I Read Where I Am

Exploring New Information Cultures

We are street readers. Look at us, info junk dealers, as we zip through the telephone, scan a newspaper we’ve just read, leaf through a magazine. We are the new generation of readers. Not dumber, just faster. We whiz through three lives at once. Let’s be honest: reading has become a different experience. Reading has become looking and vice versa. Information has become tactile. You don’t have to remember anything, you just look it up. Could it be that the average person (still) doesn’t like reading? Can you call what people do on Facebook and Twitter reading? Absorbing books and newspapers was something from which you traditionally became wiser, because unusual opinions, special thoughts, new developments, and fantasies were revealed. But there have always been good and bad books. Quality and pulp have always existed.

We are info junkies. People don’t know where to draw the line and, in today’s consumer society, are constantly fighting for control. Information, following food and the environment, may be next in line for an analysis on sustainable development. Information has become a consumer product because it is linked to the form in which it appears. New platforms and formats are appearing with greater frequency on the market. Text, video, sound, and graphics intermingle. Everybody is busy answering, uploading.

We all know the main lines of info evolution, from the printing press to the iPhone. By now the information is drifting through space and there are new tools for reading and writing, which each time combine the multimedia mix in a different way. Each change is in itself large and has consequences for the economy, politics, and the social status of our existence.

In I Read Where I Am the Graphic Design Museum, together with the Institute for Network Cultures, investigates recent developments in the field of information design. The book is produced under the Infodecodata programme, an exhibition about information design that was launched in 2010 in the Graphic Design Museum. Infodecodata presents new developments on the cusp of text and image.

Much discussion took place in the twentieth century about the relationship between art and science, but it often did not go further than good intentions. Engineers do not want to involve artists in crucial stages of the research and artists in turn are all too determined to remain ‘autonomous’. But now we see them actually coming closer together. This has not happened because good intentions have all at once been turned into deeds. It is the technology itself that develops form and content simultaneously and considers it to be a whole. Different types of content and readers ask for different forms and experiences. The question remains: which form will it assume and what experience do you want?

In I Read Where I Am, 82 invited authors, artists, critics, and designers present a wide range of observations, inspirations, and critical notes about how we daily consume and produce our information. We intended to leave the justified nostalgia for what it is and asked the expert-amateurs to look further than the current hype around the iPads and Kindles. This publication does not only reflect the current state of affairs but also speculates about the significance and importance of new forms of image-text in the future. Let us together place them in the world and not wait for ready-made products from Silicon Valley. The reflections presented here are explicitly intended to be read as a guideline for the following generations of ‘reading machines’. All that remains is for us to design them - without losing our attention.

Mieke Gerritzen is designer and director of the Graphic Design Museum.

Geert Lovink is media theorist, net critic and director of the Amsterdam-based Institute of Network Cultures.

1

Gathering Up Characters

Arie Altena

Arie Altena writes about art and new media; he works for V2_ in Rotterdam and co-curates the Sonic Acts Festival.

2

Better Stories

Henk Blanken

Henk Blanken is a journalist and writer of books on digital culture and new media.

3

From Books to Texts

Andrew Blauvelt is Curator of Architecture and Design at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.

4

I Read More Than Ever

Erwin Blom

Erwin Blom is founder of The Crowds, a company specialized in social media.

5

Encoded Experiences

James Bridle

James Bridle is publisher, writer and editor.

6

Watching, Formerly Reading

Max Bruinsma

Max Bruinsma is an independent design critic and editor-in-chief of Items, the Dutch review of design.

7

If Words, Then Reading

Anne Burdick

Anne Burdick is a designer, writer, and curator as well as the Chair of the graduate Media Design Program (MDP).

8

Flowing Together

Vito Campanelli

Vito Campanelli is new media theorist and teaches Theory and Technics of Mass Communication at the Università degli Studi di Napoli 'L'Orientale'.

9

Highway Drugs and Data Visualization

Catalogtree

Joris Maltha and Daniel Gross run the multidisciplinary design studio 'Catalogtree', specialized in making information visualizations.

10

The Revenge of the Gutenberg Galaxy

Florian Cramer

Florian Cramer is director of the Piet Zwart Institute and head of the research programme Communication in a Digital Age.

11

Where Do You Read?

Sean Dockray

Sean Dockray is founder of AAAARG.org, an online archive of texts, as well as founder of the first Public School, a project initiated by Telic Arts Exchange in Los Angeles.

12

Pancake

Paulien Dresscher

Paulien Dresscher is head of New Media at Cinekid, advisor E-Culture at the Netherlands Film Fund, filmmaker, and researcher.

13

Between Reality and the Impossible: Revisited

Dunne & Raby

Dunne & Raby is a design studio run by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby.

14

Weapons of Mass Distraction

Sven Ehmann

Sven Ehmann is Creative Director at Die Gestalten Verlag.

15

Reading Beyond Words

Martin Ferro-Thomsen

Martin Ferro-Thomsen, M.A. is co-founder of Issuu, a leading digital publishing platform.

16

We Left Home; Why Shouldn’t Ideas?

Jeff Gomez

Jeff Gomez is author of the book Print is Dead: Books in our Digital Age.

17

Delectation

Denise Gonzales Crisp

Denise Gonzales Crisp is a designer, writer, and Graphic Design professor at North Carolina State University, College of Design.

18

Welcome to the Digital Age. What Changed?

Alexander Griekspoor

Alexander Griekspoor is the co-founder of Mekentosj, an independent software company that writes innovative software for researchers.

19

Non-linear Publishing

Hendrik-Jan Grievink

Hendrik-Jan Grievink is an editorial designer and co-founder of the Next Nature Institute.

20

Subtitling

Ger Groot

Ger Groot is a writer and teaches Philosophy at the Erasmus University Rotterdam and Philosophy and Literature at the Radboud University Nijmegen.

