There is a fundamental difference between the experience of a print media and screen based media. As screen based technologies become more and more pervasive, it is refreshing to see some design companies ie Bonnier considering the particular affordances of the media devices that they attempting to prototype. The affordances of the screen are those at which print material can not possess but there is always a trade off. Bonnier is making a valid argument that if magazine content is going to delivered on a screen, then that screen should deliver a unique experience relatively independent of its magazine predecessor. That is not to say that the screen is devoid of design elements and layout principals that have garnished the vast history of magazine publishing, but rather that those design elements and layout principles be modified to fit the device. Form follows function and the function of a screen is not that of a book or magazine. To exchange the values of a book experience complete with printed ink, paper and sequential pages with that of a screen and expect the user to just accept the convenience and portability of that screen ignores that unique opportunity to make something new. Screen experience design is in its beginning stages and has struggled to separate it self from is print based counterpart. The technology of printing and books has not adapted to the technologies of desktop computing. There has been an extreme leap from the printed page to the screen and in this leap many interactions and experiments with combined media have been left out. Personal Computing expectations and device production has left print design in its coat tails, but the expectation of experience is still lagging behind with the print world. Bonnier is a least attempting to realize and research the unique affordance of a screen based magazine and not just transport a magazine onto the screen.
A line needs to be drawn in the sand for the values of static media. The expectation and belief that that dynamic content is the wave of the future needs to be reconsidered. Motion pictures are great incredible informative and interesting and have changed the way we see and respond to the world, but do we want every bit of content the we engage with to be moving or worse reactive. Media content has variety and in my opinion more value should be placed on the ability of somethings to be still and other things to move.
The expectation that readers of Outside will want to want motion images assumes that the current model of photography is incomplete to the user and what is the answer, a screen. A world of screens is not one that I hope will exist.
Apple is selling record numbers of downloadable games for the iPhone and iPod Touch. This is attracting publishers because the lack of physical media is better economically for both consumers and video game creators (November 12)
Microsoft is set to open up the XBox 360 to user-generated games on November 19, all of which will only be available via download – there will be no DVDs (October 30)
The bullet list is a few examples of technologies and media delivery platforms that currently or will in the future deminish print media’s market share or potentially eliminate it all together. Print Media platformes of books, magazines, posters, etc etc are talked about in term of being Tangible Media.
The description of tangible is defined as capable of being perceived especially by the sense of touch.
The materiality of paper and ink in all is variety from newsprint to gompy has earned print media the use of that terminology with in its description. Media delivery devices like the kindle, the iphone etc are tangible. To suggest that they are not assumes that the ability to touch a screen ie a pixel is not equal with that of prior physical object (artifacts) like books for instance.
The reasoning behind referencing print material as “Tangible Media” and technologies like the Kindle as being something different is really located with in the process of experience. Tangible when describing a book is referencing the experience a user has engage with that media type for the time they were a child to current interactions. Paper has texture, color, smell, it can be flooded and imprinted or debossed the list goes on and on. Tangible becomes a catch all for the experience of turning pages in a seqential artifact and emcompasses the notions of age, use and variety. When tangible is used for the iPhone, Kindle or technologies, it is used more as a description of functionality of the interface. Because a screen is just pixels that can be anything, the experience of that tangible experience is fundimentally different then that of the experience with print media, and rightly so!
The issue is then the expectation that a book can be on a screen and contain the same experience? There is a compromise when “tangible media” is traded for “tangible pixel”, the experience of the can only be mimicked or hinted at through acknologment in either direction. The ability to have animated turning pages in a pdf is an example of a media type not sure how to accept its “pixel” nature because a pixel can never be a piece of paper.
As technologies become more and more pervasive, print media companies are starting to jump on the bandwagon that a screen is a “better” way to experience their content. With the techno world buzzing about the possibilities of tablet computers from Apple, Microsoft, and prototype Joojoo
, media providers rather then improving or increasing content awareness are opting for the screen. The demo of the Sports Illustrated magazine on a tablet is a interesting view into the possibilities of their future content. Complete with page turning sounds and multi-touch options the demo shows some potential in eliminating the magazine. I mean why would I buy print when I can get it on a screen? Soon enough we will never have old used magazines that can be rummaged through at our uncles “the sport nuts” house.
The introduction of the iPhone has truely had immense impact on the acceptance of interacting with the screen. I just see the thinking of “You know what is better than an iPhone, A bigger iPhone!” faulty. The iPhone functionality and pervasiveness is seen in the Joojoo demo utilizing similar learned interactions from the existing phone. Technology is iterative and for innovation to exist predecessors have to come before, I am having a hard time coping with the innovation of phones replacing the innovations that print has made since the invention of the printing press.
