Situated Publishing: Writing with and for Machines

Situated Publishing: Writing with and for Machines

Date: 
04.02.2017 20:00
Edition: 
2017
Format: 
Talk
Location: 
Studio

In this presentation, publishing activities including collective writing, editing, and layout designs are used to generate PDFs or printed brochures as examples of digital output beyond the cloud. Over the years, the Constant association for arts and media began experimenting with a local server, using it as a literary and publishing platform for temporary, collective work situations. Thanks to tools such as Etherpad, Git, FTP, and web servers it is fairly simple to install a virtual work desk alongside a physical desk, where ideas are shared and developed in real life. But what if this table is shared, not only with humans, but also with algorithms? Short script commands write and rewrite data in a customized way. They become personal tools and enrich our text processing abilities like spell-checkers or dictionaries. In addition to exploring code-based approaches for developing and publishing texts, Constant invited designer and programmer Sarah Garcin to demonstrate her PJ-machine, which composes layouts for publishing, transforming data into PDFs that flow from the printer in one click.

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