21

Ambient Scholarship

Gary Hall

Gary Hall is author of Digitize this Book! and Professor of Media and Performing Arts at Coventry University.

22

Set the Text Free: Balancing Textual Agency Between Humans and Machines

John Haltiwanger

John Haltiwanger engages new media in theory and practice. He is a member of the Open Source Publishing collective.

23

Educate Well, Read Better

N. Katherine Hayles

N. Katherine Hayles is a professor in the Literature programme at Duke University, Durham, NC.

24

Reading the Picture

Toon Horsten

Toon Horsten is writer of Het Geluk van de Lezer [ed. Happiness of the Reader] and artistic leader of Strip Turnhout.

25

Apples and Cabbages

Minke Kampman

Minke Kampman is an editor, teacher, and new media researcher.

26

How Will We Read?

Lynn Kaplanian-Buller

Lynn Kaplanian Buller is the director of The American Book Center in Amsterdam.

27

Screening

Kevin Kelly

Kevin Kelly is Senior Maverick for Wired Magazine.

28

I Don’t Read on My Bike

Joost Kircz

Joost Kircz is part-time programme manager electronic publishing at the HvA [Hogeschool van Amsterdam] and director of Kircz Research Amsterdam.

29

Reading As Event

Matthew Kirschenbaum

Matthew G. Kirschenbaum is Associate Professor of English (University of Maryland), Associate Director of the MITH, and Director of Digital Cultures and Creativity.

30

Reading the Network

Tanja Koning

Tanja Koning is freelance programme maker and project leader of Discovery Festival and O.K. Periodicals.

31

Nearby and Global in Its Impact

Steffen Konrath

Steffen Konrath is editor-in-chief of nextlevelofnews.com and blogs about the future of journalism.

32

The Interface of the Graphic Novel

Erin La Cour

Erin La Cour is a PhD candidate at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA) where she researches graphic novels and cultural memory.

33

Minimal and Maximal Reading

Rudi Laermans

Rudi Laermans is professor of theoretical sociology at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Catholic University of Leuven.

34

Reading Apart Together

Warren Lee

Warren Lee is the owner and co-founder of the internationally renowned bookstore Nijhof & Lee in Amsterdam.

35

Unexpected Ways

Jannah Loontjens

Jannah Loontjens is a writer and poet.

36

Consume Without a Screen

Alessandro Ludovico

Alessandro Ludovico is a media critic, editor-in-chief of Neural magazine, and founder of Mag.net (Electronic Cultural Publishers organization).

37

The Networked Culture Machine

Peter Lunenfeld

Peter Lunenfeld, Professor in the Design Media Arts Department at UCLA. He is the creator and editorial director of the MIT Press Mediawork project.

38

From Noun to Verb

Ellen Lupton

Ellen Lupton is curator at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in NYC and director of the Graphic Design MFA at MICA, Baltimore.

39

The Role of the Hardware

Anne Mangen

Anne Mangen is a reading specialist at the National Centre for Reading Research and Education at Stavanger University in Norway.

40

From Reading to Pattern Recognition

Lev Manovich

Lev Manovich is an author of new media books and director of the Software Studies Initiative at CALIT2.

41

Reading ‘For the Sake of It’

Luna Maurer

Luna Maurer is a designer under the name Poly-Luna and she is part of the Conditonal Design Collective.

42

The Matrix: Three Subjective and Intuitively Selected Pointers for Building Blocks for The Script in Which We Live

Geert Mul

Geert Mul is a media artist and VJ pioneer.

43

Horses Are Fine So Are Books*

Arjen Mulder

Arjen Mulder is a media theorist, writer, and editor for V2_Publishing and of De Gids.

44

Shapes

Caroline Nevejan

Caroline Nevejan is a researcher and designer focusing on the implications of technology on society.

45

Achievement Unlocked!

David B. Nieborg

David B. Nieborg is researcher and teacher at the University of Amsterdam and Utrecht with a focus on online participation and gaming culture.

46

U-turn

Kali Nikitas

Kali Nikitas is the Chair of MFA Graphic Design + Communication Arts of the Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles.

47

The Epitaph or Writing Beyond the Grave

Henk Oosterling

Henk Oosterling is a philosopher, and associate professor at Erasmus University Rotterdam.

48

Jumping Frames

David Ottina

David Ottina is an interaction designer, free culture advocate, and a co-founder of Open Humanities Press.

49

Pictures and Words

Peter Pontiac

Peter Pontiac is a comic strip artist.

50

The Grammar of Images

Ine Poppe

Ine Poppe is an artist and journalist with a special interest in digital culture, technology, and art.

51

The Many Readers in My Body

Emilie Randoe

Emilie Randoe is director of Randoe Verandermanagement and founder of the Institute of Interactive Media at the Hogeschool Amsterdam.

52

Arrangements

Bernhard Rieder

Bernhard Rieder is an assistant professor for New Media at the Media Studies department at the University of Amsterdam.

53

Desecration of Reading

Paul Rutten

Information consumption, and that includes reading, can in principle take place everywhere. Electronic networks offer information to the farthest corners of the world. Efforts by research institutes and companies are aimed at making information omnipresen

54

Epi-phany Plea for a Counter-culture of Un-reading and Un-writing

Johan Sanctorum

Johan Sanctorum is a Flemish columnist, essayist, and philosopher.

55

Savouring Thoughts

Louise Sandhau

Louise Sandhaus is owner of LSD (Louise Sandhaus Design), full-time faculty at CalArts and board member of AIGA.

56

The Stutter in Reading (Call for a New Quality of Reading)

Niels Schrader

Niels Schrader is founder of Mind Design in Amsterdam and lecturer at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague.