file and include it in the shell script after the last line.
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curl is a command that can be used from the terminal to take text from a URL. It can be piped with software such as pandoc to convert the text to other formats, and in support of a workflow I'm starting to develop, this comes in quite handy.
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I'm writing text on the pad, and then converting it to markdown. This extra step isn't necessary (in fact it adds to the work) but I'm interested in using pads as multi-flow publishing tools in the future so I'm testing this out. Also, using a pad allows me to style the text simply using markdown rather than HTML.
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For example, this is a file I made from some notes on a Flusser interview about linear writing:
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I'm then storing the files in my git, which is public. Having texts in git allows me to use its versioning capabilities, allowing me to go back over old modified versions in the file tree - I can copy paste from these snippets that I may want to go back and retain in the future..
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Most often, acquisition requests are as mundane as someone asking if the library has a particular text. A quick search online produces a digital file as a result. The provenance of these texts is buried in the file paths of the uploader’s computer, and the computers before it. Texts are acquired by any means necessary, through a social network, or through a digital network of so-called “shadow libraries” and groups of sympathetic readers. It’s often surprising how fast an unknown fellow reader will respond to a request for a text via certain groups operating on social media websites. Type F to follow this post.
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11.12.19 - lunchmeeting #3, in the Research Station[edit]
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Mapping the library #1
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Mapping the library #2
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Mapping the library #3
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Wilma Knol (embedded librarian in the Research Station) invited me to a lunchmeeting, a series of informal hour-long open meetings based on a directive to "future-proof" the collection. Wilma is part of a group that is determining news ways for acquisitions to take place within the WdKA Research Station/Library. Other members of the group are ginger coons and Jojanneke Gijsen, both teachers at WdKA. The group have established certain directions and strategies, highlighting these interests:
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acquisition requests
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the legacy of the collection
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displaying and distributing the collection
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I'm interested to see if the bootleg library can be of assistance with this directive - especially in informing a bottom-up method of acquiring new books by looking at what is being read/downloaded/uploaded.
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Researching aaaaarg.fail, ubuweb & Project Gutenberg with Tancredi:[edit]
Content: What is in the library?
-How much? PDFs - a lot! (hard to see how many, but 26,000+ and counting...) theory and critical theory
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Users: Who is using / uploading / downloading?
-Used by researchers, academics, students, people interested in theory who can become members by invitation. Members of the site can upload and download, and request new titles through a messageboard.
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Catalog: What is the system? How is it organised? How about its ontology?
-Indexed, by "catalog" (listing by author name), "collection" (listing by topic), and also by "requests" (listing by new requests, most requested, unrequested, and everything - also with RSS feed)
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Infrastructure: What are technical specs? Software? Hardware?<
-Probably runs on self-hosted server - you access it through a browser
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Politics: What is the attitude?
-Kind of like a private club - invite only
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Economy: Sponsors? Donation? Advertising?<
-No advertising on site - no information about sponsors or donations on site either...
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Content : What is in the library? How much?
-(PDF, VIDEO, AUDIO...) art, media, theater... in the contest of avant-gard in 2011 over 7,500 artists and over 2500 full-length avant-garde films and videos
-Users: Who is using / uploading / downloading? editors + volunteers + users + artists
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Catalog: What is the system? How is it organised? How about its ontology?
-each section has an editor who brings to the site their area of expertise / structured as a research project, index with descriptions
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Infrastructure: What are technical specs? Software? Hardware?
-servers donated by several universities as a means of study
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Politics: What is the attitude?
-library which is ever-expanding in uncanny—and often uncategorizable—directions / no logo,advertise,donation / anti-institutional / Act as a museum
-alternative by invoking a gift economy of plentitude with a strong emphasis on global education
-Economy: Sponsors? Donation? Advertising? volunteering / no advertising / free download / autonomous no sponsors
-Law: How does it interface? no financial interest but educational approach. VS copyright
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Content: What is in the library? How much?
-Project Gutenberg started in 1971. Texts in the library are those that have entered the public domain after exceeding the statute of limitations (in 1971 it was 14 years after death of the author, then 28, now 50 years). The website offers 58,000+ free "eBooks" (ePUB, Kindle, HTML and plain text formats). The collection is described as being comprised of three core types of text, "light literature" (e.g. Alice In Wonderland), "heavy literature" (e.g. Shakespeare), and "references" (e.g. encyclopedias)
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Users: Who is using / uploading / downloading?
-Anyone can download without registering an account. Only the site admin can upload.
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Catalog: What is the system? How is it organised? How about its ontology?
-Indexed alphabetically by author, title, language, "special categories" and recent uploads. Also includes a search function based on U.S. Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), and Yahoo and Google search (using metadata)
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Infrastructure: What are technical specs? Software? Hardware?
-Runs off a wiki. Hosted by ibiblio.org ("one of the largest free information databases online"). Accessed through the browser.
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Politics: What is the attitude? Based on democratic principle of shared knowledge.
-Operates (mostly) within the law. Heavily affiliated, with sister organisations in many countries, as well as partnerships with many other libraries and organisations that provide software to help read eBooks.
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Economy: Sponsors? Donation? Advertising?
-Project Gutenberg began with a serendipitous grant to Michael Hart (founder of Project Gutenberg) of an operator's account with $100,000,000 of computer time in it in 1971. Now, donations are accepted, run by volunteers (also makes calls for volunteer help - "digitizing, proofreading and formatting, recording audio books, or reporting errors").
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Law: How does it interface?
-(mostly) Legally, as most texts are within the public domain.
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-A) DESCRIPTION: an abstract of what each shadow library is [Steve suggests: make this 300 words or so]
-B) QUESTIONS: what type of questions does it raise? (e.g. what type of assumptions are implicit in its ontology?)
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PROJECT GUTENBERG
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Abstract — Project Gutenberg, initiated in 1971 by Michael Hart, is the world's oldest digital library of "eBooks", that is, books that are available electronically as PDFs, HTML, ePUB and plain text format. The collection has more recently expanded to include audio books, and texts in a variety of languages other than English. On the wiki-based website www.gutenberg.org, more than 58,000 eBooks are indexed by author, title, language and "recently posted". The search function allows users to look for titles by US Library of Congress search terms, as well as by going through Google and Yahoo metadata. The majority of these books are within the public domain and therefore free from copyright restrictions, although undoubtedly there are some that are orphaned by subsequent changes to US copyright terms (which in most cases of published texts, is now 70 years after the death of the author). Due to this, as well as differences in copyright law internationally, the complete legal legitimacy of its collection is in question, despite careful attempts to comply with US copyright law. It is important to note that Project Gutenberg is a project, rather than a single library, with sister affiliations in many countries (Project Gutenberg Australia, Project Gutenberg Europe among many others). This, alongside its non-profit stance (Project Gutenberg accepts donations, and also calls for volunteer help with proofreading and digitization of books, as well as recording audio books) lends moral legitimacy to its online distribution of texts.
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Questions —
-Looks like a classic collection; the interface is classic; based on a wiki; speaks of legitimacy
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Who is responsible and what are they responsible for?This is all the stuff that's in the public domain...
-What could be the motivation to make such a library?
-What values does it communicate? Good. Air of legitimacy; “library of congress search terms” and google to collect information. On this way they seek legitimacy from the on-line and off-line agents.
-What do they mean 'a project'? (is this an agent of legitimacy?) Involves many people; projects into the future; mutable (not set in stone)
-What is it filtered out and what are the political implications of that?
-How does the codex form limit what is available?
-Who does the library serve? user friendly interface; Also limitations of content, classic collection
-Who is responsible and what are they responsible for?
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AAAAARG.FAIL
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Abstract — Out of the necessity for a library, for artist Sean Dockray's LA-based educational institution called "The Public School", aaaaarg.fail (formerly aaarg.org, then aaaarg.org) is a website that hosts a collection of mostly theory and critical theory texts, and an online forum for members. Access to the collection comes from registering an account (you must be invited by a member first). Members can upload and download texts, as well as request titles via the forum. The changes in the domain name for the library come from repeated copyright infringement allegations from publishers of works that have been made accessible on the site, including the Australian publisher Macmillan. The publisher hired Mark Taylor, a former music industry executive, who was instrumental in bringing forth a cease and desist order against aaarg.org. Dockray later called this "another case where university students are conceived of as consumers, as carriers of debt for everything from degrees to consumer electronics to intellectual property" (http://unprojects.org.au/magazine/issues/issue-4-2/the-future-and-the-public-school/ ).
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Questions —
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Who does the library serve? (who are the customers?) Intellectual snobs. You have to be invited
-Forum? What affordance does that give?Sociability? There is a set of manners
-The forum produces a text (a form of collective annotation); a discussion on the texts in the library. Because you can make requests it is much more personal. You can also select by "most requested", which means that a hierarchy of information is produced within the forum.(by the discussion of the members)
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How is it different if you can participate in discussing the content of a library, than just be a viewer-receiver of the content?
-Who is responsible and what are they responsible for?
-How is it different to be an exclusive member in order to have access to the content of a library, compared to have no restrictions in accessing it?
-How does the collection (and discourse around it) represent the members of the library?
-If the library is based on user requests, it's a mirror of the members interests/social status/credentials/ideologies/clout
-Does this platform require a certain degree of library literacy and research skills?
-Does the background of the librarians affect the content presented in a library?
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UBUWEB.COM
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Abstract — UbuWeb.com is a large web-based, free, non-commercial resource for avant-garde poetry, music, film, literature and more, founded in 1996 by poet Kenneth Goldsmith. It offers visual, concrete and sound poetry, expanding to include film and sound art mp3 archives. The site's architecture limits retrieval to keyword searching and browsing by media type and artist/project name. In addition, sustainability is a concern for this website as it was never intended to be a permanent archive. Still, there is no comparable commercial source for the content on UbuWeb so it is valuable as a resource for libraries to point users toward so long as librarians are aware of its limitations. It is a library which is ever-expanding in uncanny—and often uncategorizable—directions. Each section has an editor who brings to the site their area of expertise. UbuWeb is not n to any academic institution, instead relying on alliances of interest and benefiting from bandwidth donations from its partnerships with GreyLodge, WFMU, PennSound, The Electronic Poetry Center, The Center for Literary Computing, and ArtMob. UbuWeb was founded in response to the marginal distribution of crucial avant-garde material. It remains non-commercial and operates on a gift economy. UbuWeb ensures educational open access to out-of-print works that find a second life through digital art reprint while also representing the work of contemporaries. It addresses problems in the distribution of and access to intellectual materials.
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Questions —
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Who does the library serve?
-What could be the motivation to make such a library?
-What values does it communicate?
-How can the material available in a library shape the discourse around a particular field?
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Date of publication: March 2016
-Publisher: Print>Imprint
-ISBN: 9780646954691
-Dewey number: 028.9099451
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-From the books: SLV RBRR 000-099 is a publication that explores marks left in over 300 books by visitors to the 000-099 section of the State Library of Victoria (SLV) Redmond Barry Reading Room (RBRR). The tactile materiality of the publication is emphasised by its form; section-sewn, with an unglued spine, allowing it to incorporate other components of the publication; such as a zine (with a commissioned essay by Federico Antonini) tucked inside the front cover, and a collection of 4" x 6" photographs taken at the SLV which are randomly inserted between pages. Transcripts of sounds recorded in the RBRR appear as intermittent typographic spreads within the layout. On the cover of the book is a list of the terms we defined to categorise the types of marks discovered. The preface to the book is an essay I wrote on the changing role of libraries, and in the end-matter there is a tongue-in-cheek "bibliography" which gives publication details and a Dewey Decimal reference of each book that appears in the publication. The marks we catalogued include (but are not limited to) examples such as marginalia, underlined text, dog-ears, stains, wear and tear, and objects left within books, such as photographs, scraps of paper or letters to future readers.
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Front cover
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Inside front cover
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A defaced page from Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, held in the SLV rare books collection
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Sounds from the Redmond Barry Reading Room
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Spread with insert
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Zine with essay by Federico Antonini
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-The publication developed from a collaborative research project with graphic designer Masaki Miwa. This initially involved a time-consuming process in which we removed each book, inspected for marks, scanned results, and then identified, catalogued and inserted them into the layout of the publication. The process of identifying marks and ascribing meaning to them prompted questions of intent and conventions within mark-making. Other research included interviews with librarians at the SLV on marks within rare books. A key development from this research was the discovery of how mark-making can indicate provenance, (e.g. markings on a map which can determine that it was owned by Captain James Cook) or give certain historical value to books, that result in relocation to less publicly-accessible areas of the library. The photographs and transcriptions of sounds were included in order to give an impression (beyond the merely textual) of this particular area of the SLV. In order to contextualise our findings within a wider realm of public discourse on the social role of libraries, I wrote an essay on the contemporary shift from libraries acting as repositories of knowledge to active social spaces as collections are slowly being digitised. Federico Antonini's essay explores mark-making as a deliberate creative strategy in the design of artist's books, offering speculative answers to questions of intent and meaning around the marks we discovered in the SLV.
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The project began with an interest in this phenomenon, and curiosity about the possible intentions of mark-makers. Part of my own interest was from a typographic perspective, exploring the range of symbols used when marking texts. Through our research we became interested in this phenomenon of books being used as vehicles for communication by readers, and through categorising them and exploring commonalities in mark-making, attempt a kind of subjective taxonomy within the limited context of this section, at that particular time in history. Our interviews with SLV librarians and research into the shifting role of libraries prompted us to expand the scope of our publication beyond the small section of books we surveyed, and connect our research to a wider contemporary discourse on attitudes towards libraries. The publication was (perhaps ironically) acquired by the SLV, and now sits within its collection of artist's books.
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Date of publication: March 2016
-Publisher: Print>Imprint
-ISBN: 9780646954691
-Dewey number: 028.9099451
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-From the books: SLV RBRR 000-099 is a publication that explores marks left in over 300 books by visitors to the 000-099 section of the State Library of Victoria (SLV) Redmond Barry Reading Room (RBRR). The tactile materiality of the publication is emphasised by its form; section-sewn, with an unglued spine, allowing it to incorporate other components of the publication; such as a zine (with a commissioned essay by Federico Antonini) tucked inside the front cover, and a collection of 4" x 6" photographs taken at the SLV which are randomly inserted between pages. Transcripts of sounds recorded in the RBRR appear as intermittent typographic spreads within the layout. On the cover of the book is a list of the terms we defined to categorise the types of marks discovered. The preface to the book is an essay I wrote on the changing role of libraries, and in the end-matter there is a tongue-in-cheek "bibliography" which gives publication details and a Dewey Decimal reference of each book that appears in the publication. The marks we catalogued include (but are not limited to) examples such as marginalia, underlined text, dog-ears, stains, wear and tear, and objects left within books, such as photographs, scraps of paper or letters to future readers.
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Front cover
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Inside front cover
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A defaced page from Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, held in the SLV rare books collection
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Sounds from the Redmond Barry Reading Room
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Spread with insert
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Zine with essay by Federico Antonini
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-The publication developed from a collaborative research project with graphic designer Masaki Miwa. This initially involved a time-consuming process in which we removed each book, inspected for marks, scanned results, and then identified, catalogued and inserted them into the layout of the publication. The process of identifying marks and ascribing meaning to them prompted questions of intent and conventions within mark-making. Other research included interviews with librarians at the SLV on marks within rare books. A key development from this research was the discovery of how mark-making can indicate provenance, (e.g. markings on a map which can determine that it was owned by Captain James Cook) or give certain historical value to books, that result in relocation to less publicly-accessible areas of the library. The photographs and transcriptions of sounds were included in order to give an impression (beyond the merely textual) of this particular area of the SLV. In order to contextualise our findings within a wider realm of public discourse on the social role of libraries, I wrote an essay on the contemporary shift from libraries acting as repositories of knowledge to active social spaces as collections are slowly being digitised. Federico Antonini's essay explores mark-making as a deliberate creative strategy in the design of artist's books, offering speculative answers to questions of intent and meaning around the marks we discovered in the SLV.
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The project began with an interest in this phenomenon, and curiosity about the possible intentions of mark-makers. Part of my own interest was from a typographic perspective, exploring the range of symbols used when marking texts. Through our research we became interested in this phenomenon of books being used as vehicles for communication by readers, and through categorising them and exploring commonalities in mark-making, attempt a kind of subjective taxonomy within the limited context of this section, at that particular time in history. Our interviews with SLV librarians and research into the shifting role of libraries prompted us to expand the scope of our publication beyond the small section of books we surveyed, and connect our research to a wider contemporary discourse on attitudes towards libraries. The publication was (perhaps ironically) acquired by the SLV, and now sits within its collection of artist's books.
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A glossary is a list of terms defined in relation to the specificity of the text. Glossaries aid reading comprehension, and also establish the presence of the readers. Glossing (from Late Latin glossa "obsolete or foreign word") was a medieval technique of adding commentaries to the main text of illuminated manuscripts. Glossators would add small handwritten notes and illustrations in between the lines and in the margins. Reading between the lines opened the text up for various interpretations, and illustrations served as mnemonic aids to assist readers to recall information. [1]
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The texts written on these cards constitute a glossary which defines the tasks of the Contingent Librarian.
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Image: A glossed manuscript of a late-thirteenth-century Latin translation of a medical work by Hippocrates
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↑Hobart, M.E. and Schiffman, Z.S. (1998) Information ages: literacy, numeracy, and the computer revolution. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
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Main question: How can annotation be useful to us, and a third party?
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Possible ways
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Keep text and annotations together
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scan and overlay transparencies (more like a graphical representation but perhaps not very readable)
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write, re-write, cut and paste the annotations in a bigger paper all together
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use the annotation bot (a digital tool)(it would be cool if you could underline, etc - yes! including graphic elements)
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if digital, create the possibility to turn on and off the annotations to keep the original text
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bind the pages into books and make a bootleg library with them
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Separate text and annotations (deconstruction / structure analysis)
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only underlined text (in many ways: lines, circles, waves...)
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list of questions, tags, notes + composition and mapping of them (different mapping techniques)
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historical timeline
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only drawings?
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free graphical interpretation
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Computer driven annotation
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scrape the text (words processing)
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pattern recognition
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delete all articles and implicit elements
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Combine the above possibilities
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overlay of analog annotations to represent "heat patterns" (parts of the text with lots of/little engagement), as well as a digital version that is more legible
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HOW DO I KNOW WHAT I AM READING? We are discussing form how do we talk about content?
-How do you make the content readable for others?
-How do you communicate what you're interpreting?
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There are many different reasons why you might read something, but essentially, reading involves skimming (reading to get the main idea of a text) or scanning (looking for specific information in details). This often happens in tandem—skimming the catalogue to see what the interest of the library is, and then scanning to see if a particular text has been included—and has relations to other modes of information retrieval, e.g. browsing/searching.
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In 1977, while facing a skeptical audience in a Q & A session broadcast live on Australian television, Marshall McLuhan argued “the word read means to guess – look it up in the big dictionary. Reading is an activity of rapid guessing because any word has so many meanings – including the word reading – that to select one in a context of other words requires very rapid guessing. That’s why a good reader tends to be a very quick decision-maker.”[1] This is very true of human reading, where multiple interpretations lead to various equivalent understandings of a text, but false when applied to machine reading, which only operates with predefined ways of interpreting text.
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Image: "the word read means to guess" A quote from Marshall McLuhan during a live television broadcast, 1977
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We read texts, and write notes in the margins; usually in private, isolated from other readers. We come across texts with others' notes on them; the author unknown, their thoughts obscure. What happens when we share our notes, vocalise and perform them?
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In this workshop...we'll read, annotate and discuss an open letter which asks for pirate library practices to come out from the shadows. We'll read aloud and perform parts of the text, enriched by our doubts, sympathies, tensions and diverse understandings. We'll personalise the text, opening it up for collective conversations. Our voices will occupy the space and leave traces on the text and in the library.
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INTRODUCTION (5min)
-Meet each other: have a quick round of saying something about ourselves and what do we know about pirate/shadow libraries. Short description of the steps of the workshop and let people know we'll be recording.
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Overview of what happens in this workshop in one sentence:
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1st part: Reading/Annotating, heatmap
-2nd part: Discussion, Rehearsal of Performative reading and recording of performance.
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-Topic: pirate libraries - topic of special Issue 9
-Text: "In solidarity with Library Genesis & Sci-Hub" letter
-Aim: 2-3 sentences of what is the aim of this workshop. Why this collective reading-conversations matter?
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- We see "annotations" as a way to express our understandings/questions/comments/disagreements/ tensions/positions about what we read. So we can discuss about it and form a collective understanding of the text. Our aims are to:
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- open up a conversation about pirate libraries, through a deeper collective understanding of a specific text that refers to this topic (enrichment comes through collectively reading and annotating the text)
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- develop ways in which texts can become conversations through annotating together
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- make public what we have learned about pirate libraries and annotation, and to reflect on the public's response(s)
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-STEP 1: Reading/Annotating (15min) PALOMA
-Materials: "In Support of Library Genesis & Sci-Hub" English language letter (on A3 spread), A3 tracing paper, ballpoint pens (annotation pack)
-Participants: Individual
-Archiving step: collect tracing paper, carbon paper
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- We provide the solidarity letter in an A3 pack
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- Read the text individually
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- Annotate the text in English. (It will be traced through carbon paper to the tracing paper underneath.)
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-STEP 2: Heatmap and discussion through the annotations (20min) SIMON
-Materials: Same as Step 1
-Participants: Whole group/Small groups
-Archiving step: Photographs of annotated texts, discussion
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Create a "heatmap" of the text by placing tracing papers with annotations on top of each other, showing which areas are interesting/remarkable to others.
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We can focus in the most "annotated", thus "active", "interesting", "relevant" parts of the text. At the end of the heatmap stage we introduce the discussion by identifying common areas of annotation, and also listing things that need further definition. Why did you annotate this part? What is the "global north"? etc.
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Comment generally on the text, what was interesting? Did you make sense? Are there specific parts you want to discuss?
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Conclusions? Comments? Discuss the most commented.
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Discuss this experience and anything we want to discuss about pirate libraries, this text, our experiences.
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Collectively determine strategies to "amplify" specific parts of the texts that either
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-a) we all agree on
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b) we don't understand
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c) disagree on
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d) we want to develop further
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e) think are worth repeating/recording
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-STEP 3: Performative reading (20min) ARTEMIS
-Participants: All together (if more than 10, divide into two groups???)
-Materials: Annotated "In Support of Library Genesis & Sci-Hub" letter, audio recording device (ZOOM rented from WdKA shop/smartphone), (maybe speakers?)
-Archiving step: Voice recording
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Introduce by saying: "We are going to read aloud the text in turns, while also performing our annotations. Try to perform your comment to make your position/understanding of the text clear. If you have an annotation, please do or say something (e.g. interrupt, whisper, raise your hand, make a noise, use an accent, use intonation to convey emotion etc)."
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The text becomes a "play", a performance, a discussion between us
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The purpose is to activate a text, by transforming it into a conversation through spoken annotation
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This reading will be recorded (ask)
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Decide on an "interesting" way of performing and record that. It could be more than one language in this audio piece.
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-OUTPUT:
-At Leeszaal:
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Play the collective recording from speakers placed in shelves at Leeszaal (Bluetooth)
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Later:
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Printed version with the overlapping of individual comments - heatmap - pocket version???
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Printed URL on annotated tracing paper to direct readers to the online versions of the texts?
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Bookmark or some object (it can be the pocket version) to introduce it in some books in Leeszaal, understanding that as a way to spread the letter (like sowing seeds)
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POST-WORKSHOP MATERIAL:
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Transcription of the voice performance (we can be inspired by film transcriptions) - perhaps we could annotate this as well:
Writing “by hand” is how we most often think of the act. The hand is symbolically connected to the act of writing, to the extent that we still use icons of the hand-held utensils to represent it graphically—a ballpoint pen, a pencil, even an old-fashioned quill and nib, all often associated with letter-writing. Slowly, this iconography is being replaced by another symbol; the keyboard, signalling the contemporary dominance of typography on writing.
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Image: ‘Proper posture for writing with pen’, from Drucker, J. (1999) The alphabetic labyrinth: the letters in history and imagination. London: Thames & Hudson
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Printed: 20.12.19
-Dimensions: 190x260mm
-Cover stock: Heavy green stock (unknown brand) - around 210gsm
-Text stock: Laser 80gsm
-Binding: Perfect bound, hot glue
-Pages: 330pp
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Johanna Drucker's The Alphabetic Labyrinth is a book that traces the history and development of the alphabet. Full of diagrams and densely populated with these histories, it demands printing and reading in physical form. A PDF just won't do. I printed this from a PDF that I laid out quickly in InDesign using my trusty placemultiplePDFpages script. The cover was made on the photocopier, a technique I was well-acquainted with from my days as a teacher, where lessons would be literally cut and pasted together to be copied on the glass. The task that took the most time was making sure the pages would be printed at reasonable size, while economising on paper. For this reason, I wanted to print it double-sided on A4 paper with minimal excess. The annotations (interestingly, many in Greek - a coincidence as the book focuses for some time on development of the Greek alphabet) and artefacts from scanning were retained (such as darkened page edges), creating a materiality that reminds one the book is most definitely loved, copied, and shared.
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Inclusion and exclusion are not just processes that occur when books arrive in the library. They are recurring, procedural, practical actions executed throughout the library’s lifetime. It comes down to the issue of space quite rapidly. With too many books, certain brutal decisions may have to be made to retain or dispose of the surplus.
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The results of including and excluding are visible in the catalogue and classification system adopted by the library, defining the particular interests of the library.
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Inclusion also plays a part when considering how public or private the library is, and how its membership is formed. There are several layers of privilege (and accompanying responsibilities) that can be given, from anonymous guest, to registered user, to administrator. Users who have administrative privileges may add new users and bestow (or revoke) freedoms and responsibilities.
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Image: A membership card for the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the national library of the Netherlands
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Most books contain an index. Most books are also indexed in some type of cataloguing system, to present the collection and inter-relationships between the texts contained within, and those outside of the library. This set of cards is an unbound index, which can be reshuffled, added to and reduced as the reader pleases. Reducing a text to an index opens it up for the reader to complete it as they read, drawing on what they have read before and creating a mental network of associations. A book is a hyper-index, forever pointing outwards to other books, libraries, readers and writers. I use my index finger to trace over the text, moving down the page as my eyes scan for keywords.
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Image: Alejandro Cesarco, Index, exhibited at Witte de With Contemporary, September 2019-January 2020
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Hope A Olson's text "Mapping Beyond Dewey's Boundaries" on spatial representations in classification systems, explored through a project that attempted to cross-reference two classification systems - A Woman's Thesaurus and Dewey Decimal Classification by Mary Ellen S Capek. Stating that "classifications are locational systems" suggests that spatial representations can be used with various effect; describing, exposing, and when used as metaphors, shifting the discourse.
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1. Spatial representation of classification systems reveals the ideological conditions that form them.
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Olson refers to spatial representations of classification systems in the form of diagrams.
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The first diagram is one that shows distribution of subjects, with the idea of a mainstream core that diffuses towards the margins. The second is a Venn diagram that illustrates how "mainstream" or "core" descriptors actually eventuate in very small "cores" due to limitations by Boolean "ands'. Venn diagrams operate on the basis of duality - something is or isn't part of a set.
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2. The concepts of "paradoxical space" and "rhetorical space".
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Paradoxical space is described in a similar way to the paranodal; being "both inside and outside, center and margins".
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How to utilise a "paradoxical space"? The text seems to suggest focusing on connections, relationships between subjects rather than differences? What could an associative classification system look like?
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The space of a page is crucial in the printed format - the text block excludes the margin - clearly delineating what is recognized as authored, and what is not. Book printing has many terms to cut up a page into a layout - deciding on "safe areas" to print and areas to leave open. In my own experience, shaping the text block is the first consideration when laying out a page.
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However, some formats of digital books (e.g. EPUB) do not have the notion of a page. There is the space of the screen, but this is mutable, whereas a printed page is not.
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The library is a collection of texts and the readers collected around them. Nothing comes from nothing, everything comes from somewhere, something or someone. Authors are dependent on other texts, writers, and readers. I write this text using borrowed words. As a legal, economic and institutional construct[1], authorship is problematic; current publishing models see texts as the intellectual property of authors possessed with “originality”. This originality is a myth; each text is layered in dependencies.
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Image: An author signing a book
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↑Weinmayr, E., ‘Confronting Authorship, Constructing Practices (How Copyright is Destroying Collective Practice)’ in Jefferies, J. and Kember, S. (eds.) (2019) Whose Book is it Anyway?: A View from Elsewhere on Publishing, Copyright and Creativity. Open Book Publishers. doi:10.11647/OBP.0159
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Eva Weinmayr's Piracy Project invites submissions of pirated books. The books are collected in public places (e.g galleries, art book fairs) where visitors are available to read them.
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Of particular interest are the editorial decisions made in the pirating of the books. Copying of a book invites an inevitable comparison between the "source" and the "copy". It is not as straightforward as assuming a hierarchy based on chronology - such as in the case of a leaked manuscript - the "origin" may have been published after the "copy". Instead, a list of words describing the possible motivations are devised to examine the possible motivation for pirating:
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This reminds me of the list of words I devised for my FTB project - however my list was of names of types of "marks of use" made in books from a section of a public collection in a library. Using verbs instead of nouns is a subtle shift away from concrete definitions of modifications between the published book and its counterpart towards a actions that may have produced these modifications.
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Artemis & I examined two pirated books, speculating on the strategies behind their duplication and making notes and questions related to each one:
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Book 1: Teignmouth Electron - Tacita Dean
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Strategies: Translating, Caring, Reproducing, Bootlegging, Reformatting, Re-Editing, Adapting, Expanding, (re)focusing, fan working, homageing, engaging, fostering, crafting, adding value
-Notes & Questions: A caring reproduction from an independent editorial project, showing special value on the content. Seems that there is collaboration with the artist, but don't have permission from the previous publisher.
-Has an isbn number. It seems not like a pirate version but as an official published version.
-Making a choice between what should and shouldn't be translated - e.g. Space Oddity appears in both English and Spanish.
-The text is privileged over the images, and reproduction comes into play with the different printing methods. Photography as a visual medium that relies on reproduction.
-It's an adaption in that it drastically changes the format (and slightly changes the content) to meet a need (to connect with a larger audience of Spanish speakers), and can be seen as vastly different from the source.
-Is the translator the author? What happens with copyright in this case?
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Book 2: Shampoo by Robert Towne and Warren Beatty, silenced by K. Lassinaro
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Strategies: Silencing, Reducing, Redirecting, Reframing, Recontextualising,(re)Focusing, (Translating (from an aural/oral/visual source to a literate destination), Re-mediating, censoring, critiquing, deleting violating
-Notes & Questions: What is the source? Is it a film, or the manuscript? Is the manuscript published? We found it easily in the web. Is a manuscript a publication? Does this constitute fair use? The pirate edition makes space for the imagination of the reader to fill the gaps. The focus seems to be the "container bag" instead of the "content". The "source" was focusing in a visual experience, while the pirate version does the opposite. The dialogues don't matter / Critique on the content
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Invitations to join the library are made through private channels of communication; direct messages, personal emails with no-one cc’d or bcc’d, private conversations held in intimate spaces, small printed cards passed by hand. Everyone is welcome to join, but the library does not require everyone to be a member in order to operate.
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Image: A6 cards, invitations to use the bootleg library
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Date & Time:
-27.11.19: 10:20-11:50
-28.11.19: 10:00-11:00
-04.12.19: 10:00-11:30
-Location:
-04.128 (A small office in the drawing station, by the printer)
-Things to bring: a computer (or a USB drive) with some of your favourite texts on it, a cup for tea or coffee if you want some (there will be spare cups if needed)
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-bootleg library sessions
-During these sessions, we'll have an introduction to the bootleg library, and create user accounts. Once you have a user account you will have full access to useful features of the library, such as arranging the collection through public and private "shelves", as well as downloading and uploading texts. If we have time, we can discuss the things we're reading, and how we'd like to use this library. These sessions are free and open for all to attend, and tea, coffee and snacks will be provided.
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about the bootleg library
-The bootleg library is a local collection of texts, available in digital (mostly PDFs and EPUB) and physical (printed) form. The digital library is available over a local network, at this URL: http://145.24.131.15:20190. Much of the collection has been “bootlegged”, meaning that the books have been copied, modified, and redistributed, unauthorised, as fairly faithful reproductions of a source publication.
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The physical library is a growing collection of republished books, mostly made by Simon Browne (XPUB), sometimes donated by visitors. These books, currently stored in a box on a shelf in the Lens-Based studio, are available to be read, borrowed and annotated, with a condition that they are returned.
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The digital library runs on calibre-web https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web, a web interface for Calibre, which is open-source software for ebook management. Calibre allows storage and conversion of ebooks in many file formats, which can all be listed under the one catalogue entry, providing a diversity of formats for different reading needs; print, full text search, copy/paste, hyperlinked references, etc. The software also allows users to manually or automatically enter cataloguing details, and create and edit "shelves". These shelves are either public or private, so users may organise the collection together, and also create their own sections of books that are individually organised.
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The bootleg library has a smaller collection than many other libraries, but it is personalised, collective, and local. It has a curated collection of eclectic texts, individually uploaded and catalogued by readers who want to share them. Readers, and the texts they read, are represented in the library, and by way of alternative library practices this representation produces a certain kind of sociability. Through using this library, readers and texts become active participants in the collection. If you know the person you know something about the book, and vice-versa, or if you don't there is the opportunity to find out more.
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The conditions for uploading are that;
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the contributor is familiar with the text, and
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the contributor completes the metadata on each upload
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Most important are the description and page fields; these are completed subjectively. Texts are tagged with keywords that indicate the subject, such as “Media Theory”, “Fiction”, “Technical manuals” etc., and also (if applicable) the person who referred them, which can be the contributor, or another person e.g. “Amy’s books”, “Steve’s books”, “Simon’s books” etc. Anyone who is on the local network and knows the URL can download or upload texts, but only those with a user account will have access to its more useful features, such as the ability to create and edit public and private “shelves”, which is how the collection may be both collectively, and individually organised.
