The Hardcore critique was an opportunity to get some great feedback on my experiments and process, along with an opportunity to gauge what needs to be completed and flushed out before graduation. There were many informative aspects to take away from the review and here are the productive 5.
1.) Prototype! Prototype! Prototype!
The ideas of combining print and screen need to manifest themselves in a way that it is possible to see how a user will engage in such process. Speaking about the ideas is all good an well but unless you can show anyone and engage the opportunity space in a meaningful way it’s just a lot of words.
2.) Focused Scenario
Classroom and product scenario video needs refinement, focusing, and shortening that drives at the ideas that will be shown in the prototype. The prototype comes first and need to complement the opportunity space set up through the video
3.) A New title
Hybrid Media Systems is generic and the title should get at the premise of the experimentation right away. Marginalia seems to hit at the production space so now it is just what the by line and how the supporting language starts to complete itself.
4.) Premise contextualization
I need to get to the idea of print and screen being linked quicker. The premise shouldn’t linger too long on the refuting of physical books but rather dilineate the advantages of combining the affordances of each. Prototype should have examples where actual marginalia was collected but also show how the new form of reading and writing is used, and possible misused. The interface of the prototype should capitalize on the engagement with a classroom and be part of the conversation.
5.) Narrow and Deep
The context and scenario of it existing for a classroom and an educational experience is a rich space but it needs to explored deeper through posing the possibility to teachers and be less about something that can be generalized for all print material.
A Norwegian researcher, Anne Mangen, wrote an interesting paper in the Journal of Research in Reading, asserting that screen reading and page reading are radically different. “The feeling of literally being in touch with the text is lost when your actions – clicking with the mouse, pointing on touch screens, or scrolling with keys or on touch pads – take place at a distance from the digital text, which is, somehow, somewhere inside the computer, the e-book, or the mobile phone,’’ Mangen writes.
Her conclusion: “Materiality matters. . . . One main effect of the intangibility of the digital text is that of making us read in a shallower, less focused way.’’
The materiality of paper takes on a extended meaning due to its experience. The knowledge that is contained with in a book is not singularly wrapped up in the words on the page. From psychology class in college at Colorado State University, I remember my teacher telling us that our brains formulate knowledge and recall through repeating similar experiences under which that knowledge was learned. For example if you are juiced up on coffee while you study for a test you should be juiced up on coffee during the test because the brain associates the experience of the learning along with the recall of that information. Similarly you might be able to recall a story in a book more vividly when the same circumstances are repeated. The engagement of content influences our learning and subsequent recall. Therefore the reading of a book is learned through the experience of the pages. Knowledge that is engaged in the physicality of pages is then linked with that experience. Pages then become essential to formulation of knowledge within a book.
Media critic William Powers wrote a defense of physical bound literature in his essay, “Hamlet’s BlackBerry: Why Paper Is Eternal,’’ Mr. Paper – he not dead, Powers wrote: “There are cognitive, cultural, and social dimensions to the human-paper dynamic that come into play every time any kind of paper, from a tiny Post-It note to a groaning Sunday newspaper, is used to convey, retrieve, or store information.’’
Paper will never die, Powers concluded: “It becomes a still point, an anchor for the consciousness. It’s a trick the digital medium hasn’t mastered – not yet.’’
The digital medium has been attempting to replace the piece of paper and it has been around the corner in terms of technology since technology began. Now what if the digital medium and the physical medium where equal? When paper and computer work together seamlessly then paper takes on an added functionality with the computer.
The digital textbook?
With students doing so much of their reading assignments through the screen instead of on book or paper formats, it’s important for educators to determine how the shift is altering their habits and learning. The research is just beginning, but it’s getting deeper, an article in the Journal of Research in Reading (2008, pp. 404-419) by Anne Mangen, “Hypertext fiction reading: haptics and immersion.” Mangen notes the growing sub-field of screen reading studies, but finds that the “intangibility and volatility of the digital text” remain under-examined. She focuses first, then, on the material nature of digital and non-digital reading experiences. “Unlike print texts,” she writes, “digital texts are ontologically intangible and detached from the physical and mechanical dimension of their material support, namely, their computer or e-book (or other devices, such as the PDA, the iPod or the mobile phone” (405).
