'For the bibliographers at UCL': A Humument and the lessons it teaches 21st century librarians

Object-based learning lies at the heart of teaching in both Historical Bibliography and Cataloguing classes on the MA Library and Information Studies at UCL. Tom Phillips’s work A Humument and the novel he chose to use as his canvas, W.H. Mallock’s A Human Document provide memorable ‘object lessons’ with scope for students to synthesize and evaluate their pre-existing learning from inside and outside the modules. It is important that the examples used in class are simple enough to illustrate the strengths of any conceptual model yet complex enough to highlight its limits. It is also ideal if examples can be beautiful as well as useful. A Humument fulfills all these criteria and, for students with no background in Art or Art Librarianship, also introduces the artists’ book as a genre and artists themselves as an important and interesting user group within information services

The Photobook in the face of Pervasive Digital Resources: Is there an enduring need for the physical book amongst students of photography?

Photography students and the specific information resources they use represent a relatively unexplored area in the Library and Information Science literature. The intention of this study is to explore the relevance of the physical photobook and digital resources to this specific audience. A mixed method, pragmatic approach was deemed the most appropriate means by which to establish an initial understanding of the research issues upon which further research may be based. Interviews were conducted with subject librarians, a higher education photography lecturer and photography programme graduates in order to form a holistic understanding of the relevance of and issues associated with the photobook and photography resources within the digital information ecology. The findings of these interviews inform the design and content of a web based survey instrument which was administered to current photography students and graduates from higher education photography courses in the UK. The findings provide insight into a previous unexplored area. Despite the small sample size, the findings of this study indicate that the photobook is a resource of particular significance to students of photography, especially with relation to inspiration and insight into the work and practice of photographers. The surveyed students indicated a preference for the photobook when engaging with the work of photographers which is rooted in the physical properties of the book and its role as a medium for presenting photographs in which aspects such as sequencing and narrative were deemed to be of importance. Various correlations are apparent between critical perspectives in both the photography related and LIS literature consulted. The findings reveal the surveyed students to be users of the libraries at their respective institutions with photobooks being the primary motivation for their visits

A Glitch Pedagogy: Exquisite Error and the Appeal of the Accidental

By experimenting with computer glitches as provocation of accepted norms of user interactions with digital technologies, this paper extends and radicalizes Dewey’s (1934) pedagogical principle of “consummatory experience,” observing computational error, logical accidents, and procedural glitches as creative and productive forces in the lived curriculum. We hold that this troubling of expected outcomes, this disruption of programmed processes which, as a result of incommensurable informational input, result in unique (and educational) by-products, is fundamental to understanding our digital humanity, and that these irregularities convey the same learning potential that learning from mistakes and fortunate accidents do in the arts, sciences, and within the broader context of lifelong learning

Towards a fugitive press: materiality and the printed photograph in artists’ books

The aim of my research is to demonstrate how a practice of hand made books based on the materiality of the photographic print and photo-reprography, could engage with notions of touch in the digital age. We take for granted that most artists’ books are made from paper using lithography and bound in the codex form, yet this technology has served neither producer nor reader well. As Hayles (2002:22) observed: We are not generally accustomed to thinking about the book as a material metaphor, but in fact it is an artifact whose physical properties and historical usage structure our interactions with it in ways obvious and subtle. My research examines the discourse surrounding the materiality of the photographic print within artists’ publishing and explores book handling as a research method to identify non-codex forms that invite non-sequential reading, physical interaction and touch. The primary purpose of the practice element of my research is to test disruptive making strategies and fugitive materials, in order to make tacit knowledge explicit in the physical forms of prototypes and finished artists’ books that operate beyond our horizons of expectations. My practice interconnects the separate fields of documentary photography and curating photography and the vernacular together with visual humour and seeks to restore a connection with the ‘thingness’ of photography largely absent in the post-digital age

Forms of List-Making: Epistemic, Literary, and Visual Enumeration

This open access book attempts to show that an examination of the list’s formal features has the potential to produce genuine insights into the production of knowledge, the poetics of literature and the composition of visual art. Following a conceptual introduction, the twelve single-authored chapters place the list in a variety of well-researched contexts, including ancient Roman historiography, medieval painting, Enlightenment periodicals, nineteenth-century botanical geography, American Beat poetry and contemporary photobooks. With its interdisciplinary approach, this book is a unique contribution to an emerging field dedicated to the study of lists

Forms of List-Making: Epistemic, Literary, and Visual Enumeration

This open access book attempts to show that an examination of the list’s formal features has the potential to produce genuine insights into the production of knowledge, the poetics of literature and the composition of visual art. Following a conceptual introduction, the twelve single-authored chapters place the list in a variety of well-researched contexts, including ancient Roman historiography, medieval painting, Enlightenment periodicals, nineteenth-century botanical geography, American Beat poetry and contemporary photobooks. With its interdisciplinary approach, this book is a unique contribution to an emerging field dedicated to the study of lists

Publication of an Internet-accessible database resource for Arts et Metiers graphiques

