Sunday, February 13, 2011

Re: [Yasmin_discussions] Next Step Publishing: FakePress Statement

Hi Federico, FakePress & yasminers,

I am wondering what drives you to incorporate the use of the word 'Fake'
in your group's title, when in your post you declare an ambition to
appropriate or instigate reasons relating truth?

Wishing you well.

marc

www.furtherfield.org

> Dear yasminers,
>
> our statement as FakePress lives at the crossroad of the other
> discussants' statements. Intertwined within the intersectual meanders
> of eXpanded design (Canevacci), augmented architecture, our reflection
> takes a complementary perpective. Within the magmatic, reactive,
> animated editorial landscape outlined by the other discussants, we
> would like to focus on the specific theme of future of publishing
> houses.
>
> Our observation is partial since we are part of a strange publishing
> house. Why should we create a publishing house? Publishing has become
> a central activity in the contemporary era. Goods we buy every day in
> supermarkets are complited filled with information (e.g.: barcodes),
> and even our public identities (on blog, sites, socialnetworks)
> require a continuous activity of publication.
>
> FakePress is a think tank that aims at exploring the next steps in
> publishing practices and tools, and investigate about the
> opportunities given by location based technologies and by novel
> approaches to knowledge dissemination, communication and expression.
> Our not-books (or fake-books, if preferred) are platforms that enable
> the expression of multiple points of view, an emergent, recombinant
> poliphony in continuous mutation. We promote the term "augmented
> truth" in a world that is completely encoded, indicating the
> possibility to create stratifications on ordinary truth, opening it up
> to new interpretations and continuous re-codifications. This is our
> political-poetical statement as publishers.
>
> While in the past the work of the publisher could be described as
> reviewing manuscripts, editing, marketing and distributing books
> through booksellers around the world, we are wondering what changes
> when networked people access, produce, share, extract and remix
> contents through a variety of devices. What happens when interfaces
> and enabling technologies transform places, spaces and objects in
> "surfaces" for publishing. How a publishing house may be still
> relevant when contents are at the centre of a potentially infinite
> relationship with other text and multimedia objects, and are accessed
> through paper and digital devices, via web, on mobile phones as well
> as through architecture and objects?
>
> Let's make an example to describe what we are investigating at the
moment.
>
> Imagine a washing machine, a white washing machine like the one you
> may have in your house. Imagine that there is a mobile app that
> recognize physical components of the washing machine and retrieve
> contents on demand such as instructions on how to use the washing
> machine or tips to foster sustainable washing practices. Well, who is
> going to publish this content? A group of activists could be
> interested in publishing content to foster education on sustainability
> and may suggest to use natural detergents. A company producing
> chemical detergents could be willing to publish some content to
> promote their detergents; some consumers may want to publish their
> reviews on the washing machine and, of course, the washing machine
> factory may want to highlight the distinctive features of its washing
> machine; its competitors would be willing to publish some alerts that
> say that there are other (potentially) better washing machines
> available on the market. A magazine like Wallpaper may end up
> reviewing the washing machine and the national consortium of washing
> machine producers want to add its positive review. The white washing
> machine (as billions of other physical objects) may become the arena
> for new kinds of publishing strategies (and battles) and almost every
> object could start hosting additional contents.
>
> This is an extremely interesting time and some publishers (like our
> company) are wondering if and how they can re-shape their traditional
> mission in order to continue to represent a fundamental crown in the
> publishing engine. As a publishing house we are still trying to
> understand potential business models that guarantee an economic
> viability for this kind of augmented reality publications.
>
> FakePress' experiences in one and a half year of existence have
> produced a quantity of concepts, projects and technological
> infrastructures (and, obviously, books!) that is quite amazing, and it
> highlighted how this is substantially a research and experimentation
> process: return on investment is not always guaranteed, but the
> motivations, desires and importance of experimenting new grammars and
> "new ways of writing on the world" still remain our priority.
>
> Therefore we were wondering how the list imagines the future for a
> publishing house that wants to explore augmented reality
> (location-based, object-based, multi-author, open-ended, cross-medial
> publications).
> Thanks and a big hug,
>
> FakePress
> (Federico Ruberti, Luca Simeone, Oriana Persico, Cary Yungmee
Hendrickson)
>
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HOW TO SUBSCRIBE: click on the link to the list you wish to subscribe to. In the page that will appear ("info page"), enter e-mail address, name, and password in the fields found further down the page.
HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE: on the info page, scroll all the way down and enter your e-mail address in the last field. Enter password if asked. Click on the unsubscribe button on the page that will appear ("options page").
HOW TO ENABLE / DISABLE DIGEST MODE: in the options page, find the "Set Digest Mode" option and set it to either on or off.