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During these workshops, we will engage in a variety of activities;
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creating user accounts
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collectively determining the development of desired features in the library
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uploading and cataloguing texts
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classifying texts in shelves, both public and private
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downloading, reading, annotating and discussing texts
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digitising printed matter, including scanning and OCR
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designing, printing and binding books for the physical bootleg library
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The Bootleg Library represents its readers through various strategies;
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a horizontal approach to classification through collective organisation of public shelves
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personalisation of the catalogue through subjective descriptions and tags, elevating the position of the reader in regard to texts
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ability to navigate the collection through the sociability of its users - if you know a person whose name appears as a tag in the metadata, you know something about the text, and vice-versa
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development of a collection and interface made by and for its readers, containing texts that are personally chosen and shared within our community
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The workshop sessions are open to all who are interested, and will be published on the media design calendar. Registration is not necessary, but please refer to the calendar entries for any other specific requirements for each workshop.
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All that I did was click a button and switch on the content server. The library was automatically assigned a dynamic IP address, followed by a colon and a port: 8080. Type http://145.131.24.139:8080 into a browser, and you’d arrive at the library, no problem. But you had to already be on the local network; you couldn’t access it from the outside. And the IP address could change without warning, as dynamic IPs often do.
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A sequence of digits is not nearly as memorable as a domain name. And paradoxically, we expect stability from a digital environment that is quite dynamic and in flux. Trust erodes at every extra click, every retyped URL. Accessibility is tantamount to existence. If you can’t access it, it doesn’t exist.
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8080 is for personally-run web servers. It’s called 8080 because it relates to port 80, the port that HTTP is served over. But ISPs regularly scan for HTTP requests including port 8080, to see if there is any illegal traffic occurring over the network, so it’s best to set it to a custom number (there are 65535 potential ports to use).
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The library is now accessible from the outside over a VPN, and the page is HTTP password-protected. On arrival at the URL enter the following user name and password.
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Image: Poster announcing the bootleg library, Piet Zwart Institute, July 2019
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You can easily create a unit file for calibre to run on boot on a modern (systemd) based Linux system. This means it will also restart after a crash. Create the file /etc/systemd/system/calibre-server.service with the contents shown below:
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The User and Group should be the same ones that own the files in the calibre library directory. It's generally not a good idea to run the server as root. Also change the path to the calibre library directory to suit your system.
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Machines can read text, and process it in complex ways. Code may contain instructions for a computer to read a file, so that its contents may be then used as part of a program. An example of this in practice is in the catalogue details of books in the library (title, author, description, publisher etc), which can be downloaded rather than manually written. This involves communication between systems to search their databases; for example, taking these details from another source, such as https://books.google.com or https://goodreads.com.
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Books can also be checked in and out of libraries by a variety of machine reading methods such as barcode scanning, or using RFID (radio-frequency identification) chips inserted into the cover.
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Image: An RFID tag; an object often contained within the cover of a public library book to track when it is checked in or out
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This text is being written on a QWERTY keyboard, through a browser, using a software called “Etherpad” that records every changeset—every typed key of the characters that are added or deleted. The software is logging these changes fast enough that it appears to be happening in real time. I can also go back through every previous changeset to older versions with the granularity of the individual character. This is the liminal space between texts; in split-seconds of processing where human writing is manipulated by machine writing.
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curl is a command that can be used from the terminal to take text from a URL. It can be piped with software such as pandoc to convert the text to other formats, and in support of a workflow I'm starting to develop, this comes in quite handy.
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I'm writing text on the pad, and then converting it to markdown. This extra step isn't necessary (in fact it adds to the work) but I'm interested in using pads as multi-flow publishing tools in the future so I'm testing this out. Also, using a pad allows me to style the text simply using markdown rather than HTML.
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For example, this is a file I made from some notes on a Flusser interview about linear writing:
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I'm then storing the files in my git, which is public. Having texts in git allows me to use its versioning capabilities, allowing me to go back over old modified versions in the file tree - I can copy paste from these snippets that I may want to go back and retain in the future...
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The library depends on its public, just as the public depends on the library. Sharing of texts is the heart of library culture. A completely private collection lacks sociability. Libraries that operate outside of the law (shadow/extra-legal/pirate/+++) also depend on tactics to survive, such as password protection and invite-only systems for registering new users. In this context, publishing is not broadcasting, scattering seeds of information widely to encourage maximal distribution. The public sphere created by the library is limited by necessary measures designed to sustain it.
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Image: Chained books at the medieval Hereford Library, an illustration from Streeter, B. H., (1931) The Chained Library; A Survey of Four Centuries in the Evolution of the English Library, B. Franklin : New York [1970]
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Making something public, and making publics. Matthew Stadler, writer and co-founder of the federated publishing network Publication Studio, makes a distinction between publishing and publication. For Stadler, publication happens not only through sharing texts, but also “setting up the circumstance through which we can talk and debate them, together”.
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Publishing survives through publication, which is the necessary creation and maintenance of the space created for a public; to read, to share texts, to discuss and publish them. Publication continues after the event of publishing.
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Image: Still from What is Publication?, a talk by Matthew Stadler, writer and co-founder of the federated publishing network Publication Studio, available at https://vimeo.com/14888791
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Matthew Stadler is a writer, and one of the founders of Publication Studio, a federated publishing house which operates worldwide. I met with him at Leeszaal, where we discussed our mutual interests in texts, reading, libraries and open access to knowledge. Matthew was able to give some valuable insights on what makes certain publishing models, (and libraries) successful, including Publication Studio, and Leeszaal, where he works as a volunteer. His response to my bootleg library was very encouraging. It affirmed some of the hypotheses I have proposed, and offered some insights that I found quite inspiring:
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a successful publishing practice resembles an estuary, which is a fertile ecological environment formed by the confluence of saltwater, freshwater and minerals. The metaphor is extended to the practice of contingent librarianship, which doesn't opt for one stream of activity, but provides a meeting point of many
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what I'm most interested in is readers, and shared the act of reading as the thing that binds together a library
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the haptic experience of reading a printed book is fundamentally one of a circuit-based spatial relationship with the book - holding the verso with the left hand, and the recto with the right. In this way the body and the text form a loop
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small, spur-of-the-moment actions, in response to immediate needs is most effective in establishing a collective publishing project; i.e. you look at what you have to do today, you print a book, tomorrow you develop the library, a little at a time, rather than as part of some grand scheme that can very quickly become oppressive and driven by ideology instead of a practical response to circumstances
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As a writer, Matthew's interests are in the extension of the life of the book post-publication, and how it survives after it is published. There is quite a proliferation of "unofficially published" books made by artists and designers, but these are usually tied to an event: an artwork, a catalogue, a book launch; soon to be forgotten. For him (like myself), the visibility of readers supports the argument for a library's existence. This was the impetus behind a series of books published by Publication Studio, which were free to annotate using software called an.notate. Further to this interest, he co-wrote and published a book called Revolution: A Reader, which is a book made from annotations made on the topic of revolution. I showed him the system of annotation on the bootleg library, which at present is just a link to an etherpad in the description. He pointed out that while the etherpad is a fertile and dynamic collaborative writing environment, having annotations in a separate window to the text lacks fixidity, and proximity.
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Matthew also brought up the topic of renumeration for publication - asking if I charged a fee for the services I offer. To me, it is not only unnecessary, but also contradictory to the type of culture the bootleg library should foster. I prefer to exchange bootlegged books for something else, and I'm printing and making them at very little material costs, only my time is expensive. I realise that this luxury is one I can afford only now, and that the question of money (as a necessary part of sustaining a publishing practice) will be an important one to address in the future.
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I'm quite interested in the aspect of publication that Matthew champions; one that ensures the survival of a publication after the fanfare of the launch event. Thinking about the use of the text in 20, 30 years time gives a very different set of priorities to thinking about how it will be read as a "current" publication. The way texts are read, distributed, and most importantly shared, precipitates a form that must be durable, and suitable to the long-term needs of the public it is presented to.
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The library collection is intentionally small; it does not wish to be everything to everyone. Focused library sessions are held regularly, and informally, with participants free to come and go as they please. The sessions do not require registration, and make no demands on participants. The result is often a small group of session attendees, who can offer personal insights and opinions in an intimate setting. It is more beneficial to the library’s development to have a conversation between a small number of participants than to lecture to a crowd.
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Image: bootleg library session at Varia, A Collective-space for Everyday Technology, Rotterdam, 26th January, 2020
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Date & Time:
-27.11.19: 10:20-11:50
-28.11.19: 10:00-11:00
-04.12.19: 10:00-11:30
-Location:
-04.128 (A small office in the drawing station, by the printer)
-Things to bring: a computer (or a USB drive) with some of your favourite texts on it, a cup for tea or coffee if you want some (there will be spare cups if needed)
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-bootleg library sessions
-During these sessions, we'll have an introduction to the bootleg library, and create user accounts. Once you have a user account you will have full access to useful features of the library, such as arranging the collection through public and private "shelves", as well as downloading and uploading texts. If we have time, we can discuss the things we're reading, and how we'd like to use this library. These sessions are free and open for all to attend, and tea, coffee and snacks will be provided.
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about the bootleg library
-The bootleg library is a local collection of texts, available in digital (mostly PDFs and EPUB) and physical (printed) form. The digital library is available over a local network, at this URL: http://145.24.131.15:20190. Much of the collection has been “bootlegged”, meaning that the books have been copied, modified, and redistributed, unauthorised, as fairly faithful reproductions of a source publication.
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The physical library is a growing collection of republished books, mostly made by Simon Browne (XPUB), sometimes donated by visitors. These books, currently stored in a box on a shelf in the Lens-Based studio, are available to be read, borrowed and annotated, with a condition that they are returned.
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The digital library runs on calibre-web https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web, a web interface for Calibre, which is open-source software for ebook management. Calibre allows storage and conversion of ebooks in many file formats, which can all be listed under the one catalogue entry, providing a diversity of formats for different reading needs; print, full text search, copy/paste, hyperlinked references, etc. The software also allows users to manually or automatically enter cataloguing details, and create and edit "shelves". These shelves are either public or private, so users may organise the collection together, and also create their own sections of books that are individually organised.
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The bootleg library has a smaller collection than many other libraries, but it is personalised, collective, and local. It has a curated collection of eclectic texts, individually uploaded and catalogued by readers who want to share them. Readers, and the texts they read, are represented in the library, and by way of alternative library practices this representation produces a certain kind of sociability. Through using this library, readers and texts become active participants in the collection. If you know the person you know something about the book, and vice-versa, or if you don't there is the opportunity to find out more.
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The conditions for uploading are that;
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the contributor is familiar with the text, and
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the contributor completes the metadata on each upload
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Most important are the description and page fields; these are completed subjectively. Texts are tagged with keywords that indicate the subject, such as “Media Theory”, “Fiction”, “Technical manuals” etc., and also (if applicable) the person who referred them, which can be the contributor, or another person e.g. “Amy’s books”, “Steve’s books”, “Simon’s books” etc. Anyone who is on the local network and knows the URL can download or upload texts, but only those with a user account will have access to its more useful features, such as the ability to create and edit public and private “shelves”, which is how the collection may be both collectively, and individually organised.
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During these workshops, we will engage in a variety of activities;
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creating user accounts
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collectively determining the development of desired features in the library
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uploading and cataloguing texts
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classifying texts in shelves, both public and private
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downloading, reading, annotating and discussing texts
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digitising printed matter, including scanning and OCR
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designing, printing and binding books for the physical bootleg library
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The Bootleg Library represents its readers through various strategies;
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a horizontal approach to classification through collective organisation of public shelves
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personalisation of the catalogue through subjective descriptions and tags, elevating the position of the reader in regard to texts
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ability to navigate the collection through the sociability of its users - if you know a person whose name appears as a tag in the metadata, you know something about the text, and vice-versa
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development of a collection and interface made by and for its readers, containing texts that are personally chosen and shared within our community
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The workshop sessions are open to all who are interested, and will be published on the media design calendar. Registration is not necessary, but please refer to the calendar entries for any other specific requirements for each workshop.
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booklet.sh for PDF imposition into a booklet[edit]
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I found another way to do imposition using a script Michael wrote called booklet.sh, downloadable here: https://git.xpub.nl/murtaugh/95layouts
-It's a shell script that can run in the bin folder from the home directory, which allows you to run it wherever you are in the computer - you don't have to cd to the folder where the script is. To enable this, first you have to echo the path for the bin folder that the scripts are in. The command to run it from the terminal is:
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booklet.sh source.pdf
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It needs a few dependencies to run (mainly psutils).
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Requirements: psutils, pdftk, python3 with reportlab (make_blank_pdf.py)
Note: Comment out or delete the last line to produce three .ps files - the first one is the source PDF, the second is the PDF imposed in the correct order, the third one is the imposed PDF pages on an A4 page. This works well if all you want to do is impose, print and fold. For cutting sheets you need to position the pages 2-up, centred on the page, which I can't quite figure out how to do...
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The jam band The Grateful Dead were followed around the United States by a legion of die-hard fans, proclaiming themselves “Deadheads”. Cheaply available cassette recorders allowed them to tape concerts and then share recordings amongst each other. Thinking of this, I’m reminded of John Cage’s motto, “Everything you do is music, and everywhere is the best seat.” Each position in the audience produces a slightly different recording, and this multiplicity of form connects the audience not only with the music, but with each other.
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There are files in the library that are of the same text, but they have travelled different paths to get there, accumulating difference through methods such as annotation and material transformation. And so, they have different materialities, lending weight to the argument that a text is not identical with itself; that there is no such thing as a unique, singular, original “work”, but instead many different versions of texts, born through the accidents of their creation.
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Image: “Deadheads” recording a live Grateful Dead concert, 1972
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“Deadheads” recording a live Grateful Dead concert, 1972
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---
-title: notes on texts
-author: collective/Etherpad
----
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-Notes on *Notes on Texts*, with Simon Browne, contingent librarian* at the bootleg library*
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-## url to this editable pad
-<https://pad.xpub.nl/p/Notes_on_texts>
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-## bootleg library
-+ <https://hub.xpub.nl/bootleglibrary>
-User: THENWHO
-Password: WASPHONE
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-### we will use:
-* calibre-web, the software the bootleg library runs on
-<https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web>
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-* Etherpad, a browser-based, realtime collaborative text editor
-<https://pad.xpub.nl>
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-* Markdown, a lightweight markup language
-<https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/wiki/Markdown-Cheatsheet>
-<https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax>
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-* Pandoc, a universal document converter
-<https://pandoc.org/>
-Installation guide:
-<https://pandoc.org/installing.html>
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-### workflow summary:
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-**1. upload to the bootleg library**<br />
-**2. select a PDF, choose a page from that text**<br />
-**3. annotate the page in a new etherpad document (use markdown for structure)**<br />
-**4. export to plain text from etherpad**<br />
-**5. convert .txt to .EPUB**<br />
-**6. upload to the bootleg library**<br />
-**7. paste URL of the pad you used**<br />
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-### workflow steps in detail:
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-**1. upload to the bootleg library**
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-* Click 'upload'
-* Choose a text from your computer
-* Enter metadata, or download it
-* Click 'submit'
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-**2. select a PDF, choose a page from that text**
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-* Click on a catalogue entry to see the book details
-* Click on 'read in browser', choose 'pdf'
-* Part of what calibre web does is create URLs for each book in the library, for instance, Raymond Queneau, Exercises in Style is now referenceable as....
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-<https://hub.xpub.nl/bootleglibrary/read/382/pdf>
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-* Scroll to a page in the browser e-reader
-* Add an anchor to the URL with #page=17 (this will load the URL at pg 17)
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-<https://hub.xpub.nl/bootleglibrary/read/382/pdf#page=17>
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-**3. annotate the page in a new etherpad document (use markdown for structure)**
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-* Make a new etherpad document* using <https://pad.xpub.nl>, name it anything you want
-* Add details for title and author following the example below. The title and author can be anything you want, but this metadata is required to make an EPUB, so make sure you enter something
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-<code>
----
-title: Annotations on Exercises In Style
-author: collaborative/Etherpad
-date: 21/05/20
----
-</code>
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-* Write your annotations, use markdown* if possible
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-Cheatsheet available here: <https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/wiki/Markdown-Cheatsheet>
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-### Quick Markdown guide
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-* You can add URLs as hyperlinked text, for example with
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- [Label text here](https://hub.xpub.nl/bootleglibrary)
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- or
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-* You can also add a URL like this
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- <https://hub.xpub.nl/bootleglibrary>
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-* Headings can be added like this:
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- # h1
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- ## h2
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- ### h3
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- and so on...
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-* Emphasis can be added with <code>*single asterisks*</code>, bold with <code>**double asterisks**</code>
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-* Add a heading, and the URL to the pdf, before exporting, for example
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-<code>
-# Annotations on *Notation*
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- [page 17](https://hub.xpub.nl/bootleglibrary/read/382/pdf#page=17)
-</code>
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-**4. export to plain text from etherpad**
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-* Click on the 'Import/Export from/to different file formats' option
-* Export current pad as: 'plain text' (the file will be saved as a .txt, and named after the pad)
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-**5. convert .txt to .EPUB**
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-* Using pandoc*, run this command in the terminal (swap out the file names)
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-<code>
-pandoc --from markdown --to epub my_etherpad.txt -o annotations.epub
-</code>
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-**6. upload to the bootleg library**
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-* Click on the book you annotated to see the book details
-* Click on 'Edit metadata'
-* Scroll down, click on 'Upload Format'
-* Upload the EPUB you made to the same catalogue entry
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-**7. paste URL of the pad you used:**
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-https://pad.xpub.nl/p/exercises_in_style_annotations
-https://pad.xpub.nl/p/entreprecariat_annotations
-https://pad.xpub.nl/p/Annotations_On_The_End_of_Policing
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-## other tools for annotation
-<https://linux.die.net/man/1/pdftk> (tool: stamp)
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-<https://beepb00p.xyz/annotating.html> (annotating the web)
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-<https://hypothes.is/><br />
-<https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mediadesign/User:Angeliki/X-LIB/Annotations><br />
-<https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mediadesign/File:Annotated_stein.jpg><br />
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-## other references
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-House of Leaves, Danielewski
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-<https://www.katjarempel.de/project/ebookdossier.html>
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-<http://www.kajsadahlberg.com/work/a-room-of-ones-own--a-thousand-libraries/>
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Networking is not a dirty word. I’m not talking about networking as schmoozing, rubbing elbows with those you wish to impress, handing out business cards like there’s no tomorrow. I mean forming networks of one’s own[1], within which the library can take shape and survive. Maintaining these networks ensures that the space for publication is available.
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We started with a reading of a text on centralised, decentralised, and distributed networks that included a diagram made by Paul Baran for the RAND corporation. This diagram displays classic ways to visualise these networks.
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As part of the Infrastuctour, when we set up our homeservers, I worked with Artemis to create a visualisation of the dependencies involved setting them up.
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I made a map of the location of homeservers and routers, including the other (non-XPUB) network users as well as situations where it was not possible for XPUB students to connect their server to their home router, and so had to depend on others. Manetta introduced me to Inca Quipu, a way that the Inca recorded numbers by tying knots in strings.
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I connected a piece of string I'd tied knots in to represent my external IP address for my home server, as a way to visualise the idea of connecting and also the route that a client follows when connecting to my website, which is in reverse from the way I would display my IP.
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I began collecting relevant texts to my research and creating html pages to store them on my website. This has been a useful way to develop my web design knowledge and skills as well as provide theoretical basis for the research I'm undertaking into network topologies.
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-Tung-Hui Hu: Truckstops on the Information Superhighway
-https://issue.xpub.nl/08/Research/b-e-e-t.r-o-o-t.net/truckstops_on_the_information_superhighway.html
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These texts introduced me to alternative models for mapping topologies such as "klein worms", referred to in both Hui (2015) and Rand's (1970) texts. Klien worms are based on the klein bottle, which falls into the category of "topologically impossible" objects (such as moebius strips etc.).
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The concept of paranode (as suggested in Constant's Feminist Server Manifesto, and further explored by Zach Blas) was intriguing, and I resolved to keep this in mind when mapping network topologies. I see the paranode as both a disruptive concept (the thing that isn't there?), also not related to physical devices (established as nodes, but instead on social and conceptual relations between people and the world). I took initial references from the SI concept of the derive as a way to rethink autonomy in public space.
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The author defines the paranodal in this way: the space between nodes; the space that is not dead, but very much alive.
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The author also uses Ranciere's terminology, saying: the paranodal is "the part of those who have no part", where we experience what it is to be outside of the network while still being related to it.
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I began recording some of my thoughts around the concept of contingent autonomy and how it relates to mapping. These refer to the map/territory problem, which sees a 1:1 map as redundant (and therefore useless) and also Hakim Bey's Temporary Autonomous Zone concept (introduced to me by Tancre), where the 1:1 map is the only possible way for someone to have autonomy.
-https://pad.xpub.nl/p/map_thoughts
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This script applies transformations to the image before running OCR, resulting in a clearer result:
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# import the necessary packages
-#from PIL
-import Image
-import pytesseract
-import argparse
-import cv2
-import os
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-# construct the argument parse and parse the arguments
-ap = argparse.ArgumentParser()
-ap.add_argument("-i", "--image", required=True,
- help="path to input image to be OCR'd")
-ap.add_argument("-p", "--preprocess", type=str, default="thresh",
- help="type of preprocessing to be done")
-args = vars(ap.parse_args())
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-# load the example image and convert it to grayscale
-image = cv2.imread(args["image"])
-gray = cv2.cvtColor(image, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
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-# check to see if we should apply thresholding to preprocess the
-# image
-if args["preprocess"] == "thresh":
- gray = cv2.threshold(gray, 0, 255,
- cv2.THRESH_BINARY | cv2.THRESH_OTSU)[1]
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-# make a check to see if median blurring should be done to remove
-# noise
-elif args["preprocess"] == "blur":
- gray = cv2.medianBlur(gray, 3)
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-# write the grayscale image to disk as a temporary file so we can
-# apply OCR to it
-filename = "{}.png".format(os.getpid())
-cv2.imwrite(filename, gray)
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-# load the image as a PIL/Pillow image, apply OCR, and then delete
-# the temporary file
-text = pytesseract.image_to_string(Image.open(filename))
-os.remove(filename)
-print(text)
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-# show the output images
-cv2.imshow("Image", image)
-cv2.imshow("Output", gray)
-cv2.waitKey(0)
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Open-source means exactly that; the source code is open for anyone to copy, modify and distribute it. The library is running on the open-source software Calibre, and is accessed through a browser using calibre-web, a web-app for ebooks stored in a Calibre database. It’s important that the library software is open-source, as this empowers us to own and modify it to suit our particular needs and interests. Technology and culture exist in a dynamic interplay, shaping and being shaped by each other.[1]
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The notion of open-source can be extended to books as well; already there is the “public domain” (works that are outside of the bounds of copyright law, and therefore fair game) and “fair use”, which allows works to be used without asking for permission from the copyright owner, for the purposes of commentary, criticism and parody. In addressing the accessibility needed for a true knowledge commons to be protected, copyright laws are flawed to begin with as they assume that knowledge is private property.
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Image: Screenshot of calibre-web interface
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↑Hobart, M.E. and Schiffman, Z.S. (1998) Information ages: literacy, numeracy, and the computer revolution. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
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1. There is a lot of redundancy on the "categories" page. Categories are defined by tags - which are written subjectively, or downloaded from existing data on the uploaded books. There should be a distinction between categorising texts, and tagging them.
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2. Tags are case-sensitive, leading to multiple entries of the same tag (e.g. Media Theory vs Media theory vs media theory)
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1. Create a series of general categories, and then tags can exist as sub-categories. Further to this, can tags also be used dynamically? E.g. being able to highlight more popular tags? Tagging people?
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1. We noticed that if an article is uploaded from JSTOR, the book automatically takes the JSTOR logo as the cover. Is this because it is watermarked on the first page of the PDF?
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1. Could watermarking be a way to make covers of future uploaded PDFs?
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1. Upload cover from local drive - currently only accepts jpegs, and the field remains empty after you choose a jpeg to upload
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2. "Submit" button vs "Upload format" button - a bit confusing because of placement, similarity of meaning between "submit" and "upload"
-3. "Get" metadata is ambiguous
-4. Not possible to create shelves while in book view, limiting the functionality. Being able to create a shelf while looking at a book would be a more immediate use of the shelves
-5. At the moment, it's not possible to see who uploaded what. This limits the sociality of the site - it might be a nice way to recommend other texts if we can see who uploaded them
-6. If you click on a shelf, you get the option to download its contents - this is currently done one-by-one.
-7. No ability to change username at present - what if people want to use a handle rather than their real name, but don't think about this when making their account?
-8. Journal articles - how do you enter a season, e.g. "Autumn, 1977"?
-9. At present, there is no ability to see the whole collection without filtering - e.g. you can only see by "recently added", "read" or "unread" etc. What if you want to see the entire collection?
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1. Allow png to be accepted, and make it clearer within the interface that the cover image has been uploaded (perhaps with a thumbnail of it?)
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2. Create a clear distinction between uploading a new format of the same text, and submitting metadata, e.g. "upload", and "add new format"
-3. Change "get" for "download"
-4. Create this functionality
-5. Implement a feature in book view that recommmends books that are related, and/or recommends the reader who uploaded the book
-6. Include an option to download everything on a shelf
-7. Create this functionality
-8. Create this functionality
-9. Implement a feature allowing user to browse everything without filtering
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a) what purpose does annotation serve (in your case)?
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Annotations in the form of accumulative traces of reader's interactions with texts underline the sociability of libraries - not just collections of knowledge but discourse around them; [How?] dispels notions of the singular, authority and property in favour of collectivity and plurality and highlights the social construction of knowledge
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b) what does it do for the reader (in your case)?
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Simon: Annotation affirms the idea that a text is part of a discourse - not in isolation from other texts/writers - and that knowledge is socially constructed. Annotation is a way for a reader to become visible to others and part of this discourse. It avoids authorship, and singular notions of knowledge production.
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c) what does it do for the annotators (in your case)?
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Simon: In my case, the annotators are the readers. Annotation exists as an action in response to the text, or to existing annotations. It can be idiosyncratic, and readable only to the annotator, therefore revealing (some) elements of how that particular person interprets the text. But, more often there are unspoken conventions to the types of annotations typically used, e.g. underlining, highlighting, circling, asterisks, dots etc. These can be defined by the technical limitations of the technology used, or linguistic (and typographic) conventions. This commonality begins to create a shared vocabulary through which readers read each other's responses to texts (here "read" can mean interpret, or access, like a file).
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YOUR PROJECT
-look at your project descriptions and use them as a basis to make a plan
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define your aim [see above]
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what needs to be done?
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make a timetable
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what needs to be developed further?
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who can help you? and how?
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consider how you can organise your upcoming methods sessions (5 & 19 June) so they can help you realise your aim.
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General question: what is the interface to your part the project. OR How do you invite people in to your project?
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02.12.19 The nomadic physical bootleg library[edit]
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The physical bootleg library is a collection of books, mostly made at PZI by myself and other students, or donated by visitors to PZI. The books are kept in a repurposed champagne crate, usually stored on a shelf in the Lens-Based studio. The only condition for borrowing books is that they are returned at some point. The dimensions of the box introduce certain constraints on the size and quantity of books contained within. The box is portable, allowing it to be placed in many locations:
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In the LB studio (its usual location)
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On top of the water fountain on Level 4
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In the kitchen on Level 4
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By the printer on Level 2
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On top of the letterboxes on Level 2
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At the desk in the Research Station where you borrow/return books
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On a bookshelf in the Research Station
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On a table in the main entrance to WdKA Wijnhaven building
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On top of some signage in the WdKA Wijnhaven building
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On a table in the De Willem cafeteria
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In an elevator in the WdKA Wijnhaven building
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The portability of the box means that it could be an interesting container & receptacle for libraries that travel - I'm quite interested in the possibility of using the box to transport and store both printed and digital books, especially in temporary library situations (on hotspotted Raspberry Pi for example) that could be used in worksessions at various locations.
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Historically, the word “text” comes from the Proto-Indo-European word teks-, meaning “to weave, to fabricate, to make; make wicker or wattle framework”. The written word is a text, and so is a conversation, both represent the exchange of shared concepts woven into the fabric of communication. There is also an exchange between written and spoken texts; discussions which influence writing, and writing which sparks conversations.
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The digital library creates texts through its catalogue, where the metadata for each entry comprises a paratext[1] that not only adds meaning to the core text, but also influences how a reader will discover it in the collection by fields such as tags and description. Metadata which is downloaded and entered automatically comes from online commercial sources has a particular promotional tone. Those who write metadata should do so subjectively; descriptions based on personal significance represent the text and the readers, equivalently.
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The library is sustained through producing texts.
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Image: Papyrus, an early writing surface made from woven reeds
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↑Genette, G. (1997) Paratexts: thresholds of interpretation. Literature, culture, theory 20. Cambridge ; New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press.
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a) what purpose does annotation serve (in your case)?
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Annotations in the form of accumulative traces of reader's interactions with texts underline the sociability of libraries - not just collections of knowledge but discourse around them; [How?] dispels notions of the singular, authority and property in favour of collectivity and plurality and highlights the social construction of knowledge
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b) what does it do for the reader (in your case)?
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Simon: Annotation affirms the idea that a text is part of a discourse - not in isolation from other texts/writers - and that knowledge is socially constructed. Annotation is a way for a reader to become visible to others and part of this discourse. It avoids authorship, and singular notions of knowledge production.
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c) what does it do for the annotators (in your case)?
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Simon: In my case, the annotators are the readers. Annotation exists as an action in response to the text, or to existing annotations. It can be idiosyncratic, and readable only to the annotator, therefore revealing (some) elements of how that particular person interprets the text. But, more often there are unspoken conventions to the types of annotations typically used, e.g. underlining, highlighting, circling, asterisks, dots etc. These can be defined by the technical limitations of the technology used, or linguistic (and typographic) conventions. This commonality begins to create a shared vocabulary through which readers read each other's responses to texts (here "read" can mean interpret, or access, like a file).
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YOUR PROJECT
-look at your project descriptions and use them as a basis to make a plan
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define your aim [see above]
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what needs to be done?
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make a timetable
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what needs to be developed further?
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who can help you? and how?
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consider how you can organise your upcoming methods sessions (5 & 19 June) so they can help you realise your aim.
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General question: what is the interface to your part the project. OR How do you invite people in to your project?
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In order to give an appraisal of the necessity for professionalism within librarianship, first the concept of “professional” must be unpacked. Professional in what sense? The most generic definition of being able to profess a skill is the first that comes to mind. This seems hardly a thing to argue against, as the particular skills of professional librarians are certainly called for in most cases. If we take another generic assumption that the profession of a librarian revolves around the mores of making information accessible, then this invites questions about associations between moral behaviour and professionalism. All this aside, what I can say is that professional librarians are not seriously threatened by the amateur librarians, operating from a distance. The threat comes from much closer for them; budget cuts that cripple and close their libraries, policies driven by the encyclopedic expectation that digital volumes of data inspire.[1]
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Image: A makeshift library checkout card, usually placed in a pocket in the back of a book
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↑Murray, J.H. (1998) Hamlet on the holodeck: the future of narrative in cyberspace. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
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Session at the Rietveld Library, with Eva Weinmayr, An Mertens, Martino Morandi, Anita Burato, Lieven Lahaye, & XPUB1.
-Central to the session was a presentation on the Rietveld's cataloguing system, which employs open-source software and also a semi-permanent library.
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The Rietveld Library uses Evergreen open-source software to catalogue its books. They have developed it with the aim of making the infrastructure of the library cataloguing system more visible. This in line with workshops with students to address the fact that students use both analog and digital books, as well as many files, docs etc that are usually disorganised.
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The EPUB format offers a lot of potential in its structure - composed of HTML files, and stored in folders according to chapter - offers a lot of potential in its structure to "bring books together" or to make "a book of a book". Based on Ivan Illich's Tools for Conviviality, Rietveld librarians have republished books by scanning, OCR processing and converting to EPUB.
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splotr (semi-permanent library of the rietveld[edit]
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splotr (Calibre server running on a Raspberry Pi) is a small repository that is connected to the main catalogue of the library. This allows students to gather digital files in a device that is accessible over a local network, and associate them with files and books in the more stable, "permanent" catalogue.
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Content: What is in the library?
-How much? PDFs - a lot! (hard to see how many, but 26,000+ and counting...) theory and critical theory
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Users: Who is using / uploading / downloading?
-Used by researchers, academics, students, people interested in theory who can become members by invitation. Members of the site can upload and download, and request new titles through a messageboard.
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Catalog: What is the system? How is it organised? How about its ontology?
-Indexed, by "catalog" (listing by author name), "collection" (listing by topic), and also by "requests" (listing by new requests, most requested, unrequested, and everything - also with RSS feed)
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Infrastructure: What are technical specs? Software? Hardware?<
-Probably runs on self-hosted server - you access it through a browser
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Politics: What is the attitude?
-Kind of like a private club - invite only
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Economy: Sponsors? Donation? Advertising?<
-No advertising on site - no information about sponsors or donations on site either...
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Content : What is in the library? How much?
-(PDF, VIDEO, AUDIO...) art, media, theater... in the contest of avant-gard in 2011 over 7,500 artists and over 2500 full-length avant-garde films and videos
-Users: Who is using / uploading / downloading? editors + volunteers + users + artists
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Catalog: What is the system? How is it organised? How about its ontology?
-each section has an editor who brings to the site their area of expertise / structured as a research project, index with descriptions
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Infrastructure: What are technical specs? Software? Hardware?
-servers donated by several universities as a means of study
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Politics: What is the attitude?
-library which is ever-expanding in uncanny—and often uncategorizable—directions / no logo,advertise,donation / anti-institutional / Act as a museum
-alternative by invoking a gift economy of plentitude with a strong emphasis on global education
-Economy: Sponsors? Donation? Advertising? volunteering / no advertising / free download / autonomous no sponsors
-Law: How does it interface? no financial interest but educational approach. VS copyright
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Content: What is in the library? How much?
-Project Gutenberg started in 1971. Texts in the library are those that have entered the public domain after exceeding the statute of limitations (in 1971 it was 14 years after death of the author, then 28, now 50 years). The website offers 58,000+ free "eBooks" (ePUB, Kindle, HTML and plain text formats). The collection is described as being comprised of three core types of text, "light literature" (e.g. Alice In Wonderland), "heavy literature" (e.g. Shakespeare), and "references" (e.g. encyclopedias)
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Users: Who is using / uploading / downloading?
