I’ve been testing the new WordPress interface for a while and just think it’s da bombiest! The user interface is clean, the new functions rock, and the .php seems pretty optimized (everything running faster, even on my slow server).
It’s amazing to think that I’m already done with the first three weeks of my final quarter at RIT. It’s been intense — and the reason that I’ve not been blogging. By the end of this coming week, I’ll be able to premier all the stuff that I’ve been working on.
So I haven’t been able to update the site on any consistent base in a while. Life’s been really busy. Unfortunately, as of late, it seems like I only have time to blog around major, and often tragic, events. So, quickly (with RIT’s quarter drawing to its close, I have a mountain of grading to do) here’s some good things:
I’m sure there’s more, but my timer is going off, reminding me that it’s time to get back to grading.
I’m back from vacation, and sitting in my office trying to get used to my new Mac laptop. Our short vacation was great. And Dre and I have passed the one-year marriage milestone with no frying pans being embedded into my skull. Good times!
Here are some photos from today at RIT:
Tomorrow I’m at Cornell to start classes there.
A note before proceeding: this post may read as a bit of a “duh” to some folks. To others it may seem like the height of naval gazing. These relationships have been bouncing around in my head for about a week and I needed to get them out in order to sort these concepts out and begin making them my own. Like any good spark of an idea, this needs to be taken as a beginning and not a definitive standpoint. As with all models, there are holes in this one. My overall goal was to create a jumping off point for future discussions about what it is that we’re doing here at RIT and where we are going.
Last week, after my interviews at RIT, Frank Cost and I sat discussing the School of Print Media (SPM) and its relation to the field of communications. In particular we were trying to situate our position in the ever expanding world of technologically mediated communications. We both agreed that we weren’t simply in the business of facilitating communication, as that’s too broad a category. Nor are we in the business of Publishing, which has specific industry and process implications beyond the (re)production[1] of a text. So, from an academic perspective, what exactly are we specializing in here at SPM?
The field of Computer Mediated Communications divides interactions into two categories: synchronous and asynchronous. Synchronous communications are those in which all individuals are “present” at the time of interaction. The most common example is the proverbial face-to-face conversation. The notion of “present” refers to a temporal and interaction collocation rather than a geographical one. Telephones, live-chat, and video teleconferences are all examples of technologically mediated synchronous conversations. The key thing is that wherever the participants are, they are communicating in real time.
In asynchronous communications, on the other hand, the participants are not temporally co-located. This blog is an example of an asynchronous communication. I’m typing this at ten minutes to noon on Monday April 24, 2006. Who knows when you’ll read this. It might be later today (Monday April 24, 2006). It might be later this week. Or you might have found this through a Google search a year or two after I posted it. The key thing is that you are not looking over my shoulders as I’m typing this – though, speaking as the author, it often feels like you are.
In order to work, all asynchronous communications must produce artifacts[2] (or artefacts if you’re using the Brit spelling) – “Anything made by human art and workmanship; an artificial product.” (artefact, n. and a., 1989) Without an artifact, be it this blog entry or the post-it note left on someone’s computer screen, the communication cannot take place. Note that the artifact does not need to be long-lived or physical. As already mentioned, a blog can function as an artifact, and that post-it note isn’t intended to hang on that screen forever.
Asynchronous communications can be seen as having (at least) two phases – production and dissemination. I’m currently producing this entry, undertaking the action of translating ideas in my head to a static form within a word document. That’s just half of the process. When I press <crlt – s> for the last time and save this in its final form, the artifact is finished. But, from a communicative sense, it’s latent – unshared. It doesn’t have value until it’s disseminated – published to the web. And even then it isn’t truly a communication until someone reads it – thank you for completing the process.
Acts of dissemination are not created – or are intended to be – equal. The vast majority of artifacts that we create and distribute are not intended for mass consumption. E-mail, and letters before them, are by and large considered to be private communications, disseminated to select individuals. On the other hand, my blog and the books on my office shelves are written for larger audiences. Hence we have terms like “mass media” to denote channels of communication with access to large number of people. I think the prefix “macro” might work better than mass for what I’m getting at. Thus we can differentiate between a micro-dissemination and a macro-dissemination. What is useful about “marco” is that it denotes both large scale and “the existence of smaller individuals”
Relating this back to the conversation I had with Cost, the School of Print Media needs to be concerned with the (re)production and macro-dissemination of artifacts (forms of asynchronous communication). This (re)production and macro-dissemination can take place across multiple technologically-mediated mediums – paper, web, and portable media devices.
There are two key ideas here: (re)production and macro-dissemination. Digital media often blurs the line between the production and reproduction of an artifact. For example, take this blog: there is no reproduction of this entry, at least not in a physical sense. In the background my words are tagged and entered into a database. When the entry is called, my words are retrieved, and then have design styles applied against them in order to render a finished page. But, ignoring RSS feeds for the moment, no additional copies of my words are created. Yet those words can still be, and are, fact, macro-disseminated. Thus we cannot only be interested in the reproduction of artifacts.
Macro-dissemination is used to differentiate us from visual artists whose job is also to produce and disseminate artifacts. The differences between their work and ours is a matter of scale (and perhaps reproduction). In order to be financially and culturally successful, an artist must not only produce work but also to get it disseminated (installed in galleries, patron’s residences, or other exhibition locals). At some point, that act of dissemination may include reproducing those artifacts in a macro-dissemination medium, such as print. In doing so, those existing artifacts are used to create new artifacts (note that artifacts often beget other artifacts) and at that point printers often come into play.
What I also like about macro- is that it doesn’t contain some of the cultural baggage of “mass.” In particular, mass contains the notion of uniformity – mass production. We don’t think of mass communications as particularly personal. One of the most talked about areas of print, on the other hand, is Variable Data Print. Facilitated by digital technology, we can create jobs where each artifact is customized (personalized) for a different recipient. The end result is a macrodissemination of individualized communications (hence the value of macro’s acknowledgement of “smaller individuals”).
artefact, n. and a. Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. 1989. cited March 28, 2006: available from http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50053052?query_type=word&queryword=artefact.
macro-, comb. form. Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. 1989. cited March 28, 2006: available from http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50053052?query_type=word&queryword=macro.
[1] The approach of using the “(prefix)word” construct is liberally appropriated from the writings of Michael Silverstein, University of Chicago
[2] These records are often referred to as “texts.” My only issue with using this designation is that its easy to conflate the idea of a text with type. Thus, for some, in order to be a text a document must contain type and some form of written structure. Semoticians are quick to remind that any form of written language is, at its core, stable images and that images are also texts. For my part, I think that using artifact sidesteps some of these debates.
That question has been front of mind for most of the last week after I first encountered it on the In The Balance Blog.1 It seem an especially pertinent as I prepared for my interviews at the School of Print Media. There is little question in my mind that print is sexy — though limiting it to just being sexy seems to do it a bit of a disservice. I don’t think it is an exaggeration to recognize the printing press, and the dissemination of the printed word, as the most important technological advance of the last millennium. Likewise, the translation and reproduction of thought and knowledge in the printed page is at once an intellectual and a sensual process. And, as I’ve previously posted, there is something inherently sexy about machines that can print, in perfect registration, at speeds approaching 60 miles an hour. Finally, I think there can be little doubt that the products of the process can be sexy as well — the US Supreme Court, among others, has spent quite a bit of time trying to decide exactly how sexy printed materials can be.2
The question at hand is whether or not the printing industry is sexy. I seem to think that it once was, though that may be misplaced nostalgia for bygone days of stripping and before that of hot metal and letterpress. As I delve further into its present state, I see sexy aspects to the current industry — I’m just not sure how we we are taking advantage of them. In my view, tied up in the question of sexiness is a return to the tension between craft and automation. I find the day-to-day sexy — if there is such a beast — is contained in the craft and is embodied in the connection between the printer, her equipment, and the product they are producing. The problem we face is that automation has often disrupted those relationships and, as an industry, we haven’t compensated for those changes.3
Over the past hundred and fifty years, more and more aspects of the craft of printing have transitioned out of the print shop. Take for example prepress. At one time, the printer would receive handwritten (or perhaps typed) text and loose illustrations. the barest of building blocks for a job, and through the alchemy of their craft, the printer would transform these elements into a finished book. Slowly, with the introduction of photo typesetting and new printing processes, the art began to come to the printer in more and more complete forms. Still, as late as the mid 1990’s, it was up to the printer to take these break down these elements and reassemble them into the job.
Today, thanks to desktop publishing, much of that process has been automated.4 And in that transition, and countless others like it, we have lost more and more of the traditional craft of printing. Granted, new technology has developed new craft areas, but not at the same rate as what is lost. Nor necessarily are these new crafts quite as diverse. This, in my mind, has led the industry to feeling less sexy.
The challenge we face is to bring more craft back into the printing industry. This doesn’t mean that we return to Linotypes. While automation might provide technical and production parity (or something close to it), the sexy is found in new areas of differentiation. We need to reclaim areas of the production cycle that moved out of the print shop. One area where this contains immediate opportunities is in the area of Variable Data Print (and Publishing). This is an example of an area where printers can develop new crafts, advising their clients in the structuring of data, the development of offers, and the optimization of design. Granted this may involve moving out of comfort zones and taking a few risks here and there. Isn’t danger an inherent part of sexy?
2 – I’m not trying to conflate sexiness with pornography. There is little doubt in my mind that they are two different things. That said, they are often bound up together and their edges sometimes blur.
3 – I am not arguing against automation. Its a powerful tool. But being a tool it also is a subtle form of trap, and needs to be acknowledged as such.
4 – This is not to say that prepress and preflighting have gone away entirely. Nor am I suggesting that most clients get the prepress aspects right. Still from all the evidence I’ve seen there are far less prepress workers today than there were at the height of mechanical stripping.