478 Matching Annotations
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    1. Comment by chrisaldrich: This was eventually published at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14682753.2017.1362168 which also has additional links/references.

    2. Comment by onewheeljoe:

      For example, we might simply ask that each participant refrain from using hashtags as a final thought because that is a form of sarcasm or punchline that can be misconstrued or shut down honest debate or agreeable disagreement.

      We could ask respondents to reply to any comment that they read twice because of tone to use "ouch" as a tag or a textual response. The offending respondent could respond with "oops" in order to preserve good will in an exchange of ideas.

      Finally, the first part of a flash mob might occur here, in the page notes, where norms could be quickly negotiated and agreed upon with a form of protocol.

    3. hopeless

      Comment by actualham: suggest edit: change to "hopeful."

    4. people will be trained to engage more rigorously and respectfully with each other.

      Comment by ndsteinmetz: YES!!! This should be the goal in its entirety. I'm so glad to hear you say "promote a more civil discussion". Too often civil discussions are avoided and, many times in education, not even offered. How are we to sustain a successful democracy without civil discussions being present and offered regularly? How are we to train up successful, contributing citizens without offering civil discussion opportunities with regularity? It can't happen and won't happen, my hope is Hypothes.is can help achieve this!

    5. a culture of civility and inquiry, but of course that’s no bulwark against trolls.

      Comment by ndsteinmetz: You're right, however, a culture of civility and inquiry can very easily overpower trolls if it's built correctly. A strong community can withstand many attacks if it's genuineness and civility remain strong!

    6. Perhaps a way for a site owner to opt out of web annotation, though I worry such a feature would undo the ability to speak truth to power.

      Comment by ndsteinmetz: I share this worry with you! I believe this infringes on the realm of censorship. How can one post something on the web and opt out of web annotation? Seems to be a double standard...I want the public to hear this but I don't want to hear their thoughts. Certainly limits the ability to speak truth to power.

    7. Under what conditions does web annotation create the social and technical structures to enhance such civil, and trustworthy, online discourse?

      Comment by BMBOD: Wow what a question. I can't wait to see what other people have to say. It seems like it would be easy to come up with ways that are not civil, or trustworthy, online discourse - but to frame this as which conditions are created is far more powerful.

      As I mentioned in an earlier annotation, I think much of this has to do with shifting personal epistemology through the process of discourse with "authorities" and authors, the societal weighting of evidence and supportive information, and the interaction among participants and text at various levels. But there is a whole lot there that can go wrong. I love all of the occasions I've had to interact with others via hypothes.is thus far, but it does strike me that they have been primarily among peers with similar perspectives, epistemology, ideals, and academic background as myself. And perhaps that is a good place to start- modeling constructive and supportive behaviors in certain communities of practice?

      Edit to add: I think the social expectation that comes with using hypothes.is the way I have (through annotation flash mobs and annotatathons) is important. Having annotated this article as separate from a flash mob type event I find myself constantly checking back for new annotations, commentary, and responses. Web annotation for me has become inherently a cooperative and collaborative practice.

    8. what of the social value

      Comment by BMBOD: something we should always ask ourselves, and ask ourselves repeatedly

    9. implicit social contract

      Comment by danallosso: To what extent does the fact that Hypothesis annotations show up in our feeds (and are thus useful for us tracking our movement through texts) while mere highlights do not, determine usage patterns ?

    10. The same technology that can spew hate speech on an individual’s blog post can also be used by community organizers to publicly critique proposed legislation.

      Comment by actualham: Yes, this is part of the paradoxical way that open works, as Martin Weller has argued. This is the crux of all of the challenge for me right now.

    11. listening to authors, first of all, but also to other readers, and then sharing where we stand? I certainly like to think so.

      Comment by ndsteinmetz: Completely agree here! It is in listening to each other that we progress. Without listening to their readers, authors are simply writing what it is they want, think, need, and feel. Without listening to authors, the readers are necessarily even reading for understanding. It seems cyclical but important to note, I wonder what would happen if we listened to each other more often, especially in the case of web text truly bringing about the "net-working" RK described.

    12. text as an unfinished thing

      Comment by danallosso: In another sense, though, it makes the reader's process more visible so that the reader no longer needs to trespass into the author's territory. I've always been dissatisfied with the lit-crit position that the author must be completely decentered and her contribution minimized to make room for the reader. THIS seems to create a real space for the reader, and in so doing maybe it also allows the author to reclaim some of her space.

    13. Much of what makes Hypothes.is special – its non-profitness, its open sourceness, its advocating for open standards-ness – is specifically structured to counteract the politics of the siloed version of the web we have now, which is not conducive or structured for enhancing civic engagement. The fundamentally open structure of the web allows information to flow freely. An open structure for web annotation will allow critique and conversation to similarly flow freely. There I go again on standards, but it’s an important difference between Twitter and Hypothes.is (or any open annotation client): your annotations are yours in a way that your Tweets simply are not.

      Comment by actualham: YES, I agree with this.

    14. Because “open” may face a similar fate as befell “design” and “innovation,” terms that are alternatively inspiring and incomprehensible, both motivation and muddled jargon.

      Comment by chrisaldrich: "Information" is another word that might fit into this group of over-saddled words.

    15. Hypothes.is as bettering Twitter

      Comment by jeremydean: There’s also a growing culture of people on Twitter hacking the microblogging platform as an annotation tool. They call them Screenshorts, Tweets that use screenshots of highlighted text to ground commentary. To me it’s just web annotation 1.0. But they’re just trying to be good English students, right?

      From a pedagogical and rhetorical perspective, at least, an annotated Trump speech is more effective than a random comment out there in the ether of the net. Similarly, a close read of the Clinton emails I believe would reveal there’s not much of a story there. But as a culture, we are not engaging with politics in that way, and we would be better off if we did.

    16. Comments sections have served this purpose in the past to an extent, but we might think of web annotation as an evolution of (rather than proxy for) page-bottom commentary.

      Comment by SenorG: This strikes me as a key factor in web annotation reaching the mainstream, especially in education. When an educator asks, "How is this significantly different from leaving comments at the end of an article?" it will be helpful to have a concise, comprehensible and convincing response. When I speak about this, I focus on the "contexting" that web annotation facilitates and the potentiality for authentic audience and dialogue. The problem with both of these points is that a critic can (rightly) respond that existing page-bottom commentary can already allow a degree of both of these.

    17. power a crowd-sourced system of fact- and bias-checking

      Comment by BMBOD: in the same line of thought as with choral explanations?

    18. speak back to the authority of the web

      Comment by silvertwin: Does this undersell your contribution? By which I mean, this looks like it's restating an opposition - between authority and 'the people' that takes us back to Gilmoor and others, Clay Shirky even, but what's happening here is disrupting such binaries? Or - and this may be another tangent you don't need - it's like Ranciere's stuff on the pedagogic relation - something like 'flipped' only inverts the relation, it doesn't disrupt it necessarily?

    19. verifying information

      Comment by actualham: Honestly, I am flummoxed about how to respond to the fake news/propaganda thing. Notions of "truth" and "credibility" and "verifiability" are so complicated, and I don't want to be forced by the terms of a fucked up debate to rally around reductive ideas that some things are true and some are false. And then again, I don't want to advocate for an anything-goes approach that makes room for climate- and holocaust-deniers. I am an active user of Snopes. But how do we allow for the richness and complexity of diverse perspectives and non-dominant narratives, while resisting the emerging leftist role of "truth police?" I think H might allow us to do the kind of discursive work-- dialogic work-- that helps here. I don't like to think about that work as fact-checking as much as the critical exposure of epistemologies. We are all biased. Anyone else uncomfortable with the idea that if we just science enough (or whatever) we can get to some kind of pure, irrefutable truth? How could that end up hurting the causes we are trying to advance?

    20. whatever client they choose just as they can use their browser of choice

      Comment by danallosso: Interesting -- what would it look like to have a shared annotation layer that could be accessed by a variety of tools?

    21. the internet as the democratization of information and the internet as yet another, perhaps even more insidious, manifestation of the inextricable relationship between knowledge and power.

      Comment by actualham: Yes. This.

    22. In terms of defining the “open” in open web annotation, I tend to take a standards approach: the Hypothes.is tool is built upon, and our organization advocates for, open standards in web annotation.

      Comment by chrisaldrich: This explanation also highlights an additional idea of open itself. I have heard many in the W3C space criticize the open standard of web annotation arrived at because of the ultimate monoculture of the space. Most of the participants of the process were all related to Hypothes.is in some way and the result was a single product that implemented the standard. To my knowledge no other companies, groups, or individual programmers have separately implemented the standard.

      In this sense, while the "standard" is openly defined, it isn't as open as other standards which were mote slowly evolved and implemented gradually and more broadly by various programming languages and disparate groups.

    23. that we’re not just accessing knowledge on the internet, but creating it ourselves. But it’s not at all the way the web has evolved in terms of the everyday ability to effectively question authority, both technically and politically.

      Comment by BMBOD: I think there are particular personal epistemological assumptions tied up in this, that impact not only how we wish web annotation to be used, but how it functionally can and will primarily be used. If you approach knowledge as something coming from an authority, it is very hard to fathom being able to create it yourself, or talk back to it, even if those platforms exist. Conversely, if you think any opinion is valid, because knowledge is completely subjected as individual "truths" then I think you end up with what we see in a majority of places on the internet that allow discourse... I wonder if, and suspect that, hypothes.is could a powerful tool in shifting personal epistemology - especially where the text creators or "authorities" engage with annotators and the comments they pose...

      ...forgive me, I bring everything back to personal epistemologies

    24. And with that, perhaps we should open this dialogue up for other people to join us.

      Comment by BMBOD: As always, so glad you did.

    25. Furthermore, web annotation also affords curation, creating a static but unstable record of this emergent and dynamic performance, accenting via hypertext particular ideas and moments from a malleable document.

      Comment by chrisaldrich: One of the pieces missing from Hypothes.is is the curateable notebook which more easily allows one to create new content from one's annotations.

      Search is certain there, but being able to move the pieces about and re-synthesize them into new emergent pieces is the second necessary step.

    26. After we posted our initial exchange, and posited our formative thoughts about openness and politics, we could not have anticipated – much less controlled – who would join as reader or conversant, what they would contribute as an annotator, and how we would subsequently react.

      Comment by chrisaldrich: Not to mention the fact that the experiment will continue on into the future past the official publication.

    27. Platforms like Hypothes.is, which afford social and collaborative web annotation, demonstrate the ease with which authors and their audience can create a sociotechnical milieu to share thinking in progress, voice wonder, and rehearse informal dispositions in service of publication.

      Comment by chrisaldrich: I personally identify with this since I'm porting my annotations and thoughts to a notebook as part of a process for active thinking, revision, writing, and eventual publication.

    28. socio-technical architecture

      Comment by actualham: Interesting phrase. Thinking about how all spaces are social (I think?) and all are built (I think?), and so what exactly makes the sociality or structure of a space "open"? Could it have to do not just with inclusivity, but also with the decentering effect that resists boundaries and borders-- and maybe therefore meaning? Invoking Homi Bhabha here in thinking about how margins define centers (not vice versa) and wondering if part of what feels politically important about web annotation is the way that it decenters the text itself, makes it incomplete, multi-authored, dynamic. And that will both challenge master-narratives and maybe also challenge meaning itself, which can be alienating to participants and a challenge to community building. Sorry-- I used to teach Intro Lit Crit. :)

    29. from SenorG’s comment that began with the caveat “Allow me to push back a bit here,” and which inspired four replies from three other annotators, to actualham’s observation

      Comment by chrisaldrich: There's something discordant here in a scholarly article about having academic participants with names like SenorG and actualham. It's almost like a 70's farce starring truckers with bizarre CB handles. It's even more bizarre since I know some of the researchers behind these screennames.

      Is the pseudonymous nature of some of these handles useful in hiding the identity of the participants and thereby forcing one to grapple only with their ideas and not the personas, histories and contexts behind them?

    30. In this respect, we join Fitzpatrick (2011) in exploring “the extent to which the means of media production and distribution are undergoing a process of radical democratization in the Web 2.0 era, and a desire to test the limits of that democratization”

      Comment by chrisaldrich: Something about this is reminiscent of WordPress' mission to democratize publishing. We can also compare it to Facebook whose (stated) mission is to connect people, while it's actual mission is to make money by seemingly radicalizing people to the extremes of our political spectrum.

      This highlights the fact that while many may look at content moderation on platforms like Facebook as removing their voices or deplatforming them in the case of people like Donald J. Trump or Alex Jones as an anti-democratic move. In fact it is not. Because of Facebooks active move to accelerate extreme ideas by pushing them algorithmically, they are actively be un-democratic. Democratic behavior on Facebook would look like one voice, one account and reach only commensurate with that person's standing in real life. Instead, the algorithmic timeline gives far outsized influence and reach to some of the most extreme voices on the platform. This is patently un-democratic.

    31. I believe that a reader’s decision to participate in public web annotation carries an implicit social contract; that my contributions are open to your response, that my ideas are open your dissent, and that my assertions are open to your rebuttal

      Comment by BMBOD: What sort of digital literacy does this require?

    32. However we may define open in the context of web annotation

      Comment by SenorG: Just as there is ambiguity around defining a word as simple as open this conversation hints at an emerging struggle with a shared meaning of annotation. As Remi points out, the traditional view of annotation is as a tool acting in service of reading comprehension. What we are talking about goes beyond that.

      While Merriam Webster and other disseminators of meaning can add extra definitions to their dictionaries under the word 'annotation', I wonder if an easier path to meaning making might be through using different words. There's a risk that it only leads to complications and muddying the waters over semantics but is it worth considering? I describe it as uptexting (not sure if I thought of that on my own or borrowed from someone else). I've heard University of Texas' Carl Blyth describe this as Social Reading and am drawn to this term because it captures the community aspect and might be less confusing because it doesn't seek to reappropriate an existing, commonly held definition.

    33. Why mention this research project alongside your Ponder example? Because irrespective of their differences, both efforts constrain notions of open by positioning annotation as an individual task. Annotation is something a sole reader might do when reacting to a given text and in the service of a broader (and presumably more important) objective.

      Comment by onewheeljoe: In that way, using a digital, sharable sticky note matters. Anyone can make a mess with sticky notes and a more skilled respondent can support another's meaning making with sticky notes.

    34. But what will those conversations look like to random people stumbling upon them?

      Comment by onewheeljoe: What do annotations in an edited volume of Shakespeare communicate to a struggling 9th grade reader? It strikes me that reader-text interactions always leave meaning negotiable, messy and interaction dependent.

      Does this question attempt to rubric-ize the notes we'd put in margins?

    35. What is annotation as a genre? I think what he observed in the annotations was a wide range of reader responses, some highly engaging, others less clearly so.

      Comment by onewheeljoe: This question seems like it should be more specific to disciplines. What is annotation in the legal world? How about for scientists? For beginning readers?

      If I'm annotating a text to make meaning, that's different than if I'm a prof annotating a historical text to provide relevant background. The two notes have only their "noteness" in common, I'd say.

    36. This is neat, though I personally don’t think it pushes students as critical readers as far as other uses of social annotation.

      Comment by onewheeljoe: Neatness matters for teachers who have to keep track of the artifacts students create as writers. If my students are doing great work but I can't see it, I'm disorganized as a teacher. In the online instructional space it is even more important that teachers can see a footprint. If a tool leaves it to chance whether a student's work will be found by the teacher or a stranger, it is a messy tool, from a teacher's perspective.

    37. allowed students to attach a preset (though variable) set of terms to specific selections of text. It touts itself as a critical reading tool but in fact delimits the variability of a reader’s response to a text, not to mention a teacher’s approach to textual analysis.

      Comment by SenorG: Allow me to push back a bit here. While the "canned responses" could, in some environments, build fences around student creativity and expression, it does not have to. From my limited play in the Ponder sandbox, I noticed that students could click on the canned responses OR offer their own annotation just like with Hypothes.is (though I am not sure if the annotation is limited to text). Also, I perceive the canned responses as allowing for scaffolding for younger readers and second language learners.

    38. The tenor of web annotation as disruptive media is defined in no small measure by attendant tensions about the locus, meaning, and impact of such disruption.

      Comment by silvertwin: Does this, then, also do something to disrupt the discourse of 'impact' as currently articulated / imposed by REF etc?

    39. very hard to quantify that datum

      Comment by Whippo: It may be a challenge, but it shouldn't be very hard. The hypothe.is R package is a good start in creating a data science workflow. This workflow would have a clear advantage in higher education... especially in academic disciplines that use R.

    40. Our flexibility goes against the templated idea of educational technology tools that dominate the scene. It’s very hard to quantify that datum generated from such a tool and thus very hard to sell it.

      Comment by onewheeljoe: I'd be interested to know how you test this theory, or hypothesis. What does user feedback look like? How is it analyzed?

    41. “not-yet-ness.”

      Comment by actualham: I know I am basically just another lit crit perspective here, but honestly that background-- particularly as a poststructuralist and probably as a postmodernist--inflects so much of my thinking about what the web is and can be. I think moving from English to Interdisciplinary Studies has also made me value the perspective that sees all knowledge as always incomplete; I love that my new field has a core value of noting that there is always another perspective, even if it's not visible or known yet. So when I work with students on the web-- especially in "intro" courses that are supposed to indoctrinate them to the core principles and theories of Interdisciplinary Studies-- I like to present the web as a space that allows and supports dynamism rather than stasis (process over product). But this is so out of line with so much about how teachers think about "public" writing and projects; we want them to be "portfolio" worthy, tidy, complete. When student work is flawed, I think it's a reminder to us about how we can think of all scholarly work. I love that H lets us focus on critique without a requirement that we devalue the work-- in fact, quite the opposite (we critique what has value and potential and impact and utility...). Just thinking out loud, but I think this aspect of "open-endedness" is really the core (ha ha-- irony) of so many of my areas of interest right now.

    42. authoritative voice of a scholar for themselves

      Comment by BMBOD: oh right, authoritative scholarly voice... guess I should leave out all those "I think"s... ;)

      now I am just adding noise; this can be deleted.

    43. internet citizens

      Comment by actualham: Thinking about this term, and about preceding it with "everyday." Wondering how one becomes this, whether it can ever be mundane without erasing the privilege inherent in the status.

    44. Web annotation clearly decenters authority or expertise in several ways

      Comment by ndsteinmetz: An important establishment in learning from text. How often we presume the author to be the authority. It's important to be open and willing to listen to the ideas of others if we are really seeking expertise. Growing from feedback and criticism is one of my greatest achievements.

    45. collaboratively established

      Comment by ndsteinmetz: It is my hope to see this in all learning environments, too often it is pre-established or determined without respect to learners' needs and interests.

    46. orchestrate shared authorship

      Comment by BMBOD: Are there standards for citing web annotations? How do we acknowledge and credit this shared authorship?

    47. to literally net-work

      Comment by BMBOD: +1

    48. I came to understand open as an invitation for reciprocal networking, the ongoing negotiation of power, and as ambiguity.

      Comment by actualham: So much of this resonates after reading Martin Weller's wonderful little post today (and the awesome PPT embedded therein): http://blog.edtechie.net/openness/the-paradoxes-of-open-scholarship/

    49. How did my experience, alongside a cohort of graduate learners, alter my definition of open?

      Comment by onewheeljoe: Great question because it shows how our language evolves as we learn in much the same way we do.

    50. distributing the source and concern of conversation amongst learners and away from my agenda

      Comment by BMBOD: I think this is such a powerful motivation for using web annotation as a component of peer-review and academic conversations.

    51. public “playground”

      Comment by BMBOD: I love the idea of the public playground, and I think that concept along with the affordances of hypothes.is, say something about the relative safety net of open annotation. Like a public playground, it is not without risk to those participating; however, a degree of anonymity is still offered. You can disconnect your hypothes.is user information from your identity. This can, of course, be both a good and bad thing in generating commentary, but is an important feature of this particular "openness"

      I also just love the connection to "play"

    52. closed educational resources

      Comment by onewheeljoe: Teachers ask for textbooks all the time and insist that student's online work stay inside a walled garden LMS. Profs, too. Empathic listening reveals that they are not novices but professionals with legitimate concerns.

    53. (much less a vendor!)

      Comment by jeremydean: Burn!

    54. with the antithesis to be avoided or judged as possibly inferior

      Comment by onewheeljoe: Agreed that tone matters. Open standards are real things but the word open has been evolving since it was first uttered and it predates Linux and the Apache server.

    55. only recently stumbled into the social practices of web annotation

      Comment by ndsteinmetz: RK is not the only one, I'm still feeling very new as well and learning each time I annotate. The newness is sometimes intimidating but I proceed nonetheless. How might it become more user friendly and inviting to grow the audience and participants?

    56. When you talk about open, I feel like what you mean is “public” or even “collaborative.”

      Comment by onewheeljoe: This is a conversation I heard as I worked with Karen Fasimpaur on various projects beginning with P2PU. She used to hold to a rigid conception of the word open that prevails in web design communities, before accepting more nuanced definitions of the word as she worked more with learners in open spaces.

    57. People should be allowed to access annotations using whatever client they choose just as they can use their browser of choice to access the web

      Comment by ndsteinmetz: Great point here, when can I use Hypothes.is on my mobile device? I'm falling behind due to the need of being at a keyboarded laptop. How might be promote equitable access to such great tools?