This is important, she argues, because “materiality matters.” The reading experience includes manual activities and haptic perceptions (what the skin and muscles and joints register), and so as activities and perceptions of that kind are changed from one kind of reading experience to another because of the object, the reading experience, too, will change.
So if materiality matters in the delivery of content especially reading material, then it would be arguable that to remove the materiality of paper from the reading experience would fundamentally alter that exchange. Screen engagement has become a reality in modern times but the advantages of the screen have forced its usability right next to the book forcing them to go head to head. I have chosen to regard these experience as different and explore a way to bridge the difference between experiences. As use of screen based devices increases, the need for physical interaction with objects like books will become essential in the recombination of content delivery. I believe users should not have to exchange one experience for the other in order to engage in the content the way they would like. Many things in this world have multiple experiences and with the linking physical and digital is opens up a strategy and platform for making printed content and digital content work together.
John Locke said, “reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.” Thinking can be greatly enhanced through digital means of networking so making paper and computer work together will greatly enhance the opportunity to make reading our again.
It has been 5 years now, since the fire that took everything from me and I wonder if a day will pass in which I don’t long for the past. Some days are better than others but days like today where the rain spits on my concrete block of a home leave me wanting my old life back. But “those days are gone” like the last thing the FBI officer said to me after I was informed I am being put into Protective Housing. (HA! They really meant Isolated Housing) FBI Special Investigator Milo Kilowski made it very clear to me that the fire was a decisive message and that the firebomb that destroyed my former life had been linked to 3000 others all at the same time. Who would do such a thing? Its been 5 years and they still haven’t figured it out, and frankly I gave up trying to understand too. So I have been sequestered in this freedom jail ever since because I happened to be the only one of the 3000 who wasn’t burned to a crisp. Lucky? On days like today I think not.
My wall talks to me about my schedule for the day and the smell of the automated coffee dispenser singes my nose hairs but the rain has clouded my ambitions even how meager they might have been. When I was smuggled here five years ago the over polished, glossy brochure Officer Kilowski handed me about this place made it sound impressive.
“A place where technology and living are linked.”
Milo was a very candid stocky man who rarely minced his words. When I gave him a puzzled look upon the examination of the brochure he said
“What did you expect us to put you in a Mansion?”
which was followed up with,
“You will be safe here, I give you my word.”
Protective Housing works on the premise of eminent danger. You accept blindly because there is the illusion that at any moment you could be killed and a person in that circumstance rarely denies the help being offered. But 5 years in I don’t feel so scared and I mostly just agonize over the ridiculous shit box that government has provided. I really just want my stuff back my wife, my dog, my books, my records, my paintings, my drawings, my paintbrushes, my tools, my house. I don’t even know if any thing survived the fire. Upon asking Kilowski just says,
“All items have been logged as evidence and evidence will be
returned to the rightful owner upon completion of the
investigation.”
He sounds like such a robot. I’m surprised he doesn’t list the rule ID number along with his canned answer. At first I pressed for answers but now I just go day to day attempting to forget my memories.
They say memories fade with time, but some memories you never want to forget. My wife had such beautiful handwriting the kind that has those cute little curly cues at the end of some words and she made tiny little circles over her i’s and j’s. It was such a reflection of her patience and style. She use to leave me such beautiful hand written notes for groceries or tasks around the house. On valentines day she would write on the mirror with red lipstick. I loved reading her books because I could get into her head from the margin. The Incident took all that from me except for the last book we read together. As a technology blogger, in my former life, I was always being inundated with waves of technology most of it crap but I usually only was given one to review. However this young rep at Hybrid Plus Pens gave me two pens and said,
“Try it with your wife. it will save all your notes to the cloud for
sharing just get a book that has the hybrid logo”
The drizzle is like salt on a paper cut today. I request the wall to bring up the Hybrid Plus Portal, stats automatically flash about my frequency to the site and ads are directed to my temperament flash in the corners. Lately mostly antidepressants show up and have been for the past 5 years when I think about it. The wall now glows with the last remnants of my wife’s writing. Her questions and sarcasm about my insistence she use the pen. She even hassled me in her notes poking fun at my techy job and rubbing in that this book was her choice. I sit at the edge of my bed and move through the pages like I have hundreds of time before. I close my eyes and flop back on the bed hoping that is this might all be a horrible twisted dream. The door speaks up and announces to my concrete block,
“FBI Special Investigator – is approaching.”