-Anyone can download without registering an account. Only the site admin can upload.
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Catalog: What is the system? How is it organised? How about its ontology?
-Indexed alphabetically by author, title, language, "special categories" and recent uploads. Also includes a search function based on U.S. Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), and Yahoo and Google search (using metadata)
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Infrastructure: What are technical specs? Software? Hardware?
-Runs off a wiki. Hosted by ibiblio.org ("one of the largest free information databases online"). Accessed through the browser.
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Politics: What is the attitude? Based on democratic principle of shared knowledge.
-Operates (mostly) within the law. Heavily affiliated, with sister organisations in many countries, as well as partnerships with many other libraries and organisations that provide software to help read eBooks.
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Economy: Sponsors? Donation? Advertising?
-Project Gutenberg began with a serendipitous grant to Michael Hart (founder of Project Gutenberg) of an operator's account with $100,000,000 of computer time in it in 1971. Now, donations are accepted, run by volunteers (also makes calls for volunteer help - "digitizing, proofreading and formatting, recording audio books, or reporting errors").
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Law: How does it interface?
-(mostly) Legally, as most texts are within the public domain.
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-A) DESCRIPTION: an abstract of what each shadow library is [Steve suggests: make this 300 words or so]
-B) QUESTIONS: what type of questions does it raise? (e.g. what type of assumptions are implicit in its ontology?)
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PROJECT GUTENBERG
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Abstract — Project Gutenberg, initiated in 1971 by Michael Hart, is the world's oldest digital library of "eBooks", that is, books that are available electronically as PDFs, HTML, ePUB and plain text format. The collection has more recently expanded to include audio books, and texts in a variety of languages other than English. On the wiki-based website www.gutenberg.org, more than 58,000 eBooks are indexed by author, title, language and "recently posted". The search function allows users to look for titles by US Library of Congress search terms, as well as by going through Google and Yahoo metadata. The majority of these books are within the public domain and therefore free from copyright restrictions, although undoubtedly there are some that are orphaned by subsequent changes to US copyright terms (which in most cases of published texts, is now 70 years after the death of the author). Due to this, as well as differences in copyright law internationally, the complete legal legitimacy of its collection is in question, despite careful attempts to comply with US copyright law. It is important to note that Project Gutenberg is a project, rather than a single library, with sister affiliations in many countries (Project Gutenberg Australia, Project Gutenberg Europe among many others). This, alongside its non-profit stance (Project Gutenberg accepts donations, and also calls for volunteer help with proofreading and digitization of books, as well as recording audio books) lends moral legitimacy to its online distribution of texts.
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Questions —
-Looks like a classic collection; the interface is classic; based on a wiki; speaks of legitimacy
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Who is responsible and what are they responsible for?This is all the stuff that's in the public domain...
-What could be the motivation to make such a library?
-What values does it communicate? Good. Air of legitimacy; “library of congress search terms” and google to collect information. On this way they seek legitimacy from the on-line and off-line agents.
-What do they mean 'a project'? (is this an agent of legitimacy?) Involves many people; projects into the future; mutable (not set in stone)
-What is it filtered out and what are the political implications of that?
-How does the codex form limit what is available?
-Who does the library serve? user friendly interface; Also limitations of content, classic collection
-Who is responsible and what are they responsible for?
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AAAAARG.FAIL
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Abstract — Out of the necessity for a library, for artist Sean Dockray's LA-based educational institution called "The Public School", aaaaarg.fail (formerly aaarg.org, then aaaarg.org) is a website that hosts a collection of mostly theory and critical theory texts, and an online forum for members. Access to the collection comes from registering an account (you must be invited by a member first). Members can upload and download texts, as well as request titles via the forum. The changes in the domain name for the library come from repeated copyright infringement allegations from publishers of works that have been made accessible on the site, including the Australian publisher Macmillan. The publisher hired Mark Taylor, a former music industry executive, who was instrumental in bringing forth a cease and desist order against aaarg.org. Dockray later called this "another case where university students are conceived of as consumers, as carriers of debt for everything from degrees to consumer electronics to intellectual property" (http://unprojects.org.au/magazine/issues/issue-4-2/the-future-and-the-public-school/ ).
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Questions —
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Who does the library serve? (who are the customers?) Intellectual snobs. You have to be invited
-Forum? What affordance does that give?Sociability? There is a set of manners
-The forum produces a text (a form of collective annotation); a discussion on the texts in the library. Because you can make requests it is much more personal. You can also select by "most requested", which means that a hierarchy of information is produced within the forum.(by the discussion of the members)
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How is it different if you can participate in discussing the content of a library, than just be a viewer-receiver of the content?
-Who is responsible and what are they responsible for?
-How is it different to be an exclusive member in order to have access to the content of a library, compared to have no restrictions in accessing it?
-How does the collection (and discourse around it) represent the members of the library?
-If the library is based on user requests, it's a mirror of the members interests/social status/credentials/ideologies/clout
-Does this platform require a certain degree of library literacy and research skills?
-Does the background of the librarians affect the content presented in a library?
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UBUWEB.COM
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Abstract — UbuWeb.com is a large web-based, free, non-commercial resource for avant-garde poetry, music, film, literature and more, founded in 1996 by poet Kenneth Goldsmith. It offers visual, concrete and sound poetry, expanding to include film and sound art mp3 archives. The site's architecture limits retrieval to keyword searching and browsing by media type and artist/project name. In addition, sustainability is a concern for this website as it was never intended to be a permanent archive. Still, there is no comparable commercial source for the content on UbuWeb so it is valuable as a resource for libraries to point users toward so long as librarians are aware of its limitations. It is a library which is ever-expanding in uncanny—and often uncategorizable—directions. Each section has an editor who brings to the site their area of expertise. UbuWeb is not n to any academic institution, instead relying on alliances of interest and benefiting from bandwidth donations from its partnerships with GreyLodge, WFMU, PennSound, The Electronic Poetry Center, The Center for Literary Computing, and ArtMob. UbuWeb was founded in response to the marginal distribution of crucial avant-garde material. It remains non-commercial and operates on a gift economy. UbuWeb ensures educational open access to out-of-print works that find a second life through digital art reprint while also representing the work of contemporaries. It addresses problems in the distribution of and access to intellectual materials.
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Questions —
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Who does the library serve?
-What could be the motivation to make such a library?
-What values does it communicate?
-How can the material available in a library shape the discourse around a particular field?
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Information, in the form of descriptions that abstract themselves from the flux of common experience, is owned by private individuals or companies. Information is property, under the law. But laws should reflect the interests of the public. The “public interest” for individuals to profit from their (and other’s) labour competes against another more public, public interest, one which sees information as common property, or one that rejects any notion of information having proprietary substance. The word “information” is related to both the Latin verb informare meaning “‘to shape’, ‘to form an idea of’, or ‘to describe’, and its cognates from the substantive “forma”, which was used meaning ‘character’, ‘form’, ‘nature’, ‘kind’, and ‘manner’”[1].
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Description seems to be the primary function of this word “information”, giving shape to experience; the very stuff of language and communication. Information has a social interest. It follows then that the most beneficial use of information would be one that serves the social good. The collective, social act of sharing information should not be trumped by individual financial interests. Never trust a corporation to do a librarian’s job.
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Image: Headquarters of The Internet Archive, San Francisco, USA
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↑Hobart, M.E. and Schiffman, Z.S. (1998) Information ages: literacy, numeracy, and the computer revolution. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
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Headquarters of The Internet Archive, San Francisco, USA
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Koninglijke Bibliotheek (Royal Library), The Hague[edit]
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On a Monday morning I took a train to the Hague, where the Koninglijke Bibliotheek, Nationale bibliotheek van Nederland, is located. I was spurred on to visit after looking for a book that Steve recommended, which apparently was available in the collection of the Royal Library when I looked through Worldcat.
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On arrival at the Royal Library, I went straight to the reception. I asked "Is this the Royal Library?" and the receptionist replied "It's up there", pointing upstairs, "But you need a pass to enter".
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"Ok, can I get a pass there?"
-"Yes, but you have to put your coat and bag downstairs in a locker".
-"Ok, thanks".
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It wasn't a very warm reception. After locking my things away, I went upstairs to the front desk of the library, where I met a more helpful staff member, who patiently explained to me that I needed to register online at a computer "over there", and that I also needed a form of ID (no problem), and something with my address on it (small problem as I didn't have anything). Most of the collection is held in stacks and must be reserved to be read. There were a lot of rules to be observed, including a reading room in which computers were not allowed (the click-clacking of typing was an issue), and although the staff member could reserve the books I needed, I couldn't take them home until my address had been verified.
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He explained:
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"If you reserve before 8:30 they'll be there at 10:00, if you reserve before 10:30 they'll be there at 1:00. And if you reserve before 1:30, they'll be there at 3:00."
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Cool. I registered online, then paid an annual membership fee (usually 15 euros, but as I am a student it was 7.50). It seemed quite strange that a national library charged for membership, and I was curious as to why.
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I left, and returned the next day to collect the two books I had reserved. At the front desk was a different staff member, who carefully explained where I needed to go to pick up my books. When I got to the collection desk, a rather flustered librarian told me that the system was down. She had my books on a shelf, but had to check to see if I could take them home or not (most of the collection can not be taken outside of the library). Thankfully she improvised an old-fashioned solution by writing down my membership details and the call number of each book. It turned out that I could take the books home. I left as fast as I could, keen to get back to school where I could scan the books and liberate them from the Royal Library.
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Main question: How can annotation be useful to us, and a third party?
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Possible ways
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Keep text and annotations together
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scan and overlay transparencies (more like a graphical representation but perhaps not very readable)
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write, re-write, cut and paste the annotations in a bigger paper all together
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use the annotation bot (a digital tool)(it would be cool if you could underline, etc - yes! including graphic elements)
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if digital, create the possibility to turn on and off the annotations to keep the original text
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bind the pages into books and make a bootleg library with them
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Separate text and annotations (deconstruction / structure analysis)
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only underlined text (in many ways: lines, circles, waves...)
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list of questions, tags, notes + composition and mapping of them (different mapping techniques)
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historical timeline
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only drawings?
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free graphical interpretation
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Computer driven annotation
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scrape the text (words processing)
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pattern recognition
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delete all articles and implicit elements
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Combine the above possibilities
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overlay of analog annotations to represent "heat patterns" (parts of the text with lots of/little engagement), as well as a digital version that is more legible
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HOW DO I KNOW WHAT I AM READING? We are discussing form how do we talk about content?
-How do you make the content readable for others?
-How do you communicate what you're interpreting?
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a) what purpose does annotation serve (in your case)?
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Annotations in the form of accumulative traces of reader's interactions with texts underline the sociability of libraries - not just collections of knowledge but discourse around them; [How?] dispels notions of the singular, authority and property in favour of collectivity and plurality and highlights the social construction of knowledge
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b) what does it do for the reader (in your case)?
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Simon: Annotation affirms the idea that a text is part of a discourse - not in isolation from other texts/writers - and that knowledge is socially constructed. Annotation is a way for a reader to become visible to others and part of this discourse. It avoids authorship, and singular notions of knowledge production.
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c) what does it do for the annotators (in your case)?
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Simon: In my case, the annotators are the readers. Annotation exists as an action in response to the text, or to existing annotations. It can be idiosyncratic, and readable only to the annotator, therefore revealing (some) elements of how that particular person interprets the text. But, more often there are unspoken conventions to the types of annotations typically used, e.g. underlining, highlighting, circling, asterisks, dots etc. These can be defined by the technical limitations of the technology used, or linguistic (and typographic) conventions. This commonality begins to create a shared vocabulary through which readers read each other's responses to texts (here "read" can mean interpret, or access, like a file).
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YOUR PROJECT
-look at your project descriptions and use them as a basis to make a plan
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define your aim [see above]
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what needs to be done?
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make a timetable
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what needs to be developed further?
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who can help you? and how?
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consider how you can organise your upcoming methods sessions (5 & 19 June) so they can help you realise your aim.
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General question: what is the interface to your part the project. OR How do you invite people in to your project?
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- identifying and naming (typo)graphical annotation methods, transcribe them to various media (digital and analog), translating/transcribing each other's systems
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- what happens when an action (e.g. writing, drawing) becomes a thing (e.g. a signature, a direction), or when a thing (e.g. a word/annotation) becomes an action (e.g. a performance)?
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- can accumulated traces of readership allow users of pirate libraries to be visible but maintain anonymity, therefore consolidating the argument for legitimacy?
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-Practical ideas for workshop(s):
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analog (printed) texts:
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transcribing:
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- identify and examine various systems of notation (music manuscripts, stage directions from a play/film, choreographic score for dance)
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- transcribe these between different media (e.g. stage directions for a PDF, choreographic score for a printout of an essay)
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-translating:
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- identify various analog methods of annotating texts (using pens etc.), and name them
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- use one (or more) systems to annotate a text
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-performing:
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- collective performance of texts with annotations - how do readers read/perform these annotations?
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-digital texts:
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digitising:
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- choose an annotated page from a book (if at Leeszaal), scan it and use Tesseract to OCR the page
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- explore the output html of the page, and see what happens to the annotations
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-retaining:
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- using provided, annotated PDFs (e.g. Borges - Garden of Forking Paths, Le Guin - Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction) - see how annotations can be retained, accumulated
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to establish lexicon(s) of graphic annotation, ways to identify and define these, and to translate them (e.g. from analogue to digital, from writer to reader)
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new knowledge?
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(possibly) using tools (such as OCR) to establish interpretations of graphic annotations, ways to retain these traces (or translations of them) when texts are digitised, (i'd reallly like to develop some tools for this), new/different semantic understandings of annotations shared by participants
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role of annotation?
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to discover what is common or diverse in our experience of reading (and annotating) texts, and also to examine the sociability around these texts - annotation as a way of comprehending not just texts but also those who read them
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Meet each other: have a quick round of saying something about ourselves and what do we know about pirate/shadow libraries. Short description of the steps of the workshop and let people know we'll be recording.
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Overview of what happens in this workshop in one sentence:
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1st part: Reading/Annotating, heatmap
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2nd part: Discussion, Rehearsal of Performative reading and recording of performance.
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-Topic: pirate libraries - topic of special Issue 9
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Text: "In solidarity with Library Genesis & Sci-Hub" letter
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Aim: 2-3 sentences of what is the aim of this workshop. Why this collective reading-conversations matter?
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- We see "annotations" as a way to express our understandings/questions/comments/disagreements/ tensions/positions about what we read. So we can discuss about it and form a collective understanding of the text. Our aims are to:
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- open up a conversation about pirate libraries, through a deeper collective understanding of a specific text that refers to this topic (enrichment comes through collectively reading and annotating the text)
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- develop ways in which texts can become conversations through annotating together
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- make public what we have learned about pirate libraries and annotation, and to reflect on the public's response(s)
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Materials: "In Support of Library Genesis & Sci-Hub" English language letter (on A3 spread), A3 tracing paper, ballpoint pens (annotation pack)
-Participants: Individual
-Archiving step: collect tracing paper, carbon paper
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- We provide the solidarity letter in an A3 pack
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- Read the text individually
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- Annotate the text (It will be traced through carbon paper to the tracing paper underneath.)
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STEP 2: Heatmap and discussion through the annotations (20min)[edit]
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Materials: Same as Step 1
-Participants: Whole group
-Archiving step: Photographs of annotated texts and discussion
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- Create a "heatmap" of the text by placing tracing papers with annotations on top of each other, showing which areas are interesting/remarkable to others.
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- We can focus in the most "annotated", thus "active", "interesting", "relevant" parts of the text. At the end of the heatmap stage we introduce the discussion by identifying common areas of annotation, and also listing things that need further definition. Why did you annotate this part? What is the "global north"? etc.
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- Comment generally on the text, what was interesting? Did you make sense? Are there specific parts you want to discuss?
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- Conclusions? Comments? Discuss the most commented.
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- Discuss this experience and anything we want to discuss about pirate libraries, this text, our experiences.
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- Collectively determine strategies to "amplify" specific parts of the texts that either
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Participants: All together (if more than 10, divide into two groups???)
-Materials: Annotated "In Support of Library Genesis & Sci-Hub" letter, audio recording device (ZOOM rented from WdKA shop/smartphone), (maybe speakers?)
-Archiving step: Voice recording
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- Introduce by saying: "We are going to read aloud the text in turns, while also performing our annotations. Try to perform your comment to make your position/understanding of the text clear. If you have an annotation, please do or say something (e.g. interrupt, raise your hand, make a noise, use an accent, use intonation to convey emotion etc)."
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The text becomes a "play", a performance, a discussion between us
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- The purpose is to activate a text, by transforming it into a conversation through spoken annotation
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- This reading will be recorded (ask if this is ok)
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- Decide on an "interesting" way of performing and record that. It could be more than one language in this audio piece.
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- Play the collective recording from speakers placed in shelves at Leeszaal (Bluetooth)
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Later:
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- Printed version with the overlapping of individual comments - heatmap - pocket version???
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- Printed URL on annotated tracing paper to direct readers to the online versions of the texts?
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- Bookmark or some object (it can be the pocket version) to introduce it in some books in Leeszaal, understanding that as a way to spread the letter (like sowing seeds)
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- possibility of providing the solidarity letter in different languages? http://custodians.online/
-- providing two texts with different positions can be polarising rather than producing conversation
-- demonstration of the "performative reading" can illustrate different positions e.g. position of the authors, the publishers (thinking about loss of profits), how can the annotations reflect this
-- how do you annotate for dissent (e.g. using different colours etc) - heatmap stage doesn't really show position (perspective), what ways of annotating could draw out these perspectives?
-- find ways to make the texts into a conversation - "how do you generate conversation through annotation?"
-- we'll run the same task twice - how can this become a conversation between the two groups?
-- don’t obsess over producing a fixed/predetermined output in the session (if it means risking losing time for discussion & feedback)
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- Work on the production of the folder/pack (carbon paper/tracing paper) that we give to participants
-- Work on the collection of references to introduce the annotation topic and produce it (if it's finally a physical object)
-- Tools that we need: Scanner, voice recording , speakers
-- How to develop the heatmap as an output for the collective annotations (can we automatize the process??)
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In the spring and summer of 2019 we developed The Library Is Open, a publication which focuses on the operations, actions, and roles of legal and extra-legal libraries. Central to this project is the community that forms around a collection of texts – the custodians of the collection and the readers.
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The Library Is Open is the result of the third iteration of Interfacing the Law, an ongoing research project between XPUB and Constant (BE), which explores issues around extra-legal libraries, software and legal interfaces and intellectual property. Led by our guest editor Femke Snelting, we participated in many activities which were organised by invited guests:
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With Bodó Balázs, an economist and researcher on shadow libraries, we analysed the gargantuan dataset of Library Genesis, to determine trends which indicate access to texts and the social, geo-political and economic aspects at play .
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With Anita Burato and Martino Morandi at the Rietveld Library in Amsterdam, we discovered the subjectivity of subjects and thorny issues of classification and representation .
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With other readers, we deepened our understandings of texts through collective annotations.
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With artist and researcher Eva Weinmayr, who introduced us to The Piracy Project, we examined the possible motivations and differences between pirated books and their "source".
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With open-source software such as Tesseract, pdftk, and LibreOffice (and many others) we explored the technical processes used during the creation of pirate libraries, and the hidden labour involved in this.
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With fellow pirates, we considered the multiplicity of roles and activities involved in maintaining various libraries, such as Monoskop, Libgen, Aaaaaarg, Sci-Hub, Memory of the World, Project Gutenberg, +++.
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With Dušan Barok, the administrator of Monoskop and an alumnus of the Piet Zwart Institute, we discovered how Monoskop was initiated and how it has changed over time.
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-The variety of our collective sessions, and the practical exercises we performed led us to organise an afternoon of three workshops that directly address the active role of piracy, rather than simply talking about it. Encouraging small, informal, collective actions, we wanted to challenge the ordinary, hierarchical presentation of research projects in the academic context, and individual notions of authorship.
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When choosing a suitable venue for our event, we decided to ask Leeszaal (in Dutch "Reading Hall") to host our workshops. Situated in a busy, multicultural area of Rotterdam, Leeszaal exemplifies many values we sympathise with, particularly open access to knowledge, and a focus on the community that uses the space, not just for reading but for many other social purposes. These values we recognise (somewhat nostalgically) as reminiscent of public libraries of yesteryear. However, the landscape today is quite different, with huge online commercial repositories of texts (e.g. JSTOR), protected by paywalls which limit access to them, and in response the emergence of "shadow libraries".
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-In the following pages we invite you to wander through the dilemmas, outcomes and reflections that came out of our three different workshops, and interviews with people whose work is at the centre of the issues that each workshop uncovers.
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-Knowledge In Action explores the roles and activities within libraries, such as selection and inclusion of books. Interview with: Dubravka Sekulić & Leeszaal staff.
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Blurry Boundaries reveals the hidden processes and labour between the publishing and distribution of physical and digital books. Interview with: Dušan Barok.
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Marginal Conversations highlights the sociality of texts, and how they can become conversations through collective reading, annotation and performance. Interview with: Marcell Mars & Tomislav Medak.
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Although literacy is the ability to read and write, an illiterate person is often described as not being able to read, rather than write. This is because the receptive skill of reading precedes the productive skill of writing. We write in response to the information we receive. Reading requires a command of the language the text is produced in, as well as a capacity to store this information in a durable medium; a book, a file, a tape, and so on.
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Media theorist Friedrich Kittler said that, historically, reading functioned as “hallucinating a meaning between the lines”[1]. This hallucination was exemplified by poetry, whereby the poet intended to induce in the reader into a state of shock with words. Kittler argued that the harnessing of electricity was the end of such hallucinations; as soon as optical and acoustic data could be electronically stored, we no longer needed our memory, and the realm of the dead was no longer in written words. The gramophone, typewriter and film produced new ways of writing and reading texts.
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Image: Reading-and-writing-at-the-same-time, diagrammed in The Principles of Psychology, William James (1890)
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↑Kittler, F.A. (2012) Literature, media, information systems: essays. Critical voices in art, theory and culture. Johnston, J. (ed.). London New York: Routledge.
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Reading and writing are interdependent; a written text exists to be read, and is based on a history of reading comprehension and processing, from the early stages of literacy (developing ability to recognise separate characters), to reading complex texts that become references for things we write. In an operational sense, we also read what we write, as we’re writing it. So, the process of writing is combined with reading, and both gestures can be found in another word that blends the two acts together: editing.Writing, reading, editing; growing a tree while making a chair from its wood to sit on.
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Image: Simon Browne, timed writing/editing experiment using Etherpad, collaborative text-editing software, 2018. The bars at the top indicate separate durations of 5-minute writing, and 3-minute editing periods
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Timed writing/editing experiment using Etherpad, collaborative text-editing software, 2018
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Slide 1: read, write, execute
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Slide 2: legible vs readable
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Slide 3: People read best what they read most
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Slide 4: An annotated book
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Slide 5: From the Books
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Slide 6: DDC 000-099; Generalities
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Slide 7: State Library of Victoria, Redmond Barry Reading Room
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Slide 8: Traces of use
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Slide 9: The Library is Open
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Slide 10: Marginal Conversations workshop
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Slide 11: Annotation pack
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Slide 12: Performing annotations
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Slide 13: Script from Marginal Conversations
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Slide 14: Talking Clock (2015)
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Slide 15: The Remington Standard Type-Writer
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Slide 16: QWERTY layout
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Slide 17: T Y P E W R I T E R
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Slide 18: Douglas Englebart's "Mother of all demos"
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Slide 19: Englebart's keyboard with mouse
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Slide 20: Etherpad instance
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Slide 21: Etherpad experiments
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Slide 22: editorial, technical, social dimensions of text
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Slide 1: read, write, execute
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In computing, read, write, and execute are permissions that can be given to files by an administrator to user accounts, which specify how data can be used:
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read permissions allow you to read a file
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write permissions allow you to change it, but not to run it
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execute permissions allow you to run a file
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You are most likely familiar with the "read-only" permission.
-For example, a document with read-only permissions given to a user means that user can only read the document, and can't edit it.
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I have chosen this title because for this presentation I want to focus on how the contingencies offered by interfaces for reading and writing produce a certain kind of reading or writing, and also a certain kind of reader or writer.
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My main interest in this presentation is to describe through several examples, the political dynamics and particular affordances of different interfaces and sites for publication, and the subsequent techno-sociologial effects these have through the way they visualise reading, writing and making things public.
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Interfaces for reading and writing are almost always visually-oriented, and their technical conditions determine how textual information is organised and processed.
-This promotes and encourages certain ways of writing and reading.
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I will present examples from my own practice as an artist and graphic designer, and also some historical examples from computer science and engineering.
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Beginning with the field of type design and typography, I want to talk about ideas of legibility and readability, which often precede notions of how written language should be visualised in graphic form.
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Slide 2: legible vs readable
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Put simply:
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legible = clear enough to read
-readable = being easy or enjoyable to read
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Often someone will use illegibility as an excuse to argue against the use of a particular font or typeface. Physical limitations are certainly a factor in deciding how type should be shaped, down to the micro-level that scrutiny of readability brings, where enjoyment is hampered by exhausted eyes. A file can also be made readable by changing permissions. Allowing a file to be read has many other implications apart from the obvious visibility of content.
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Slide 3: People read best what they read most
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There's a famous dictum in typographic history that states "People read best what they read most"
-This means that what is deemed "readable" is only so because of the prevalence of a particular font. And so, preference for certain fonts may derive from how commonplace they are within the reading environments we encounter them.
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This statement was a call to arms for multiplicity of form in type design, to challenge this tendency for form to become flattened and homogenous in the name of "readability", but it also maintains that the way information is presented becomes monolithic, having its own, enclosed logic that is exclusionary to other systems or ways of doing.
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The eye adjusts to expect certain things it has seen before, and this idea of "easy to read" is trainable, to a certain extent. We might think that a certain font is "neutral", this is because it has become invisible to us, and it is invisible to us because it is everywhere. It therefore doesn't stand out in a way that other typefaces do.
-So the main point I will try to make in this presentation is that the particular interfaces we commonly use for reading and writing train us to read and write in certain ways, ways which we will become efficient within.
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When we shift to a different writing or reading interface, there is an adjustment, a period of discomfort as we adapt.
-We approach new interfaces through the lens of the one that preceded it, always likening it to what we are familiar with.
-The new interface presents new limitations, and also offer new, unexpected possibilities for how we imagine ourselves as participatory subjects, engaging with the text.
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The discourse around reading and writing interfaces is vast, and I do not expect to be able to cover it comprehensively in this presentation.
-I can only hope to present a small overview on these interfaces, and how they visualise language, and in turn, how they create a new subjectivity in the reader or writer.
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Slide 4: An annotated book
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First, let's look at the book as a reading interface. What we call a "book" is most often a stack of pages that are fixed at one edge to form a spine.
-Reading a book is a haptic experience; the sense of touch is in many ways just as important as the sense of vision.
-Alongside this strong tactile interaction is also the inclination for a reader to engage with the text by writing directly onto the page.
-The interface of a printed book invites writing, in fact the very first books were written by hand.
-It is not uncommon to come across another reader's notes, annotations scribbled in the margins of a book.
-Annotation is primarily a strategy of reading comprehension, and there are many activities that fall under the umbrella of "annotation", including highlighting, underlining, glossing (which is writing explicatory texts that define unfamiliar phrases or words), as well as how pages are manipulated to mark text, for example, making a bookmark by folding the corner of a page in what is often called in English a "dog-ear".
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Despite these annotations are made at different times, by different people unbeknownst to each other, their methods are often consistent with each other. Their annotations also often serve the same purpose, as a reformatting of the text that is read. So the function is sometimes editorial; highlighting or underlining is a way of drawing attention to part of the text that is relevant to the person who is reading it, giving them a way to return to it when scanning through at a later time.
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Annotation also has a social function; inscribe the presence of reader within a book. The book then becomes a vehicle for a social paratext, one that lives alongside the source text, one that can be commented on by others. Sometimes these paratexts separate from the source and become texts of their own. Glossaries come from the practices established by medieval glossators, who wrote explanations of Roman law between the lines of manuscripts. The first dictionaries served a similar purpose.
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Books held in public collections have travelled different paths through the hands of different readers. They acquire provenance and their own particular history through how they are used. A book printed, bound and distributed in an edition of many books, a multiple with the ambition to present its text as singular, becomes diversified through its use
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From the Books is a research project conducted together with graphic designer Masaki Miwa. Together, we collected scans of any traces of use we found in a section of books from a public library in Melbourne, Australia. We then categorised them and made a catalogue which we self-published.
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Slide 6: DDC 000-099; Generalities
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These books come from a section of a specific reading room in a specific library; the 000-099 section of the Redmond Barry Reading Room, at the State Library of Victoria. In Dewey Decimal Classification, 000-099 is titled "generalities", including books about bibliographic practices as well computer and information science, and also manuscripts and rare books; kind of a meta section on the library and how it organises information.
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Slide 7: State Library of Victoria, Redmond Barry Reading Room
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The SLV is a very social place; visitors use the free wifi for study, and international students often use it to call their families overseas. Others do language lessons there and gather in social groups to share skills.
-It's not a sacred or quiet like a church, more like a train station in terms of its noise and activity. The SLV forecourt is a customary meeting place, people eat lunch there on the grass, on Sundays it is a speaker's corner, protestors gather there for demonstrations.
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It illustrates well that public libraries do more than just make knowledge accessible, they also produce sociality. This sociality is reflected by the tendency for businesses to open in the periphery and capitalise on this foot traffic, or those that adopt library-like structures and practices (for example, cafes that offer free wifi or cosy nooks to read)
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Here in Rotterdam this is also present - Starbucks has opened a store at the Bibliotheek Rotterdam, there is a cafe above Rotterdam Centraal Station that houses part of the same collection. There's even a cafe called "The Library" at Mathenesserplein
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Slide 8: Traces of use
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Here are some examples of traces of use we found in the section of books we explored. We categorised them semantically under the following headings:
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ACCIDENTAL DOG-EAR
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ANNOTATION
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ASTERISK
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BOOK PRICE
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BOOKMARK
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CIRCLED TEXT
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CREASED PAGE
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CROSS
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DEAD ANT
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DOG-EAR
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ERASER RUBBING
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ERRATA
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FINGERPRINT
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FOLD
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HANDWRITTEN LETTER
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INK BLOT
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LIBRARY DOCUMENT
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LIFTED PRINT
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LINE
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LOOSE PAGE
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NOTEPAPER BOOKMARK
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NOTES
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PAGES REMOVED
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POST-IT NOTE
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RECEIPT BOOKMARK
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REPLACED IMAGE
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SCUFF
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SMUDGE
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SQUIGGLE
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STAIN
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STRIKETHROUGH
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TICK
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TORN PAGE
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TORN PAPER BOOKMARK
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UNDERLINING
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WARPED PAGE
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WEAR AND TEAR
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The traces were largely mundane, but revealed a consensus of mark-making and annotation. We also found readers intentionally using the book as a vehicle to pass messages to other readers, such as a handwritten note someone had deliberately placed in a book.
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This interest in annotation as a visualisation of reader's interaction with texts was developed further with a thematic project called "The Library is Open", conducted by Experimental Publishing in 2019. The Library Is Open was an afternoon of workshops in which we made visible the operations of libraries, including municipal, academic, and importantly, so-called "Shadow" libraries, which are ones that operate outside of legality, illegally distributing pirated copies of books.
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Slide 9: The Library is Open
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As part of "The Library is Open", I conducted a workshop called "Marginal Conversations" with two classmates, Artemis Gryllaki and Paloma Garcia.
-We held our workshop at a volunteer-run space in the inner west of Rotterdam, called "Leeszaal Rotterdam West".
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Leezaal is a kind of 'reading room', a library that does not catalogue its books, nor record when they are borrowed. Anyone may pick up a book and walk out the door.
-The initiative began in 2013 when small local libraries in Rotterdam began to close, and the initators asked their local community two questions; 1) Do we need a library?, and 2) How can you contribute?
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Leeszaal offers a safe space for members of the local community to gather, to learn languages and share skills, to read newspapers, learn how to use computers, use the internet, watch YouTube or just hang out. It's not a traditional library in any sense, but is sympathetic to many of the social democratic values of open access to knowlegde that public libraries embody.
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Slide 10: Marginal Conversations workshop
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Marginal Conversations focused on reading and annotating together, and performing our annotations. We read and annotated an open letter called "In Solidarity with Library Genesis and Sci-Hub".
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This letter asks for pirate library practices to come out of the shadows, a bold move and demand for legitimacy and visibility
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Slide 11: Annotation pack
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We made an annotation kit that contained the letter, a layer of carbon paper, and a sheet of translucent tracing paper. After reading and annotating the letter, we could compare our annotations by overlaying the tracing paper to create "heat maps" that established common areas of interest.
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Slide 12: Performing annotations
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Then we rehearsed and performed our annotations, taking turns to read the letter while others reacted with their annotations.
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Slide 13: Script from Marginal Conversations
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We made a recording of this performance, and then transcribed it into a script.
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The flipping back and forth between oral and literate productions of texts is a strategy to discover the slippages in the memory of texts that occur when transcribing. Early media theory was particularly concerned with the gap between orality and literacy, and the effect writing has on the problem of memory. Writing as a technology had a considerable effect on how we think about memory and how we form cultural narratives. The view of memory as a container within which information can be stored is very much a post-literate idea, from this also comes the the notion of "verbatim" or "word perfect". This is because what is said can be recorded in written words and stored in a text, which can be checked against for discrepancies. Pre-literate cultures think of memory instead as commemorative, a communal act of remembering together through oral storytelling traditions.
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Without a writing system in which memory can be stored and retrieved, events and narratives are seen as cyclical, and the notion of things "in their place" is ascribed to external forces like the seasons, the weather and time.
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This is a work I made in 2015, called Talking Clock. I was interested in using the mechanism of a clock to produce language, including "real" and also "potential" words.