    58. annotation – whether social, technical, or political – are amplifications of traditional media practices

      Comment by otterscotter:

    59. in the end be too ethereal or too noisy, testing our ability to subsequently and usefully capture and represent a layered, versioned textual experience as more conventional academic prose

      Comment by BMBOD: Could we perhaps use tags or groups to functionally sort through the layers of "noise" ? Perhaps things like: content critique, meta, grammatical nuances, etc?

    60. performative publishing

      Comment by SenorG: This term is new to me. It really catches my attention while at the same time making me wonder whether there is such a thing as a published text that is not performative. Is the act of publishing - even if as an annotation in the margins of a niche academic journal where it is unlikely to ever be discovered by another set of eyes - inherently performative, regardless of author intent and potentiality for audience?

    61. One challenge is whether – or how – this conversation becomes generative of traditional scholarship, such as a more linear, peer-reviewed article.

      Comment by amidont: There is, truly, so much potential in these tools and approaches toward asynchronous, distributed reading and writing. One question I have, already, is how such distributed forms of production-consumption further dissolve notions of textuality and authorship so entrenched within traditional notions and practices of scholarship and empirical research. The flattened hierarchies, especially, threaten the institutionalized power structures which have tightly controlled the design, review, and dissemination of scholarship and research.

    62. as we invite colleagues to join our conversation and further open the growing discourse to the public.

      Comment by onewheeljoe: The analytics of this article as inquiry are to some degree plain to interested readers. If a reader wants to test out the hypothesis that the conversation will be "interrupted," all they have to do is check the margins. I'm curious about the choice of the word interrupted, tho. Won't bookworms in these margins build on the conversation, the way kids in a sandbox build with what they find? Do annotations interrupt or do they make plain the reader-text interactions?

    63. interrupted

      Comment by BMBOD: Interrupted seems like such a harsh word here. Perhaps punctuated fits better? You don't have to interrupt reading the conversation with the annotations, but you can. Of course in a journal of disruptive media, maybe interruption is exactly the disruption desired...

    64. We have each chosen specific keyword

      Comment by onewheeljoe: This reminds me of Paul Allison's LRNG playlist in which youth have to choose keywords associated with their own inquiry questions.

    65. This article

      Comment by silvertwin: General point - I've been asked to join in this dialogue but it is already very rich and substantial so opting to add only a couple of comments rather than reinvent the wheel.

    1. Comment by postoccupant: Vote for UniverCity!

      I've proposed a workshop to the Future Architecture platform, organised by the Museum of Architecture and Design, Ljubljana. The idea is that the ideas arising from the UniverCity forum can be worked through in discussion about the possibility of a future form of architectural visualisation not tied down to images of completed buildings. Renderings of unpredictability, of occupation, of diverse public knowledges. Vote online: and browse the other projects too.

    2. Comment by postoccupant: Just been invited by Clare Melhuish from UCL Urban Laboratory to participate in a symposium this November. Title: 'Co-curating the city: universities and urban heritage past and future.' We'll be looking at UCL East and the University of Gothenburg in the context of University developments in urban contexts. The forum will feed into this.

    3. Comment by k_wimpenny: Hi, this is my first entry, I have uploaded our ideas for our paper 'Remembering, Reflecting, Returning', we (Peter, Karen and I) want to explore creative ways of sharing our poetry through our images and accompanying music alongside scholarly critique. Annual leave is approaching but we look forward to engaging in conversation with this exciting community!

    4. Comment by postoccupant: UniverCity on Twitter #univercity @postoccupant

    5. Comment by postoccupant: Just posting here to share this content about academia and Twitter... some good links to further discussion of digital academia...

      'Digital platforms, from Twitter and personal blogs to e-journals and iterative monographs, are creating new ways to publish and new publishing opportunities. In this new model of academic publishing, Twitter interactions exist on the same spectrum of activity as peer-review and scholarly editing. But more importantly, new models for scholarly publication are creating new ways to engage in public scholarship beyond traditional publication, fundamentally blurring the boundaries between publication, conversation, and community.'

      http://www.digitalpedagogylab.com/hybridped/beyond-academic-twitter/

    6. Comment by drneilfox: Hello. This is my first entry. Dario and I plan to create a podcast that has three elements:

      1) A formal exploration of the podcast form using our own podcast as a case study. 2) A discussion around academic research and the podcast. 3) A discussion around the 'disruptive journal' featuring input from JMP contributors.

      The aim is to construct a text that operates as a viable and valid piece of research and also is reflexive regarding the changing nature of academic research.

      We will be talking in person late July following some leave and will be emailing disruptive JMP participants shortly to invite them to participate.

      For now I listening to podcasts to prepare, and recommend the latest NPR Invisibilia episode on problem solving, and any episode of the brilliant Longford Podcast.

    7. rapidly shifting status of the University

      Comment by postoccupant: Postoccupant took part in a workshop organised by UCL Urban Lab and Centre for Critical Heritage Studies, exploring the impact of University development projects in Newham (London) and Gothenburg (Sweden). 2 days of discussion, and a great series of presentations on subjects as diverse as activist histories of East London, the agonistic politics of university expansion here and overseas, territorial complexity and public space, workshopping architecture for communities in Bangladesh and London, and the V and A's approach to community engagement. Many more, and the conversations ranged far and wide.<br /> See the post on UniverCity here... http://journal.disruptivemedia.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=209

    1. Comment by hedgesprite: It is so refreshing to read a researcher - outside of dance academe - acknowledging the critical (in both sense) importance of gut instincts in guiding research enquiry. Somatic practice teaches that the gut - being the first organ to form in utero and thus a primitive 'nervous’ system - remains our first and more responsive ‘sense’, before conscious, prefrontal neural processing (e.g. see Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen's Sensing Feeling Action (1993) or Linda Hartley's Wisdom of the Body Moving (1995)).

      While academe is becoming more aware of or preoccupied with dissolving mind-body binary, and the validity of embodied and practice-based enquiry, having the bravery to pursue research that is guided by these things FIRST, with logocentric critical discourse only following subsequently is really important, but seems to be practised less than it is proposed.

    1. It is with that notion that we invite the reader to consider the broader conceptual, heartful dimensions of our work

      Comment by Jessifer: This closing section has a lot of wonderful bits in it. I think the artfulness of this piece earns you the ability to make a stronger claim in the closing section. Even if it is an impressionistic one. It could even be in the parenthetical describing this last bit of music. I kind of love the parentheticals that offer a bit more substantive commentary on the choice. They feel like productive tangents that brush against the text in a useful way.

    2. So it was easy to leave.  It has been much harder to return.

      Comment by Jessifer: So lovely.

    3. And you – contact, inspiration, support? Part of my road back to OT? How about coffee? Inspiration, a part time job at the university?! I hope, I joke, I look forward. Remembering, Reflecting, Returning.

      Comment by Alan_Hook: There are different mixes between the way the streams are produced, is this intentional? The first has both music and poetry through both ears, the second has one in each, is this intentional?

    4. .

      Comment by Alan_Hook: I think that there needs to be a base coat of Narrative Research methods to help to understand the approach to the generation of knowledge and how the particular extrudes out into a wider contribution to new knowledge

    5. In arts-based research practices, a series of abstractions and dealing with the abstract is equally as important in learning about the experience.

      Comment by Jessifer: I like that this sentence theoretically explains the movement from the "I" to the "we." I wonder if you could call that out more directly with a line like. "We (Peter, Karen, and Katherine) draw our stories together here in order to..."

    6. I make due

      Comment by Alan_Hook: would it make more sense here for this to shift from make do to make due

    7. sat a

      Comment by Alan_Hook: sat at a

    8. ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

      Comment by Alan_Hook: There needs to be a meta-communicative channel that helps to orientate the reader between the different research personas

    9. my

      Comment by Alan_Hook: me

    10. Bricolage

      Comment by Alan_Hook: This needs to be introduced earlier to help frame the research process as it is a recurring theme. I would argue that the authorship is also a bricolage rather than a co-authorship, and framed in this way can help guide the readers interpretation.

    11. John-Steiner (2000) observed, “Collaboration thrives on diversity of perspectives and on constructive dialogues between individuals negotiating their differences while creating their shared voice and vision” (p. 6). That’s interesting, politically-influenced language and while I agree with most of it, I’d reframe and redirect that definition to “collaboration includes a diversity of ideas that spring forth from exciting, invigorating, creative dialogues between colleagues to form a bricolage of actions, voices, and visions.” Diversity is inevitable, particularly when working with diverse groups of people. I like the notion of ‘spring’ as both a metaphor for birth (and the season, Spring) and the actions of a spring, both the coiled wire and the water source. Whenever I’m engaged in an Arts Based, Arts Infused, or Arts Informed research project, particularly one that enables the opportunities that emerge from engaging with rich digital media, it’s “exciting, invigorating, and creative.”

      Comment by Alan_Hook: I think that there always needs to be a positioning of the 'I'. The authors have separated and created distinct authorial personas and positions which should be highlighted throughout the work, especially given the connectedness of some of the relationships

    12. It was then that I realized it was very serious – I could touch my palm with my pinky, yet my ring finger stood perfectly still.

      Comment by Jessifer: The writing here is so lovely and precise.

    13. Remembering  music praxis

      Comment by Jessifer: There's a stylistic inconsistency in how each of these sections is presented. I feel like tidying the formatting so that each of these biographical sections has a similar form (and parallel structure) would help keep the reader from veering too far. Honestly, though, I'm loving the mash-up of forms, media, voices. That is working really really well. Just needs a bit more polish as you continue revising.

    14. Peter:  A currere of returning to practice 

      Comment by Alan_Hook: I think this gives context to the approach. There are many ways that practice researchers position what they do, and this sometimes needs to be foregrounded to help the reader orientate the approach and other researchers understand, and be less resistant too the multiplicity of forms that research can take.

    15.  “That’s me in the corner.   That’s me in the spotlight losing my religion.   Trying to keep up with you.   And I don’t know if I can do it.”  (Losing My Religion, REM, 1991)

      Comment by Alan_Hook: There are issues from a readers perspective in how fragmented this is and how it jumps between people, viewpoints etc. Is there another way of presenting this in the journal which makes the flow easier to navigate. There are a lot of authorial styles and voices which the reader/viewer needs to juggle which cause tensions.

    16. Over the past 12 months we have been exploring new avenues of scholarship and theoretical understanding, not least in redefining what contribution to knowledge the artistic process and ‘artwork’ makes methodologically, pedagogically and therapeutically. Our stories and poems are based around the experiences of an occupational therapist, Karen, who after a career break to have a family, decided to reenter her profession. Our work also shares our collaborative research practices which has enabled each of us all to benefit and be inspired, again. Our aim is bring to life and illuminate our experiences of our journeying as practitioners/artists/researchers/teachers with humour and humility.

      Comment by Alan_Hook: There is a break in the paper to provide a back-story, which maps the researchers relationship to the process which is important and has been outlined as an important process in Design based research. This research narrative positions the research subject, and their bias, in relationship to the research outputs, so that the reader can understand how the new knowledge is shaped, and contorted by the researchers subjective encounters with the research process.

      This research process is important for more traditional researchers as there needs to be a solid foundation of this as research for the sceptical.

    17. juxtaposing poetic and visual images

      Comment by Alan_Hook: I had considered this a process of bricolage rather than juxtapositioning. My reading might be wrong, but there is interesting tensions between static images, temporal media such as music, historical context and reconfiguring these to represent something different.

    18. powerful sources of data

      Comment by Alan_Hook: This paragraph shifts the focus from data representation to data source. There needs to be some clarity here, is this a cyclical process. As this sets out some of the bounds of the argument then it becomes a little confusing as to how the authors consider the poems as data. There should be a consideration of the mediating process in this data collection and representation if they are to consider them as data.

    19. The research poem is a form of data representation, where narratives and text generated in the data collection process of qualitative research are condensed into poetic forms

      Comment by Jessifer: I find myself wanting this to be the lead-off sentence of the piece. It sets the stage in a way that helps the rest flow from this claim, rather than around it.

    20. Our choice of images around wood has been carefully selected and considered, representing the many changes wood may undergo through its life course, whilst also connecting to the professional roots of occupational therapy and the arts and crafts movement.

      Comment by Alan_Hook: I think that you need to expand, i would guess as a reader that this has something to do with the transitional nature of the organic material, and its becoming or inbetweeness but i think that you need to explain more about the authorial decisions to help guide the interpretation of the work.

    21. broaden and deepen conversations and raise further questions

      Comment by Alan_Hook: This approach is really important to open up the complexity and 'messiness' (Law 2004) of the generation of new knowledge. It works against the positivism of other research intensive disciplines, but is there a tension in-between the output of research activities opening a space for consideration and reflection and the miscommunication of the new knowledge that has been generated?

    22. Remembering, reflecting, returning: A return to professional practice journey through poetry, music and image

      Comment by Alan_Hook: I think that there needs to be a recognition of some of the instrumental constraints of research as practice. It would be nice to see the accompanying 300 words for this as a research output as there is a lot of complexity to the work and the authorial process that is not apparent through the practice itself

    1. The Author as Producer

      Comment by Gary_Hall: Is this the JMP style. Aren't articles in journals and books usually indicated using quote marks?

    2. endless insecurity.

      Comment by postoccupant: It seems, at the end, I chickened out and produced a pat conclusion. I need to keep the writing 'boiling,' not to bring it down to any kind of conclusion about 'how to think x.' If I am trying to write against causality, the paper needs to remain open - and this means seeing it as an open structure, a mechanism, not an ornament. I have to go through this again. My ideas right now are about bringing this all back to the metaphor of construction - that this is at one and the same time a 'brick' or a piece of a 'ruin.' I'm grateful to my reviewers who have provided useful points for refining the argument - but what is really valid is the fact of their contribution.

      Now, do I rewrite, perfect, refine and produce a 'complete' textual artefact, relegating all comments to my 'research file' - something secondary, annotations in the margin? Or, in the spirit of the Disrupted Journal, keep the paper in its annotated form and put it forward for publication as-is? Thoughts on a post-card please! (with acknowledgements to Derrida!)

    3. For-profit schools are multiplying at an incredible rate and being funded by money machines … to sell dreams to people, young and old. The problem is those dreams don’t exist. These schools are churning out thousands of graduates to an industry without jobs. The only selection process at these types of schools is can you pay or can you sign this student loan from the government.  Your aptitude and your potential talent is never evaluated. Guidance counselors (sic) never reveal the reality of the industry you’re getting into or your odds. In most cases these diploma mill types of schools teach very little of value and even those that do now have cranked out so many others it doesn’t matter. (Squires, 2013)

      Comment by bali: should this be an indented quote? it seems like the entire paragraph is a quote...

    4. Taking a cue from the Occupy movement, as does Giroux, the project occupies the space of the existing University – and in this sense is unrepresentable. Such a project can have no architecture, no totalising vision.

      Comment by bali: very interesting idea - the project, and how it is unrepresentable because it occupies the space of the traditional institution even while challenging it

    5. signally

      Comment by bali: Never seen this word before

    6. he Enlightenment project that gave birth to the University as institution and idea

      Comment by Gary_Hall: The oldest university in Europe is the University of Bologna. It was founded in 1088. Isn't this before the Enlightenment?

    7. my

      Comment by bali: Small point. Rose et al's italics or yours, Adam? If Adam then you should claim that after the citation, i think

    8. spreadsheets

      Comment by Gary_Hall: Isn't Matthew Fuller working on this kind of grey literature? Might be worth checking out.

    9. but in some cases the removal of resistance

      Comment by bali: That's very interesting. Could you give examples of how resistance might be represented or portrayed in the real building vs the architectural representation of it before it exists physically? Are we talking graffiti? People using space in ways it wasn't intended for?

    10. work of abstraction can also be considered a form of violence

      Comment by bali: Wow, I love this point! Making me think in many directions!

    11. mechanisation

      Comment by bali: This paragraph seems to be coming out of nowhere. Like it isn't clear why we are now talking about your labor and mechanisation. But I am sure you have a point there and a reason why you inserted this here. But you need to help the reader see that connection.

    12. bureaucratic

      Comment by Gary_Hall: Is the bureaucratic control you refer to really as total as you seem to be suggesting?

    13. CGI

      Comment by bali: I would clarify to readers what is different or special about CGI renderings here

    14. What I have chosen to problematize in this project is not what is necessary so much as the representation of what is perceived to be necessary. The fact that images are involved – and how they are deployed – matters to me as someone who teaches students to be reflective, critical producers, consumers and manipulators of images.

      Comment by bali: Again, really liking how you are making this point explicit

    15. the ideas, positions, and shared/communal knowledges of undergraduates, postgraduates and academics

      Comment by Gary_Hall: This is interesting. Can you say more about how the ideas of these undergraduates etc. constitute unrepresented knowledges?

    16. is capital

      Comment by Gary_Hall: Is it just capital? Is there nothing in your work that escapes capture by capital?

    17. affect, spectacle and ‘dreamwork

      Comment by bali: You may want to expand on these points. The multidisciplinary nature of your writing means that most of it is understandable to people from a critical stance (so far) but some terms will be completely new. To me, dreamwork is completely new.

    18. It could be argued that a space for the production of knowledge must be unrepresentable – being a location in which something intangible, unknown, and unpredictable is intended to emerge via a process by which groups of human (and nonhuman) agents – students, academics and technologies – engage in processes of collective exploration and/or structured disagreement.

      Comment by Gary_Hall: This is one understand of what a university is. But there are others. For example, the UK government's emphasis on 'impact' is surely about making universities produce knowledge that is very tangible and instrumental-- certainly enough for it to be capable of being measured. Hence also the REF. Do you need to articulate which understanding of the university you are working with here?

    19. beam

      Comment by postoccupant: There is a huge architectural metaphor I have yet to make the most of - if later I draw on the caricature of contemporary attitudes to research as the accumulation of factual 'bricks' (Bernard Forscher (1962) quoted in Gary Rolfe, see references) and oppose it to Bill Readings' notion that the University is in ruins, and that this is something that can be seen as productive, against attempts to aestheticize these ruins. Which is something the CGI University definitely attempts to do! He writes about 'the University as a space for a ... structurally incomplete practice of thought... (I)t is imperative to accept that the University cannot be understood as the natural or historically necessary receptacle for such activities, that we need to recognize the University as a ruined institution, one that has lost its historical raison d'etre. At the same time, the University has, in its modern form, shared modernity's paradoxical attraction to the idea of the ruin, which means that considerable vigilance is required in disentangling this ruined status from a tradition of metaphysics that seeks to re-unify those ruins, either practically or aesthetically.' (Readings, p. 19) CGI as the continuation of metaphysics by other means? Much to do here...

    20. absolute uncertainty

      Comment by Gary_Hall: Do you need to establish that the university is a space designed to contain absolute uncertainty.? At the moment you are just asserting that it is. Don't you need to make a persuasive argument to this effect?

    21. How can a representation that determines each element with absolute precision represent a space which is intended to contain absolute uncertainty?

      Comment by bali: Love this question! I had never thought of it before.

    1. pedagogy of forgetting, a pedagogy of remembering – emerged as a future education initiative. Is it possible that we have forgotten how to forget? Is it possible that we have forgotten how to remember? If so, what would we need to learn to forget and remember?

      Comment by silvertwin: I am fascinated by a pedagogy of forgetting, need to read more.

    2. We asked each member of the Futuremaking group to share their experiences of the Help Desk and Museum, and posed the question “What is your recollection of our futuremaking?” The responses of the members are shared below.

      Comment by silvertwin: There is a tension here, in the 'in between' status of what's presented for review. On the one hand, the curational and participative practices, partly ethnographic (though not stated as such) are documented as practice research, but on the other witness testimony, mainly written, is presented as 'data' (or equivalent) so the disruption appears to be in the act of curation (ie the un-collecting) but it's less clear how the format of the 'output' proposed here is disrupting the orthodoxies of capturing research evidence?

    1. Kittler notes that media “are (at) the end of theory because in practice they were already there to begin with,” (ibid) insisting that the subject’s “intellectual operations” have already been configured, even before these considerations of economics or productivity come into play. In essence, “information wants to be free” because the medium that holds information (in the whatever-form of writing) architecturally demands its basic operations of dissemination, distribution, ingestion, and re-configuration.

      Comment by samoore_: I think this is a really interesting take on OA as necessarily embedded in the medium itself. However, I think it would be helpful for you to add one more paragraph or sentence here to make fully explicit the link between open access and the architectural features of the scholarly medium. It took me a couple of reads to fully understand this paragraph.

    2. Academia.edu,

      Comment by samoore_: Does academia.edu not want to also emulate the profit margins of the large commercial publishers? Only here, it wants to exploit transactional data among its users and charge for 'add-on' services, thus creating new forms of enclosure. See: http://liquidbooks.pbworks.com/w/page/106236504/The%20Academia_edu%20Files

    3. Others have come afterwards and updated this distinction, referring to OA journals with Article processing charges (APCs) and other fees as “gold” and those without fees as “platinum,” pointing to the fact that numerous corporate publishers have begun to offer OA alternatives for their journals (although fees can be as high as $5000 or more). Even Taylor and Francis has an extensive OA publishing policy. These fees aren’t new, of course, as many publishers passed costs on to authors. It was all accepted practice in the publish-or-perish world. The American Journal of Science, for example, charges not only to view the article online, but also charges the authors editorial fees as well as a “$100 per printed page” fee (although institutions paying these charges “will be entitled to 100 free reprints without covers”). 

      Comment by samoore_: I think you need another paragraph here to show just how much the large commercial publishers have hoovered up public funding for APCs (in the UK at least). See: https://olh.openlibhums.org/articles/10.16995/olh.72/ (Table 2).

    4. working with the University of Michigan Press

      Comment by Gary_Hall: OHP used to, during the initial five years of our OHP monograph project, which began in 2009. We are not working with Michigan now, though.

    5. The OA policies adopted by institutions not only forces authors to seek out more “open” options for publications, but help to increase the value proposition that potentially frightens authors away from OA journals.

      Comment by Gary_Hall: This section on open access seems almost to be positioned as a solution to some of the problems discussed previously in relation to Elsevier. Yet can't Elsevier in some respects be understood as one of the largest of open access publishers? (For more, see the recent discussion of 'Elsevier As An Open Access Publisher' on the GOAL email list.)

    6. So profound that the most well funded University in the world, Harvard, has stated it can not continue to afford publisher’s prices.

      Comment by samoore_: This is related to the point above. Harvard has an endowment of $35.7 billion. (http://www.hmc.harvard.edu/investment-management/performance-history.html.) and can clearly afford all the resources it needs.

      The reason I say this is because such institutions may be in a position to take the publishing process in-house, away from large corporations, and compensate the editorial labour mentioned above.

    7. However, it seems that Elsevier has already been disrupted. Maybe not financially (at least at first), but in a way that resulted in a shif to a more aggressive business model, preying on whatever profits they can scrounge. It seems they have seen the proverbial writing on the (digital) wall, or felt the echoes of a dying god.

      Comment by samoore_: While I agree that they have already seen the writing on the wall for the subscription system, they have rapidly moved into APC-based publishing and ‘vertical integration’ of its products by trying to access the data for all aspects of the publishing process (see their purchase of SSRN for example). It’s the data that is most valuable here and allows them to sell services to universities and other institutions.

    8. Communication Professor and Medium author Jason Schmitt outlines some of the concerns that have clouded Elsevier’s business model, despite it remaining more profitable than Apple.

      Comment by samoore_: It might be worth briefly summarising Schmitt's argument here.

    9. The privileged few who can afford to eschew Elsevier either do not need them anymore, or probably never needed them in the first place.

      Comment by samoore_: In fact, the pull of high-reputation is so strong that roughly a quarter of those who do sign the boycott still end up publishing in an Elsevier journal http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frma.2016.00007/full

    10. but server space is plentiful and cheap

      Comment by Gary_Hall: I'm not sure about this. One of the requests we often get at Open Humanities Press, for example, concerns whether we can provide people who want to start an open access journal with free or at least affordable server space.

    11. The costs of a traditional academic publishing include a variety of things that, as mentioned above, have often been pushed over to the academic author: editing, reviewing, typesetting, marketing, etcetera.

      Comment by samoore_: This is true, but does it not somewhat diminish your argument above about the workload pressures of academics? Universities require academics to publish more and more, for fewer career opportunities, and at the same time publishers are pushing increasing amounts of the labour onto academics. Would a disruptive approach be one in which universities provide time and space for editorial/publishing responsibilities?

    12. Within the digital world, the cost of publishing and distribution drops dramatically (not to zero, but much closer than ever before)

      Is this true within an academic publishing context? First copy costs remain substantially high: editing, review, typesetting, server and band with costs, marketing etc. are still part of a digital only model. One thing that is important to explore though is what these first copy costs consist off in a digital context, to explore from there what the profit margin is that publishers put on top (plus cost for printing etc.). This could lead to the development of perhaps a more fair and transparent system based on actual costs. For books the OAPEN-NL project tried to do exactly this: https://openreflections.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/oapen-nl-final-report.pdf

    13. There is a fruitful argument for the cost of these more “traditional” publishing houses, as they spend a good amount of time with editing, formatting, and distribution (often in paper form)

      One of the complaints I hear more and more often from academics is that traditional publishing houses are actually no longer doing this work. Editing and formatting are increasingly outsourced to academics themselves (as are indexing etc.) and even marketing is something publishers ask authors to so themselves using their social media profiles and academic brands. This is one of the issues many scholar-led publishing initiatives are trying to address, by highlighting for example the various processes that go into creating a scholarly publication and giving these due recognition. Mattering Press is at the forefront of this:https://www.matteringpress.org/

      http://www.csisponline.net/2014/06/18/from-openness-to-openings-reflections-on-the-experiments-in-knowledge-production-workshop/

    14. More and more academics are pressured into publishing without research being any part of their current career expectations, authoring unpaid articles for journals owned by large publishing conglomerates.

      Comment by samoore_: This point is completely true, but is it not also the fault of universities who perpetuate this system? Publishers merely exploit it. I feel it's quite difficult to talk about disrupting the journal without also talking about disrupting the increasingly privatised university too.

    15. journals hosted and owned by large corporations are valued even more over those run by independent organizations

      Comment by Gary_Hall: Yes, following on from Sam's comment, do you need to provide some evidence to support this claim? What about journals published by scholarly societies, or by university presses? Aren't they valued even more than those owned by large corporations precisely because the latter are seen as possibly being motivated more by money than an interest in supporting high-quality scholarship?

    16. and journals hosted and owned by large corporations are valued even more over those run by independent organizations.³

      Comment by samoore_: I'm not sure how true this clause is. I think large corporations own a disproportionate number of journals but I think they're valued just as much as those owned by smaller commercial publishers (e.g., Sage) or not-for-profits (university presses, PLOS, etc.)

    17. Unpaid Labor

      If this special issue of Ephemera ever comes out (I have been keeping an eye out for it but nothing as yet) it might be highly relevant for this discussion: http://www.ephemerajournal.org/content/labour-academia-0 Back issues of Ephemera do cover topics related to this discussion too though, so might be a relevant resource anyway (and OA!)

    18. Accessibility

      Comment by samoore_: This section could do with fleshing out. There are a number of similar instances around accessibility for disadvantaged communities (https://jhatkaa.org/oxford-cambridge-university-press-drop-the-lawsuit/); Publishers attacking fair use for universities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_University_Press_v._Patton); Commercial publishers in the UK seeking to control public access to research with 'walk-in' services https://www.elsevier.com/connect/free-access-to-research-at-your-local-uk-public-library

    19. The majority of academic writing, particularly in regards to journal articles, is of course produced as part of academic author’s position. For many it is expected that as part of the academic’s position within the university that they continuously publish, whether journals, collections, or monographs.

      Comment by LucaMorini: And most of what actually comprises our work in the 21st Century, such as this kind of discussions, will never give us any "points" in the "game" of publishing, where only the final outcomes (that are still produced under a pre-digital, Gutenbergian paradigm) count for something. A system oriented to quantification and control over 19th century media. Please note I am not saying that I would prefer that my tweets counted toward my career, but indeed further highlighting the inconsistencies and absurdity of the current academic publishing policies (and market).

    20. Klaus Krippendorf’s conceptualization of “second-order cybernetics” (1996) helps push this notion of the cyborg-author one step further in this regard. Krixpendorf’s conceptualization of communication that “I and You as well as the particular relation between them evolve in processes of mutual adjustment,” (Ibid, 319) offers up an interesting framework when considering the interface of digital distribution and publishing. This relationship changes significantly with the introduction of new interface relations, disrupting previous relations of publisher and author.

      Comment by LucaMorini: It is interesting, in comparing foucauldian and cybernetic conceptualisations of power (Wiener, 1948, and especially Von Foerster, 2002) to highlight similarities and differences. While both constructions are deeply relational, showing how power is not simply imposed but co-constructed, the cybernetic ideal is markedly (and maybe deceivingly) more optimistic, by focusing on the mutuality of this relationship. Maybe only a plurality of epistemologies and points of view can help us successfully navigate and resist the pervasivity of power.

    21. particularly digital media platforms which are not as obvious about their power and configuration as older publishing practices like printing presses

      Comment by Gary_Hall: Isn't it more often the other way round? Many authors are currently writing about the power associated with digital capitalist companies such as Google, Twitter and WhatsApp (Facebook). But they are doing so in 'ink-printed' books, copyrighted to for-profit presses (such as Polity, who distribute their titles through John Wiley and & Sons Ltd., one of the 'big four,' profit-maximising, scholarly publishing mega-corporations, along with Reed Elsevier, Springer, and Taylor & Francis/Informa), and published on an all-rights-reserved basis, with little appreciation of the issues of power (or hypocrisy) involved in doing so. And this includes many media archaeologists and software theorists. They, too, have yet to learn the lesson you attribute in your conclusion to Derrida and Kittler: that there is no outside of media.

    22. The term “copyright” itself makes what is often complicated incredibly simple, as it symbolizes only the right to copy (and therefore to distribute), not the rights of the author or intent of the object in question.

      Comment by Gary_Hall: Is this only the case if you adhere to the Anglo-American copyright tradition? I know this is the understanding of copyright that is discussed most often. But is there not also an understanding of copyright connected with what is known as author’s or moral rights, which is understood as having originated in the culture of Western Europe?

    23. own stated goal

      Comment by Gary_Hall: Doesn't academic journal publishing have other stated goals besides this one? The establishment of trust, for example, and of a permanent record. Hence all the concern with the fixed and finished, 'final' published version of a text.

    24. paywall

      Comment by Gary_Hall: The issue of paywalls seems highly relevant to to the content-driven world of profit-maximising academic publishers such as Reed Elsevier, Springer, Wiley-Blackwell, and Taylor & Francis/Informa. It seems less relevant to the the data-driven world of search engines, social media, and social networking, and of digital capitalist companies such as Google and Twitter. In the latter world, who gate-keeps access to (and so can extract maximum value from) content is less important, because that access is already free, than who gate-keeps (and so can extract maximum value from) the data generated around the use of that content, which is used more because access to it is free.

      All of which raises interesting questions for the issue of JMP and its open/public peer review. Reviewers are encouraged to use Google Chrome to install the Hypothes.is plug-in needed to make these public annotations. Which means the work is no longer behind a paywall, yes. But haven't we've just swapped the content-driven world of paywalls for the data-driven world of Google, with its emphasis on open and free content?

      So how much is disruption a matter of coming out from behind paywalls? And how disruptive is this issue of JMP?

    25. disruptive i

      Comment by Gary_Hall: Do you need to say something about how you are understanding 'disruptive' here and throughout this piece. Is it along the lines of Silicon Valley rhetoric; of Clayton Christensen and his colleagues at the Harvard Business School; of the affirmative disruption some of us at Coventry have talked about?

    1. Are the artistic and scholarly spirits fundamentally at odds? Is artistic practice at odds with academic notions of research?

      Comment by lskains: They shouldn't be! After all, in a lot of ways, no matter what our purpose in creative practice -- whether for research or not -- it nonetheless is a form of research. We are experimenting with art, trying to be better, get better. It's always research in an implicit sense. What makes it explicitly research is when it is incorporated into a defined methodology that allows us to explore and respond to specific research questions, and to communicate how the practice helps us answer those questions. Ideally, it should be a symbiotic relationship.

      Also, who defines what is "good"? The academy? Research councils? Consumers? Prize committees?

    2. does it matter if the film that emerges from the research is no good?

      Comment by lskains: Depends on the research question, and whether or not it is applicable as research.

    3. If we consider writing as a process of thought ‘in action’ (i.e., ideas transcribed through language), then what’s the problem with screen practitioners having to produce a statement of research? Is writing the problem; or is the problem actually a lack of research?

      Comment by lskains: I think this is a key element in practice-based research in media in general - if we look at the creative practice as analogous to data (in the sciences, for example), then we still have to make the contribution to knowledge explicit through a statement of research and/or exegesis. The sciences don't just throw raw data at each other and ask one another to figure out what its contribution is - that's what papers and reports are for. I can tell you a lot of them don't like writing it up either! But at its core, isn't that what research is -- collecting data, analyzing it, and communicating it explicitly to others in the field (and even outside the field)?

    4. ‘knowing’

      Comment by NealW: Really interesting - as well as knowing, there is not knowing, about a subject or an area, which leads to research processes being developed. These new approaches or methods being the actual area in which new knowledge lies, can also be transformative, or lead to epistemic things (Rheinberger, Schwab, White etc) - many in the field of art research, that do not seek to explain a subject, might use such as distinction which also speaks of methods, or 'models of research practice'.

    5. but what KIND of impact is it making?

      Comment by NealW: Impact in UK - which is part of our beloved REF is not the same as dissemination. For Impact to have value, its qualities must be transformative, to an audience, a policy, or to a group in terms of distinct categories, such as; health and wellbeing, cultural enrichment. Providing evidence of the pathways, or in areas such as public engagement, has been under scrutiny for some time, but the arts / creative areas have been looking at this for years too - so Arts & Humanities fared well relatively in 2014.

    6. the current research paradigms if they do not adequately reflect the way we undertake and communicate research in our discipline.

      Comment by NealW: The challenge for institutions is very real, as to differentiate between scholarly activity, practice which is also research, and practice which is not, might mean recognising activity which is also not paid for, practice outside the academy. Then we have issues of ownership etc too, along with many others. Again, if there are practical approaches that have been researched as part of your previous activity, and which are of use to other practitioner / researchers, this would be valuable to readers.

    7. This is also the case for other disciplines such as science

      Comment by NealW: I would question this - many papers in science are riddled with all kinds of language, material, graphs, mathematics, that require a high degree of a priori knowledge. I am sometimes concerned within non-science areas, the demand for dissemination/enhanced understanding (category alongside new knowledge of increasing importance in UK) overrides the expediency by which a range of communications can be utilised. In this sense, do we have, or only make use of a narrower lexicon?

    8. these online journals

      Comment by NealW: Can you reference your research in some form. Endnotes?

    9. With this comes the very complicated problem of how screen-based works are evaluated and peer reviewed.

      Comment by silvertwin: As we've heard from, in the UK context, REF sub-panel reports and consecutive editorial pieces in JMP, there is a vicious circle here in that the REF panel are calling for more practice researchers to 'step up' to be on such evaluative platforms but also practice researchers may need to be more coherent as a community about criteria for rigour. So posing the question again within an 'output' is part of the problem, not the solution, perhaps? In which case, can you articulate how the informal conversations to camera, this piece and SIghtlines work as a research 'output'?

    10. e continued these conversations informally to camera. This is the ASPERA (Australian Screen Production and Education Research Association) website, where we also launched a page dedicated to the Sightlines festival. Apart from the vox-pops, we also later developed a fully refereed audiovisual journal, also called Sightlines, based on the films shown at the event and with the idea of allowing it to grow in future years. 

      Comment by silvertwin: I cannot access these links, they are pretty important context I think, so please try to resolve.

    11. We favour the idea of a conversation because the form allows us to dwell along the fissures that mark our field. Rather than providing a singular voice that encompasses the huge diversity of our practices, we carry out this poly-vocal conversation.

      Comment by silvertwin: Is it helpful to the reader to signpost this approach as practice research by citing aligned studies / previous work in the field taking a similar approach?

    1. I think there is something very interesting about which elements of that process, along with which of the parties it involves, are experienced by viewers as a legitimate part of the work

      Comment by markreadman: As Ben says here, the process is opened up to scrutiny, becomes 'part of the work', which means that we have to read these images differently – we're not going to fall into the trap of what Gregory Currie calls 'aesthetic empiricism' and judge the photos as art works in a vacuum. But perhaps there's the danger, lurking, of aestheticising the abject? And (although it's probably the seaside setting that prompts this association) the beach photos taken by the participants just occasionally reminded me of some of Martin Parr's New Brighton photographs. So what kinds of photographic language have the participants internalised? Are they conscious or unconscious rhetoricians of the image?

    2. It seems to me that the core of your query here is an apparent tension between the process and products of the practice

      Comment by markreadman: It strikes me that the soundtrack that accompanies the montage presented here (which is much more limited than the gallery exhibition described in the conversation between Anthony and Ben) is as important as the images; it allows us access to the negotiations behind the camera, the handing over of the cable release so that the subject becomes their own object, the pedagogic conversation, the gratitude. But there is always the awareness of a power differential between artist and participant, and of the editing of the sound, the selection of what to include and what to exclude, despite its vérité quality.

    3. Jo Spence

      Comment by markreadman: Jo Spence is a great reference point, given how she forged such a powerful voice through images of her vulnerable body. Photography was an autoethnographic tool for her – is there an explicit connection to be made here I wonder?

    4. participatory photography—what some people, generally those outside the arts, sometimes call ‘photo voice’

      Comment by markreadman: This apparently oxymoronic term that Ben Burbridge uses, 'photo voice' encapsulates a key issue for this project - how a picture 'enunciates'. Anthony, the artist, understands this debate well, and both he and his interlocutor Ben, are aware of the play of meaning here.

    5. He also invited participants to learn how to use medium-format digital camera equipment, over repeated sessions, in order to create a self-portrait for the ongoing series Assisted Self-Portraits

      Comment by markreadman: There is something interesting here about the facilitation of the use of professional equipment, rather than, say, a phone camera; this could be empowering (but the access is temporary – a gift then taken away?), or it could be alienating – a self-portrait produced with strange machinery. The technological dimension is not addressed explicitly, despite the power that inheres within 'pro kit', despite the language of democracy and facilitation that the project uses ("invite", "assist"). I wonder what the rationale was for the use of the medium format camera.

    6. Luvera volunteered at the Brighton Housing Trust homeless support service, First Base Day Centre, working in the kitchens and in the activity rooms over the course of a year.

      Comment by markreadman: Echoes here of the sociological participant observer with, perhaps, the attendant ethical concerns about appropriation. The artist's roles as facilitator, 'voice', 'lens' begin to emerge here.

    1. disruptive if it remains behind a paywall?

      I would be interested to hear more about issues of academic labor in relationship to OA in specific. One of the issues that we continue to encounter in forms of what we have called more 'radical' open access practices, in specific academic-led projects and experimental publishing endeavours, is that the amount of free labour increases significantly (and this is of course what publishers traditionally offer to researchers, they facilitate many of the publishing processes). So, where there has been a call to only give one's free academic labour to NFP or open access initiatives (and not to Elsevier or Academia.edu for example), although this might be a more ethical use of academic labour, this does not solve the underlying issue of 'un(der)paid labor' in academia as such. So does this mean we need to work towards more recognition for the types of free labor academics do (from reviewing to editing, to board memberships, to what have you?) and to have this included more directly in impact statements etc. Or does this just lead to a further instrumentalisation of academic job specifications? Is there a tension here too between narratives that see this kind of work as part of an academic 'gift economy' versus those that stress 'free and un(der)paid labour'?

    1. Remembering, reflecting, returning: A return to professional practice journey through poetry, music and image

      Comment by Alan_Hook: I think that there needs to be a recognition of some of the instrumental constraints of research as practice. It would be nice to see the accompanying 300 words for this as a research output as there is a lot of complexity to the work and the authorial process that is not apparent through the practice itself

    2. Remembering, reflecting, returning: A return to professional practice journey through poetry, music and image

      Comment by Alan_Hook: I think that there needs to be a recognition of some of the instrumental constraints of research as practice. It would be nice to see the accompanying 300 words for this as a research output as there is a lot of complexity to the work and the authorial process that is not apparent through the practice itself

    1. disruptive if it remains behind a paywall?

      I would be interested to hear more about issues of academic labor in relationship to OA in specific. One of the issues that we continue to encounter in forms of what we have called more 'radical' open access practices, in specific academic-led projects and experimental publishing endeavours, is that the amount of free labour increases significantly (and this is of course what publishers traditionally offer to researchers, they facilitate many of the publishing processes). So, where there has been a call to only give one's free academic labour to NFP or open access initiatives (and not to Elsevier or Academia.edu for example), although this might be a more ethical use of academic labour, this does not solve the underlying issue of 'un(der)paid labor' in academia as such. So does this mean we need to work towards more recognition for the types of free labor academics do (from reviewing to editing, to board memberships, to what have you?) and to have this included more directly in impact statements etc. Or does this just lead to a further instrumentalisation of academic job specifications? Is there a tension here too between narratives that see this kind of work as part of an academic 'gift economy' versus those that stress 'free and un(der)paid labour'?

    2. disruptive if it remains behind a paywall?

      I would be interested to hear more about issues of academic labor in relationship to OA in specific. One of the issues that we continue to encounter in forms of what we have called more 'radical' open access practices, in specific academic-led projects and experimental publishing endeavours, is that the amount of free labour increases significantly (and this is of course what publishers traditionally offer to researchers, they facilitate many of the publishing processes). So, where there has been a call to only give one's free academic labour to NFP or open access initiatives (and not to Elsevier or Academia.edu for example), although this might be a more ethical use of academic labour, this does not solve the underlying issue of 'un(der)paid labor' in academia as such. So does this mean we need to work towards more recognition for the types of free labor academics do (from reviewing to editing, to board memberships, to what have you?) and to have this included more directly in impact statements etc. Or does this just lead to a further instrumentalisation of academic job specifications? Is there a tension here too between narratives that see this kind of work as part of an academic 'gift economy' versus those that stress 'free and un(der)paid labour'?

  2. Jun 2024
  3. thepoliticalnatureofthebook.postdigitalcultures.org thepoliticalnatureofthebook.postdigitalcultures.org
    1. Comment by reviewer_SorenPold: Both the article in itself and its design in DJMP raise questions about the architecture and materiality of the book and publishing, including academic publishing, through its discussion of artist books and open access. The interesting discussion is of course how ways of publishing, textual formats, ways of writing, editing and reading relate to different kinds of politics, e.g. institutional, economic, ways of ascertaining quality, etc. These are very important questions, both in global politics (e.g. the discussions on ‘fake news’ and its relation to social media), in institutional politics (e.g. the standards and quality assessment of academic publishing) and in art and literature (e.g. whether readers are able and willing to actually read and understand different forms of texts). In general, it is a question of how the text mediates and transforms the reading, how meaning is produced and how/whether it reaches an audience, whether it is productive of e.g. meaning, knowledge and/or action. It is a discussion of the text between mediator and tool.