The experience of print material on a screen starts to include video options and some level of costume interactions which is what makes interaction with screen objects effective and engaging but is that functionality worth the tangible interaction with printed paper. Interactions with the tablet are all learned and idiosyncratic rather than the free form and intuitive interactions with the pages of a magazine. The ease of getting to page 22 in a magazine is much different than the action to do that same thing on a tablet. Especially a magazine like SI where a users is less inclined to read from front to back (unless we are talking about the swim suit issue of course) Regardless the SI interactive has some interesting potential but in my opinion will never become a replacement for the greatest bathroom reading since the Victoria Secret Catalog (unless it can become waterproof.) I just don’t see a tablet computer replacing the magazine rack in the bathroom no matter how interactive and engaging it is.
An Interactive poster using conductive ink with a five color print (edition of 12) serigraphed artifact. Functionality of poster is activated through the user touching the conductive ink switches on the poster which both activate a LED light and a canon sound. Image inspired by a CocoRosie song.
Perception is the process of attaining awareness and understanding of sensory information the action of taking possession, apprehension with the mind and senses.
” You perceive the world through an automatic filter of affordances. Your perception of a scene is not just the sum of its geometry, spatial relations, light, shadow, and color. Perception streams not just through your eyes, ears, nose, and skin, but is automatically processed through your body mandala to render your perceptions in terms of their affordances.” (p 106 – The Mind has a body of it’s Own – Sandra & Mathew Blakeslee)
Affordances is an idea posed by Psychologist James J. Gibson in his 1977 article “The Theory of Affordances” and explored it more fully in his book The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception in 1979. He defined affordances as all “action possibilities” latent in the environment, objectively measurable and independent of the individual’s ability to recognize them, but always in relation to the actor and therefore dependent on their capabilities.
Affordance is a concept that is widely used to talk about functionality, intent and action with in HCI (Human Computer Interaction), product design, and systems design.When users speak of an object being intuitive, easy to operate, clear and understandable, usually actions have been designed through a clear understanding of the affordance of the actions that are being accomplished.
Take the book for instance, the affordance of pages is sequential ( the english language is read top to bottom, left to right). The language process is a learned, as is the flipping of pages but the affordance of that action is one that is unique to the delivery of the media of language. The variety of this language delivery system is vast and deeply explored through both writing and the design of sequential artifacts. The perception of sequential media is filtered through the affordance of the page and meaning is associated with that artifact through cultural affordance. That is to say that the design of a bible has a particular cultural and meaning space in comparison to a Nancy Drew book while each posses a particular design functionality that is unique to it own content.
Unique to the page is its ability to contain extended meaning through design. The margins of sequential mediums can be signifier to the quality, and value the author has attributed to the ideas on the page. When design is considerate of the content to which it is attempting to communicate, said design can imply particular use scenarios and meaning that can extend and engage the experience of reading.
As technology becomes more and more involved within the delivery of media, the question of the format of delivery and the consideration of the delivery with in the design of the content
Through out the history of language, book, and narrative, the cultural importance of these artifacts has produced
The video prototype concept utilizes the conductive inks I have been experimenting with to generate interactive switches that are designed with in the margins of the narrative. The conductive switches illicit the context of the footnote for the narrative. The switch both lights up an embedded LED in the page and also triggers a screen / projection / smart phone message that could be accessed simultaneously through out the narrative. The content is a short story from David Foster Wallace’s Interviews with Hideous Men : Suicide as a Sort of Present. David Foster Wallace is an author the has utilized the footnote context annotation through out his body of work especially Infinite Jest
“What writing is all about is what happens on the page between the reader and the page…What I want is a collaboration, really, with the reader on the page where the reader is also making an effort, is putting something of himself into it in the way of understanding, in the way of helping to construct the fiction that I am giving him.” -William Gaddis
Similarly I believe the design and technological advances might increase a reader’s access and process in the collaboration with fiction. When the interaction of a reader is considered in not just the generation of fiction but also in the access of delivery, an alternative arises for a new form of meaning making. The design of the artifact that is the book can be given an alternative meaning besides just delivering the words and ideas on the page.
The attempt to give the book interactive and responsive conditions allows an author and designer an interesting outcome that would be a collaboration from the start rather than the out come of an author writing words and a designer making those words explode on the page through typography, page layout and conceptualization of ideas. The hybrid of design outcomes being considered in the formulation of literature might produce engaging and experience based out comes that would push a readers knowledge and understanding. The possibilities of designed literature might lead to a 3rd outcome that is neither a book or an e-book screen replacement, but rather a combination of both. An outcome that might result in the best of what the traditional print artifact possesses in its tangibility and distribution through institutional data banks of libraries and commercial entities of book stores and the contemporary screen book technological conveniences of size, space, and access.
The attempt to give narrative sequential fiction and non fiction a set of new or previously unused tools might produce new forms of writing outcomes and productions that might engage tech savy clientel who are interested in no only reading but being engaged with physical artifacts. Book whose pages are self aware, switches that are embedded into content, and spaces that are effected by those interactions will engage readers in experiences the literature on the page for a different more media influenced atmosphere that will engage the reader / user in interesting exchanges that are controlled or left open by the narrative and author/designer team.
Perception is the process of attaining awareness and understanding of sensory information the action of taking possession, apprehension with the mind and senses.