Arts et Metiers graphiques (AMG) was a prominent French graphic arts magazine that was published in 68 issues from 1927 to 1939. Charles Peignot, head of the French typefoundry Deberny et Peignot, created the publication. Deberny et Peignot was the leading company of its kind in France. It manufactured not only thousands of metal type designs, but also machinery, furniture, and accessories for sale to the typesetting and printing industries. Charles Peignot, a young visionary with presses, metal type, and personal connections at his disposal secured his legacy in graphic arts history with the publication of Arts et Metiers graphiques. In it, he wanted to cover all the subjects near or far from printing, of its history, and its diverse contemporary manifestations. In over ten years of publication Peignot\u27s wide editorial goal encompassed subjects ranging from illustration, the history of the book and printing techniques and the then-expanding disciplines of advertising design and modern art photography. The magazine also featured regular reviews of fine limited-edition books and reprints of classical literature excerpts in typographically innovative layouts. Each edition was printed on high-quality papers with frequent tipped-in plates and inserts. Until the Second World War forced the magazine to cease production, Arts et Metiers graphiques was one of the highest standards for graphic arts magazines of its time. This thesis describes the creation and implementation of a web-based database providing access to the digitized content of Arts et Metiers graphiques

Photo Wallet : interface design for simple mobile photo albums

Tese de mestrado. Multimédia (Perfil Tecnologias). Universidade do Porto. Faculdade de Engenharia. 201

Print versus screen—presentation medium-dependent picture consumption

Part I: The use of digital technologies has forever changed how consumers are capturing, sharing, and storing their pictures. The long-term objective of Part I of this study is to obtain an overall picture of the current state of consumer photographers’ practices. While digital camera owners are taking more photos than ever before, most are not printing them. However, experiments conducted on the presentation mediumdependent differences in picture consumption showed that a majority of the participants prefer printed images to images viewed on a screen. Regardless of this preference, participants did not print images very often for a variety of reasons, including lack of time or money. In addition, results showed that the most commonly used printing tools included Kodak EasyShare Gallery, Shutterfly, and Flickr. Finally, participants cited Photoshop, Lightroom, and Picasa as the primary editing tools, with Facebook being mentioned as the main sharing tool. Parts II & III: The advent of digital print engines capable of achieving high image quality has opened up many new and exciting print product opportunities, including the short-run printing of magazines. However, content available for magazines is also readily available on-line. It is not immediately obvious that the capability of creating a short-run magazine translates into a viable business model; just because they can be printed does not necessarily mean that it makes sense to do so. The objective of this project was to take the first steps toward identifying and understanding the differences in how information is consumed from print on paper versus computer display and which characteristics of these media are particularly relevant in this comparison. Longer-term, it is intended to explore how such differences affect the efficacy of magazine advertising. This evaluation involved an assessment of differences for several metrics, including information retention, time taken to view images, preference for visually consuming information, and distribution of visual gaze as measured by eyetrackers. Experimentation was conducted that focused on the first three of these four factors (Part II). Experimentation in Part III generally confirmed the results of this study: specifically, that people preferred the hard copy rendition over a PDF when given the choice (for reasons of image accessibility and tangibility), and that neither the time used to view the photo books nor information retention as measured by image recognition and information recall were affected by the medium in which the photo book was seen. The results of this study also agreed with earlier research findings that observers tend to fixate first and most often in the central areas of images. This research also found, however, important differences between how the observers viewed the printed and screen versions of the photo book, with the screen group having more fixations per image for many of the images early in the book (though not spending more time with these images), while the print group switched more often between images. While the work conducted in Part II suggested that there were no important differences between the print and screen groups of observers, the results of Part III hint at differences that may be important with regard to individual images or image layouts. Further work involving image content with a more balanced mix of text and pictorial imagery might prove useful in exploring these findings further

Art Style, Art & Culture International Magazine, no. 7

Special issue on the "Material Image: Affordances as a New Approach to Visual Culture Studies." Editorial Team: Editor-in-Chief and Creative Director: Christiane Wagner Senior Editor: Martina Sauer Co-Editor for this Special Issue: Elisabeth Günther Associate Editors: Laurence Larochelle, Katarina Andjelkovic and Natasha Marzliak For more information about the magazine or for the full bios of the editorial team and scientific committee, please visit the Art Style Magazine’s website. Art Style | Art & Culture International Magazine is an open access, biannual, and peer-reviewed online magazine that aims to bundle cultural diversity. All values of cultures are shown in their varieties of art. Beyond the importance of the medium, form, and context in which art takes its characteristics, we also consider the significance of socio-cultural, historical, and market influence. Thus, there are different forms of visual expression and perception through the media and environment. The images relate to the cultural changes and their time-space significance— the spirit of the time. Hence, it is not only about the image itself and its description but rather its effects on culture, in which reciprocity is involved. For example, a variety of visual narratives—like movies, TV shows, videos, performances, media, digital arts, visual technologies and video game as part of the video’s story, communications design, and also, drawing, painting, photography, dance, theater, literature, sculpture, architecture and design—are discussed in their visual significance as well as in synchronization with music in daily interactions. Moreover, this magazine handles images and sounds concerning the meaning in culture due to the influence of ideologies, trends, or functions for informational purposes as forms of communication beyond the significance of art and its issues related to the sociocultural and political context