-I made a spreadsheet to work out the best combinations of letters to use on the flip cards, plotting combinations of letters, and mapped words I knew existed, words which were possible (following linguistic conventions), and words which were unlikely. In total I produced 72 cards, 12 for the left side of the clock (one for each hour in a 12-hour cycle), and 60 for the right side (one for each minute).
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The clock displays, or "prints" 1440 words every day (1 per minute). It's very noisy, making a loud click every time a card flips over. It's very difficult to tell the time as the sequence of numbers are replaced by a different system of letters, but it's possible at least to know that the hour has changed, with a little time spent with the clock.
-There is a sense that the machine is writing the words, but they have been pre-selected by a human, myself.
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When we encounter a new word in English, it's not always possible to know how to say it, especially in English, which has different standards, and borrows words from many other languages, so spelling and pronunciation are very different sometimes. This leads to the fluidity of "potential words". Because they isn't yet a consensus on their use, there also is no consensus on their pronunciation.
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Slide 15: The Remington Standard Type-Writer
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The earliest transcription machines were ones that humans operated, becoming the transcriber.
-This lead to the invention of machines like typewriters, and practices like stenography, which were used in court cases to record proceedings.
-The need to type quickly, to keep up pace with speech and to record spoken language "verbatim" lead to the design of interfaces and systems that trained operators to use them efficiently
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In the late 19th century came the emergence of typewriters, such as this one that was produced by the American company Remington.
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Slide 16: QWERTY layout
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The layout of keys (now known as the QWERTY layout) was invented by Christopher Latham Sholes, who wanted to keep the typebars from clashing when the operator typed quickly.
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He sold his design to the Remington Company, a typewriter manufacturer, who popularised it, selling their machine alongside typing courses that trained writers to use the layout, purporting it to be the best for rapid typing.
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The QWERTY arrangement of the original Remington typewriter has remained virtually universal since the 1890s, even though more efficient arrangements have been developed. There is no particular reason why this convention has taken such a strong hold. Technological advances in machinery and electronics have rendered the problem Sholes was trying to solve redundant, but still it persists. If you've ever had to use a non-QWERTY keyboard, you may struggle.
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Slide 17: T Y P E W R I T E R
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Reportedly the Remington Company also liked its product name, "type-writer," to appear acrostically in the top row.
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Fast-forward to December 9, 1968, and computer engineer Douglas Englebart gave what is now known as "the mother of all demos" at a San Francisco computer conference.
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Slide 18: Douglas Englebart's "Mother of all demos"
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He presented a demonstration that includes many features of computer engineering and publishing that we now take for granted, including the mouse, video conferencing, the modern desktop-style user interface, word processing and collaborative text-editing.
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Slide 19: Englebart's keyboard with mouse
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About 26 mins into the presentation Englebart says "I don't know why we call it a mouse...it started that way and we never did change it."
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While the mouse is a useful tool in modern desktop-style graphic user interfaces, text editors and computer terminal windows utilise the keys and forgo the use of a mouse.
-Text editors are used for a variety of writing applications, for example programming, and writing text documents, without the need to style it graphically.
-Most computer operating systems come with a text-editing program as part of the basic package of software (e.g. Mac has "TextEdit" and Windows has "notepad"). These programs are usually used by a single user at one time.
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Some environments, such as the one Englebart demonstrates, are collaborative, allowing many users to write together in realtime.
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Slide 20: Etherpad instance
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I'd like to talk about a collaborative writing environment that exemplifies the editorial, technical and social dimensions of text; the open-source software Etherpad. This software is a manifestation of what Englebart demonstrated in 1968, and through its interface and technical configuration offers an interesting twist on the notion of public space and the public it creates.
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You can install etherpad-lite on a server, and host the software for yourself or others to use
-although most pads aren't indexed by search englines, they are 100% public, and editable to anyone who knows their URL.
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It's a very dynamic writing environment, and environment in the sense of the combinations of technical conditions of hardware and software, and how users operate within it every key you press is recorded (including deletions), building a mind-boggling database in the background which you can track in the version history, import/export text.
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The software automatically assigns authorship colours, users can change them and give themselves user names or remain "unnamed". Authorship in etherpad is blurry from the level of the user, but crystal clear from the level of the system administrator (can easily run searches on IP addresses).
-Interesting social protocols emerge from collaborative use of pads concerning conviviality (not so much spell-checking or correction). Misspelling is transgressive and signals the speller's marginal status, either preeducated, uneducated, or sloppy. Ignoring misspelling in favour of transcription, recording what is said quickly introduces a type of collective, consensual authorship.
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New users react with either enthusiasm or suspicion - to the enthusiasts, it's exciting to collaborate in realtime, to others it's just a bit too public, everything you type can be seen as you type it.
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Slide 21: Etherpad experiments
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Here is a series of solo experiments I conducted with Etherpad, where I wrote and edited text within constrained periods of time. Etherpad offers the potential for very quick visualisations of the writing and editing process through its autmoatically assigned authorship colours.
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I was interested in seeing what happened when I visualised the writing and editing process. I wrote as multiple users, opening up a new tab in a private window each time and tricking the software into thinking I was a new writer, so it gave me new authorship colours.
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This was a timed task, beginning with writing periods of 3 minutes, and a rest of 2 minutes. After 4 iterations, this shifts to 5 minutes for both respectively. I found I needed a bit more time as the text began to grow.
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This experiment showed me that editing is a form of writing, like growing a tree and making furniture from it at the same time.
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Slide 22: editorial, technical, social dimensions of text
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At the beginning of this presentation I described my interest in text and its overlapping dimensions; editorial, technical and social.
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I will go into a bit more detail now to explain further:
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editorial: text is a sequence. A line of characters and spaces, the particular order that the writer sets these in. Text becomes an object, a carrier of thoughts and feelings, something that can be sent back and forth between participants in a conversation.
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technical: text is a process. Messages and files that we share are text-based. A computer runs on software, programmed in encoded text, often the same characters that flicker before your eyes. Texts can be assembled on-the-fly as a machine reads scripts and writes output in response to input.
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social: text is a framework. The English word "text" has roots in the Proto-Indo-European word teks-, meaning “to weave, to fabricate, to make; make wicker or wattle framework”. A piece of writing is a text, and so is a conversation; texts represent the exchange of shared concepts (words, signs, representations) woven into a fabric of communication. There is also an exchange between written and spoken texts; oral discussions which prompt writing, and writing which sparks conversations. Texts elicit further texts.
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Etherpad exemplifies all three of these dimensions. The interface allows readers to become writers, and text editors, themselves. It uses the technicality of text-based software to record what is written, or deleted there in a process that is recorded in the version history. And when used collaboratively (which is what it is designed for, it creates a framework of shared concepts that come together into the one textual fabric.
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What is important about this, as well as other open-source tools for reading and writing is that they offer the potential for us to develop our own particular ways of reading and writing. There is a lot more effort that is needed in order to not just read and write, but to also determine our own definitions of what is most readable, writeable and executeable.
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An app that makes aphoristic sentences to print and display in the work space. Its use is not limited to this space, but this is taken as a departure point for testing. The app borrows from a selection of words within a limited syntax and creates new meanings in the process.
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Inspiration comes from ideas of syntactic ambiguity and lexical ambiguity, which are areas of linguistic study interested in sentences that may be read in several different ways. Ambiguity comes from both lexical and syntactic diversity, put simply, the range of diversity in both the meanings that words can point to, and also how the construction of a sentence influences a diversity of readings.
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This particular sentence uses the word "buffalo" as 3 discrete components:
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1. A proper noun (meaning the city of Buffalo in upstate New York).
-2. A verb (meaning to bully - an uncommon spoken use, but familiar to North American English speakers)
-3. A common noun (meaning a kind of bison indigenous to certain parts of North America)
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A fluent speaker of a language parses the components of an utterance, often adding contextually implied meanings that may be common in their vernacular. So the sentence (particularly in the North American town of Buffalo) can be read as:
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-Buffalobuffalo (Buffalo from the town of Buffalo)
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Buffalobuffalo [that] (other buffalo from Buffalo) buffalo (bully)
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[themselves] buffalo (bully)
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Buffalobuffalo (buffalo from Buffalo)
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This is but one of many extrapolations that can be made from the combination of words in this sentence. Other readings include:
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Buffalo buffalo (the animals called "buffalo" from the city of Buffalo) [that] Buffalo buffalo buffalo (that the animals from the city bully) buffalo Buffalo buffalo (are bullying these animals from that city).
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[Those] buffalo(es) from Buffalo [that are intimidated by] buffalo(es) from Buffalo intimidate buffalo(es) from Buffalo.
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Bison from Buffalo, New York, who are intimidated by other bison in their community, also happen to intimidate other bison in their community.
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The buffalo from Buffalo who are buffaloed by buffalo from Buffalo, buffalo (verb) other buffalo from Buffalo.
Examples of this are diverse, including famous sentences such as Noam Chomsky's famous "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously".
-This type of sentence (as well as many other examples) introduce the idea of syntactic ambiguity. Chomsky's sentence has correct grammar - all the components are there - but it has no apparent meaning.
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Regular Strategies is an app that produces sentences based on random modelling of sentences. Each sentence has the same grammatical structure, each part of speech has the same function in the parse tree. An idea is to perhaps allow users to input values specific to their circumstances, and from this generate the affirmations. These can then be printed to the workplace (either as a screensaver, or as a poster).
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A perfect-bound book is typically made with cold glue (such as polyvinyl acetate), or glue that melts at high temperatures. The benefit of cold glue is that it allows the book to lie flat when opened, as the spine is flexible. Cold-glue bound books can be made by hand with quite rudimentary equipment. All you need is a printed text block and cover, a press, a piece of gauze or cheesecloth for the spine, and a brush to apply the glue to it. This takes a lot of time, practice, skill and patience to do by hand, but machines for cold-glue binding are hard to find.
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Hot-glue binding machines can bind a book in less than 3 minutes, usually. Just be sure to set wider than normal margins before printing (I usually go for between 8 and 12mm for good measure) and make sure the book isn’t uncomfortably small. The minimum size should be considered in relation to the reader’s hands, how they grip the book and turn the pages, and how much effort will be needed to hold the book open in order to read it.
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Image: A hot-glue bound book held open with one hand
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This book took about 40 hours to create, the longest time it's taken so far... I found a PDF on Lib Gen, but for some reason the OCR'd text was tracked quite tight making each line look like a very long word - this was even worse when printed. After a quick search on worldcat, I discovered that this book was available to be borrowed from the Royal Library in the Hague. Off I went to borrow the book. I planned to scan it using the bookscanner, but the cameras kept crashing after scanning half the 433 page book. So, I managed to extract the text using Calibre's book convert process from PDF > RTF. However, after placing the text in an InDesign layout, all of the numbers appeared as missing characters. From the looks of the PDF it seemed that these were perhaps from an Opentype font's custom stylistic set, which would explain why they weren't turning up in my system fonts. Also, in the index at the back of the book the numbers seemed to have the appearance of hyperlinks (when hovering over the hand icon appears) but when clicked, did absolutely nothing. So I began the rather painstaking process of laying out the book with exactly the same text flow and page numbers as the source. The work included removing headers and page numbers from the RTF, scanning all photos from the printed book, endlessly wordspacing paragraphs to make sure they fit where they should on each page, styling the text, removing manually written hyphenation (this was done programmatically, and ended up with a few words that were joined together in the case of examples like "re- and dis- associate" becoming reand disassociate") and the seemingly endless task of manually entering in EVERY number. At times it felt a bit masochistic, but I used this time to reflect on the process, thinking a lot about the changes I was making to preserve the form of the original. Ironically, this also involved a lot of forced line breaks, which would make the task of anyone who wanted to bootleg this book a bit more difficult (forced line breaks are the bane of the bootlegger). Another strange thought - I'm reading these books as I redesign them, but my reading happens on a more superficial level perhaps, meaning that I'm not absorbing the content fully, but reading it like a machine would as I look for anomalies and address them.
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Clara Balaguer asked me for a copy of this book, and it seemed like a good opportunity to try a new printing and binding process. I decided to print the book double-sided on A4 paper, as opposed to the previous method of 2-up imposed printing on A3 paper. I wasn't very satisfied with how the previous printing method had produced a "split" in the book due to the paper grain direction. Yin Yin Wong at PS Rotterdam had recommended printing double sided rather than 2-up to avoid this, so this was the technique I decided to try out. I also decided on hand-binding it with cold glue, a technique which I had recently learned. Cold glue binding is done with equipment and materials such as a hacksaw, scissors, medical gauze (or cheesecloth), brushes, PVA glue, bookbinding thread, a jig to hold the book in while notches are cut and the spine receives its initial gluing, and a book press to keep the book in overnight, which stops the book from warping due to the high water content of the PVA glue. Cold glue binding allows the book to lay open flat on a table, a benefit I was keen to apply to this edition of the book as I was dissatisfied by how tight the binding of the first edition was because I had used the hot glue binding machine, which takes much less time but for thick books can produce a lower quality result. I was quite pleased with how this book came out, however, when applying the cover I had to decide not to glue it to the spine. Cold glue binding results in a rough spine, and hot glue creates a smooth layer of glue that dries quickly, producing a smooth spine. The only way to avoid this is to not attach the cover to the spine if using cold glue.
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Bootlegged books front covers: Second edition (left) and first edition (right)
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Front covers: Source publication (left) and second edition bootleg (right)
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Beginning of image section: Source publication (left) and second edition bootleg (right). The second edition bootleg book lies open more easily due to the cold glue binding
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Spines: Source publication (left) and second edition bootleg (right)
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Back covers: Source publication (left) and second edition bootleg (right)
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The simplest solution is to just print the source publication, but sometimes you might want to lay the text out again using a different format, font or layout, for reasons not worth going into in detail here. This means either the original text flow and page numbers should be the same, or there must be some references in the bootleg to the source publication.
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Some observations and methods:
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1) Justified text saves space and gives much more control over where to break the page.
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2) The most basic reference system is to include an index that specifies which page in the source publication matches the bootleg. However, this is not so useful when setting text for a page (e.g. PDF), and more useful for EPUBs, which don’t have the notion of a page.
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Inserting page numbers directly into the text can indicate where the page breaks in the source publication. This is quite time consuming, but it allows you a lot of freedom to differ between fonts, page and type size, text-block dimensions and page count.
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Image: A page from a bootleg of Mladen Dolar’s A Voice and Nothing More, implementing new page numbers to mark the page breaks of the source publication
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Printed: 19.11.19
-Dimensions: 155x235mm
-Cover stock: Ursus glossy white 210gsm
-Text stock: Bio Top 80gsm
-Binding: Perfect bound, cold glue
-Pages: 226pp
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This is another book where I took a text file and laid it out again in InDesign, like the copy of Dumbstruck that I bootlegged. However, this time I made a code to indicate the page numbering and text flow of the source publication. This was to provide comfortable, consistent tracking to the letterspacing - one of the issues with Dumbstruck was that, in an attempt to keep the text flow and page numbering the same, some paragraphs were too tightly, or too loosely kerned. I feel this is a more elegant solution, however, it might pose problems if someone else tried to do the same as I had (taking the text from a source publication and laying it out) as the code is now part of the text. The cover was made with glossy paper, and custom-cut vinyl stickers. In time these will probably come off, but that's conceptually sympathetic to the content of the book, which is about the transience of the voice.
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Front cover, with white vinyl text and graphics
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Spine
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Code referring to text flow of the source publication
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Bootleg acknowledgement
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Spread: Book opens easily due to cold glue binding
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Making a printed book involves selection of paper stock and decisions on how to economise with the printing method. Often this calls for text to be imposed, 2-up, double-sided, into a booklet. Booklets are useful for thin, staple-bound books, less than 64 pages of ordinary 80gsm paper.
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A text block of 2-up imposed spreads is cut in the middle first, then the two halves are joined together like a sandwich. Turning a single page document into a 2-up imposed PDF also imposes a constraint. There is no other way to create the text block. So, a book made in this way will result in a visible “split”, and the pages will naturally fall open where the two halves were joined.
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This is because most commercially bought paper comes with the grain direction aligned with the long edge, not the short edge. The solution is to print pages, not spreads, 1-up, double sided on a page. If you can find a printer that takes sheets of paper smaller than A4 (such as A5) this is perfect, if not, you may have to concede the loss that comes from trimming down to a smaller than A5 size. Although this may seem just a superficial concern, the book will not be split, making for a materiality that emphasises the unity of the text.
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Image: (clockwise from top left): imposition from a single-page PDF into a booklet, anatomy of a book, a spread
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Premise: I will write my own script(s) to impose pages from a source PDF:
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The aim is to write a Python script to automate the process by iterating recursively over pages in a PDF. These will be called in Python as subprocesses using the subprocess module.
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23.09.19
-I'm working out which commands to use from the command line. The process should be as follows:
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#burst the source PDF, keep the name of the source plus page number (-%d)
- $ pdftk source.pdf burst output source-%d.pdf
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Results:
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To identify the size of a single burst page in pixels, this is the command I used:
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$ identify Carrier_burst-1.pdf
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which returns this information:
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Carrier_burst-1.pdf PDF 398x591 398x591+0+0 16-bit sRGB 19486B 0.000u 0:00.009
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26.09.19
-Then for the next step, resizing each page to fit 2-up on an A4. It's easy enough to reduce to 50% if the original is A4, but in other formats it's a bit trickier...
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#resize the resulting burst single page PDF (this only does one - needs Python loop to iterate recursively)
- $ magick mogrify -resize 50% new_source.pdf
- #or to resize to specific pixel dimensions such as 256x256
- $ magick mogrify -resize 256x256 new_source.pdf
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After resizing to 50%, the identify command returns these values:
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Carrier_burst-1.pdf PDF 199x296 199x296+0+0 16-bit sRGB 51910B 0.000u 0:00.000
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27.09.19
-The next steps are these:
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#impose 2up on a page using imagemagick montage command
- #assemble imposed PDFs into a single file
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pdfimpose is a python library that does imposition. It's quite easy and powerful, though again it is not quite set up for cutting pages. I found some Python code, which creates an imposed PDF in a 2x2 format, with folds to be made first vertically, then horizontally:
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booklet.sh for PDF imposition into a booklet[edit]
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I found another way to do imposition using a script Michael wrote called booklet.sh, downloadable here: https://git.xpub.nl/murtaugh/95layouts
-It's a shell script that can run in the bin folder from the home directory, which allows you to run it wherever you are in the computer - you don't have to cd to the folder where the script is. To enable this, first you have to echo the path for the bin folder that the scripts are in. The command to run it from the terminal is:
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booklet.sh source.pdf
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It needs a few dependencies to run (mainly psutils).
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Requirements: psutils, pdftk, python3 with reportlab (make_blank_pdf.py)
Note: Comment out or delete the last line to produce three .ps files - the first one is the source PDF, the second is the PDF imposed in the correct order, the third one is the imposed PDF pages on an A4 page. This works well if all you want to do is impose, print and fold. For cutting sheets you need to position the pages 2-up, centred on the page, which I can't quite figure out how to do...
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Samizdat publishers considered a printed text to be officially published if it came in an edition of at least 5 copies. The library considers this to be excessive, and reduces that number to 1. One copy of a text can be shared and enriched by the accumulated annotations of many readers. A one-to-many-publishing model distributes texts to the widest possible public. The library instead insists on a many-to-one model, drawing many readers to one text. Republishing the one text many times creates a multiplicity of form, and subsequently a multiplicity of publics in each instance.
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Image: Staff working at Publication Studio, London. Publication Studio is a federated publishing network with studios located worldwide. Books ordered from the shared catalog are printed and bound one-at-a-time by the closest studio. Differences in availability of paper and machinery at each studio means that the materiality of each instance of a printed text will vary depending on where and how the books are made.
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02.12.19 The nomadic physical bootleg library[edit]
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The physical bootleg library is a collection of books, mostly made at PZI by myself and other students, or donated by visitors to PZI. The books are kept in a repurposed champagne crate, usually stored on a shelf in the Lens-Based studio. The only condition for borrowing books is that they are returned at some point. The dimensions of the box introduce certain constraints on the size and quantity of books contained within. The box is portable, allowing it to be placed in many locations:
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In the LB studio (its usual location)
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On top of the water fountain on Level 4
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In the kitchen on Level 4
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By the printer on Level 2
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On top of the letterboxes on Level 2
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At the desk in the Research Station where you borrow/return books
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On a bookshelf in the Research Station
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On a table in the main entrance to WdKA Wijnhaven building
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On top of some signage in the WdKA Wijnhaven building
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On a table in the De Willem cafeteria
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In an elevator in the WdKA Wijnhaven building
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The portability of the box means that it could be an interesting container & receptacle for libraries that travel - I'm quite interested in the possibility of using the box to transport and store both printed and digital books, especially in temporary library situations (on hotspotted Raspberry Pi for example) that could be used in worksessions at various locations.
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Academic research requires citation, and inevitably this means referring to a quote from a book, located on a particular page. Citation allows readers to locate the reference efficiently. For this to happen, the reader must be able to find the text easily by searching for it in a catalogue system. Often books will include cataloguing information in the front matter, and for citation purposes this can be retained in a bootlegged book.
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Digital files don’t always come with text that is suitable for print, particularly when the text is kerned too tightly or too loosely, or when bad OCR (Optical Character Recognition) returns characters that are not actually in the source publication. Sometimes a dark mark on a page will be interpreted as a character by OCR software. In these cases the text may need to be set again using a different format, font and page layout.
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Image: A bootleg copy of The Open Work by Umberto Eco. Optical Character Recognition software has mistakenly rendered the page number (page 80) as the word “So”
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This script applies transformations to the image before running OCR, resulting in a clearer result:
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# import the necessary packages
-#from PIL
-import Image
-import pytesseract
-import argparse
-import cv2
-import os
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-# construct the argument parse and parse the arguments
-ap = argparse.ArgumentParser()
-ap.add_argument("-i", "--image", required=True,
- help="path to input image to be OCR'd")
-ap.add_argument("-p", "--preprocess", type=str, default="thresh",
- help="type of preprocessing to be done")
-args = vars(ap.parse_args())
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-# load the example image and convert it to grayscale
-image = cv2.imread(args["image"])
-gray = cv2.cvtColor(image, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
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-# check to see if we should apply thresholding to preprocess the
-# image
-if args["preprocess"] == "thresh":
- gray = cv2.threshold(gray, 0, 255,
- cv2.THRESH_BINARY | cv2.THRESH_OTSU)[1]
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-# make a check to see if median blurring should be done to remove
-# noise
-elif args["preprocess"] == "blur":
- gray = cv2.medianBlur(gray, 3)
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-# write the grayscale image to disk as a temporary file so we can
-# apply OCR to it
-filename = "{}.png".format(os.getpid())
-cv2.imwrite(filename, gray)
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-# load the image as a PIL/Pillow image, apply OCR, and then delete
-# the temporary file
-text = pytesseract.image_to_string(Image.open(filename))
-os.remove(filename)
-print(text)
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-# show the output images
-cv2.imshow("Image", image)
-cv2.imshow("Output", gray)
-cv2.waitKey(0)
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The formal qualities of annotations are defined by the tools used to make them, and also the cultural uses of these. Given a pen, most people will write, although it is also possible to draw or use it in other ways. With a keyboard it seems most appropriate to type. With a mouse, one can click on things, and select them.
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What happens when these are retained, transformed and isolated from the source?
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These are rare, but I found one PDF of Jorge Luis Borges "The Garden of Forking Paths" that had underlinings and highlighted text. The interesting thing is that these change appearance slightly depending on the e-reader software used to display the text.
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-Digital annotations on a pdf of Jorge Luis Borges' "The Garden of Forking Paths"
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Another text that came pre-annotated was Ursula K Le Guin's "The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction". For this, I placed scans in a vector graphics program and digitised pen marks. I also included the text that was annotated with circles, underlines and lines in the margins.
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-Hand-drawn annotations on a pdf of Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction"
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A basic definition of a library, because it's called for, because we've moved so far from it being simply a collection of books:
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A library retains:
-* a collection of texts
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-A library produces:
-* sociability
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-A library gives access to:
-* knowledge
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Each statement declares the verb and object predicated by the subject of "A library". What if these objects were exchanged between these sentences?
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So
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It becomes
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A library retains sociability, produces a collection of texts, and gives access to knowledge.
-A library retains knowledge, produces sociability, and gives access to a collection of texts.
-A library retains a collection of texts, produces knowledge, and gives access to sociability.
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Perspectives on current and potential libraries[edit]
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By changing parts of speech (the verb and its object), we can imagine different scenarios that potential (and current) libraries can play out. For example:
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A library retains knowledge
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Retention of knowledge points towards the desire to acquire information that has high value; intellectual, social, practical etc.
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produces a collection of texts
-What are the texts that can be produced? Metadata, annotations and marginalia, infrastructural interfaces for readers (signage, an index, a classification system)
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and gives access to sociability
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How does the library give access to sociability? What are the necessary actions for sociability to become accessible, and what are the limits to accessibility?
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Scanning is reading for particular details (such as names and numbers) by running one’s eyes over every word in a line. Sometimes I find myself using my index finger to guide my eyes when scanning a printed text. With a computer and full-text search capabilities, control-f helps find instances of a particular word or phrase.
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Scanning is also a way to process printed matter so that it may be electronically archived, modified and distributed. A bookscanner is the tool of choice for many archivists. It has two cameras, one to capture the odd pages, and one for the even pages. Most bookscanners consist of a system of pulleys which allow the book to be raised to two perpendicular sheets of glass, laying the pages flat and ensuring the focus is correct. It’s quite a workout, and is usually reserved for books which are difficult to find in digital format. Essentially the bookscanner takes two photographs, one each for the even and odd sides of a spread. So the sequence goes; flip, click click, flip, click click, and so on, and so on. Next, these images must go through a variety of processes to produce a digital book; rotating, cropping to the size of the page, merging into a single PDF. Ultimately, the most useful digital books include a digital text layer generated by OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software, making the text searchable and copy/pasteable.
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I tried using the Bookscanner, built as part of Special Issue 5 OuNuPo. The Bookscanner needed a few adjustments before it was ready to use. The documentation is rather limited, but the software is set up so that it is quite easy to work out how to use it.
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The scanner takes photos of even and odd pages, from cameras mounted above the glass. First, you have to mount a drive in which the scanned images will be stored. Then, you can adjust the zoom, and shutter speed. I found it impossible to take an image of only the page, so I will need to crop out everything around it in the future.
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I scanned a book, and made jpegs of each page. The pages are oriented from the camera's perspective, like so:
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Next, I ran a script that does OCR on jpegs that Pedro, Tancre and Bo made for their workshop Blurry Boundaries as part of Special Issue 9: The Library Is Open. This created two PDFs, with OCR. The next step will to be to work out how to rotate the images 90 degrees to the correct orientation, (clockwise for the odd pages, anti-clockwise for the even pages), and crop the images.
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The difference between these two depends on the interface, and its seductive (or stoic) effect. The way users are affected also depends on the hierarchy of information presented, and interfaces that limit how that information is retrieved. For example, the screen, keyboard, and mouse make up the interface of the library when viewed on a desktop computer. On a smartphone, only the screen and keyboard comprise the interface. Given a mouse, a user may be more liable to pinpoint or target information. Some features are more conducive to searching, like a search bar, some more to browsing, like a scroll bar. The library can be accessed through a browser, just type hub.xpub.nl/bootleglibrary into the search bar.
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Image: A mouse, keyboard and collaborative text-editing demonstrated in Douglas Englebart’s “Mother of All Demos”, 1968
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A mouse, keyboard and collaborative text-editing demonstrated in Douglas Englebart’s “Mother of All Demos”, 1968
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Slide 1: read, write, execute
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Slide 2: legible vs readable
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Slide 3: People read best what they read most
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Slide 4: An annotated book
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Slide 5: From the Books
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Slide 6: DDC 000-099; Generalities
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Slide 7: State Library of Victoria, Redmond Barry Reading Room
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Slide 8: Traces of use
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Slide 9: The Library is Open
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Slide 10: Marginal Conversations workshop
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Slide 11: Annotation pack
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Slide 12: Performing annotations
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Slide 13: Script from Marginal Conversations
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Slide 14: Talking Clock (2015)
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Slide 15: The Remington Standard Type-Writer
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Slide 16: QWERTY layout
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Slide 17: T Y P E W R I T E R
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Slide 18: Douglas Englebart's "Mother of all demos"
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Slide 19: Englebart's keyboard with mouse
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Slide 20: Etherpad instance
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Slide 21: Etherpad experiments
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Slide 22: editorial, technical, social dimensions of text
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Slide 1: read, write, execute
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In computing, read, write, and execute are permissions that can be given to files by an administrator to user accounts, which specify how data can be used:
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read permissions allow you to read a file
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write permissions allow you to change it, but not to run it
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execute permissions allow you to run a file
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You are most likely familiar with the "read-only" permission.
-For example, a document with read-only permissions given to a user means that user can only read the document, and can't edit it.
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I have chosen this title because for this presentation I want to focus on how the contingencies offered by interfaces for reading and writing produce a certain kind of reading or writing, and also a certain kind of reader or writer.
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My main interest in this presentation is to describe through several examples, the political dynamics and particular affordances of different interfaces and sites for publication, and the subsequent techno-sociologial effects these have through the way they visualise reading, writing and making things public.
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Interfaces for reading and writing are almost always visually-oriented, and their technical conditions determine how textual information is organised and processed.
-This promotes and encourages certain ways of writing and reading.
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I will present examples from my own practice as an artist and graphic designer, and also some historical examples from computer science and engineering.
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Beginning with the field of type design and typography, I want to talk about ideas of legibility and readability, which often precede notions of how written language should be visualised in graphic form.
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Slide 2: legible vs readable
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Put simply:
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legible = clear enough to read
-readable = being easy or enjoyable to read
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Often someone will use illegibility as an excuse to argue against the use of a particular font or typeface. Physical limitations are certainly a factor in deciding how type should be shaped, down to the micro-level that scrutiny of readability brings, where enjoyment is hampered by exhausted eyes. A file can also be made readable by changing permissions. Allowing a file to be read has many other implications apart from the obvious visibility of content.
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Slide 3: People read best what they read most
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There's a famous dictum in typographic history that states "People read best what they read most"
-This means that what is deemed "readable" is only so because of the prevalence of a particular font. And so, preference for certain fonts may derive from how commonplace they are within the reading environments we encounter them.
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This statement was a call to arms for multiplicity of form in type design, to challenge this tendency for form to become flattened and homogenous in the name of "readability", but it also maintains that the way information is presented becomes monolithic, having its own, enclosed logic that is exclusionary to other systems or ways of doing.
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The eye adjusts to expect certain things it has seen before, and this idea of "easy to read" is trainable, to a certain extent. We might think that a certain font is "neutral", this is because it has become invisible to us, and it is invisible to us because it is everywhere. It therefore doesn't stand out in a way that other typefaces do.
-So the main point I will try to make in this presentation is that the particular interfaces we commonly use for reading and writing train us to read and write in certain ways, ways which we will become efficient within.
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When we shift to a different writing or reading interface, there is an adjustment, a period of discomfort as we adapt.
-We approach new interfaces through the lens of the one that preceded it, always likening it to what we are familiar with.
-The new interface presents new limitations, and also offer new, unexpected possibilities for how we imagine ourselves as participatory subjects, engaging with the text.
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The discourse around reading and writing interfaces is vast, and I do not expect to be able to cover it comprehensively in this presentation.
-I can only hope to present a small overview on these interfaces, and how they visualise language, and in turn, how they create a new subjectivity in the reader or writer.
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Slide 4: An annotated book
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First, let's look at the book as a reading interface. What we call a "book" is most often a stack of pages that are fixed at one edge to form a spine.
-Reading a book is a haptic experience; the sense of touch is in many ways just as important as the sense of vision.
-Alongside this strong tactile interaction is also the inclination for a reader to engage with the text by writing directly onto the page.
-The interface of a printed book invites writing, in fact the very first books were written by hand.
-It is not uncommon to come across another reader's notes, annotations scribbled in the margins of a book.
-Annotation is primarily a strategy of reading comprehension, and there are many activities that fall under the umbrella of "annotation", including highlighting, underlining, glossing (which is writing explicatory texts that define unfamiliar phrases or words), as well as how pages are manipulated to mark text, for example, making a bookmark by folding the corner of a page in what is often called in English a "dog-ear".
-
Despite these annotations are made at different times, by different people unbeknownst to each other, their methods are often consistent with each other. Their annotations also often serve the same purpose, as a reformatting of the text that is read. So the function is sometimes editorial; highlighting or underlining is a way of drawing attention to part of the text that is relevant to the person who is reading it, giving them a way to return to it when scanning through at a later time.
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Annotation also has a social function; inscribe the presence of reader within a book. The book then becomes a vehicle for a social paratext, one that lives alongside the source text, one that can be commented on by others. Sometimes these paratexts separate from the source and become texts of their own. Glossaries come from the practices established by medieval glossators, who wrote explanations of Roman law between the lines of manuscripts. The first dictionaries served a similar purpose.
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Books held in public collections have travelled different paths through the hands of different readers. They acquire provenance and their own particular history through how they are used. A book printed, bound and distributed in an edition of many books, a multiple with the ambition to present its text as singular, becomes diversified through its use
-
From the Books is a research project conducted together with graphic designer Masaki Miwa. Together, we collected scans of any traces of use we found in a section of books from a public library in Melbourne, Australia. We then categorised them and made a catalogue which we self-published.
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Slide 6: DDC 000-099; Generalities
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These books come from a section of a specific reading room in a specific library; the 000-099 section of the Redmond Barry Reading Room, at the State Library of Victoria. In Dewey Decimal Classification, 000-099 is titled "generalities", including books about bibliographic practices as well computer and information science, and also manuscripts and rare books; kind of a meta section on the library and how it organises information.
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Slide 7: State Library of Victoria, Redmond Barry Reading Room
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The SLV is a very social place; visitors use the free wifi for study, and international students often use it to call their families overseas. Others do language lessons there and gather in social groups to share skills.
-It's not a sacred or quiet like a church, more like a train station in terms of its noise and activity. The SLV forecourt is a customary meeting place, people eat lunch there on the grass, on Sundays it is a speaker's corner, protestors gather there for demonstrations.
-
It illustrates well that public libraries do more than just make knowledge accessible, they also produce sociality. This sociality is reflected by the tendency for businesses to open in the periphery and capitalise on this foot traffic, or those that adopt library-like structures and practices (for example, cafes that offer free wifi or cosy nooks to read)
-
Here in Rotterdam this is also present - Starbucks has opened a store at the Bibliotheek Rotterdam, there is a cafe above Rotterdam Centraal Station that houses part of the same collection. There's even a cafe called "The Library" at Mathenesserplein
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Slide 8: Traces of use
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Here are some examples of traces of use we found in the section of books we explored. We categorised them semantically under the following headings:
-
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ACCIDENTAL DOG-EAR
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ANNOTATION
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ASTERISK
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BOOK PRICE
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BOOKMARK
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CIRCLED TEXT
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CREASED PAGE
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CROSS
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DEAD ANT
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DOG-EAR
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ERASER RUBBING
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ERRATA
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FINGERPRINT
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FOLD
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HANDWRITTEN LETTER
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INK BLOT
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LIBRARY DOCUMENT
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LIFTED PRINT
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LINE
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LOOSE PAGE
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NOTEPAPER BOOKMARK
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NOTES
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PAGES REMOVED
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POST-IT NOTE
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RECEIPT BOOKMARK
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REPLACED IMAGE
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SCUFF
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SMUDGE
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SQUIGGLE
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STAIN
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STRIKETHROUGH
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TICK
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TORN PAGE
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TORN PAPER BOOKMARK
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UNDERLINING
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WARPED PAGE
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WEAR AND TEAR
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The traces were largely mundane, but revealed a consensus of mark-making and annotation. We also found readers intentionally using the book as a vehicle to pass messages to other readers, such as a handwritten note someone had deliberately placed in a book.
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This interest in annotation as a visualisation of reader's interaction with texts was developed further with a thematic project called "The Library is Open", conducted by Experimental Publishing in 2019. The Library Is Open was an afternoon of workshops in which we made visible the operations of libraries, including municipal, academic, and importantly, so-called "Shadow" libraries, which are ones that operate outside of legality, illegally distributing pirated copies of books.
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Slide 9: The Library is Open
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As part of "The Library is Open", I conducted a workshop called "Marginal Conversations" with two classmates, Artemis Gryllaki and Paloma Garcia.
-We held our workshop at a volunteer-run space in the inner west of Rotterdam, called "Leeszaal Rotterdam West".
-
Leezaal is a kind of 'reading room', a library that does not catalogue its books, nor record when they are borrowed. Anyone may pick up a book and walk out the door.
-The initiative began in 2013 when small local libraries in Rotterdam began to close, and the initators asked their local community two questions; 1) Do we need a library?, and 2) How can you contribute?
-
Leeszaal offers a safe space for members of the local community to gather, to learn languages and share skills, to read newspapers, learn how to use computers, use the internet, watch YouTube or just hang out. It's not a traditional library in any sense, but is sympathetic to many of the social democratic values of open access to knowlegde that public libraries embody.
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-
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Slide 10: Marginal Conversations workshop
-
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Marginal Conversations focused on reading and annotating together, and performing our annotations. We read and annotated an open letter called "In Solidarity with Library Genesis and Sci-Hub".
-
This letter asks for pirate library practices to come out of the shadows, a bold move and demand for legitimacy and visibility
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Slide 11: Annotation pack
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We made an annotation kit that contained the letter, a layer of carbon paper, and a sheet of translucent tracing paper. After reading and annotating the letter, we could compare our annotations by overlaying the tracing paper to create "heat maps" that established common areas of interest.
-
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Slide 12: Performing annotations
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Then we rehearsed and performed our annotations, taking turns to read the letter while others reacted with their annotations.
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Slide 13: Script from Marginal Conversations
-
-
We made a recording of this performance, and then transcribed it into a script.
-
The flipping back and forth between oral and literate productions of texts is a strategy to discover the slippages in the memory of texts that occur when transcribing. Early media theory was particularly concerned with the gap between orality and literacy, and the effect writing has on the problem of memory. Writing as a technology had a considerable effect on how we think about memory and how we form cultural narratives. The view of memory as a container within which information can be stored is very much a post-literate idea, from this also comes the the notion of "verbatim" or "word perfect". This is because what is said can be recorded in written words and stored in a text, which can be checked against for discrepancies. Pre-literate cultures think of memory instead as commemorative, a communal act of remembering together through oral storytelling traditions.
-
Without a writing system in which memory can be stored and retrieved, events and narratives are seen as cyclical, and the notion of things "in their place" is ascribed to external forces like the seasons, the weather and time.
-
This is a work I made in 2015, called Talking Clock. I was interested in using the mechanism of a clock to produce language, including "real" and also "potential" words.
-I made a spreadsheet to work out the best combinations of letters to use on the flip cards, plotting combinations of letters, and mapped words I knew existed, words which were possible (following linguistic conventions), and words which were unlikely. In total I produced 72 cards, 12 for the left side of the clock (one for each hour in a 12-hour cycle), and 60 for the right side (one for each minute).
-
The clock displays, or "prints" 1440 words every day (1 per minute). It's very noisy, making a loud click every time a card flips over. It's very difficult to tell the time as the sequence of numbers are replaced by a different system of letters, but it's possible at least to know that the hour has changed, with a little time spent with the clock.
-There is a sense that the machine is writing the words, but they have been pre-selected by a human, myself.
-
When we encounter a new word in English, it's not always possible to know how to say it, especially in English, which has different standards, and borrows words from many other languages, so spelling and pronunciation are very different sometimes. This leads to the fluidity of "potential words". Because they isn't yet a consensus on their use, there also is no consensus on their pronunciation.
-
-
-
Slide 15: The Remington Standard Type-Writer
-
-
The earliest transcription machines were ones that humans operated, becoming the transcriber.
-This lead to the invention of machines like typewriters, and practices like stenography, which were used in court cases to record proceedings.
-The need to type quickly, to keep up pace with speech and to record spoken language "verbatim" lead to the design of interfaces and systems that trained operators to use them efficiently
-
In the late 19th century came the emergence of typewriters, such as this one that was produced by the American company Remington.
-
-
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Slide 16: QWERTY layout
-
-
The layout of keys (now known as the QWERTY layout) was invented by Christopher Latham Sholes, who wanted to keep the typebars from clashing when the operator typed quickly.
-
He sold his design to the Remington Company, a typewriter manufacturer, who popularised it, selling their machine alongside typing courses that trained writers to use the layout, purporting it to be the best for rapid typing.
-
The QWERTY arrangement of the original Remington typewriter has remained virtually universal since the 1890s, even though more efficient arrangements have been developed. There is no particular reason why this convention has taken such a strong hold. Technological advances in machinery and electronics have rendered the problem Sholes was trying to solve redundant, but still it persists. If you've ever had to use a non-QWERTY keyboard, you may struggle.
-
-
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Slide 17: T Y P E W R I T E R
-
-
Reportedly the Remington Company also liked its product name, "type-writer," to appear acrostically in the top row.
-
Fast-forward to December 9, 1968, and computer engineer Douglas Englebart gave what is now known as "the mother of all demos" at a San Francisco computer conference.
-
-
-
Slide 18: Douglas Englebart's "Mother of all demos"
-
-
He presented a demonstration that includes many features of computer engineering and publishing that we now take for granted, including the mouse, video conferencing, the modern desktop-style user interface, word processing and collaborative text-editing.
-
-
-
Slide 19: Englebart's keyboard with mouse
-
-
About 26 mins into the presentation Englebart says "I don't know why we call it a mouse...it started that way and we never did change it."
-
While the mouse is a useful tool in modern desktop-style graphic user interfaces, text editors and computer terminal windows utilise the keys and forgo the use of a mouse.
-Text editors are used for a variety of writing applications, for example programming, and writing text documents, without the need to style it graphically.
-Most computer operating systems come with a text-editing program as part of the basic package of software (e.g. Mac has "TextEdit" and Windows has "notepad"). These programs are usually used by a single user at one time.
-
Some environments, such as the one Englebart demonstrates, are collaborative, allowing many users to write together in realtime.
-
-
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Slide 20: Etherpad instance
-
-
-
I'd like to talk about a collaborative writing environment that exemplifies the editorial, technical and social dimensions of text; the open-source software Etherpad. This software is a manifestation of what Englebart demonstrated in 1968, and through its interface and technical configuration offers an interesting twist on the notion of public space and the public it creates.
-
You can install etherpad-lite on a server, and host the software for yourself or others to use
-although most pads aren't indexed by search englines, they are 100% public, and editable to anyone who knows their URL.
-
It's a very dynamic writing environment, and environment in the sense of the combinations of technical conditions of hardware and software, and how users operate within it every key you press is recorded (including deletions), building a mind-boggling database in the background which you can track in the version history, import/export text.
-
The software automatically assigns authorship colours, users can change them and give themselves user names or remain "unnamed". Authorship in etherpad is blurry from the level of the user, but crystal clear from the level of the system administrator (can easily run searches on IP addresses).
-Interesting social protocols emerge from collaborative use of pads concerning conviviality (not so much spell-checking or correction). Misspelling is transgressive and signals the speller's marginal status, either preeducated, uneducated, or sloppy. Ignoring misspelling in favour of transcription, recording what is said quickly introduces a type of collective, consensual authorship.
-
New users react with either enthusiasm or suspicion - to the enthusiasts, it's exciting to collaborate in realtime, to others it's just a bit too public, everything you type can be seen as you type it.
-
-
-
Slide 21: Etherpad experiments
-
-
Here is a series of solo experiments I conducted with Etherpad, where I wrote and edited text within constrained periods of time. Etherpad offers the potential for very quick visualisations of the writing and editing process through its autmoatically assigned authorship colours.
-
I was interested in seeing what happened when I visualised the writing and editing process. I wrote as multiple users, opening up a new tab in a private window each time and tricking the software into thinking I was a new writer, so it gave me new authorship colours.
-
This was a timed task, beginning with writing periods of 3 minutes, and a rest of 2 minutes. After 4 iterations, this shifts to 5 minutes for both respectively. I found I needed a bit more time as the text began to grow.
-
This experiment showed me that editing is a form of writing, like growing a tree and making furniture from it at the same time.
-
-
-
Slide 22: editorial, technical, social dimensions of text
-
-
At the beginning of this presentation I described my interest in text and its overlapping dimensions; editorial, technical and social.
-
I will go into a bit more detail now to explain further:
-
-
editorial: text is a sequence. A line of characters and spaces, the particular order that the writer sets these in. Text becomes an object, a carrier of thoughts and feelings, something that can be sent back and forth between participants in a conversation.
-
technical: text is a process. Messages and files that we share are text-based. A computer runs on software, programmed in encoded text, often the same characters that flicker before your eyes. Texts can be assembled on-the-fly as a machine reads scripts and writes output in response to input.
-
social: text is a framework. The English word "text" has roots in the Proto-Indo-European word teks-, meaning “to weave, to fabricate, to make; make wicker or wattle framework”. A piece of writing is a text, and so is a conversation; texts represent the exchange of shared concepts (words, signs, representations) woven into a fabric of communication. There is also an exchange between written and spoken texts; oral discussions which prompt writing, and writing which sparks conversations. Texts elicit further texts.
-
Etherpad exemplifies all three of these dimensions. The interface allows readers to become writers, and text editors, themselves. It uses the technicality of text-based software to record what is written, or deleted there in a process that is recorded in the version history. And when used collaboratively (which is what it is designed for, it creates a framework of shared concepts that come together into the one textual fabric.
-
What is important about this, as well as other open-source tools for reading and writing is that they offer the potential for us to develop our own particular ways of reading and writing. There is a lot more effort that is needed in order to not just read and write, but to also determine our own definitions of what is most readable, writeable and executeable.
-
Skimming is reading for the main meaning of a text, reading between the lines in a semi-distracted state. A way to get the gist of a text quickly, flipping pages, jumping pages with the spacebar, infinitely scrolling. Just like skimming stones over water, the eyes jump in saccades over the surface of the text.
-
Many prefer to read from paper than from a screen. Who hasn’t heard complaints that reading from a screen is tiring, especially when you just want the gist of a text? Sometimes online articles are accompanied by information about how long it will take to read them. Estimated reading time 6 mins. Max word count 400-600 words.
-
Reading comprehension relies on the twin skills of skimming and scanning, often done together. Depending on what the function of the text is, one skill will be used more than the other. It would be foolish to skim a contract without reading the small print carefully. And if you don’t skim a newspaper article to get the gist of it, scanning for details is meaningless.
-
Image: A reader highlights text while skim-reading in order to improve retention and to create a hierarchy in a text, applying a style that can be efficiently scanned for at a future time
-
A reader highlights text while skim-reading in order to improve retention and to create a hierarchy in a text
-
installing chdk firmware for the bookscanner[edit]
-
From a framapad made by erg
-
-
https://annuel.framapad.org/p/ergbookscan
-
-*ERG BOOK SCAN*
-
-Doc de base:
-http://diybookscanner.org/archivist/
-
-Doc pour erg:
-https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZFgxLRWM-amLoyrPdKVwJJwBGfQBsEq3rNSjX41_mL4/edit
-
-
-Budget:
-https://lite.framacalc.org/ergbookscan
-
-
-Fourniseurs :
-bois
- Gédé boishttp://www.gedebois.be/
- Lochten & Germeaux http://www.lochten.be/
-
-verre
-- vitrerie Defise — Rue de Mérode 459, 1190 Forest — 02 537 20 24
-- https://fr.glassolutions.be/fr-be/planiclear
-
-ce qu'il manque:
-
-velcro
-2x poulies de 5 cm de diamètre: Industrial product chaussée de Ruisbroek
-
-le verre : vitrerie Defise - rue de Mérode 1190
-4mm rodé d'un coté à 45°
-
-électiricite:
-cable 220v
-prise
-
-
-
-
- https://www.brico.be/fr
- https://www.youbuild-mpro.be
- https://www.gamma.be/fr
- https://www.lochten.be/
- https://www.hubo.be/fr.html
- https://www.mr-bricolage.be
-
-
-software
-
-notes from PZ: https://pad.xpub.nl/p/bookscanner-software
-
-Install piscan on SD:
- https://github.com/Tenrec-Builders/pi-scan
- https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/installation/installing-images/linux.md
-
-Prepare SD cards for camera:
- https://chdk.fandom.com/wiki/Prepare_your_SD_card
- CHDK instructions
-
- Download the correct firmware according to your camera model
-
- http://www.mighty-hoernsche.de/
-
- Method 2 - Using CHDK itself to make the SD card bootable.
-
- Start out with your SD Card Lock switch in the unlocked position (the small slide switch on the side of the card - see picture above - make sure it is in the unlocked position to start this process.)
-
- Low level format the card in camera using the camera's built-in card format menu selection. Warning : any images on the card will be erased at this point.
-
- Remove the card from your camera and put it into the SD card reader of your PC.
-
- The card should now contain a single FAT32 partition. If you are using a large SD card, please make sure your camera did not format the card as exFAT - see warning note at start of this section. You may need to use something like FAT32 Format to reformat the card in your PC if so.
-
- Now please check again (by looking at the properties of your card in an SD card reader in your PC) to ensure that your card is formatted either FAT16 or FAT 32 - and not exFAT!
-
- Unpack the appropriate build of CHDK for your camera and firmware version directly to the card (including all subdirectories).
-
- With the Card Lock switch still in the unlocked position put the card back into your camera.
-
- Turn on your camera by pressing the Play button (or using the Play switch on some cameras). Do not start the camera with the On/Off switch or this process will not work.
-
- Reset factory settings on the camera in order to enable the firmware update setting (if it's not there already)
-
- Start CHDK manually by selecting the Firmware Update option in the Canon menus.
-
- After the CHDK logo briefly displays, start CHDK by using the <ALT> key sequence for your camera.
-
- Enter the CHDK menu (press play button and then MENU for the CHDK menu), and select Miscellaneous stuff -'> SD Card' -> Make Card Bootable
-
- Turn your camera off, write protect the SD card by moving the little switch on the side of the card to the lockedposition, insert the card back into your camera. Note that CHDK will cause the camera to ignore the lock switch so that you can take pictures normally.
-
-adjust the cameras:
- http://tenrec.builders/archivist/camera-guide.html
-
-laptop, python 2.7 requirements
-Cython
-pip install git+https://github.com/kivy/kivy.git@master
-dbus-python
-chdkptp.py
-pygame
-
-
-luarocks install chdkptp
-
-
I wanted to read this collection of essays by Flusser during the holidays. Steve had sent me a link to an interview with Flusser in which he described the "magic" of linear writing and subsequent technologies, and I wanted to read more. I very quickly bootlegged this book by printing the PDF on the last day school was open for the year. In my haste, however, I trimmed the bottom edge a bit too close. It's still fine (at least the page numbers weren't cut off), but I wish I hadn't been in such a rush. The cover was made quickly at the photocopier as well, a no-frills effort.
-
The library is closed, the shelves are empty, the librarian has gone. All that is left is a set of index cards contained in a box. At the top of each card is a verb introducing the tasks performed within the space and duration of a particular, situated social infrastructure called the “bootleg library”. The reverse includes references and images that illustrate each task.
-
This text was written with, by and for readers during library sessions. We wrote on cards by hand, we typed words in a collaborative writing environment. We wrote them together; humans and machines; texts were blended into a mix of keystrokes in changesets too complex, and dependencies too layered to determine singular authorship. These texts were never objects, always processes[1].
-
Participation from readers became a vital element in the practice of librarianship. The library grew, and we sustained it through conversation and correspondence. We wrote together in threads and strings; and so we created and maintained a space for publication. In the journey from private to public collection, texts were intermingled and rematerialised, gaining provenance and diversification through use. The readers are in the pages of the books, in the metadata of the library and on these cards, where traces of their presence remain.
-
This text will never be complete. It describes a particular, situated library, one that does not exist anymore, but resembles those that came before it and those that will succeed it. This set of cards is also a library, a collection organised into a structure that directs readers towards the interior, towards the texts it contains. This set is a book, a hyper-index, forever pointing outwards to other books, libraries, readers and writers. Text, library, book and index all come together in this particular material form to comprise a manual, a thing to be manipulated in the hands of readers.
-
Cards invite shuffling, re-organising, flipping over, distributing, annotating, laying out. An A6 card like the one you’re holding now fits comfortably into the palm of one’s hand, and can be easily turned as it is gripped between the index finger and thumb.
-
Cards have two sides. Arranged on a table, only one side is visible, and proximity determines connections. Held in the hands and flipped like a book, new relationships between the verso and recto pages emerge. The reader becomes the writer anew, determining what to keep or discard, what to edit or leave as is; the author of the sequence, connections and hierarchy between tasks.
-
-
-
↑Barthes, R., ‘From Work to Text’, in Barthes, R. and Heath, S. (1987) Image, music, text. London: Fontana Press.
-
This text has been written with the intention to be materialised in a very specific form; a set of A6-sized index cards, contained in a box. Please read it while holding the cards in your hands, shuffling and reordering them, making your own text as you read.
-
These cards list the tasks performed on the site of contingencies, the bootleg library. Tasks are described on the obverse, and related images and references are on the reverse.
-
The library is closed, the shelves are empty, the librarian has gone. All that is left is a set of index cards contained in a box. At the top of each card is a verb introducing the tasks performed within the space and duration of a particular, situated social infrastructure called the “bootleg library”. The reverse includes references and images that illustrate each task.
-
This text was written with, by and for readers during library sessions. We wrote on cards by hand, we typed words in a collaborative writing environment. We wrote them together; humans and machines; texts were blended into a mix of keystrokes in changesets too complex, and dependencies too layered to determine singular authorship. These texts were never objects, always processes[1].
-
Participation from readers became a vital element in the practice of librarianship. The library grew, and we sustained it through conversation and correspondence. We wrote together in threads and strings; and so we created and maintained a space for publication. In the journey from private to public collection, texts were intermingled and rematerialised, gaining provenance and diversification through use. The readers are in the pages of the books, in the metadata of the library and on these cards, where traces of their presence remain.
-
This text will never be complete. It describes a particular, situated library, one that does not exist anymore, but resembles those that came before it and those that will succeed it. This set of cards is also a library, a collection organised into a structure that directs readers towards the interior, towards the texts it contains. This set is a book, a hyper-index, forever pointing outwards to other books, libraries, readers and writers. Text, library, book and index all come together in this particular material form to comprise a manual, a thing to be manipulated in the hands of readers.
-
Cards invite shuffling, re-organising, flipping over, distributing, annotating, laying out. An A6 card like the one you’re holding now fits comfortably into the palm of one’s hand, and can be easily turned as it is gripped between the index finger and thumb.
-
Cards have two sides. Arranged on a table, only one side is visible, and proximity determines connections. Held in the hands and flipped like a book, new relationships between the verso and recto pages emerge. The reader becomes the writer anew, determining what to keep or discard, what to edit or leave as is; the author of the sequence, connections and hierarchy between tasks.
-
-
-
↑Barthes, R., ‘From Work to Text’, in Barthes, R. and Heath, S. (1987) Image, music, text. London: Fontana Press.
-
Many national libraries have acquisition programs in place with stringent, highly formalised procedures through which new texts enter the collection. Some countries require that an officially published book is donated to their national library by way of a system called “legal deposit”. Purchase of a commercial identifier such as an ISBN (International Standard Book Number) allows the book to be registered, so that other libraries that subsequently acquire the same text may share cataloguing details.
-
The library makes no such demands. Books are acquired through informal means, in ways that are not regulated or legislated. Anyone may remove or add texts to the library.
-
Most often, acquisition requests are as mundane as someone asking if the library has a particular text. A quick search online produces a digital file as a result. The provenance of these texts is buried in the file paths of the uploader’s computer, and the computers before it. Texts are acquired by any means necessary, through a social network, or through a digital network of so-called “shadow libraries” and groups of sympathetic readers. It’s often surprising how fast an unknown fellow reader will respond to a request for a text via certain groups operating on social media websites. Type F to follow this post.
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The digital collection is formed from individual uploads made by readers who care to share. Uploading takes time—a precious commodity for many readers—and each upload is a deliberate action, not an afterthought. Fostering a culture of uploading requires a decentralised network of readers, and likewise, librarians. A different notion of librarianship is required; the librarian is not the central hub of access to knowledge, but each reader should be a librarian, with the ability to produce, recommend and request texts from others.
-
A reader who downloads and does not upload is a passive observer to the activities of the library. We prefer to be in the position of the downloader due to the legal penalties for uploading and redistributing copyrighted texts, which are far more severe than those for downloading. The library will not grow if all we do is take. A library is a collection of shared texts, and sharing is facilitated by both uploading and downloading.
-
Most people think of bootlegs as cheap knock-off products that masquerade as the real deal; bootleg cigarettes, designer-label clothes, not-quite-right imitations of Disney products and the like. Bootlegging began during the prohibition era with the practice of illegally distilling and distributing alcoholic beverages, often literally concealed in the leg of a boot while being transported. Run an image search on the keyword “bootleg” and you’ll probably see all sorts of suspicious-looking products. But the way I want to speak of bootlegging is as a social act, a homage, and one that creates and celebrates a multiplicity of form. I’m referring in particular to the vibrant culture of music sharing in the 1970s that followed portable cassette tape recorders entering the market. These allowed fans to cheaply record live performances and share these recordings—also known as bootlegs.
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Image: A “bootlegger” concealing a flask of an illegally distributed alcoholic beverage in the leg of a boot during the Prohibition era
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While bootlegging makes a fairly faithful reproduction of a source publication, the degree of transformation is sometimes due to unintentional or uncontrollable factors, such as availability of the equipment and materials needed to make a close copy. At other times, more deliberate choices can be made concerning the transformed materiality of the bootleg.
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Economy, efficiency, and readability are the main concerns when bootlegging texts for the library. Economy often dictates that materials that are at hand are used—in the case of printed books for example, this often means defaulting to certain choices with paper, printing methods and binding. An efficient workflow is not too time-consuming. Although the most important thing is to have the text by any means necessary, we read best what we read most, and certain typographic concerns may become vital to the readability of the text.
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Being kind to the reader can involve adhering to typesetting conventions; including headers, footers and page numbers should the book be photocopied and pages subsequently separated from the others. Most importantly, a reasonable line length and wide margins will allow the book to be made in a way that ensures a comfortable reading experience and provides space for annotation.
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Image: A bootleg copy of My Mother Was A Computer by N. Katherine Hayles. The source PDF has been reimposed into a booklet, with reasonable line length (60-80 characters) and ample space for annotations
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Publications acquire difference through reproduction; sometimes intentionally, always circumstantially. A printed book always ends up in the hands of at least one reader. It is transported, pages are dog-eared and annotated, time weathers the paper and cracks the spine. Multiply this by many readers, and each printed copy starts to accumulate its own traces, losing resemblance to the rest of the edition and acquiring its own particular countenance and provenance through use.
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Image: 1. Books are for use.
-The first law of S. R. R. Rangathan’s 5 Laws of Library Science, 1931
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The jam band The Grateful Dead were followed around the United States by a legion of die-hard fans, proclaiming themselves “Deadheads”. Cheaply available cassette recorders allowed them to tape concerts and then share recordings amongst each other. Thinking of this, I’m reminded of John Cage’s motto, “Everything you do is music, and everywhere is the best seat.” Each position in the audience produces a slightly different recording, and this multiplicity of form connects the audience not only with the music, but with each other.
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There are files in the library that are of the same text, but they have travelled different paths to get there, accumulating difference through methods such as annotation and material transformation. And so, they have different materialities, lending weight to the argument that a text is not identical with itself; that there is no such thing as a unique, singular, original “work”, but instead many different versions of texts, born through the accidents of their creation.
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Image: “Deadheads” recording a live Grateful Dead concert, 1972
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Samizdat publishers considered a printed text to be officially published if it came in an edition of at least 5 copies. The library considers this to be excessive, and reduces that number to 1. One copy of a text can be shared and enriched by the accumulated annotations of many readers. A one-to-many-publishing model distributes texts to the widest possible public. The library instead insists on a many-to-one model, drawing many readers to one text. Republishing the one text many times creates a multiplicity of form, and subsequently a multiplicity of publics in each instance.
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Image: Staff working at Publication Studio, London. Publication Studio is a federated publishing network with studios located worldwide. Books ordered from the shared catalog are printed and bound one-at-a-time by the closest studio. Differences in availability of paper and machinery at each studio means that the materiality of each instance of a printed text will vary depending on where and how the books are made.
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A text found in the wild often comes with visible and invisible artefacts. The visible ones come from bad OCR, with strange characters popping up in place of the ones you expect, such as a 1 instead of an l. The bane of the bootlegger is most definitely the line break or “soft return”, inserted by software that automatically breaks the line as you type. Screen-based formats such as EPUB don’t have the notion of a page, and flow text according to window size.
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You can either be methodical and remove each soft return manually, or use the powerful automated find/replace all option. A useful tactic is to find every instance of a full stop followed by a space where a line was intentionally broken by the human writer. Next, replace each full stop with an arbitrary but uncommon character, such as a dagger (†). Then, do another find/replace and remove every instance of a soft return and a space, and finally replace the uncommon character with a full stop, in one final find/change command.
-Another unwanted character that often appears is the hyphen, inserted where words break at the end of a line. Here the pruning of errant characters is trickier, and the best method is to find each instance and remove them manually. Running find/replace all can often remove necessary hyphens, such as in time ranges (e.g. 9-5) and compound adjectives (e.g. inter-dependent).
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As soon as a reader edits a text its materiality changes either unintentionally, or through more intentional methods, such as republishing in a different format to make the text more accessible to a wider public. Samizdat publishers often considered themselves editors, or typists (rather than authors) due to the unwanted attention and risk that this credit would bring. As they reproduced texts by hand, a slippery form of authorship evolved through human error and also particular idiosyncratic preferences for a new phrase, approximate translation or text structure. Vladimir Bukovsky summarised the process of self-publishing as “Samizdat: I write it myself, edit it myself, censor it myself, publish it myself, distribute it myself, and spend time in prison for it myself.” The responsibility these self-proclaimed editors took upon themselves by republishing dissident material bound them to the texts; entwined in their creation and distribution. When no writer wants to be an author, everyone becomes an editor.
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Image: Facsimile of A Chronicle of Current Events (Russian: Хро́ника теку́щих собы́тий), the longest-running Samizdat publication, (1968-1982)
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The simplest solution is to just print the source publication, but sometimes you might want to lay the text out again using a different format, font or layout, for reasons not worth going into in detail here. This means either the original text flow and page numbers should be the same, or there must be some references in the bootleg to the source publication.
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Some observations and methods:
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1) Justified text saves space and gives much more control over where to break the page.
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2) The most basic reference system is to include an index that specifies which page in the source publication matches the bootleg. However, this is not so useful when setting text for a page (e.g. PDF), and more useful for EPUBs, which don’t have the notion of a page.
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Inserting page numbers directly into the text can indicate where the page breaks in the source publication. This is quite time consuming, but it allows you a lot of freedom to differ between fonts, page and type size, text-block dimensions and page count.
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Image: A page from a bootleg of Mladen Dolar’s A Voice and Nothing More, implementing new page numbers to mark the page breaks of the source publication
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Making a printed book involves selection of paper stock and decisions on how to economise with the printing method. Often this calls for text to be imposed, 2-up, double-sided, into a booklet. Booklets are useful for thin, staple-bound books, less than 64 pages of ordinary 80gsm paper.
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A text block of 2-up imposed spreads is cut in the middle first, then the two halves are joined together like a sandwich. Turning a single page document into a 2-up imposed PDF also imposes a constraint. There is no other way to create the text block. So, a book made in this way will result in a visible “split”, and the pages will naturally fall open where the two halves were joined.
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This is because most commercially bought paper comes with the grain direction aligned with the long edge, not the short edge. The solution is to print pages, not spreads, 1-up, double sided on a page. If you can find a printer that takes sheets of paper smaller than A4 (such as A5) this is perfect, if not, you may have to concede the loss that comes from trimming down to a smaller than A5 size. Although this may seem just a superficial concern, the book will not be split, making for a materiality that emphasises the unity of the text.
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Image: (clockwise from top left): imposition from a single-page PDF into a booklet, anatomy of a book, a spread
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Academic research requires citation, and inevitably this means referring to a quote from a book, located on a particular page. Citation allows readers to locate the reference efficiently. For this to happen, the reader must be able to find the text easily by searching for it in a catalogue system. Often books will include cataloguing information in the front matter, and for citation purposes this can be retained in a bootlegged book.
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Digital files don’t always come with text that is suitable for print, particularly when the text is kerned too tightly or too loosely, or when bad OCR (Optical Character Recognition) returns characters that are not actually in the source publication. Sometimes a dark mark on a page will be interpreted as a character by OCR software. In these cases the text may need to be set again using a different format, font and page layout.
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Image: A bootleg copy of The Open Work by Umberto Eco. Optical Character Recognition software has mistakenly rendered the page number (page 80) as the word “So”
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A perfect-bound book is typically made with cold glue (such as polyvinyl acetate), or glue that melts at high temperatures. The benefit of cold glue is that it allows the book to lie flat when opened, as the spine is flexible. Cold-glue bound books can be made by hand with quite rudimentary equipment. All you need is a printed text block and cover, a press, a piece of gauze or cheesecloth for the spine, and a brush to apply the glue to it. This takes a lot of time, practice, skill and patience to do by hand, but machines for cold-glue binding are hard to find.
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Hot-glue binding machines can bind a book in less than 3 minutes, usually. Just be sure to set wider than normal margins before printing (I usually go for between 8 and 12mm for good measure) and make sure the book isn’t uncomfortably small. The minimum size should be considered in relation to the reader’s hands, how they grip the book and turn the pages, and how much effort will be needed to hold the book open in order to read it.
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Image: A hot-glue bound book held open with one hand
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Most people I know prefer to read off paper. The arguments for the printed text usually are about exhaustion, e.g. “I get tired reading from a screen”, lack of retention, e.g. “It’s proven that people remember things they read on paper better than on screen”, and in the circles I tend to run in, a sentimentality pervades, nostalgic for the haptic experience that reading from printed books brings.
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We expect acceleration from digital technologies. The cultural significance of new media is bolstered through remediality, which is its refashioning through the lens of old media[1]. Skeuomorphic design brings us the texture of paper on a screen. Hayles argues for intermediality, the interpretations between, and the coexistence of all media, including printed and digital texts.[2]
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Digital text is fraught with trauma, underpinned by the possibility of fragmentation. Text that is to the reader fully searchable and copy-pasteable is also text that threatens to come apart. Text that is less of an object, and more a process, often not residing in any one place in a computer file system, assembled dynamically, “on-the-fly”. Printed text, by contrast, reassures us by way of its indelibility.
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Image: The physical bootleg library contained in a disused champagne crate, and the digital bootleg library running from a Raspberry Pi computer
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↑Bolter, J.D. and Grusin, R. (2003) Remediation: understanding new media. 6. Nachdr. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
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↑Hayles, N.K. (2005) My mother was a computer: digital subjects and literary texts. Chicago London: The University of Chicago Press.
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Historically, the word “text” comes from the Proto-Indo-European word teks-, meaning “to weave, to fabricate, to make; make wicker or wattle framework”. The written word is a text, and so is a conversation, both represent the exchange of shared concepts woven into the fabric of communication. There is also an exchange between written and spoken texts; discussions which influence writing, and writing which sparks conversations.
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The digital library creates texts through its catalogue, where the metadata for each entry comprises a paratext[1] that not only adds meaning to the core text, but also influences how a reader will discover it in the collection by fields such as tags and description. Metadata which is downloaded and entered automatically comes from online commercial sources has a particular promotional tone. Those who write metadata should do so subjectively; descriptions based on personal significance represent the text and the readers, equivalently.
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The library is sustained through producing texts.
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Image: Papyrus, an early writing surface made from woven reeds
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↑Genette, G. (1997) Paratexts: thresholds of interpretation. Literature, culture, theory 20. Cambridge ; New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press.
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Marks left by readers are at times recognisable as annotation; underlines, asterisks and notes scribbled in the margins that all add something to the text. Taken a step further, annotation can include metadata (information about information), which is most commonly text that describes the author and subject, and bibliographic details needed for citation purposes. Collectively, these forms of annotation indicate the presence of readers, making them visible to each other. Annotation lives in close proximity to the text. When it is separated from the text, it becomes unfixed, losing its symbolic power to remind us that other readers have also been here.
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Image: Tracing paper bearing carbon-copied annotations from Marginal Conversations, a workshop first held by Simon Browne, Paloma García and Artemis Gryllaki at Leeszaal West Rotterdam, 20th June 2019
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A glossary is a list of terms defined in relation to the specificity of the text. Glossaries aid reading comprehension, and also establish the presence of the readers. Glossing (from Late Latin glossa "obsolete or foreign word") was a medieval technique of adding commentaries to the main text of illuminated manuscripts. Glossators would add small handwritten notes and illustrations in between the lines and in the margins. Reading between the lines opened the text up for various interpretations, and illustrations served as mnemonic aids to assist readers to recall information. [1]
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The texts written on these cards constitute a glossary which defines the tasks of the Contingent Librarian.
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Image: A glossed manuscript of a late-thirteenth-century Latin translation of a medical work by Hippocrates
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↑Hobart, M.E. and Schiffman, Z.S. (1998) Information ages: literacy, numeracy, and the computer revolution. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
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What makes up a text depends on perspective and overlapping dimensions of text; editorial, technical and social.
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The editorial dimension; a sequence. A line of characters and spaces, the particular order that the writer sets these in. Text becomes an object, a carrier of thoughts and feelings, something that can be sent back and forth between participants in a conversation.
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The technical dimension; a process. Cybertexts and “ergodic literature” require non-trivial effort to read[1]. Examples of this are MUDs (multi-user dungeons/domains/dimensions), which are real-time virtual worlds in which the players construct the story on-the-fly, and Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves[2], a printed novel that defies a linear narrative structure through its cybertextual materiality.
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The social dimension; a framework, a network of texts that elicit further texts.
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The library is a collection of texts; not just books, but also files, metadata, scripts and the processes that determine how they are used, and the readers who use them.
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Image: A spread from Danielewski’s House of Leaves
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↑Aarseth, E.J. (1997) Cybertext: perspectives on ergodic literature. Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press.
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↑Danielewski, M.Z. (2000) Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of leaves. 2nd ed. New York: Pantheon Books.
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Inclusion and exclusion are not just processes that occur when books arrive in the library. They are recurring, procedural, practical actions executed throughout the library’s lifetime. It comes down to the issue of space quite rapidly. With too many books, certain brutal decisions may have to be made to retain or dispose of the surplus.
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The results of including and excluding are visible in the catalogue and classification system adopted by the library, defining the particular interests of the library.
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Inclusion also plays a part when considering how public or private the library is, and how its membership is formed. There are several layers of privilege (and accompanying responsibilities) that can be given, from anonymous guest, to registered user, to administrator. Users who have administrative privileges may add new users and bestow (or revoke) freedoms and responsibilities.
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Image: A membership card for the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the national library of the Netherlands
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An administrator has authority to make modifications to the infrastructure of the library. Every registered user of the library is also an “admin”. With this responsibility, comes great power. An admin may delete user accounts, or take down the entire library if they wish. But they can also make registered accounts for other users, and choose to bestow the same privileges, or not. The library is open.
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Image: Characters representing read (r), write (w), and execute (x) permissions in UNIX and UNIX-like systems
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Most books contain an index. Most books are also indexed in some type of cataloguing system, to present the collection and inter-relationships between the texts contained within, and those outside of the library. This set of cards is an unbound index, which can be reshuffled, added to and reduced as the reader pleases. Reducing a text to an index opens it up for the reader to complete it as they read, drawing on what they have read before and creating a mental network of associations. A book is a hyper-index, forever pointing outwards to other books, libraries, readers and writers. I use my index finger to trace over the text, moving down the page as my eyes scan for keywords.
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Image: Alejandro Cesarco, Index, exhibited at Witte de With Contemporary, September 2019-January 2020
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The library depends on its public, just as the public depends on the library. Sharing of texts is the heart of library culture. A completely private collection lacks sociability. Libraries that operate outside of the law (shadow/extra-legal/pirate/+++) also depend on tactics to survive, such as password protection and invite-only systems for registering new users. In this context, publishing is not broadcasting, scattering seeds of information widely to encourage maximal distribution. The public sphere created by the library is limited by necessary measures designed to sustain it.
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Image: Chained books at the medieval Hereford Library, an illustration from Streeter, B. H., (1931) The Chained Library; A Survey of Four Centuries in the Evolution of the English Library, B. Franklin : New York [1970]
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Invitations to join the library are made through private channels of communication; direct messages, personal emails with no-one cc’d or bcc’d, private conversations held in intimate spaces, small printed cards passed by hand. Everyone is welcome to join, but the library does not require everyone to be a member in order to operate.
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Image: A6 cards, invitations to use the bootleg library
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Making something public, and making publics. Matthew Stadler, writer and co-founder of the federated publishing network Publication Studio, makes a distinction between publishing and publication. For Stadler, publication happens not only through sharing texts, but also “setting up the circumstance through which we can talk and debate them, together”.
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Publishing survives through publication, which is the necessary creation and maintenance of the space created for a public; to read, to share texts, to discuss and publish them. Publication continues after the event of publishing.
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Image: Still from What is Publication?, a talk by Matthew Stadler, writer and co-founder of the federated publishing network Publication Studio, available at https://vimeo.com/14888791
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All that I did was click a button and switch on the content server. The library was automatically assigned a dynamic IP address, followed by a colon and a port: 8080. Type http://145.131.24.139:8080 into a browser, and you’d arrive at the library, no problem. But you had to already be on the local network; you couldn’t access it from the outside. And the IP address could change without warning, as dynamic IPs often do.
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A sequence of digits is not nearly as memorable as a domain name. And paradoxically, we expect stability from a digital environment that is quite dynamic and in flux. Trust erodes at every extra click, every retyped URL. Accessibility is tantamount to existence. If you can’t access it, it doesn’t exist.
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8080 is for personally-run web servers. It’s called 8080 because it relates to port 80, the port that HTTP is served over. But ISPs regularly scan for HTTP requests including port 8080, to see if there is any illegal traffic occurring over the network, so it’s best to set it to a custom number (there are 65535 potential ports to use).
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The library is now accessible from the outside over a VPN, and the page is HTTP password-protected. On arrival at the URL enter the following user name and password.
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Image: Poster announcing the bootleg library, Piet Zwart Institute, July 2019
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The library operates outside of legal boundaries that see knowledge as private property. As such, it requires protection from those that wish it to cease and desist. Invitations to join the library are made through personal correspondence and printed matter, in the form of A3 sized posters, and A6 sized cards, like the very one you’re reading right now. Handing a printed card with login details to an interested reader is an act of trust. The card, a pocket-sized object made with care and attention which is passed from hand to hand, engenders a certain kind of intimacy, as opposed to the brute act of spamming a mailinglist.
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Image: A6 card, obverse and reverse, announcing the first bootleg library sessions, Piet Zwart Institute, December 2019
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Networking is not a dirty word. I’m not talking about networking as schmoozing, rubbing elbows with those you wish to impress, handing out business cards like there’s no tomorrow. I mean forming networks of one’s own[1], within which the library can take shape and survive. Maintaining these networks ensures that the space for publication is available.
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The library collection is intentionally small; it does not wish to be everything to everyone. Focused library sessions are held regularly, and informally, with participants free to come and go as they please. The sessions do not require registration, and make no demands on participants. The result is often a small group of session attendees, who can offer personal insights and opinions in an intimate setting. It is more beneficial to the library’s development to have a conversation between a small number of participants than to lecture to a crowd.
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Image: bootleg library session at Varia, A Collective-space for Everyday Technology, Rotterdam, 26th January, 2020
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The library is for all, and made by all. There is no singular embedded librarian, because everyone is a librarian, and the library is everywhere. I’m not interested in developing the “perfect” system in isolation and then dictating how it should be used, I’m interested in asking how people want to use systems, and developing them together. Technical development is ongoing in line with feedback from bootleg library sessions.
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Image: bootleg library session at Onomatopee Projects, Eindhoven, as part of Meeting Grounds, 6th March, 2020
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Open-source means exactly that; the source code is open for anyone to copy, modify and distribute it. The library is running on the open-source software Calibre, and is accessed through a browser using calibre-web, a web-app for ebooks stored in a Calibre database. It’s important that the library software is open-source, as this empowers us to own and modify it to suit our particular needs and interests. Technology and culture exist in a dynamic interplay, shaping and being shaped by each other.[1]
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The notion of open-source can be extended to books as well; already there is the “public domain” (works that are outside of the bounds of copyright law, and therefore fair game) and “fair use”, which allows works to be used without asking for permission from the copyright owner, for the purposes of commentary, criticism and parody. In addressing the accessibility needed for a true knowledge commons to be protected, copyright laws are flawed to begin with as they assume that knowledge is private property.
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Image: Screenshot of calibre-web interface
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↑Hobart, M.E. and Schiffman, Z.S. (1998) Information ages: literacy, numeracy, and the computer revolution. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
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The library is a collection of texts and the readers collected around them. Nothing comes from nothing, everything comes from somewhere, something or someone. Authors are dependent on other texts, writers, and readers. I write this text using borrowed words. As a legal, economic and institutional construct[1], authorship is problematic; current publishing models see texts as the intellectual property of authors possessed with “originality”. This originality is a myth; each text is layered in dependencies.
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Image: An author signing a book
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↑Weinmayr, E., ‘Confronting Authorship, Constructing Practices (How Copyright is Destroying Collective Practice)’ in Jefferies, J. and Kember, S. (eds.) (2019) Whose Book is it Anyway?: A View from Elsewhere on Publishing, Copyright and Creativity. Open Book Publishers. doi:10.11647/OBP.0159
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Information, in the form of descriptions that abstract themselves from the flux of common experience, is owned by private individuals or companies. Information is property, under the law. But laws should reflect the interests of the public. The “public interest” for individuals to profit from their (and other’s) labour competes against another more public, public interest, one which sees information as common property, or one that rejects any notion of information having proprietary substance. The word “information” is related to both the Latin verb informare meaning “‘to shape’, ‘to form an idea of’, or ‘to describe’, and its cognates from the substantive “forma”, which was used meaning ‘character’, ‘form’, ‘nature’, ‘kind’, and ‘manner’”[1].
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Description seems to be the primary function of this word “information”, giving shape to experience; the very stuff of language and communication. Information has a social interest. It follows then that the most beneficial use of information would be one that serves the social good. The collective, social act of sharing information should not be trumped by individual financial interests. Never trust a corporation to do a librarian’s job.
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Image: Headquarters of The Internet Archive, San Francisco, USA
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↑Hobart, M.E. and Schiffman, Z.S. (1998) Information ages: literacy, numeracy, and the computer revolution. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
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In order to give an appraisal of the necessity for professionalism within librarianship, first the concept of “professional” must be unpacked. Professional in what sense? The most generic definition of being able to profess a skill is the first that comes to mind. This seems hardly a thing to argue against, as the particular skills of professional librarians are certainly called for in most cases. If we take another generic assumption that the profession of a librarian revolves around the mores of making information accessible, then this invites questions about associations between moral behaviour and professionalism. All this aside, what I can say is that professional librarians are not seriously threatened by the amateur librarians, operating from a distance. The threat comes from much closer for them; budget cuts that cripple and close their libraries, policies driven by the encyclopedic expectation that digital volumes of data inspire.[1]
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Image: A makeshift library checkout card, usually placed in a pocket in the back of a book
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↑Murray, J.H. (1998) Hamlet on the holodeck: the future of narrative in cyberspace. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
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Amateur librarianship happens whenever texts are shared informally. An amateur (from French, meaning “one who loves, lover”) acts out of love (rather than motivated by prestige, or money); there is not often a conscious decision to be an amateur anything. Instead, we often see the word “amateur” as a negation or lack of professionalism. A rising imperative emerges, for amateurs to take up the task of librarianship. The 19th century model of the public library that spread throughout the U.K. and the U.S.A. was an exemplar of social democratic values. Such libraries are now under threat. So, sometimes in response, but often without thought of the legal consequences, amateur librarianship happens in small, quiet ways that are usually mundane; passing a USB drive around, emailing a link or a file. I thought you should read this.
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Reading and writing are interdependent; a written text exists to be read, and is based on a history of reading comprehension and processing, from the early stages of literacy (developing ability to recognise separate characters), to reading complex texts that become references for things we write. In an operational sense, we also read what we write, as we’re writing it. So, the process of writing is combined with reading, and both gestures can be found in another word that blends the two acts together: editing.Writing, reading, editing; growing a tree while making a chair from its wood to sit on.
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Image: Simon Browne, timed writing/editing experiment using Etherpad, collaborative text-editing software, 2018. The bars at the top indicate separate durations of 5-minute writing, and 3-minute editing periods
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Although literacy is the ability to read and write, an illiterate person is often described as not being able to read, rather than write. This is because the receptive skill of reading precedes the productive skill of writing. We write in response to the information we receive. Reading requires a command of the language the text is produced in, as well as a capacity to store this information in a durable medium; a book, a file, a tape, and so on.
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Media theorist Friedrich Kittler said that, historically, reading functioned as “hallucinating a meaning between the lines”[1]. This hallucination was exemplified by poetry, whereby the poet intended to induce in the reader into a state of shock with words. Kittler argued that the harnessing of electricity was the end of such hallucinations; as soon as optical and acoustic data could be electronically stored, we no longer needed our memory, and the realm of the dead was no longer in written words. The gramophone, typewriter and film produced new ways of writing and reading texts.
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Image: Reading-and-writing-at-the-same-time, diagrammed in The Principles of Psychology, William James (1890)
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↑Kittler, F.A. (2012) Literature, media, information systems: essays. Critical voices in art, theory and culture. Johnston, J. (ed.). London New York: Routledge.
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Reading comprehension relies on the twin skills of skimming and scanning, often done together. Depending on what the function of the text is, one skill will be used more than the other. It would be foolish to skim a contract without reading the small print carefully. And if you don’t skim a newspaper article to get the gist of it, scanning for details is meaningless.
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Image: A reader highlights text while skim-reading in order to improve retention and to create a hierarchy in a text, applying a style that can be efficiently scanned for at a future time
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There are many different reasons why you might read something, but essentially, reading involves skimming (reading to get the main idea of a text) or scanning (looking for specific information in details). This often happens in tandem—skimming the catalogue to see what the interest of the library is, and then scanning to see if a particular text has been included—and has relations to other modes of information retrieval, e.g. browsing/searching.
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In 1977, while facing a skeptical audience in a Q & A session broadcast live on Australian television, Marshall McLuhan argued “the word read means to guess – look it up in the big dictionary. Reading is an activity of rapid guessing because any word has so many meanings – including the word reading – that to select one in a context of other words requires very rapid guessing. That’s why a good reader tends to be a very quick decision-maker.”[1] This is very true of human reading, where multiple interpretations lead to various equivalent understandings of a text, but false when applied to machine reading, which only operates with predefined ways of interpreting text.
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Image: "the word read means to guess" A quote from Marshall McLuhan during a live television broadcast, 1977
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Skimming is reading for the main meaning of a text, reading between the lines in a semi-distracted state. A way to get the gist of a text quickly, flipping pages, jumping pages with the spacebar, infinitely scrolling. Just like skimming stones over water, the eyes jump in saccades over the surface of the text.
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Many prefer to read from paper than from a screen. Who hasn’t heard complaints that reading from a screen is tiring, especially when you just want the gist of a text? Sometimes online articles are accompanied by information about how long it will take to read them. Estimated reading time 6 mins. Max word count 400-600 words.
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Machines can read text, and process it in complex ways. Code may contain instructions for a computer to read a file, so that its contents may be then used as part of a program. An example of this in practice is in the catalogue details of books in the library (title, author, description, publisher etc), which can be downloaded rather than manually written. This involves communication between systems to search their databases; for example, taking these details from another source, such as https://books.google.com or https://goodreads.com.
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Books can also be checked in and out of libraries by a variety of machine reading methods such as barcode scanning, or using RFID (radio-frequency identification) chips inserted into the cover.
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Image: An RFID tag; an object often contained within the cover of a public library book to track when it is checked in or out
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Scanning is reading for particular details (such as names and numbers) by running one’s eyes over every word in a line. Sometimes I find myself using my index finger to guide my eyes when scanning a printed text. With a computer and full-text search capabilities, control-f helps find instances of a particular word or phrase.
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Scanning is also a way to process printed matter so that it may be electronically archived, modified and distributed. A bookscanner is the tool of choice for many archivists. It has two cameras, one to capture the odd pages, and one for the even pages. Most bookscanners consist of a system of pulleys which allow the book to be raised to two perpendicular sheets of glass, laying the pages flat and ensuring the focus is correct. It’s quite a workout, and is usually reserved for books which are difficult to find in digital format. Essentially the bookscanner takes two photographs, one each for the even and odd sides of a spread. So the sequence goes; flip, click click, flip, click click, and so on, and so on. Next, these images must go through a variety of processes to produce a digital book; rotating, cropping to the size of the page, merging into a single PDF. Ultimately, the most useful digital books include a digital text layer generated by OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software, making the text searchable and copy/pasteable.
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Writing is a technology which transforms cultures, particularly from pre-literate perceptions of memory as a commemorative act bound to the flux of human experience, to post-literate thinking of it as containers within which to store information. The invention of the Greek alphabet, with its introduction of letters representing vowels[1], connected speech with a form of its material representation. This technological development resonates with how we perceive oral communication—thinking of spoken language through the lens of literacy; as discrete, easily divisible units, like printed words punctuated by neat spaces. It all falls apart when speech-to-text transcription software “doesn’t work” (meaning that it works in ways that we do not expect). The result is that speech, essentially the long continuous sounds that we make with our mouths, tongues, teeth, lips and throat, comes out as gobbledygook on the screen.
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Writing is a fundamental part of the library. Not only in the written texts it contains, but also in the texts it produces; metadata (information such as author, title, subject, description, publisher, etc), annotations made by readers, readers made by readers, correspondence between the users about the texts, which form a dialectical synopsis. The library is sustained through producing texts which argue for its legitimacy by representing the readers who use it.
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Image: Very early Greek abecedariums, inscriptions of the alphabet in order, typically used as a practice exercise in learning writing, from Drucker, J. (1999) The alphabetic labyrinth: the letters in history and imagination. London: Thames & Hudson
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↑Hobart, M.E. and Schiffman, Z.S. (1998) Information ages: literacy, numeracy, and the computer revolution. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
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According to the philosopher Vilém Flusser, history—in the traditional sense of a record of events—begins with writing. As such, writing created a linear, historical consciousness. This allowed us to see events as part of a process that is manipulable by humans, outside of divine intervention. Before the technology of writing, a propriocentric notion of the world dominated human consciousness; perceived through the senses, immediate and without what we think of as history, which comes from the ability to store memory in texts. Flusser adds that “Those who use texts to understand the world, those who ‘conceive’ it, mean a world with a linear structure”.[1]
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In pre-literate cultures, such as in Ancient Greece, songs were stitched together into rhapsodies.[2] Before literacy, texts existed as oratories, plays, epics, proclamations and dialogues; mostly oral forms. The nature of text is to knit together communication. In literate cultures texts become textiles, tapestries that form cultural narratives.
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Image: The Rosetta Stone, a tablet discovered in 1799, inscribed with three versions of a decree written in Ancient Egyptian and Ancient Greek
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-
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↑Vilém Flusser ‘The Future of Writing’, from Flusser, V. and Ströhl, A. (2002) Writings. Electronic mediations v. 6. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
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↑Ong, W.J. and Hartley, J. (2012) Orality and literacy: the technologizing of the word. Orality and literacy. 30th anniversary ed.; 3rd ed. London ; New York: Routledge.
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Writing “by hand” is how we most often think of the act. The hand is symbolically connected to the act of writing, to the extent that we still use icons of the hand-held utensils to represent it graphically—a ballpoint pen, a pencil, even an old-fashioned quill and nib, all often associated with letter-writing. Slowly, this iconography is being replaced by another symbol; the keyboard, signalling the contemporary dominance of typography on writing.
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Image: ‘Proper posture for writing with pen’, from Drucker, J. (1999) The alphabetic labyrinth: the letters in history and imagination. London: Thames & Hudson
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It wasn’t handwriting that drove forward the technology of writing into the modern era, but type. Moveable type expanded the publishing capabilities of text from a one-to-one to one-to-many model. In the late 19th century hot-typesetting machines melted pieces of aluminium and cast them into type, in order to be re-used and repeated. Input for these machines was often entered on a keyboard, which produced a perforated paper tape, a common early data storage medium. A distinguishing feature of these early typesetting machines was the ability to iterate processes by storing information in a reusable format.
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For the keyboard, iteration operates at another level, the keys. The keyboard has its roots in moveable type, which produced “typing”, or using a discrete set of components that could be rearranged in infinite combinations. From iteration comes automation; “typewriters”, which emerged onto the market around the same time as the phonograph, were often advertised as a product that enabled “automatic writing”.
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Image: The first commercially-produced typewriter, the Hansen Writing Ball, from Kittler, F.A. (1990) Discourse networks 1800/1900. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press
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This text is being written on a QWERTY keyboard, through a browser, using a software called “Etherpad” that records every changeset—every typed key of the characters that are added or deleted. The software is logging these changes fast enough that it appears to be happening in real time. I can also go back through every previous changeset to older versions with the granularity of the individual character. This is the liminal space between texts; in split-seconds of processing where human writing is manipulated by machine writing.
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The difference between these two depends on the interface, and its seductive (or stoic) effect. The way users are affected also depends on the hierarchy of information presented, and interfaces that limit how that information is retrieved. For example, the screen, keyboard, and mouse make up the interface of the library when viewed on a desktop computer. On a smartphone, only the screen and keyboard comprise the interface. Given a mouse, a user may be more liable to pinpoint or target information. Some features are more conducive to searching, like a search bar, some more to browsing, like a scroll bar. The library can be accessed through a browser, just type hub.xpub.nl/bootleglibrary into the search bar.
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Image: A mouse, keyboard and collaborative text-editing demonstrated in Douglas Englebart’s “Mother of All Demos”, 1968
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According to the philosopher Vilém Flusser, history—in the traditional sense of a record of events—begins with writing. As such, writing created a linear, historical consciousness. This allowed us to see events as part of a process that is manipulable by humans, outside of divine intervention. Before the technology of writing, a propriocentric notion of the world dominated human consciousness; perceived through the senses, immediate and without what we think of as history, which comes from the ability to store memory in texts. Flusser adds that “Those who use texts to understand the world, those who ‘conceive’ it, mean a world with a linear structure”.[1]
-
In pre-literate cultures, such as in Ancient Greece, songs were stitched together into rhapsodies.[2] Before literacy, texts existed as oratories, plays, epics, proclamations and dialogues; mostly oral forms. The nature of text is to knit together communication. In literate cultures texts become textiles, tapestries that form cultural narratives.
-
Image: The Rosetta Stone, a tablet discovered in 1799, inscribed with three versions of a decree written in Ancient Egyptian and Ancient Greek
-
-
-
↑Vilém Flusser ‘The Future of Writing’, from Flusser, V. and Ströhl, A. (2002) Writings. Electronic mediations v. 6. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
-
-
↑Ong, W.J. and Hartley, J. (2012) Orality and literacy: the technologizing of the word. Orality and literacy. 30th anniversary ed.; 3rd ed. London ; New York: Routledge.
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Typologies of traces of use identified from a previous project called From the Books, which explored books from the 000-099 section of the Redmond Barry Reading Room in the State Library of Victoria.
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ACCIDENTAL DOG-EAR
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ANNOTATION
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ASTERISK
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BOOK PRICE
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BOOKMARK
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CIRCLED TEXT
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CREASED PAGE
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CROSS
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DEAD ANT
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DOG-EAR
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ERASER RUBBING
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ERRATA
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FINGERPRINT
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FOLD
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HANDWRITTEN LETTER
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INK BLOT
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LIBRARY DOCUMENT
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LIFTED PRINT
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LINE
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LOOSE PAGE
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NOTEPAPER BOOKMARK
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NOTES
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PAGES REMOVED
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POST-IT NOTE
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RECEIPT BOOKMARK
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REPLACED IMAGE
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SCUFF
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SMUDGE
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SQUIGGLE
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STAIN
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STRIKETHROUGH
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TICK
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TORN PAGE
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TORN PAPER BOOKMARK
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UNDERLINING
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WARPED PAGE
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WEAR AND TEAR
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These formed a loose classification system that indexed these books not by bibliographic reference, but by the frequency of occurrence, taking a "bag of words" approach.
-Problems that arose were linguistic - it was difficult assigning a word to an example as this already had some assumption of intention (e.g. a doodle as an intentional drawing vs squiggle as unintentional drawing).
-
My approach was one of identification based on nouns, which presented problems in describing the traces we found and the possible intention (or lack of intention) in their making. To what extent could the noun communicate what had happened? Nouns point towards things affected by actions. In a sense, to name something is to own it, and things become property much more easily than actions.
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Text Laundrette is a workshop in which we use a home-made, DIY book scanner, and open-source software to scan, process, and add digital features to printed texts brought by the participants to the workshop. These are included in the “bootleg library”, a shadow library accessible over a local network.
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Shadow libraries operate outside of legal copyright frameworks, in response to decreased open access to knowledge. This workshop aims to extend our research on libraries, their sociability, and methods by which we can add provenance to texts included in public or private, legal or extra-legal collections.
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The physical bootleg library is housed in a disused champagne crate. It contains books that I have bootlegged myself, or ones that others have. It also contains books donated by visitors to wherever the library is (temporarily) installed. The library travels, and is part of bootleg library sessions held at PZI and at other locations.
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At Varia, Gouwstraat 3, with books distributed on table
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At the Library, Karel Doormanhof 45, ready to be unpacked
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At Onomatopee Projects, before the bootleg library session
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The IKEA trolley the physical bootleg library usually travels on. Biyi lent me the trolley, and in return, I bootlegged the IKEA logo to read AIKE (Biyi's husband's name)
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The library operates outside of legal boundaries that see knowledge as private property. As such, it requires protection from those that wish it to cease and desist. Invitations to join the library are made through personal correspondence and printed matter, in the form of A3 sized posters, and A6 sized cards, like the very one you’re reading right now. Handing a printed card with login details to an interested reader is an act of trust. The card, a pocket-sized object made with care and attention which is passed from hand to hand, engenders a certain kind of intimacy, as opposed to the brute act of spamming a mailinglist.
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Image: A6 card, obverse and reverse, announcing the first bootleg library sessions, Piet Zwart Institute, December 2019
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The first bootleg library sessions were held in Wijnhaven 61, a building that houses several of the Piet Zwart Institute Master's Departments, including XPUB, Lens-Based, MIARD, and the Master in Arts Education. The building also is home to many bachelor students, and stations where students can prototype work. I decided to run introduction sessions in a small room in the drawing station. I advertised these sessions with posters and flyers, distributed throughout Wijnhaven 61 and the adjacent Blaak building. Sessions were organised as a come-as-you-are basis, running for half-hour intervals, but with an open invitation for attendees to stay as long as they liked. The initial purpose of these sessions was to acquaint attendees with the digital bootleg library, explore the interface, and create registered user accounts. There was also another purpose of meeting with other readers to discuss texts we were reading, and how we gained access to them. I kept an Etherpad document open for each session, where I could take notes on what was discussed.
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It wasn’t handwriting that drove forward the technology of writing into the modern era, but type. Moveable type expanded the publishing capabilities of text from a one-to-one to one-to-many model. In the late 19th century hot-typesetting machines melted pieces of aluminium and cast them into type, in order to be re-used and repeated. Input for these machines was often entered on a keyboard, which produced a perforated paper tape, a common early data storage medium. A distinguishing feature of these early typesetting machines was the ability to iterate processes by storing information in a reusable format.
-
For the keyboard, iteration operates at another level, the keys. The keyboard has its roots in moveable type, which produced “typing”, or using a discrete set of components that could be rearranged in infinite combinations. From iteration comes automation; “typewriters”, which emerged onto the market around the same time as the phonograph, were often advertised as a product that enabled “automatic writing”.
-
Image: The first commercially-produced typewriter, the Hansen Writing Ball, from Kittler, F.A. (1990) Discourse networks 1800/1900. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press
-
The first commercially-produced typewriter, the Hansen Writing Ball
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Setting up a calibre-web content server on an RPi[edit]
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From a pad session:
-
-bootleg library: http://145.24.131.15:20190/
-Username: guest
-Password: thelibraryisopen
-
-
-Setting up a headless Calibre server
-http://linuxphilia.blogspot.com/2012/06/my-wife-and-i-like-to-read-books-on-go.html
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-Turning raspbeery pi to ebook server:
-https://opensource.com/article/17/6/raspberrypi-ebook-server
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-ctl + z to suspend a session in terminal, fg to rejoin
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-usbmount: automatically mounts USB mass storage devices (typically USB pens) when they are plugged in, and unmounts them when they are removed.
-but it didn't work ;(
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-https://www.raspberrypi-spy.co.uk/2014/05/how-to-mount-a-usb-flash-disk-on-the-raspberry-pi/
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-init.d and service files
-generating a /etc/init.d/calibre file, and paste bash script from line 6 to file.
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-what is init.d?
-read on:
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- https://bash.cyberciti.biz/guide//etc/init.d
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- https://www.ghacks.net/2009/04/04/get-to-know-linux-the-etcinitd-directory/
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- https://askubuntu.com/questions/5039/what-is-the-difference-between-etc-init-and-etc-init-d
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- https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/20357/how-can-i-make-a-script-in-etc-init-d-start-at-boot
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- http://linux-tutorial.info/modules.php?name=ManPage&sec=7&manpage=init.d
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-what is daemon?
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- http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/daemon.3.html
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-https://askubuntu.com/questions/666423/run-script-at-startup-in-etc-init-d#666480
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-sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/calibre
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-sudo update-rc.d calibre defaults
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-
-other than init.d there is systemd, which is supposed to be faster
-
-sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/calibre.service
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-[Unit]
-Description=Calibre.
-After=syslog.target network.target
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-[Service]
-Type=simple
-User=pi
-Group=pi
-WorkingDirectory=/home/pi
-ExecStart=/usr/bin/nodejs /opt/etherpad/node_modules/ep_etherpad-lite/node/server.js
-Restart=always
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-[Install]
-WantedBy=multi-user.target
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-sudo service ~insert program
-
-installed calibre web!
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-also check out
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- http://internet-in-a-box.org/
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- https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web
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What makes up a text depends on perspective and overlapping dimensions of text; editorial, technical and social.
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The editorial dimension; a sequence. A line of characters and spaces, the particular order that the writer sets these in. Text becomes an object, a carrier of thoughts and feelings, something that can be sent back and forth between participants in a conversation.
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The technical dimension; a process. Cybertexts and “ergodic literature” require non-trivial effort to read[1]. Examples of this are MUDs (multi-user dungeons/domains/dimensions), which are real-time virtual worlds in which the players construct the story on-the-fly, and Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves[2], a printed novel that defies a linear narrative structure through its cybertextual materiality.
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The social dimension; a framework, a network of texts that elicit further texts.
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The library is a collection of texts; not just books, but also files, metadata, scripts and the processes that determine how they are used, and the readers who use them.
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Image: A spread from Danielewski’s House of Leaves
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↑Aarseth, E.J. (1997) Cybertext: perspectives on ergodic literature. Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press.
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↑Danielewski, M.Z. (2000) Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of leaves. 2nd ed. New York: Pantheon Books.
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text, tbc is an essay written as a contribution to a publication, as part of Onomatopee's Meeting Grounds public program. In this essay I describe my interest in text's overlapping dimensions: the editorial, technical and social. The text is performed through the use of Etherpad: as a writing environment to create the text, a software to reflect on, and a live editable document which anyone may edit, if they know the URL.
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The essay below, text, tbc, lives in a pad on a server hosted by Experimental Publishing (XPUB), at the Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam.
-This a live text, welcome to be edited by anyone. However, in the interests of transparency and care towards yourself and others, please be aware of the following:
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VISIBILITY:
-This pad isn't indexed by search engines, but it is 100% public to anyone who knows its URL.
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PRIVACY:
-This pad is not encrypted, meaning that it is not private. Anyone who can access the server can also see its content.
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RETENTION:
-Text can change, rapidly and in real time, making this a dynamic, but ultimately unstable environment. Make backups regularly if you wish to keep copies.
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ACCESSIBILITY:
-Pads can go down for many reasons, such as scheduled server maintenance, unforeseen events, and of course, human error. It is impossible to determine the identity of an author and XPUB does not respond to pad retrieval requests.
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CONVIVIALITY:
-Please be as respectful and supportive towards other reader/writers as possible. Don't delete anything, just add.
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-text, tbc
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Text flies in an endless stream before your eyes. News reports, longform articles, facts and figures, documents and messages sent at all hours of the day and night; it is always daylight somewhere in the world and there is always something new to report. You see text, but you don't have the time to carefully read and absorb it. You have never read or written so much. Your phone buzzes with the input and output of messages and notifications. You are exhausted by the letters, numbers, punctuation, and spaces that make up what is usually called “text”.
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But the overwhelming presence of text is not felt just in the material form of its characters, or the spaces between them. It resides in text's overlapping dimensions and resulting viewpoints and how these influence practices of reading and writing.
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The editorial dimension; text is a sequence. A line of characters and spaces, the particular order that the writer sets these in. Text becomes an object, a carrier of thoughts and feelings, something that can be sent back and forth between participants in a conversation.
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The technical dimension; text is a process. Messages and files that we share are text-based. A computer runs on software, programmed in encoded text, often the same characters that flicker before your eyes. Texts can be assembled on-the-fly as a machine reads scripts and writes output in response to input.
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The social dimension; text is a framework. The English word "text" has roots in the Proto-Indo-European word teks-, meaning “to weave, to fabricate, to make; make wicker or wattle framework”. A piece of writing is a text, and so is a conversation; texts represent the exchange of shared concepts (words, signs, representations) woven into a fabric of communication. There is also an exchange between written and spoken texts; oral discussions which prompt writing, and writing which sparks conversations. Texts elicit further texts.