      It is noteworthy how little has happened after several decades of digital publishing and a plethora of death sentences for books and print: Even though some things have changed and are changing e.g. WWW’s ‘non-linear’ and labyrinthine, multi-cursal (Aarseth 1997) hypertext and the collaborative writing tools and platforms like wikis and social media are part of our everyday textual culture, we still have books and journals. Why? Is it because, as Stuart Moulthrop suggested already in 1991, that although hypertext affords new visions about a shared writing space, the responsibility for changes of this magnitude come from a diverse elite (of software developers, literary theorists, legislators, capitalists) who despite their differences remain allegiant to the institutions of intellectual property (the book, the library, the university, the publishing house). In other words, Moulthrop suggests that “it seems equally possible that engagement with interactive media will follow the path of reaction, not revolution.” (Moulthroup 2003 (1991), Andersen and Pold 2014). Is it because of institutional conservatism, because readers are conservative and slowly adapting (as the rather slow development of hypertext seems to suggest), is it a political battle (as the current discussions of the role of digital media, social media versus traditional media might suggest)? And to which extend is it a battle we should go for, if it includes breaking down the kinds of authority that comes with established publication formats and editorial processes (at least the current political climate raises some concerns).

      I know that many of these concerns are afterthoughts to an article and a design done before the current situation, and in this sense, they are more reflections that might be relevant for further work. However, the questions remain, whether hypertext and collaborative authoring always leads to more freedom and productive reading/writing? Whether deconstructing the order of the text and its extended argument is always a good thing? We have of course examples of great hypertextual formats that function well as tools and presentation of knowledge, e.g. the encyclopedia, but maybe there are also good reasons to preserve the extended argument of the book and the article? Today it seems simply wrong to assert that "hypertext does not permit a tyrannical, univocal voice” (Landow 1992) faced with Trump and Wilders’ tweets. Consequently, I think, the argument of the article and its design could relate to the history of hypertext and electronic literature, though the discussion of artist books and open access publishing is also relevant.

      The implementation in DJMP is in many ways exemplary and manages to present the article in nice ways, including the posters, the ability to comment and follow keywords. It allows its reader to access and use the text in different ways, and gives the valuable possibility of commenting and reading other people’s comments. In this it also follows paths from hypertext and electronic literature/digital culture, e.g. Electronic Book Review of A Peer Reviewed Journal About_. The design in many ways affords that it can do as it ‘preaches’, and in this way experiments with different ways of publishing academic texts. This is needed and current academia is not open enough to these kinds of experiments, that are, as argued, much more than making open access a homogeneous project – there is a need for an ongoing critical struggle that includes the forms of publishing. This is necessary, also to reach the popular masses on Twitter and Facebook! Currently, it is a problem, that standardizations within academia driven by STEM standards does not invite for such experiments that would in many cases not even be accepted as examples of academic publication. Also, I want to finish emphasizing that my discussion above is mainly stirred by the qualities of the publication, the important questions and reflections it raises.

      References

      Andersen, C. U. and S. B. Pold (2014). "Post-digital Books and Disruptive Literary Machines: Digital Literature Beyond the Gutenberg and Google Galaxies." Formules 2014(18): 164-183.<br /> Landow, G. P. (1992). Hypertext the convergence of contemporary critical theory and technology. Baltimore, Md, Johns Hopkins University Press.<br /> Moulthroup, S. (2003 (1991)). You Say You Want a Revolution. The New Media Reader. N. W.-F. N. Montfort. Cambridge, Massachusetts & London, England, The MIT Press: 691-704. <br /> Aarseth, E. J. (1997). Cybertext perspectives on ergodic literature. Baltimore, Md., Johns Hopkins University Press.

    2. Comment by KamilaKuc: 'Altered books tap into our collective heightened interest in books as objects. Physical books, as differentiated from digital versions, tend to trigger memories, both visual and tactile.' (Kuhn, 2013: 11). The question of what will be left behind of the digital is a curious one here, perhaps. While we know what film and a physical book leave behind, the traces of their existence are still present (film strip, video tape, paper), what will be left behind of digital works (books)? What traces do digital forms leave behind?

    3. Comment by KamilaKuc: See the idea of 'altered books', or bookworks, as defined by Doug Beube, as presented in 'Art Made From Books' by Alyson Kuhn, which looks at the conceptual underpinnings of artists books but also art made form books whereby the physical material of the book functions as a material and a platform to exercise ideas.

    4. Comment by KamilaKuc: For the changing guises and forms of a book, see The Book Is Alive blog, which displays book 'as an evolving, open and visual medium' that is curated and alive, thus its shape and content can change.

    5. Comment by KamilaKuc: For the changing guises and forms of a book, see The Book Is Alive blog, which displays book 'as an evolving, open and visual medium' that is curated and alive, thus its shape and content can change.

    6. should open access advocates on occasion not

      Comment by friedelitis: This seems like a much more cautious approach compared to the ones before. I would also argue that not all researchers and academics alike are prone (or even exposed to) to the idea of experimentation (see the points on STEM vs HSS made before). Already complex topics could be mystified and therefore not taken seriously in their findings and arguments. This discussion is in danger of becoming a pointless "either or" discussion where it can and should probably be complimentary (and I see how you argue for that).

    7. If we miss this opportunity, might we not find ourselves in a similar situation to that many book artists and publishers have been in since the 1970s, namely, that of merely reiterating and reinforcing established structures and practices?

      Comment by friedelitis: I see the point - how would you build the case that the reiteration and reinforcement of established structures is a bad thing, though? Is there an argument to be made that questions around authorship, authority, legitimacy, etc., need to be rethought beyond the idea that (academic) work should be openly accessible to the public? And isn't the idea of linking and rethinking even more powerful once more work is openly available?

    8. the open access book should for the most part still find itself presented as having definite limits and a clear, distinct materiality

      Comment by friedelitis: I wonder if this imperative of materiality is not derived from the fact that it is still called a 'book'. A book is in itself regarded to be a (physically) closed, comprehensive representation of a story, a narrative or a question. From a reader's perspective, a book is supposed to 'make sense' on its own, without necessary links to another publication or format. Calling OA books 'books' does therefore not seem helpful if you want to foster a more experimental use of the book.

  4. thepoliticalnatureofthebook.postdigitalcultures.org thepoliticalnatureofthebook.postdigitalcultures.org
    1. I would like to further extend this practice-based project both theoretically and practically, by discussing the genealogy and correlations of ‘performative publishing’ with ideas such as ‘technotext’ (Hayles), ‘performative materiality’ (Drucker) and ‘liberature’ (Fajfer), alongside other projects and practices. As part of this I would like to explore the ethical and political challenges towards academic publishing these kind of concepts and practices pose. By using hypothes.is—an open source software/browser extension that enables an annotation layer on top of websites and online files and objects—which for this special disrupted issue of the Journal of Media Practice functions as a way to enable conversations around its processual papers, I would like to draw in these conversations around performative publications by directly setting up a dialogue with various theorists and the works, concepts, practices and values that connect to both this project and to performative publications as I envision them more in general.

    2. What is certain is that poetics in general, and narratology in particular, must not limit itself to accounting for existing forms or themes. It must also explore the field of what is possible or even impossible without pausing too long at that frontier the mapping out of which is not its job. Until now, critics have done no more than interpret literature. Transforming is now the task at hand. That is certainly not the business of theoreticians alone; their role is no doubt negligible. Still, what would theory be worth if it were not also good for inventing practice?

      (Genette 1988, 157)

    1. Comment by KamilaKuc: Here the notion of a design as a political tool is also crucial. From the Constructivist practices onwards, the question of how design comments on and engages with contemporary life is definitely manifested in this project as well as in corresponding practices such as Photomediations: An Open Book.. How does the content one wants to present/communicate to the audiences fit the format in which this information is presented/accessed seem to be the key questions.

    2. Comment by KamilaKuc: See for example an experiment concerning gestures of reading and writing, 'unruly gestures.' 'unruly gestures: seven cine-paragraphs on reading/writing practices in our post-digital condition' is a performative essay for 'Shifting Layers. New Perspectives in Media Archaeology Across Digital Media and Audiovisual Arts' edited by Miriam De Rosa and Ludovica Fales (Mimesis International, 2016). In it we aspire to break down preconceptions about gestures of reading/writing that relate to their agency, media-specificity, (linear) historicity and humanism. Informed by Tristan Tzara’s cut-up techniques, where through the gesture of cutting the Dadaists tried to subvert established traditions of authorship, intentionality and linearity, this visual essay has been cut-up into seven semi-autonomous cine-paragraphs, accompanied by text.

    3. create

      Comment by KamilaKuc: It is this idea of critically thinking through making, working through the ideas by employing both critical thinking and making practices and all the processes that are involved in it.

    4. the materiality of our (textual) scholarship and its material modes of production, is and should not in any way be separate from a discussion on the content of our work.

      If performative publications are the material expressions or incarnations of specific research projects and processes, entangled with them are various other agencies of production and constraint (i.e. technological, authorial, cultural and discursive agencies, to name just a few). What I want to argue is that performative publications as a specific subset of publications actively interrogate how to align more closely the material form of a publication with its content (in other words, where all publications are performative—i.e. they are knowledge shaping, active agents involved in knowledge production—not all publications are 'performative publications', in the sense that they actively interrogate or experiment with this relation between content and materiality —similar to artist books). Yet in addition to this there is also an openness towards the ongoing interaction between materiality and content which includes entanglements with other agencies, and material forms of constraint and possibility.

      This concern for the materiality and form of our publications (and directly related to that the material production and political economy that surrounds a publication) is not a response to what elsewhere as part of a critique of certain tendencies within the field of new materialism is seen as a reaction to ‘the linguistic turn’ (Bruining 2013). On the contrary, I see this as a more direct reaction against perspectives on the digital which perceive digital text as disembodied and as a freeing of data from its material constraints as part of a conversion to a digital environment. However, content cannot be separated that easily from its material manifestations, as many theorist within the digital humanities have already argued (i.e. Hayles, Drucker). Alan Liu classifies this 'database' rhetoric of dematerialization as a religion that is characterised by 'an ideology of strict division between content and presentation' where content is separated from material instantiation or formal presentation as part of an aesthetics of network production and consumption (Liu 2004, 62).

    5. In this respect this project wants to emphasise that we should have more in depth discussions about the way we do research.

      Scholarly poethics is what connects the 'doing' of scholarship with the ethical components of research. Here, ethics and poetics are entangled and an ethical engagement is already from the start involved in the production of scholarship, it informs our scholarship. Whilst formulating a narrative around the idea of a scholarly poetics—what it would look like, what it could mean, imply and do and, perhaps most importantly, what it could potentially achieve—in relation to our publishing practices, I want to argue that we should pay more attention to how we craft our own poetics as scholars.