I open my eyes right as he knocks on the door.
I open the door and Kilowski is standing holding a small tattered cardboard box with a tag that says evidence in bright yellow and black tape.
“Evidence? “ I say,
“Does this mean the investigation is over?”
Kilowski gets a slight smile out of the corner of his over stoic face and hands me the box. He turns around and upon exit says,
“Go back to your old life and find someone who you can use that
pen with!”
I just stand in the doorway overlooking the other concrete blocks and get rained on as the premise of my “old life” rings in my ears.
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
Engaging users with an interaction is a difficult process. I am attempting to engage users in natural mapped interactions through iconography the associats a particular action of touch. Natural mapping is a term for the proper and natural arrangements for the relations between controls and their movements to the outcome from such action into the world. Like that of a door knob or a book.The real function of natural mappings is to reduce the need for any information from a user’s memory to perform a task. This term is widely used in the areas of human-computer interaction (HCI) and interactive design discussed in Donald Norman’s book : The design of Everyday Things.
Through out my experimentation with conductive inks and screen printing, I have started to try and engage the user in interaction with the tangible printed artifact. Paper and ephemeral material is inherently tangible and physical you can bend it, tear it, crinkle it, touch it plus it has a texture a quality and a materiality very unique to its form. Unique to the conductive inks is there ability to engage a user. The current experiment is a test to see if certain form structures are inherently engage-able. With out any signage does a user know to touch the paper and interact with the strips. This experiment utilizes the nature the higher contact equals a brighter light.
In the process of looking at printing material and contemplating the possibility of the end of print where a screen replaces all print material, I was struck by something that to date has not really been handled by screen based technologies. The Margin! Margins in technology since are locations for buttons, actions, and tools associated with the particular application that is being used.
Since the margin has excuse my pun been marginalized by technologies, I decided to do a number of explorations in to the potential of the margin when given a computational aspect and affordance. In order for me to get a good grasp on the design nature of margins with in printed matter, I have taken 9 of my books ranging from design porn to technical textbooks, I have done an analysis of the margin and implied usage and created a piece of relevant print material describing each examples margin design and use as associated with grid, layout and space.
The idea revolves around the notion of marginalia and the use of margins with in written content in order to apply notes, reflections and sketches.
Now the conductive inks that I have made work, I have started to dive into breaking the perception of what a circuit should be and should look like. With the addition of user interaction, turning a light on becomes more interesting and engaging. The earlier experiments are mostly a process of seeing and thinking about paper differently, this is a experiment into giving paper an added interaction through the conductive ink and the simple switches. The form of the conductive lines are skewing the efficiency ideas associated with circuit board design, and the interaction allows the user to piece together the shapes of both the form and of the shape the lights make.
Now that I have gotten an ink that can conduct an current over a relatively decient distance, I have started to play with the notion of what can a circuit look like. Can it be anything you want it to be as long as there is a positive and negative in and out. Can the form start to speak about it functionality, can the forms be unique and artistic rather than function based. Most circuitry disappears and becomes invisible. To most who use electronics and understanding of the work, skill, craft, and planning that has gone into a majority of the things they operate on a daily basis is pretty minimal. Electronics work and we rarely pay attention until they stop working. An interest in involving conductive ink is to challenge the expectation and visibility of otherwise invisible things. The mixed media piece of conductive ink, copper tape on paper is an experiment into changing and evaluating the expectations of electronic conductivity and use.
I finally have had some success with screen printing conductive ink or my own concoction. The image is a picture of a mixed media experiment with screen printed graphite based conductive ink and copper tape for power and light source. The form of the line printed in the conductive ink is the shape of a book spine based RFid. The RFid market is one of the largest outcomes of printed circuitry but the implications of “big brother” tools leaves the novice and consumer out of the loop. My experimentation into conductive inks has not been rooted in invention but rather in the exploration space and thinking that I have now started to give paper. The question of networked, self aware and linked paper artifacts could be a possibility through RFid or other circuitry based functionality. My ability to get a screen printed line to be reactive to electricity has helped my pursuit into thinking about paper in a new and unique ways. The ability to make paper an interface is now a distinct possibility.