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I’m typing this now using a self-hosted, open-source, browser-based, realtime, collaborative text-editing software called Etherpad. Etherpad is many things, as you can probably tell by the string of adjectives in my previous sentence. The pad, as it is colloquially (somewhat affectionately) known by many users, has its own peculiar twist on online public space and subsequently, the public it makes. An environment; a combination of particular conditions set by hardware and software that determine how a user operates within it. The pad is an unstable, dynamic environment open to participation, often without notions of consistency in formatting, or singularity in authorship. For a start, anyone who knows the URL can edit what is written here. This text could easily become an unruly wall built without convention, just sitting there in the browser. And though you, dear readers, may also become writers, you will barely recognise each other as authors.
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Some of you will choose a username, some will remain unnamed by default. I often call myself karen eliot (all lowercase), a shared pen name favoured by the Neoists, an art movement famous for creating multiple definitions of itself. karen eliot is everyone and no-one, and on the pad, so am I. In collaborative writing sessions, what I type becomes intermingled with the writings of others until I can hardly say it is mine any more; copy-pasted, deleted, overwritten, rephrased, paraphrased and line-edited to the nth degree. As authorship colours and names change at whim, it's almost impossible for writers to know who is who unless you go back through the version history and/or sleuth the chat section for clues. But it's hardly important when the purpose is to write together.
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Sometimes I use it to write by myself, typing into the pad as the server records a mind-boggling database of every key I press, every action I undo. I slide back in time through this text (the one you're reading) to see revisions in the version history. So far the only author there is myself, although all anyone needs to do is type (even a space), and they will automatically join karen eliot as a listed co-author. Add multiple users at multiple keyboards, all free to edit autonomously, and the writing starts to become definitively less a work of singular authorship, and more a woven multiplicity of perspectives.
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Often the pad serves as a note-taking accompaniment to a spoken conversation, transcribing each other's words, turning our speech into text. Fingers typing rapidly, trying to keep up with the pace of dictation will make mistakes. In response, a distinct protocol develops in support of diverse ways of reading and writing. Spell-checking is often unnecessary; writers may mis-type, but ultimately, their/they're/there spelling isn't a concern as long as it doesn't get in the way of communication. I'm reminded of Samizdat publishers, who eschewed the title of "author" in favour of “typist” or “editor” due to the unwanted attention and risk it would bring to themselves and their dissident republications of censored books. Editing, typing, reproducing texts by hand; all of this encourages a slippery form of authorship through human error and idiosyncratic preferences for a new phrase, sense-for-sense translation or structure. When no writer is the discernible author, everyone becomes a text editor.
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The pad exemplifies the editorial, technical and social dimensions of text. New editors respond with reactions that range from eager enthusiasm to shy suspicion. For some, the pad seems too public, too immediate, too dynamic. What we type, delete, mis-type or mis-spell is there for all to see as we do it. But for the enthusiasts, individually-coloured sentences quickly proliferate into multicoloured streams of collaborative writing. For all its dynamic energy and realtime nature, the pad generates an aura of calm. It's not a feed which must be scrolled, there are no read receipts and no-one can be left on seen. Indeed, nothing can be sent or unsent, nor for that matter, unseen. There are no notifications, it doesn't buzz in the middle of the night. When I come back to it a day or so later, a new text has evolved. There are no other readers or writers there now, only myself, karen eliot. I pause, taking the time to read and absorb it.
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—Simon Browne, Rotterdam, April 2020
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With special thanks to Steve Rushton and Michael Murtaugh.
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The digital collection is formed from individual uploads made by readers who care to share. Uploading takes time—a precious commodity for many readers—and each upload is a deliberate action, not an afterthought. Fostering a culture of uploading requires a decentralised network of readers, and likewise, librarians. A different notion of librarianship is required; the librarian is not the central hub of access to knowledge, but each reader should be a librarian, with the ability to produce, recommend and request texts from others.
-
To enable, start, stop, or check the status of the nginx web server, a service file is needed. To create one in a systemd Linux distribution, make this file:
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/lib/systemd/system/nginx.service
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with the following contents:
-
-
# Stop dance for nginx
-# =======================
-#
-# ExecStop sends SIGSTOP (graceful stop) to the nginx process.
-# If, after 5s (--retry QUIT/5) nginx is still running, systemd takes control
-# and sends SIGTERM (fast shutdown) to the main process.
-# After another 5s (TimeoutStopSec=5), and if nginx is alive, systemd sends
-# SIGKILL to all the remaining processes in the process group (KillMode=mixed).
-#
-# nginx signals reference doc:
-# http://nginx.org/en/docs/control.html
-#
-[Unit]
-Description=A high performance web server and a reverse proxy server
-Documentation=man:nginx(8)
-After=network.target nss-lookup.target
-
-[Service]
-Type=forking
-PIDFile=/run/nginx.pid
-ExecStartPre=/usr/sbin/nginx -t -q -g 'daemon on; master_process on;'
-ExecStart=/usr/sbin/nginx -g 'daemon on; master_process on;'
-ExecReload=/usr/sbin/nginx -g 'daemon on; master_process on;' -s reload
-ExecStop=-/sbin/start-stop-daemon --quiet --stop --retry QUIT/5 --pidfile /run/nginx.pid
-TimeoutStopSec=5
-KillMode=mixed
-
-[Install]
-WantedBy=multi-user.target
-
I tried using the Bookscanner, built as part of Special Issue 5 OuNuPo. The Bookscanner needed a few adjustments before it was ready to use. The documentation is rather limited, but the software is set up so that it is quite easy to work out how to use it.
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The scanner takes photos of even and odd pages, from cameras mounted above the glass. First, you have to mount a drive in which the scanned images will be stored. Then, you can adjust the zoom, and shutter speed. I found it impossible to take an image of only the page, so I will need to crop out everything around it in the future.
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I scanned a book, and made jpegs of each page. The pages are oriented from the camera's perspective, like so:
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Next, I ran a script that does OCR on jpegs that Pedro, Tancre and Bo made for their workshop Blurry Boundaries as part of Special Issue 9: The Library Is Open. This created two PDFs, with OCR. The next step will to be to work out how to rotate the images 90 degrees to the correct orientation, (clockwise for the odd pages, anti-clockwise for the even pages), and crop the images.
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Writing is a technology which transforms cultures, particularly from pre-literate perceptions of memory as a commemorative act bound to the flux of human experience, to post-literate thinking of it as containers within which to store information. The invention of the Greek alphabet, with its introduction of letters representing vowels[1], connected speech with a form of its material representation. This technological development resonates with how we perceive oral communication—thinking of spoken language through the lens of literacy; as discrete, easily divisible units, like printed words punctuated by neat spaces. It all falls apart when speech-to-text transcription software “doesn’t work” (meaning that it works in ways that we do not expect). The result is that speech, essentially the long continuous sounds that we make with our mouths, tongues, teeth, lips and throat, comes out as gobbledygook on the screen.
-
Writing is a fundamental part of the library. Not only in the written texts it contains, but also in the texts it produces; metadata (information such as author, title, subject, description, publisher, etc), annotations made by readers, readers made by readers, correspondence between the users about the texts, which form a dialectical synopsis. The library is sustained through producing texts which argue for its legitimacy by representing the readers who use it.
-
Image: Very early Greek abecedariums, inscriptions of the alphabet in order, typically used as a practice exercise in learning writing, from Drucker, J. (1999) The alphabetic labyrinth: the letters in history and imagination. London: Thames & Hudson
-
-
-
↑Hobart, M.E. and Schiffman, Z.S. (1998) Information ages: literacy, numeracy, and the computer revolution. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
-
Borges - "The Don Quixote of Pierre Menard" - the recreation of Don Quixote (even though word-for-word) is a different work due to the cultural context it was produced in
-
the transformation of a print document into an electronic text is a form of translation "media translation"
-
Dene Grigar in Mutability, Medium & Character - "something is gained as well as lost in translation"
-
our notions of textuality are shot through with assumptions specific to print
editors think it makes sense to talk about a text, separate from its physical embodiment in an artifact
-
Peter Shillingsburg: a text is "the actual order of words and punctuation as contained in any one physical form, such as manuscript, proof or book"
-
problems with this: the text remains the same though the signs for it are different
-
later definition from Shillingsburg: a text is "a compound of matter, concept and execution"
-
thinking of a text as the order of words and punctuation is print-centric, also presumes the text resides at one location
-
in texts assembled on the fly, the text as actual order of words and punctuation does not exist in data files
-
text comes into existence as a process
-
Shillingsburg's definition fails to account for qualities such as colour, font size and shape, and page placement, not to mention electronic-specific effects such as animation, mouseovers, instantaneous linking
-
Platonic definition of a "work" creates "a desire to suppress unruliness and multiplicity in order to converge on an ideal "work"
-
Translating texts into electronic documents - TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) community arrived at the principle of OHCO (ordered hierarchy of content objects)
-
Mats Dahlström: the markup of a text is "a theory of this text, and a general markup language is a general theory or conception of text"
-
Three positions within the text encoding community
-
OHCO: a text consists of a hierarchical set of objects (such as chapters, sections, subsections, paragraphs and sentences), a Platonist perspective
-
pluralism: a text consists of not just one hierarchy, but several interpenetrating hierarchies (e.g. a verse drama which can be parsed as sentences or metrical lines), epistemologically, texts are systems of ordered hierarchies, DTDs (document type definitions) were designed to introduce more flexibility into the system
-
antirealism (Renear): "text does not preexist encoding as a stable ontological object but is brought into existence through implicit assumptions actualized through encoding procedures". Pichler: "Our aim in transcription is not to represent as accurately as possible the originals, but rather to prepare from the original another text so as to serve as accurately as possible certain interests in the text." Ambiguities: Which certain interests?
-
All three positions focus almost exclusively on linguistic codes, allowing them to leave the document as physical artefact out of the discussion
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Although the editors of the William Blake Archive recognise the book as a physical object, they implicitly understand the bibliographic in terms of the visual
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The feel and smell of a book cannot be reproduced in digital codes
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Choices about which aspects to encode (in the William Blake Archive) are heavily weighted towards the linguistic rather than the bibliographic
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"There are only physical objects such as books and computers, foci of attention, and codes that entrain attention and organize material operations. Since no print books can be completely encoded into digital media, we should think about correspondences rather than ontologies, entraining processes rather than isolated objects, and codes moving in coordinated fashion across representational media rather than mapping one object onto another."
-
Physicality, Materiality and Embodied Textuality (pg 97)[edit]
-
editors seek to separate the work from its physical instantiation
-
Jerome McGann in Radiant Textuality writes of experiments in failure dubbed "deformations"
Transcription (and partial redaction) of a pad used to draft a text for printed matter and digital publicity of the event.
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flyer side 1 (main text)
-
-
-
bootleg library sessions
-
where?
-varia, a collective-space for everyday technology (gouwstraat 3)
-
when?
-sunday, 26.01.20, 11:00-17:00 (ongoing sessions, you can come or go anytime)
-
what to bring?
-a computer and some of your favourite ebooks (PDF, EPUB, whatever)
-
what will we do?
-we’ll have an introduction to the “bootleg library”, which is a shared digital and physical library of bootlegged texts. let’s make user accounts, download and upload some texts, talk about what we’re reading and how we like to organise our bookshelves, and together discuss ways the library can develop.
-
flyer side 2 (more info)
-
-
-
about the bootleg library
-the bootleg library is a digital, and physical collection of texts. the library consists of bootlegged texts, not in the sense of cheap knock-offs, but instead as unauthorised, fairly faithful reproductions of source publications. development of the library is ongoing, in line with feedback given during sessions.
-
the physical library is a growing collection of republished books, currently stored in an old champagne case. most of these are bootlegged by library members, some donated by visitors. the digital library (running on the open-source software calibre-web) is available at this URL:
-
hub.xpub.nl/bootleglibrary
-
then enter in the following login details:
-
user: {redacted}
-password: {redacted}
-
user accounts
-registered users can access all of the features of the library, including creating and editing public and private “shelves”, which are ways to organise the collection together, or individually. user account registrations can be made at bootleg library sessions, or by request (send an email to simon at redacted@gmail.com).
-
the current collection
-the bootleg library is small but growing, individually uploaded and catalogued by readers who are motivated simply by the desire to share the texts they read. and so the collection represents the readers interests, which range from critical theory to feminisms to literature to technical manuals and zines (and a lot more).
-
waar?
-varia, een collectieve ruimte voor alledaagse technologie (gouwstraat 3)
-
wanneer?
-zondag 26.01.20, 11:00-17:00 (doorlopend, je kan op ieder moment aansluiten)
-
wat mee te nemen?
-een computer en een paar van je favoriete digitale boeken (PDF, EPUB, wat dan ook)
-
wat gaan we doen?
-er zal een introductie over de “bootleg library” zijn, een gedeelde digitale en fysieke bibliotheek met “bootlegged” teksten. we kunnen gebruikersaccounts maken, teksten up- en downloaden, gesprekken hebben over hetgene dat we lezen of over hoe we onze eigen boekenplanken organiseren, en samen een gesprek voeren over mogelijke ontwikkelingen van deze bibliotheek.
-
flyer side 2 (more info)
-
-
-
over de “bootleg library”
-de “bootleg library” is een digitale en fysieke collectie van teksten. deze bibliotheek bestaat uit “bootlegged” teksten. dit zijn geen goedkope aftreksels, maar ongeautoriseerde, vrij precieze reproducties van orginele publicaties. de bibliotheek is in ontwikkeling, en laat zich sturen door de gesprekken die tijdens sessies worden gevoerd.
-
de fysieke bibliotheek is een groeiende collectie van hergepubliceerde boeken, op dit moment opgeslagen in een oude champagne doos. het grootste deel van deze publicaties zijn “bootlegs” van leden van de bibliotheek, anderen zijn gedoneerd door bezoekers. de digitale bibliotheek (die draait op het open source software project calibre-web) is te vinden op:
-
hub.xpub.nl/bootleglibrary
-
daar kun je de volgende login gegevens invoeren:
-
user: {geredigeerd}
-password: {geredigeerd}
-
gebruikersaccounts
-geregistreerde gebruikers kunnen alle functies van de bibliotheek gebruiken, zoals het maken en aanpassen van publieke en persoonlijke “planken”, een instrument om collecties samen of individueel te beheren. gebruikersaccounts kunnen gemaakt worden tijdens “bootleg library” sessies, of op aanvraag (send an email to simon at geredigeerd@gmail.com).
-
de huidige collectie
-the “bootleg library” is klein maar groeiende, individueel geupload en beheerd door lezers die simpelweg gemotiveerd zijn om teksten te delen die zij lezen. de collectie reflecteert daardoor de interesse van haar lezers, wat variëert van kritische theorie tot feminismes tot literatuur tot technische handleidingen en zines (en nog veel meer).
-
The first bootleg library sessions were held in Wijnhaven 61, a building that houses several of the Piet Zwart Institute Master's Departments, including XPUB, Lens-Based, MIARD, and the Master in Arts Education. The building also is home to many bachelor students, and stations where students can prototype work. I decided to run introduction sessions in a small room in the drawing station. I advertised these sessions with posters and flyers, distributed throughout Wijnhaven 61 and the adjacent Blaak building. Sessions were organised as a come-as-you-are basis, running for half-hour intervals, but with an open invitation for attendees to stay as long as they liked. The initial purpose of these sessions was to acquaint attendees with the digital bootleg library, explore the interface, and create registered user accounts. There was also another purpose of meeting with other readers to discuss texts we were reading, and how we gained access to them. I kept an Etherpad document open for each session, where I could take notes on what was discussed.
-
Varia is a collective-space in Gouwstraat, Rotterdam. On the last Sunday of each month they open their doors to the public to read books from their library and repair electronics, in what is known as the L.E.D (Library & Electronic Depot). I held a bootleg library session at the first L.E.D., which ended up being a sunny, relaxing afternoon sitting on cushions, discussing bootlegs, scanning, piracy, and the type of strategies that the physical bootleg library could employ.
-
This bootleg library session was held in a new space at Karel Doormanhof 45, called "The Library". The building is home to studios for Piet Zwart Institute MA Fine Arts participants. The first hour of the session was initially only attended by one other participant, and then others arrived. All told, there session was attended by 5 participants, including myself. The attendees interests were well reflected in the type fo texts we discussed and shared - literary theory, writing, 60s counterculture, the occult and magick. This was the first time I used the Tasks of the Contingent Librarian cards - these were distributed over the table, and put on offer for participants to choose and begin conversations about the various tasks I had been writing about; e.g. reading/writing, skimming/scanning, bootlegging, reprinting, uploading/downloading etc. This provided an easy entry point for participants to approach the topic of bootlegging and the contingencies this type of library offered.
-
Meeting Grounds is a public program organised by Onomatopee Projects, a Dutch publisher and cultural space in Eindhoven. This bootleg library session was held in Eindhoven at Onomatopee HQ as part of Meeting Grounds. It was attended by a group of friends, who were all of similar ages. After we cooked lunch together, I invited participants to explore the printed books in the physical bootleg library, and also the A6 cards I had been producing for my thesis Tasks of the Contingent Librarian. I hoped these would spark conversation about our experiences of sharing files and piracy. The participants wrote notes in a pad as they made user accounts for the digital library, and personal anecdotes came out of our experiences of filesharing during our formative years, bootlegged Britney Spears cds and "chipped" game consoles that could play bootlegged games. Some quite interesting questions arose about our attitudes towards piracy, for example the difference in moral perspective between pirating books, and pirating films. I distributed some blank index cards for participants to write their thoughts on - some of them drew pictures, others stayed within the lines and wrote about texts they would like to download and upload. The interface of the card is a low entry point into being able to contribute texts without speaking out and interrupting a conversation, something I'd like to explore in the future. The cards provide feedback, and then become part of the index.
-
/ b \ o / o \ t / l \ e / g \ l / i \ b / r \ a / r \ y /
- \ a / t \
-/ m \ e / e \ t / i \ n / g \ g / r \ o / u \ n / d \ s
-
--------------------------------------------
-the bootleg library
-
-https://hub.xpub.nl/bootleglibrary
-
--------------------------------------------
-book sharing & annotation
-
-calibre
-ebook manager - you can download this, run it on your computer and share books over a local network using the content server function
-https://calibre-ebook.com/
-
-calibre-web
-web app that the bootleg library runs on (a fork of the open-source calibre software)
-https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web
-
-Annotation on the web - the holy grail with lots of projects:
-https://beepb00p.xyz/annotating.html
-
-also done very simply and effectively with genius:
-https://genius.com/
-
--------------------------------------------
-pirate/shadow/"extra-legal" libraries
-
-Monoskop
-https://monoskop.org/Monoskop
-
-Library Genesis (collection is HUGE and mirrored) - i usually use the russian site
-http://gen.lib.rus.ec/
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-Memory of the World
-https://library.memoryoftheworld.org/#/books/
-
-aaaaarg (only accessible by members. simon can invite you - just send him an email)
-https://aaaaarg.fail/
-
-ask for PDFs from people with institutional access
-group for informal PDF sharing through a social network
-https://www.facebook.com/groups/850609558335839/
-
-Sci-Hub (this is mirrored too, try googling if the link is down):
-https://mg.scihub.ltd/
-
-ubu-web
-kenneth goldsmith's baby - an archive of avant-garde cinema and writing
-http://ubu.com/
-
-Leeszaal
-not an online pirate library, but a volunteer-run place in Rotterdam where you can borrow books, look up information, learn how to use LINUX, study or just read the newspaper. Books are not catalogued, and if you want to borrow one, just take it off the shelf and walk out with it :)
-https://www.leeszaalrotterdamwest.nl/
-
--------------------------------------------
-legal online libraries & archives
-
-Project Gutenberg
-books are within the public domain (70+ years after death of the author), so free of copyright restrictions:
-https://www.gutenberg.org/
-
-The Internet Archive
-hosts a collection of books and more, also has the wayback machine (snapshots of web pages going back to the 90s)
-https://archive.org/
-
---------------------------------------------
-projects & open letters in support of and about piracy/peeracy
-
-In solidarity with Library Genesis and Sci-Hub
-an open letter calling for shadow librarians to come out of the shadows
-http://custodians.online/
-
-Alexandra Elbakyan to Mr. Robert W. Sweet (presiding judge in the Elsevier vs Sci-Hub et al court case)
-https://torrentfreak.com/images/sci-hub-reply.pdf
-
-and publishing
-http://andpublishing.org/
- The Piracy Project
- http://andpublishing.org/the-piracy-project/
-
---------------------------------------------
-loose thoughts from our conversation
-
-misspellings on ebay - how to exploit this to find undiscovered items http://fatfingers.com
-bootlegged DVDs and PS1 games - "chipping" to play bootlegged games
-social capital accumulated from having a chipped console
-
-The Pirate Book
-historical stories of piracy - warez, demoscene, music etc:
-https://hub.xpub.nl/bootleglibrary/read/290/pdf
-
-selling unauthorised copies out of a car boot = "boot"legging?
-
-why do we feel it's more threatening to pirate books than movies/music/games etc?
-where does the text reside?
-what if i read a book out loud and make a file on youtube - is it bootlegging?
-
-can the library also have audio/visual media?
- yes - the library is running on open-source software, so definitely possible. this requires an upgrade of the computer and data storage
-what is more of a risk - a shared google drive of PDFs or the bootleglib?
- a shared google drive is more risky - the bootleg library has several security measures in place to keep it private
-will i get into trouble for using the bootleg library?
- haha - not very likely :)
-can readers communicate with each other through the bootleglib?
- not directly, but possible by adding links to etherpads (like this one) in the description fields
---------------------------------------------
-some interesting things to watch & read on archives, libraries, piracy and activism
-
-things to read:
-
- the science of piracy and the piracy of science by bodo balasz (an economist researching use of pirate libraries)
- Part 1: http://copyrightblog.kluweriplaw.com/2019/03/06/the-science-of-piracy-the-piracy-of-science-who-are-the-science-pirates-and-where-do-they-come-from-part-1/
- Part 2: http://copyrightblog.kluweriplaw.com/2019/03/21/the-science-of-piracy-the-piracy-of-science-who-are-the-science-pirates-and-where-do-they-come-from-part-2/
-
- a view from elsewhere on authorship, copyright and creativity by eva weinmayr (of and publishing and the piracy project)
- https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mw-mediadesign/images/d/dd/Confronting_Authorship_Published_with_content_page--Whose_book_is_it_anyway.pdf
-
- articles by shannon mattern on self-organised and "fugitive" libraries
- https://placesjournal.org/article/marginalia-little-libraries-in-the-urban-margins/
- https://placesjournal.org/article/fugitive-libraries/
-
- interview with kate eichhorn, author of the archival turn in feminism
- https://criticalmargins.com/interview-with-kate-eichhorn-author-of-the-archival-turn-in-feminism-a204b02ae340
-
-things to watch:
-
- Digital Amnesia
- https://youtu.be/NdZxI3nFVJs
- "Our memory is dissipating. Hard drives only last five years, a web page is forever changing and there’s no machine left that reads 15-year old floppy disks. Digital data is vulnerable. Yet entire libraries are shredded and lost to budget cuts, because we assume everything can be found online."
-
- The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz
- https://archive.org/details/TheInternetsOwnBoyTheStoryOfAaronSwartz
- "The Internet's Own Boy depicts the life of American computer programmer, writer, political organizer and Internet activist Aaron Swartz. It features interviews with his family and friends as well as the internet luminaries who worked with him. The film tells his story up to his eventual suicide after a legal battle, and explores the questions of access to information and civil liberties that drove his work."
-
---------------------------------------------
-King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard
-Polygondwanaland is free for everybody and you can do with what you.
-From the band's post accompanying links to different digital packs:
-"This album is FREE. Free as in, free. Free to download and if you wish, free to make copies.
-Make tapes, make CD’s, make records.
-[...]
-Ever wanted to start your own record label? GO for it! Employ your mates, press wax, pack boxes. We do not own this record. You do. Go forth, share, enjoy."
-https://www.discogs.com/King-Gizzard-And-The-Lizard-Wizard-Polygondwanaland/master/1268453
-
-100 copies of the white album played at once
-https://thevinylfactory.com/news/artist-layers-100-unique-copies-of-the-beatles-white-album-for-original-vinyl-release/
-
-royalty-free audio
-http://freesound.org
-
-spotify scanning interface
-http://everynoise.com/
-
-sharpest knife ever made from {insert substance here}
-https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg3qsVzHeUt5_cPpcRtoaJQ
-
-
-Bootleg Britney / A bootleg CD bought at the market in Montenegro had 3 extra unpublished songs in comparison to the actual album on sale in the shops - what message was Britney sending me?! i <3 this story
-
-
bootleg library at Art Meets Radical Openness 21.05.20[edit]
Bootleg Library Session: Notes on Texts
-The bootleg library is a particular, situated social infrastructure that operates from the understanding that the library is a collection of texts and readers. A reciprocal, self-reflexive relationship between the texts the readers produce, and the readers produced by the collection drives the sociability of the library. The bootleg library celebrates idiosyncrasy, and resists the singularity of the text.
-
A bootleg is an unauthorised copy of a source publication; bootlegging is a strategy by which texts acquire multiplicity of form and informal distribution methods, representing readers and connecting them with each other.
-
Abstract of session
-Notes on Texts is a session that annotates a library. It understands reading and writing to be fundamental library practices, and asks how new reader/writers may participate in producing texts that both describe the collection and represent themselves. This session will be centred around the *bootleg library*, a shared digital and physical collection
-of republished texts. Bootlegs; unauthorised copies of source publications that represent ourselves, our multiplicity and our shared interests. A library; a collection of texts and also the readers collected around them.
-
Previous bootleg library sessions have been moments to meet in various spaces with the people who frequent them, discuss things we read, add to the collection, and offer each other contingencies through the texts we share.
-
For this session we'll meet online in a web conference, in the digital bootleg library, and in a realtime collaborative text-editing environment. We'll explore how being together in- and out of sync and the mediums and techniques we use will shape the texts we share.
-
You are invited to experiment with annotation to produce texts by new readers (and writers), imagining ways that we can guide each other towards the things we read. What type of contingencies can we offer each other at our meeting and throughout AMRO2020, using the particular, situated social infrastructure the *bootleg library* maintains? How can we enrich texts through our annotations, and what kind of new texts can we produce through our notes?
-
Requirements
-The bootleg library has grown through individual contributions of a vast variety of texts. The collection includes many texts on critical feminist and media theory, literature, sound art, as well as technical manuals, but the collection is not exclusive to these interests. There is no set criteria for texts that can be included. Please come to this session with any ebooks that you are familiar with, are representative of your interests, and which you would like to share.
-
This session will focus specifically on annotation. Please prepare annotation(s) on the text(s) you'd like to include in the library.
-
File formats
-The bootleg library runs on calibre-web https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web , and supports a wide range of file formats, including .pdf, .epub, .mobi, .docx, .odt, .rtf, .txt, .mp3, .mp4a, .cbr, .cbz, .cbt, and many more.
-
We planned to meet in an online web conference, in an Etherpad and in the digital bootleg library. This was tricky, given that many of us were meeting for the first time, and we didn't have the same visual cues to work with. After a brief tutorial, we went through the library and added annotations in a pad. This has been transposed here
-
The basic workflow was:
-
pdf > pad > markdown > pandoc > EPUB > library
-
We chose a page from a PDF in the library to annotate, then wrote on pad, collaboratively. Markdown was added to create basic structure (this was especially important for the hyperlinks), and then we exported a .txt file from the pad. This was then run through pandoc with the following command:
-
bootleg library sessions at WdKA
-
-27.11.19
-10:20-10:50, 10:50-11:20, 11:20-11:50
-Attendees: Simon, Mia, Angeliki
-
-multiple languages?
-possibly hard to find in their native language e.g. slovene PDFs
-
-šum magazine: http://sumrevija.si/en/
-
-shelves:
- buttons! red button is very attractive
- download everything at once in a shelf?
-
-categories - and sub-categories?
-tags and categories separate?
-categories chosen by drop-down, tags individually decided
-temporality, personal aspect of tags e.g. #trending
-tags become keywords
-
-+ recently added
-+ hot books
-
-from book view - can you make a new shelf there?
-related books in book view - e.g. you may also like (and can be related to tags/categories)
-
-Simon's favourite pirate libraries
-https://aaaaarg.fail/ (by invitation only)
-https://library.memoryoftheworld.org/
-https://monoskop.org/Monoskop
-http://gen.lib.rus.ec/
-
-bootleg library link & link to pad on the main page of the wiki?
-
-journal articles - how do you enter in autumn 1977 in publishing date?
-
-case sensitivity for tags?
-
-JSTOR watermarking - how do we remove this/ use our own watermarks?
-
-Martino knows how to remove watermarks
-https://piratebox.cc/
-
-remove watermark from pdf: https://superuser.com/questions/448519/how-to-remove-watermark-from-pdf-using-pdftk
- sed -e "s/watermarktextstring/ /g" <input.pdf >unwatermarked.pdf && pdftk unwatermarked.pdf output fixed.pdf && mv fixed.pdf unwatermarked.pdf
-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
-28.11.19
-10:00-10:30, 10:30-11:00
-Attendees: Simon, Ugo
-
-French language texts - classic & contemporary social sciences from University of Quebec
-http://classiques.uqac.ca
-
-Collective Memory - Maurice Halbwachs
-Georg Simmel - The Philosophy of Money
-
-Google Scholar for academic texts?
-
-https://scholar.google.com/
-
-Descriptions for non-English books, not in English?
-
-date of publication - had to click on 2/1/1925 to enter 1/1/1925!!!
-
-"Upload Format" vs Submit button - a bit confusing at the moment
-
-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
-04.12.19
-10:00-10:30, 10:30-11:00
-Attendees: Simon, Sonia, Wilma
-
-Sonia - using Zotero a lot at the moment, likes writing tags
-
-library loaded in French on Chrome!
-
-uploading - can't upload large files!!!
-
-Categories:
- difficult with tagging people - hard to remember who the reference was
-
-At some point people will look for specific things, when the collection grows
-
-How do I browse everything?
-
-LB is very self-directed
-
-Finding contemporary references is hard - easy to find Susan Sontag, Flusser, but what about today?
-
-found references through other books - e.g. non-human photography > anthropology of tourism
-not often through people
-
-it's about having a space to have conversations - reading groups etc
-
-focus group classes: what is artistic research?
-
-Wilma Knol (librarian at Research Station), ginger koons, Jojanneke Gijsen
-
-memory of the library - remembering student through books they borrowed
-e.g. painters who borrowed Phillip Guston books
-
-From 12-1 December 11th in the library
-"make a sustainable library for the future" directive from management - inclusivity
-Cataloguing
-
-library thing - open source library
-https://www.librarything.com/
-
The bootleg library runs on a Raspberry Pi (RPi) single-board computer. The operating system of the RPi is stored on an SD card, that must be "flashed" with an "image" of the operating system in order to boot the computer.
-
There are various distributions you can choose from, depending on how you want to use the computer. This page from the Raspberry Pi documentation gives a good guide on how to install an operating system image on an SD card using Raspberry Pi Imager, or manually. For the bootleg library, I initially installed Buster-lite, and then eventually switched to a plain-text environment because it was lighter.
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I used software called balena etcher, but you can also attempt to install a distribution using the dreaded dd command to convert and copy the exact image on to the SD card. dd is sometimes referred to as the "disk destroyer", so use with caution.
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In order to find the unique reference (UUID) for your drive run the following command in the terminal :
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ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid/
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This will give you an output that should list your drive :
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The line will usually refer to “/sda” and in this example it is “sda1”. My ID is “989B-E900”. Note down yours.
-You would need to repeat this step if you wanted to use a different device as the UUID would be different.
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A mount point is a directory that will point to the contents of your flash drive. Create a suitable folder :
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sudo mkdir /media/usb
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I’m using “usb” but you can give it whatever name you like. Keep it short as it saves typing later on. Now we need to make sure the Pi user owns this folder :
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To manually mount the drive use the following command :
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sudo mount /dev/sda1 /media/usb -o uid=pi,gid=pi
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-This will mount the drive so that the ordinary Pi user can write to it. Omitting the “-o uid=pi,gid=pi” would mean you could only write to it using “sudo”.
-Now you can read, write and delete files using “/media/usb” as a destination or source without needing to use sudo.
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You don’t need to manually un-mount if you shutdown your Pi but if you need to remove the drive at any other time you should un-mount it first. Only the user that mounted the drive can un-mount it.
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umount /media/usb
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If you used the fstab file to auto-mount it you will need to use :
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sudo umount /media/usb
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If you are paying attention you will notice the command is “umount” NOT “unmount”!
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When you restart your Pi your mounts will be lost and you will need to repeat Step 4. If you want your USB drive to be mounted when the system starts you can edit the fstab file :
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The “nofail” option allows the boot process to proceed if the drive is not plugged in. The “noatime” option stops the file access time being updated every time a file is read from the USB stick. This helps improve performance.
-This is what my fstab file looks like:
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Make sure you set the correct UUID. Use CTRL-X followed by Y to save and exit the nano editor.
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Now reboot :
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sudo reboot
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Your USB drive should be auto-mounted and available as “/media/usb”.
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In the examples above I specified “vfat” as the file system of the device as it was formatted as FAT32. If you need to change the file system replace references of “vfat” with “ntfs-3g”, “ext3” or “ext4”.
-If you are using NTFS you will also need to install the following package :
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This technique suits my applications but the main disadvantage is that it is specific to a known USB device given we are using the device ID. However if you created a few mount points in advance you could manually mount a new device to a spare mount point without worrying about updating the fstab file.
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You can easily create a unit file for calibre to run on boot on a modern (systemd) based Linux system. This means it will also restart after a crash. Create the file /etc/systemd/system/calibre-server.service with the contents shown below:
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The User and Group should be the same ones that own the files in the calibre library directory. It's generally not a good idea to run the server as root. Also change the path to the calibre library directory to suit your system.
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The calibre server does not need a running X server, but it does need the X libraries installed as some components it uses link against them.
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The calibre server also supports systemd socket activation, so you can use that, if needed, as well.
-This is the configuration for calibre-web to listen on localhost:
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To enable, start, stop, or check the status of the nginx web server, a service file is needed. To create one in a systemd Linux distribution, make this file:
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/lib/systemd/system/nginx.service
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with the following contents:
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# Stop dance for nginx
-# =======================
-#
-# ExecStop sends SIGSTOP (graceful stop) to the nginx process.