      Just as we have internal discussions about the contents of our scholarship, about the methodologies, theories and politics we use to give meaning and structure to our research, we should similarly have these kinds of discussions about the way we do research. Thus we should also be focusing on the medial forms, the formats and the graphic space in and through which we communicate and perform scholarship (and the discourses that surround these), as well as the structures and institutions that shape and determine our scholarly practices. This ‘contextual’ discussion, focusing on the materiality of our (textual) scholarship and its material modes of production, is and should not in any way be separate from a discussion on the contents of our work. The way we do scholarship informs its ‘outcomes’, what scholarship looks like. It informs the kinds of methodologies, theories and politics we can choose from, and of course, vice versa, these again shape the way we perform our scholarship. A focus on scholarly poethics might therefore be useful in bridging the context/content divide.

      So what then is the altered status of a (digital) scholarly poethics today? Which theoretical streams, disciplinary fields, and schools of thought (inside and outside of academia, connecting the arts and the humanities) have specifically incorporated attention to the practices and performances of scholarship and this internal/external divide? Here it would be useful to look to fields such as design, poetry, science and technology studies (STS), feminist theory, the (radical) open access movement, and—in some instances the digital humanities and in cultural and literary studies—where the way we conduct scholarship can be seen to have been at the forefront of academic inquiries. What can we learn from these discussions and how can we add to and expand them to enrich our understanding of what a scholarly poethics could be(come)? As I envision it a scholarly poethics is not one thing, not a specific prescriptive methodology or way of doing scholarship, it is a plural and evolving process in which content and context co-develop. Scholarly poethics thus focuses on the abundant, and continuously changing material-discursive attitudes towards scholarly practices, research, communication media (text/film/audio) and institutions.

    6. disseminate

      Comment by KamilaKuc: A number of recently curated sources explore this idea in a similar manner. See for example Photomediations: An Open Book.

    7. technotext

      As a term, performative publications have a lot in common with Katherine Hayles’s concept ‘technotexts’. In her book Writing Machines (itself a technotext, beautifully designed by Anne Burdick in a hybrid print and ‘webtake’ version) Hayles introduces the term technotext as an relative and alternative to concepts such as hypertext and cybertext. She defines a technotext as something that comes about ‘when a literary work interrogates the inscription technology that produces it’ (Hayles 2002, 25) and elsewhere as ‘a book that embodies its own critical concepts (Hayles 2002, 140)’. In Writing Machines Hayles then goes on to analyse 3 technotexts, Talan Memmott’s work of electronic literature Lexia to Perplexia (2000), Tom Phillips artist’s book A Humument (1970), and Mark Z. Danielewski’s novel House of Leaves (2000).

    8. Christopher P. Long.

      For Long performative publications are directly connected to the idea of practice, where following the concept of performativity, he argues that ideas should be put to practice, where practice can further inform and enrich ones ideas again. Long applies these values directly to several of his own performative projects. In his book The Socratic and Platonic Politics: Practicing a Politics of Reading, he shows how Socratic philosophy and Platonic writing was designed to cultivate dialogue and community. By digitally enhancing his publication, Long explores how writing and reading can promote community in a digital context, in specific a community of collaborative readers. As Long argues:

      If, however, the book is not to be a mere abstract academic exercise, it will need to be published in a way that performs and enables the politics of collaborative reading for which it argues. (Long 2012)

      https://youtu.be/-f9N1n-4cI8

      A further extension of this project is a podcast series titled Digital Dialogue which aims to cultivate dialogue in a digital age by engaging other scholars in open conversation online. Long is also involved in the Public Philosophy Journal project, which is specifically set up to crawl the web to find diverse positions on various philosophical subjects and to bring these together in a collaborative writing setting. As Long explains:

      The PPJ is designed to crawl the web, listening for conversations in which philosophical ideas and approaches are brought to bear on a wide variety of issues of public concern. Once these conversations are curated and a select number chosen for further development, we will invite participants into a space of collaborative writing so they can work their ideas up into a more fully formulated scholarly article or digital artifact. (Chris Long 2013)

    9. A performative publication wants to explore how we can bring together and align more closely the material form of a publication with its content.

      Fajfer and Bazarnik make some interesting observations on how in liberature the book does not contain the work, it is the work. In this sense they don’t see the material book as a representation of the work but as something that actively shapes and determines the work.

      Their focus on liberatic works is both a reaction to a previous literary context and a plea to authors to take responsibility for the future becoming of literature. First of all, as a specific response in a Polish context (but more wider too), it rallies against literary traditions that see the materiality of the book as non-significant, that classify literature as ‘disembodied’. As Bazarnik and Fajfer state:

      If I emphasise this bodily, material aspect so much, it is because Polish literary studies seem still dominated by scholars indebted to Roman Ingarden, a Polish philosopher who ventured into literary studies to produce a highly influential theory of the literary work of art in which he denied its “material foundation” (as he called it) any significance. It was to be passed over and not interfere with reading (Fajfer and Bazarnik 2010).

      Secondly, they present liberature as a way out of the ‘crisis of contemporary literature’, which they say has its roots in the continued focus on the text and its meaning, while neglecting the physical shape and structure of the book. This is delimiting the creative possibilities for the author, they claim. As Fajfer writes:

      I believe that it is his responsibility to consider the physical shape of the book and all the matters entailed, just as he considers the text (if not to the same extent, he should at least bear them in mind). The shape of the book should not be determined by generally accepted conventions but result from the author’s autonomous decision just as actions of his characters and the choice of words originate from him (Fajfer 2010, 25).

    10. A performative publication wants to explore how we can bring together and align more closely the material form of a publication with its content.

      Liberature is a term, concept and genre coined in 1999 by the Polish avant-garde poet Zenon Fajfer, and further developed by his collaborator: literary scholar and theorist Katarzyna Bazarnik. Liberature is literature in the form of the book. Bazarnik and Fajfer define liberature as ‘a literary genre that integrates text and its material foundation into a meaningful whole' (Bazarnik and Fajfer 2010, 1). In the introduction to Fajfer’s collected essays, Bazarnik describes liberature as literary works in which the artistic message is transmitted not only through the verbal medium, but also through the author ‘speaking’ via the book as a whole (Bazarnik 2010, 7). Liberature is therefore a total approach that reaches beyond the linguistic medium, where the material form of the work is essential to its understanding and forms an organic element of the (inseparable) whole. Both Fajfer and Bazarnik emphasise that in liberature, the material book is no longer a neutral container for a text, but becomes an integral component of the literary work.

      Katarzyna Bazarnik, Zenon Fajfer, Oka-leczenie [Eyes-ore] (2000), Liberatura vol. 8, Kraków: Korporacja Ha!art, 2009.

    11. This website and the accompanying posters have been designed by Nabaa Baqir, Mila Spasova and Serhan Curti, 2nd year design students at Coventry University, as part of a project on performative publications run by Janneke Adema. They offer a different take on the article 'The political nature of the book. On artists' books and radical open access', written by Janneke Adema and Gary Hall and originally published in the journal New Formations.

      I would like to further extend this practice-based project, both theoretically and practically, by discussing the genealogy and correlations of ‘performative publishing’ with ideas such as ‘technotext’ (Hayles), ‘performative materiality’ (Drucker) and ‘liberature’ (Fajfer), and the ethical and political challenges towards academic publishing these kind of concepts and practices pose.

    12. ABOUT

      This article for The disrupted Journal of Media Practice focuses on performative publications and is itself at the same time a performative publication. Written in Hypothes.is this article will hinge upon specific aspects, fragments, and concepts of the original performative project that it engages, entangling the community’s engagements along the way.

  5. May 2024
    1. Thus, the archive is not about preserving the past but about modes ofsharing the common.

      Definition again

    2. Conceptualized as this omnipotent and alreadyaccomplished institution, the construction of our interactions with it asexternal and belated actions upon it doomed them to failure in a way thatonly a messianic destruction may appear the right way to resist thearchive. However, when one insists on the array of people’s modes ofinteraction with the archive as the point of departure for conceptualizingthe archive and writing its potential history, when people’s bodies,actions, ideas, achievements, and failures are part of the archive, thearchive as a modality of access to the common cannot be ignored.

      Interaction with archive as a commons

    3. The archive, I have shown throughout this chapter, is a modality ofaccess to the commons and not a shrine of past documents.

      Sort of definition of the arhice as a form of access

    4. Derrida’s account of the archive is schematic and abstract, that is,devoid of human action except that of the guardians.

      Derrida does provide a lot of attention to material agency of the archive too. Is that schematic and abstract? I am not sure...

    5. The soldiers claim the authority to act as archivistsdetermining the value of documents and deciding their fate.

      Also reminds me of the fate of Dutch Jews in WW2, who were proportionally the highest percentage of Jews in Europe to be processed in concentration and work camps due to the meticulous Dutch citizen archives, which were appropriated by the nazis

    6. Joan Scott

      Love her work!

    7. other modes of inscription areneglected

      This depends a bit on our definition of the archive.

    8. I’m concerned here witha twofold question. On the one hand, why is the archive’s claim toobjectivity or neutrality, even though it cannot be sustained, quoted timeand time again in alternative histories in order to be refuted time andtime again? On the other hand, why are different modalities ofengagement with the archive kept apart from the archive, as if its essenceis immune to them?

      Main researcg questions

    9. These different modes of engagement with the archive—opposition,avoidance, disengagement—undermined many of the positivisticassumptions about the archive that recur in its alternative histories.

      Summary od types of alternative histories

    10. Rather than writing alternative histories to what disciplinarypredecessors wrote and have “not gone far enough in addressing,” apotential history of the archive is an attempt to undo imperialdisciplinary grammar and foregrounds its incompatibility withnonimperial grammars. Nonimperial grammar cannot be invented—itcan only be practiced through unlearning the imperial one. Even ifnonimperial dialects of dis/engaging with/from archives are notvictorious, they are enduring dialects and not inventions by individualswho could go “far enough.” Their grammar is founded on the assumptionthat the imperial archive cannot be described from an external or aposteriori position, as long as who we are—citizens or undocumented—is defined and regulated by the archive.

      Hmmm, maybe I am missing a point here but this evades politics to some extent.

    11. Yet thisvignette is still absent from histories of the creation of archives duringthe French Revolution. When such actions of people raging against theaccumulation of papers used against them are included in such histories,it is often with a mourning tone regarding the loss of precious papers

      Yes, but compare with nazi and US book burnings though....

    12. The contention that the archive is not about the past but about thecommons requires a different genre of narrative than the one known ashistory

      Very interesting argument

    13. Restrictions on citizens’ access to documents, which became thehallmark of the violence of state archives, eclipse the denial of access tononcitizens and came to define the goal of civil struggle—gaining (more)access to what is enclosed behind the threshold of the archive, as if thisis the core of the violence of the archive.

      Restrictions and the violence of the archive