-# If, after 5s (--retry QUIT/5) nginx is still running, systemd takes control
-# and sends SIGTERM (fast shutdown) to the main process.
-# After another 5s (TimeoutStopSec=5), and if nginx is alive, systemd sends
-# SIGKILL to all the remaining processes in the process group (KillMode=mixed).
-#
-# nginx signals reference doc:
-# http://nginx.org/en/docs/control.html
-#
-[Unit]
-Description=A high performance web server and a reverse proxy server
-Documentation=man:nginx(8)
-After=network.target nss-lookup.target
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-[Service]
-Type=forking
-PIDFile=/run/nginx.pid
-ExecStartPre=/usr/sbin/nginx -t -q -g 'daemon on; master_process on;'
-ExecStart=/usr/sbin/nginx -g 'daemon on; master_process on;'
-ExecReload=/usr/sbin/nginx -g 'daemon on; master_process on;' -s reload
-ExecStop=-/sbin/start-stop-daemon --quiet --stop --retry QUIT/5 --pidfile /run/nginx.pid
-TimeoutStopSec=5
-KillMode=mixed
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-[Install]
-WantedBy=multi-user.target
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In November 2018, I experimented with a timed writing task using Etherpad, a collaborative realtime browser-based text editor. Etherpad automatically assigns authorship colours to users, and I wanted to explore how a text that I was writing, reading and editing over a specific time period could be visualised.
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The method was to write for one hour. I begin by writing a text about what I was doing (writing, reading and editing). For time constraints, I established writing periods of 3 minutes, and a rest period of 2 minutes. After 6 iterations, this shifted to 5 minutes for both respectively. I kept writing and opening up new private tabs in my browser to give each iteration new authorship colours. These are lost when exported, so I recreated the text and authorship colours to make visualisations.
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Each iteration is isolated in the following visualisations:
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21:10-21:15
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21:15-21:20
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21:20-21:25
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21:25-21:30
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21:30-21:35
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21:35-21:40
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21:40-21:50
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21:50-22:00
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22:00-22:10
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The authorship colours with text removed:
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The experiment showed me that editing is a way of writing, kind of like making growing a tree while making furniture from it. Whatever is written is there to be pruned and shaped into pieces that are joined together to form a supportive text structure. Etherpad makes this visible with its authorship colours, all the more so when it is used as it has been designed; collaboratively.
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The library is closed, the shelves are empty, the librarian has gone. All that is left is a set of index cards contained in a box. At the top of each card is a verb introducing the tasks performed within the space and duration of a particular, situated social infrastructure called the “bootleg library”. The reverse includes references and images that illustrate each task.
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This text was written with, by and for readers during library sessions. We wrote on cards by hand, we typed words in a collaborative writing environment. We wrote them together; humans and machines; texts were blended into a mix of keystrokes in changesets too complex, and dependencies too layered to determine singular authorship. These texts were never objects, always processes[1].
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Participation from readers became a vital element in the practice of librarianship. The library grew, and we sustained it through conversation and correspondence. We wrote together in threads and strings; and so we created and maintained a space for publication. In the journey from private to public collection, texts were intermingled and rematerialised, gaining provenance and diversification through use. The readers are in the pages of the books, in the metadata of the library and on these cards, where traces of their presence remain.
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This text will never be complete. It describes a particular, situated library, one that does not exist anymore, but resembles those that came before it and those that will succeed it. This set of cards is also a library, a collection organised into a structure that directs readers towards the interior, towards the texts it contains. This set is a book, a hyper-index, forever pointing outwards to other books, libraries, readers and writers. Text, library, book and index all come together in this particular material form to comprise a manual, a thing to be manipulated in the hands of readers.
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Cards invite shuffling, re-organising, flipping over, distributing, annotating, laying out. An A6 card like the one you’re holding now fits comfortably into the palm of one’s hand, and can be easily turned as it is gripped between the index finger and thumb.
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Cards have two sides. Arranged on a table, only one side is visible, and proximity determines connections. Held in the hands and flipped like a book, new relationships between the verso and recto pages emerge. The reader becomes the writer anew, determining what to keep or discard, what to edit or leave as is; the author of the sequence, connections and hierarchy between tasks.
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↑Barthes, R., ‘From Work to Text’, in Barthes, R. and Heath, S. (1987) Image, music, text. London: Fontana Press.
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*A note to the reader
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This text has been edited with the intention to be published in a very specific form; a hyperlinked index of the tasks of the contingent librarian. These tasks, performed on the site of contingencies, the bootleg library, are described on the obverse, and related images and links to snippets are on the reverse.
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Please read it while flipping through, shuffling and reordering them, making your own text as you read.
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diff --git a/sketches/site5/tasks/modal.js b/sketches/site5/tasks/modal.js
deleted file mode 100644
index 7d740aa..0000000
--- a/sketches/site5/tasks/modal.js
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,25 +0,0 @@
-// Get the modal
-var modal1 = document.getElementById("aboutModal");
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-// Get the button that opens the modal
-var btn1 = document.getElementById("aboutBtn");
-
-// Get the element that closes the modal
-var span1 = document.getElementsByClassName("close1")[0];
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-// When the user clicks the button, open the modal
-btn1.onclick = function() {
- modal1.style.display = "block";
-}
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-// When the user clicks on (x), close the modal
-span1.onclick = function() {
- modal1.style.display = "none";
-}
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-// When the user clicks anywhere outside of the modal, close it
-window.onclick = function(event) {
- if (event.target == modal1) {
- modal1.style.display = "none";
- }
-}
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/sketches/site5/tasks/nginx_configuration.html b/sketches/site5/tasks/nginx_configuration.html
deleted file mode 100644
index 5633d3d..0000000
--- a/sketches/site5/tasks/nginx_configuration.html
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,137 +0,0 @@
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- Tasks of the Contingent Librarian
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To enable, start, stop, or check the status of the nginx web server, a service file is needed. To create one in a systemd Linux distribution, make this file:
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/lib/systemd/system/nginx.service
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with the following contents:
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# Stop dance for nginx
-# =======================
-#
-# ExecStop sends SIGSTOP (graceful stop) to the nginx process.
-# If, after 5s (--retry QUIT/5) nginx is still running, systemd takes control
-# and sends SIGTERM (fast shutdown) to the main process.
-# After another 5s (TimeoutStopSec=5), and if nginx is alive, systemd sends
-# SIGKILL to all the remaining processes in the process group (KillMode=mixed).
-#
-# nginx signals reference doc:
-# http://nginx.org/en/docs/control.html
-#
-[Unit]
-Description=A high performance web server and a reverse proxy server
-Documentation=man:nginx(8)
-After=network.target nss-lookup.target
-
-[Service]
-Type=forking
-PIDFile=/run/nginx.pid
-ExecStartPre=/usr/sbin/nginx -t -q -g 'daemon on; master_process on;'
-ExecStart=/usr/sbin/nginx -g 'daemon on; master_process on;'
-ExecReload=/usr/sbin/nginx -g 'daemon on; master_process on;' -s reload
-ExecStop=-/sbin/start-stop-daemon --quiet --stop --retry QUIT/5 --pidfile /run/nginx.pid
-TimeoutStopSec=5
-KillMode=mixed
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-[Install]
-WantedBy=multi-user.target
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The physical bootleg library is housed in a disused champagne crate. It contains books that I have bootlegged myself, or ones that others have. It also contains books donated by visitors to wherever the library is (temporarily) installed. The library travels, and is part of bootleg library sessions held at PZI and at other locations.
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At Varia, Gouwstraat 3, with books distributed on table
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At the Library, Karel Doormanhof 45, ready to be unpacked
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At Onomatopee Projects, before the bootleg library session
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The IKEA trolley the physical bootleg library usually travels on. Biyi lent me the trolley, and in return, I bootlegged the IKEA logo to read AIKE (Biyi's husband's name)
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This book took quite some time to lay out. The original publication exists as an EPUB. You have to buy it, and it's not available in this format from the usual pirate libraries, but I did find an HTML version on https://monoskop.org/media/text/feminist_art_manifestos/
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I ran pandoc on the HTML file to turn it into a .rtf so that I could lay it out in InDesign using this command:
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$ pandoc -s source.html -o new_source.rtf
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This retained italics and hyperlinks (which was super nice), but there were lots of line-breaks that I didn't need and had to remove manually as find/change in InDesign is indiscriminate...
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In some ways the digital book is superior to the printed version as you can click on the hyperlinks to visit the source pages of many of these texts, something which is obviously impossible in the printed version, although it does say where the manifestos can be found.
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The interesting thing about doing this as a book sprint is the speed at which you have to make design decisions. This makes the design quite minimal, and the only typographic conceit here was with a decision to use a variety of indentation styles, which refers to the multiplicity of feminist manifestos. The interesting thing for me about these texts is that they show many different artistic views of feminism which don't necessarily agree with each other.
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During the time I was laying out this publication, I was invited by Artemis to join her and Paloma in applying to present our Marginal Conversations workshop in Athens at the ETC (Eclectic Tech Conference) festival. We were all pretty excited about the prospect, however as it turned out, some of the organisers were unsure about me presenting a workshop as a cis-gendered hetero man. Although I was disappointed, I understood the reasoning, as due to the nature of this particular conference (which started as a way for women and queer, trans & non-binary folk to share skills outside of a patriarchal male-dominated tech culture. I was reassured that this was not the opinion of all of the organisers, but of some, however, they were trying to reach a compromise with me and each other. I found this an interesting sidenote to the publication I was producing, in which there is a plurality of views that co-exist.
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I decided to print a second edition of this book for two reasons; 1) someone had borrowed the first edition three months ago and it hadn't been returned, and 2) what's a books of Feminist Art Manifestos without any images?
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I spent quite some time tracking down images to use in the book. Oftentimes I couldn't find an image that directly corresponded to the writer/writers of each manifesto, which created an interesting opportunity to think about who is represented by each text. Sometimes it was an image of an artwork (if the manifesto was written by an artist), sometimes an image of a collective or the publications they produces, often a portrait of the author or authors, sometimes an image of the manifesto as it appeared in print originally. Each manifesto text is prefaced by an image - abutting the text of a previous manifesto. This creates an interesting connection between seemingly disparate elements and waves of feminist movements. The book was printed in the same size as the first edition, with a grey cover, and noticeably more pages due to the addition of so many colour images.
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One of my favourite novels for its striking descriptions of colour. Written by "the other Murakami" (not Haruki). This was a relatively easy case of taking the text from an EPUB I found online. Again, the most tedious thing was removing the soft returns. Once I got through that, I decided to reflect the episodic nature of the novel by beginning every section with a drop cap. Another design decision was in the format - as it is originally a Japanese novel, I wanted to use a specific novel size common in Japan of 112x172mm. The blue square on the cover is a post-it note that I photocopied in single colour - blue; an impromptu decision. The cartridge was running out, which produced a very transparent blue.
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Front cover
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Spread: Sections introduced with drop capitals
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Back cover
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Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection[edit]
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Printed: 19.09.19
-Dimensions: 130x180mm
-Cover stock: Heavy green stock (unknown brand) - around 210gsm
-Text stock: Bio Top 80gsm
-Binding: Perfect bound (hot glue)
-Pages: 331pp
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Artemis messaged me asking if I was in the studio, and if I could find a book of Steve's that was about how the internet makes it seem like we're connected, though we're not. I found Steve's copy, but as Artemis was still in Greece I did a quick search online to see if I could find a digital version. The only one I could find was an EPUB, which I converted to an RTF using pandoc.
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This book took quite a while to produce as it was important that the page numbers matched the original publication (for citation purposes), so I painstakingly set the text to the same line count and flow as the original publication. I also included the Library of Congress bibliographic details for this purpose.
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THE MANUAL (How To Have A Number One The Easy Way) is a rather tongue-in-cheek guide to how to write a hit pop song, made by members of the KLF (Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty), who had a hit song in 1988 with Doctorin' the Tardis. This is a printed book made from a .txt file, found online, and still bearing the file path from the directory it came from as well as date and time of creation. I retained these details for this printed book (only substituting actual numbers for page number and page count) in reference to the provenance of the file, and to be clear about the raw nature of its origin. As a .txt, it doesn't contain any styling or italics and I wanted to retain this crudeness in the design.
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Ursula K. Le Guin's short essay appears in a compilation called Dancing at the Edge of the World, which I've found impossible to find online through the usual pirate libraries such as Library Genesis, aaaaaarg.fail and Monoskop. Perhaps this points to a gender bias in what is perceived as knowledge (Le Guin was a woman wrote mostly science-fiction)? In lieu of not being able to find the compilation, I decided to print this book in a very small size (90x120mm) and retain the annotations from the PDF I found. I digitised them by making them into vectors, and printed the text and annotations in green. In this way I wanted to speculate on what would happen when a reader was confronted with annotations that seemed to be part of the source, not a para-text added after publication.
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The Electronic Revolution is an essay by William S. Burroughs, in which he outlines his radical concepts of the cut-up, and the written word as a virus that makes the spoken word possible. The text was introduced to me by Florian Cramer in a seminar on media activism, networks, and mail art that he delivered last year as part of Special Issue 9: The Network We (de)Served. Both of these ideas can be applied to what I'm doing with this bootleg library - reformatting and annotating texts as a way to create conversations around them. I found a pdf of the text on ubuweb, where it was published under their ubuclassics imprint. This was devoid of any other publication details that usually accompany "official" publications, such as date of publication, identifier etc. The text was also riddled with punctuation and spelling errors, which I decided to keep in the bootlegged print publication. There were no italics so I used a font I had ripped from a Canadian calendar featuring Eskimo drawings and Inuit script - the font looked like a grotesque (Helvetica?) and had a low contrast, and was only available in regular (no italics) so it was usable for this design. I set the text in a symmetrical layout with large margins at either side, and decided on a suitable large scale format for more relaxed reading.
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Front cover
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Spread: Ample margins for annotation
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"Language is a virus"
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Bootleg acknowledgment
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Dumbstruck—A Cultural History of Ventriloquism[edit]
This book took about 40 hours to create, the longest time it's taken so far... I found a PDF on Lib Gen, but for some reason the OCR'd text was tracked quite tight making each line look like a very long word - this was even worse when printed. After a quick search on worldcat, I discovered that this book was available to be borrowed from the Royal Library in the Hague. Off I went to borrow the book. I planned to scan it using the bookscanner, but the cameras kept crashing after scanning half the 433 page book. So, I managed to extract the text using Calibre's book convert process from PDF > RTF. However, after placing the text in an InDesign layout, all of the numbers appeared as missing characters. From the looks of the PDF it seemed that these were perhaps from an Opentype font's custom stylistic set, which would explain why they weren't turning up in my system fonts. Also, in the index at the back of the book the numbers seemed to have the appearance of hyperlinks (when hovering over the hand icon appears) but when clicked, did absolutely nothing. So I began the rather painstaking process of laying out the book with exactly the same text flow and page numbers as the source. The work included removing headers and page numbers from the RTF, scanning all photos from the printed book, endlessly wordspacing paragraphs to make sure they fit where they should on each page, styling the text, removing manually written hyphenation (this was done programmatically, and ended up with a few words that were joined together in the case of examples like "re- and dis- associate" becoming reand disassociate") and the seemingly endless task of manually entering in EVERY number. At times it felt a bit masochistic, but I used this time to reflect on the process, thinking a lot about the changes I was making to preserve the form of the original. Ironically, this also involved a lot of forced line breaks, which would make the task of anyone who wanted to bootleg this book a bit more difficult (forced line breaks are the bane of the bootlegger). Another strange thought - I'm reading these books as I redesign them, but my reading happens on a more superficial level perhaps, meaning that I'm not absorbing the content fully, but reading it like a machine would as I look for anomalies and address them.
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Clara Balaguer asked me for a copy of this book, and it seemed like a good opportunity to try a new printing and binding process. I decided to print the book double-sided on A4 paper, as opposed to the previous method of 2-up imposed printing on A3 paper. I wasn't very satisfied with how the previous printing method had produced a "split" in the book due to the paper grain direction. Yin Yin Wong at PS Rotterdam had recommended printing double sided rather than 2-up to avoid this, so this was the technique I decided to try out. I also decided on hand-binding it with cold glue, a technique which I had recently learned. Cold glue binding is done with equipment and materials such as a hacksaw, scissors, medical gauze (or cheesecloth), brushes, PVA glue, bookbinding thread, a jig to hold the book in while notches are cut and the spine receives its initial gluing, and a book press to keep the book in overnight, which stops the book from warping due to the high water content of the PVA glue. Cold glue binding allows the book to lay open flat on a table, a benefit I was keen to apply to this edition of the book as I was dissatisfied by how tight the binding of the first edition was because I had used the hot glue binding machine, which takes much less time but for thick books can produce a lower quality result. I was quite pleased with how this book came out, however, when applying the cover I had to decide not to glue it to the spine. Cold glue binding results in a rough spine, and hot glue creates a smooth layer of glue that dries quickly, producing a smooth spine. The only way to avoid this is to not attach the cover to the spine if using cold glue.
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Bootlegged books front covers: Second edition (left) and first edition (right)
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Front covers: Source publication (left) and second edition bootleg (right)
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Beginning of image section: Source publication (left) and second edition bootleg (right). The second edition bootleg book lies open more easily due to the cold glue binding
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Spines: Source publication (left) and second edition bootleg (right)
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Back covers: Source publication (left) and second edition bootleg (right)
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A reprint of Ted Nelson's Literary Machines - a small booklet in which Nelson outlines his ideas for Project Xanadu, hypermedia and hypertext. I found this on Monoskop as an OCR'd PDF. What was interesting was how the traces of the scan persisted in the PDF - the dark edges around the pages, the bend of the paper on the glass, the warping in text from moving the paper while scanning. I simply re-imposed these pages onto a new document (of a different size), creating margins around the text and retaining these visual traces. The cover was made simply from taking each page marker, cropping it to the width of the margins (while retaining the dark edges) and stacking them on top of each other.
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Impromptu front cover, with page numbers stacked on top of each other
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Spread: Pages 3 & 4
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Spread: Pages 6 & 7
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Spread: Pages 13 (in the PDF as a half page) & 14
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Printed: 19.11.19
-Dimensions: 155x235mm
-Cover stock: Ursus glossy white 210gsm
-Text stock: Bio Top 80gsm
-Binding: Perfect bound, cold glue
-Pages: 226pp
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This is another book where I took a text file and laid it out again in InDesign, like the copy of Dumbstruck that I bootlegged. However, this time I made a code to indicate the page numbering and text flow of the source publication. This was to provide comfortable, consistent tracking to the letterspacing - one of the issues with Dumbstruck was that, in an attempt to keep the text flow and page numbering the same, some paragraphs were too tightly, or too loosely kerned. I feel this is a more elegant solution, however, it might pose problems if someone else tried to do the same as I had (taking the text from a source publication and laying it out) as the code is now part of the text. The cover was made with glossy paper, and custom-cut vinyl stickers. In time these will probably come off, but that's conceptually sympathetic to the content of the book, which is about the transience of the voice.
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Front cover, with white vinyl text and graphics
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Spine
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Code referring to text flow of the source publication
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Bootleg acknowledgement
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Spread: Book opens easily due to cold glue binding
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Information ages : literacy, numeracy, and the computer revolution[edit]
I could only find this as a printed book available for purchase online, or to borrow from the closest library, which is the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague. So, I went to the KB in the Hague, registered a membership (costing 7,50 euro per year) and borrowed the book. I scanned the book on a photocopier back at PZI (it took about 40 mins and many apologies to those who wanted to use it), and then printed and bound it by hand using a cold glue binding technique. The file produced by scanning actually took longer to be transferred over the network than it did to scan the entire book. I optimised the file after receiving it, which produced splotchy text and images (in some places the print looked damaged by water). The cover was an impromptu decision - to use the same method. The copy was made in about 2 hours.
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Front cover: Bootleg (left) and source publication (right)
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Spine: Source publication
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Spine: Bootleg
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Spines: Source publication (left) and bootleg (right)
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Spread: Source publication (left) and bootleg (right)
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This book was made quite quickly - by using a script in InDesign to place a multi-page PDF into a blank document. The cover was also made quickly, on the photocopier. The economy of speed produces what looks like a poor image zine aesthetic. This is becoming an interesting methodology for me - making books quickly by any means necessary. I just want the printed text, in a format that is going to be somewhat durable - detailed typographic consideration is hardly applicable here.
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Printed: 16.12.19
-Dimensions: 130x210mm
-Cover stock: 3mm Kraft board with Clairefontaine Trophee (white) 210gsm glued on
-Text stock: Laser 80gsm
-Binding: Perfect bound, cold glue with book binding tape
-Pages: 108pp
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I printed this book from a PDF found on aaaarg.fail. Tancredi had told me about Borges short story "The Library of Babel", which is contained in this anthology. Norman di Giovanni, the translator worked with Borges on quite a large selection of his works. Ultimately he was given a cease and desist order from Borges' estate. This PDF has been redesigned and bootlegged by a user at aaaaarg, with a nice sensibility (and respect) for producing a well-designed text. I wanted to try a different method for attaching the cover for this book, one I had seen before but never figured out how to do. I first bound the text block with cold glue, then I attached a strip of book binding tape to reinforce it. Then, I glued the printed front and back cover sheets to two thick pieces of kraft board for the cover. Finally, these thick boards were glued to the first and last pages of the book. It produced a strong binding, but unfortunately the covers warped, despite having left the book in the press immediately after gluing. At the Publication Station, Kim said that the way to remedy this is to glue paper on both sides of the kraft board, which is quite absorbent, and will easily warp with PVA. Gluing paper to both sides evens out the warp, which will want to pull in the direction of the glue.
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Printed: 17.12.19
-Dimensions: 131x216mm
-Cover stock: Clairefontaine Trophee (white) 210gsm
-Text stock: Laser 80gsm
-Binding: Perfect bound, cold glue with book tape on spine
-Pages: 214pp
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Espen Aarseth's Cybertext is a book that found its way towards me through a couple of other sources - first of all Tancredi recommended I read it, then I came across it when reading Writing Machines by N. Katherine Hayles. Aarseth's PhD dissertation proposes the idea of "cybertexts", which are part of the genre of what he calls "ergodic literature". In a nutshell, these are texts which require "non-trivial effort" to read. These texts are in both printed form (e.g. Danielewski's House of Leaves) and also in digital form (the book contains a section on MUDs - Multi User Domains - which are large gaming environments in which texts (both in the sense of software, and also narratives) are assembled on the fly. I printed this from the PDF, retaining all the marks that had come from its scanning, then bound it with cold glue and a strip of book binding tape on the spine for extra strength.
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Front cover
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Spread, with annotations from the PDF
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Spread, with dark marks around edges from the scan
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Printed: 20.12.19
-Dimensions: 190x260mm
-Cover stock: Heavy green stock (unknown brand) - around 210gsm
-Text stock: Laser 80gsm
-Binding: Perfect bound, hot glue
-Pages: 330pp
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Johanna Drucker's The Alphabetic Labyrinth is a book that traces the history and development of the alphabet. Full of diagrams and densely populated with these histories, it demands printing and reading in physical form. A PDF just won't do. I printed this from a PDF that I laid out quickly in InDesign using my trusty placemultiplePDFpages script. The cover was made on the photocopier, a technique I was well-acquainted with from my days as a teacher, where lessons would be literally cut and pasted together to be copied on the glass. The task that took the most time was making sure the pages would be printed at reasonable size, while economising on paper. For this reason, I wanted to print it double-sided on A4 paper with minimal excess. The annotations (interestingly, many in Greek - a coincidence as the book focuses for some time on development of the Greek alphabet) and artefacts from scanning were retained (such as darkened page edges), creating a materiality that reminds one the book is most definitely loved, copied, and shared.
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Printed: 20.12.19
-Dimensions: 123x180mm
-Cover stock: Heavy pink stock (unknown brand) - around 210gsm
-Text stock: Laser 80gsm
-Binding: Perfect bound, hot glue
-Pages: 322pp
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I had a PDF of Umberto Eco's The Open Work that I wanted to read, but hadn't got round to it. Such a vast, sprawling text needs to be read and digested slowly, so I decided to print the PDF. Unfortunately, the file I had was a scan of spreads, not pages, so after placing all the pages in InDesign I had to make sure that each page of the file corresponded to each page of the book. I used a dark line at the centre of each page to align with the edge of the pages in the InDesign file. Little did I know or realise at the time that this was an artefact from OCR, and that the text was riddled with such quirks that at times made the text almost unreadable. This happens sometimes if you edit a PDF in a program such as Adobe Acrobat Pro, which includes the option to run OCR all over the document. However, this function doesn't just layer an invisible txt over the images in the PDF, it replaces the images with a text file, in a font (or fonts) specified by the editor. I think that is what happened here, because on printing I discovered that a multitude of artefacts resulting from this technique - unreadable lines, characters that most likely were interpretations of marks and smudges, and a change in font every three or four pages, making for a text that had what seemed to be multiple personalities. This would be a great design approach for such a text - which is about participatory processes making up an art work - but most likely just a happy accident. The cover was made on the photocopier, simply by cutting text from the PDF, pasting and copying it to a heavy sheet of pink paper.
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I wanted to read this collection of essays by Flusser during the holidays. Steve had sent me a link to an interview with Flusser in which he described the "magic" of linear writing and subsequent technologies, and I wanted to read more. I very quickly bootlegged this book by printing the PDF on the last day school was open for the year. In my haste, however, I trimmed the bottom edge a bit too close. It's still fine (at least the page numbers weren't cut off), but I wish I hadn't been in such a rush. The cover was made quickly at the photocopier as well, a no-frills effort.
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I made this book with and for Luke (a friend), as a favour, and also to show him how to bootleg a book. I'd already redesigned the text, and printed it double-sided on laser paper. What he wanted to know how to bind books. Luke had been helping me out a lot with getting the bookscanner running, and it seemed like a nice way to repay him. The problem came when we tried to bind the book using the hot-glue machine, which was once again not working as it should and the result we got was less than optimal. So, I showed him how to notch-bind using cold glue, and he took the text block home with him to try out the technique himself, using a DIY book press made from two chopping boards. One the text block was dry, he brought it back to me to show him how to apply the cover. I'd already printed the cover on a piece of paper, but had been using it to write quick notes on in the interim. It's ironic, I'm surrounded by paper, but scrap paper can be hard to come by. Rather than printing the cover again, I decided to tear away all the areas I'd written notes on it, and then photocopy this with the lid open, leaving black where there was no paper. It was another impromptu, make-do decision, but one that lent an interesting mark - removal of all that is not necessary - and in line with the type of radical pedagogical approaches the author of the text was aiming at.
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Luke's DIY book press
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Front cover
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Spread
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Spine
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Back cover
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The book, left with keys I borrowed from Luke while staying with him and Alice in January, 2020
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I decided to print another copy of Deschooling Society for the physical bootleg library when the hot glue machine was working properly again. It was interesting to compare the differences between the two different binding methods - not something I usually see as I don't often bootleg more than one copy of a book.
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Front cover
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Spread
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Spread
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Spine
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Back cover
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Spines: First edition (top), second edition (bottom). The difference in cold vs hot glue is apparent here - hot glue ensures a smooth, square spine
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Back covers: First edition (left), second edition (right)
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A copy of Guevara's Guerilla Warfare, printed with/for Luke. We made the cover on the photocopier, make-do style. The text refers to Guevara's system of annotating - a pity the PDF I had wasn't available in colour. The text block was bound with cold glue, after trimming to the spine edge. The equations on the text block are ones I typically write down on the text block so that I don't have to do them at the guillotine, which is always busy and therefore stressful and easy to make a mistake.
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The equation I follow goes something like this:
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First cut: (page height - book height) / 2 + book height
- Second cut: book height
- Third cut: book width
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Front cover
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Spread
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Guevara's annotations
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Detail of anti-tank tactics
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Spine
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The cold-glue bound text-block, ready to have cover applied and trimmed to size. Equations for trim sizes and cut sequence (see above) written in bleed area
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text, tbc is an essay written as a contribution to a publication, as part of Onomatopee's Meeting Grounds public program. In this essay I describe my interest in text's overlapping dimensions: the editorial, technical and social. The text is performed through the use of Etherpad: as a writing environment to create the text, a software to reflect on, and a live editable document which anyone may edit, if they know the URL.
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The essay below, text, tbc, lives in a pad on a server hosted by Experimental Publishing (XPUB), at the Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam.
-This a live text, welcome to be edited by anyone. However, in the interests of transparency and care towards yourself and others, please be aware of the following:
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VISIBILITY:
-This pad isn't indexed by search engines, but it is 100% public to anyone who knows its URL.
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PRIVACY:
-This pad is not encrypted, meaning that it is not private. Anyone who can access the server can also see its content.
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RETENTION:
-Text can change, rapidly and in real time, making this a dynamic, but ultimately unstable environment. Make backups regularly if you wish to keep copies.
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ACCESSIBILITY:
-Pads can go down for many reasons, such as scheduled server maintenance, unforeseen events, and of course, human error. It is impossible to determine the identity of an author and XPUB does not respond to pad retrieval requests.
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CONVIVIALITY:
-Please be as respectful and supportive towards other reader/writers as possible. Don't delete anything, just add.
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-text, tbc
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Text flies in an endless stream before your eyes. News reports, longform articles, facts and figures, documents and messages sent at all hours of the day and night; it is always daylight somewhere in the world and there is always something new to report. You see text, but you don't have the time to carefully read and absorb it. You have never read or written so much. Your phone buzzes with the input and output of messages and notifications. You are exhausted by the letters, numbers, punctuation, and spaces that make up what is usually called “text”.
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But the overwhelming presence of text is not felt just in the material form of its characters, or the spaces between them. It resides in text's overlapping dimensions and resulting viewpoints and how these influence practices of reading and writing.
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The editorial dimension; text is a sequence. A line of characters and spaces, the particular order that the writer sets these in. Text becomes an object, a carrier of thoughts and feelings, something that can be sent back and forth between participants in a conversation.
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The technical dimension; text is a process. Messages and files that we share are text-based. A computer runs on software, programmed in encoded text, often the same characters that flicker before your eyes. Texts can be assembled on-the-fly as a machine reads scripts and writes output in response to input.
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The social dimension; text is a framework. The English word "text" has roots in the Proto-Indo-European word teks-, meaning “to weave, to fabricate, to make; make wicker or wattle framework”. A piece of writing is a text, and so is a conversation; texts represent the exchange of shared concepts (words, signs, representations) woven into a fabric of communication. There is also an exchange between written and spoken texts; oral discussions which prompt writing, and writing which sparks conversations. Texts elicit further texts.
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I’m typing this now using a self-hosted, open-source, browser-based, realtime, collaborative text-editing software called Etherpad. Etherpad is many things, as you can probably tell by the string of adjectives in my previous sentence. The pad, as it is colloquially (somewhat affectionately) known by many users, has its own peculiar twist on online public space and subsequently, the public it makes. An environment; a combination of particular conditions set by hardware and software that determine how a user operates within it. The pad is an unstable, dynamic environment open to participation, often without notions of consistency in formatting, or singularity in authorship. For a start, anyone who knows the URL can edit what is written here. This text could easily become an unruly wall built without convention, just sitting there in the browser. And though you, dear readers, may also become writers, you will barely recognise each other as authors.
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Some of you will choose a username, some will remain unnamed by default. I often call myself karen eliot (all lowercase), a shared pen name favoured by the Neoists, an art movement famous for creating multiple definitions of itself. karen eliot is everyone and no-one, and on the pad, so am I. In collaborative writing sessions, what I type becomes intermingled with the writings of others until I can hardly say it is mine any more; copy-pasted, deleted, overwritten, rephrased, paraphrased and line-edited to the nth degree. As authorship colours and names change at whim, it's almost impossible for writers to know who is who unless you go back through the version history and/or sleuth the chat section for clues. But it's hardly important when the purpose is to write together.
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Sometimes I use it to write by myself, typing into the pad as the server records a mind-boggling database of every key I press, every action I undo. I slide back in time through this text (the one you're reading) to see revisions in the version history. So far the only author there is myself, although all anyone needs to do is type (even a space), and they will automatically join karen eliot as a listed co-author. Add multiple users at multiple keyboards, all free to edit autonomously, and the writing starts to become definitively less a work of singular authorship, and more a woven multiplicity of perspectives.
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-Often the pad serves as a note-taking accompaniment to a spoken conversation, transcribing each other's words, turning our speech into text. Fingers typing rapidly, trying to keep up with the pace of dictation will make mistakes. In response, a distinct protocol develops in support of diverse ways of reading and writing. Spell-checking is often unnecessary; writers may mis-type, but ultimately, their/they're/there spelling isn't a concern as long as it doesn't get in the way of communication. I'm reminded of Samizdat publishers, who eschewed the title of "author" in favour of “typist” or “editor” due to the unwanted attention and risk it would bring to themselves and their dissident republications of censored books. Editing, typing, reproducing texts by hand; all of this encourages a slippery form of authorship through human error and idiosyncratic preferences for a new phrase, sense-for-sense translation or structure. When no writer is the discernible author, everyone becomes a text editor.
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The pad exemplifies the editorial, technical and social dimensions of text. New editors respond with reactions that range from eager enthusiasm to shy suspicion. For some, the pad seems too public, too immediate, too dynamic. What we type, delete, mis-type or mis-spell is there for all to see as we do it. But for the enthusiasts, individually-coloured sentences quickly proliferate into multicoloured streams of collaborative writing. For all its dynamic energy and realtime nature, the pad generates an aura of calm. It's not a feed which must be scrolled, there are no read receipts and no-one can be left on seen. Indeed, nothing can be sent or unsent, nor for that matter, unseen. There are no notifications, it doesn't buzz in the middle of the night. When I come back to it a day or so later, a new text has evolved. There are no other readers or writers there now, only myself, karen eliot. I pause, taking the time to read and absorb it.
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—Simon Browne, Rotterdam, April 2020
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With special thanks to Steve Rushton and Michael Murtaugh.
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Facsimile of A Chronicle of Current Events (Russian: Хро́ника теку́щих собы́тий)
A quote from Marshall McLuhan during a live television broadcast, 1977
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Timed writing/editing experiment using Etherpad, collaborative text-editing software, 2018
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