On Monday, the Guardian published an article in which the novelist Jonathan Franzen condemned ebooks, warning that they have a negative effect on literature, and may actually be damaging to society. Whilst I’m inclined to agree with his statements about the nature of physical books, that they are permanent and reassuring tangible objects – monuments [...]
Entries Tagged as 'writing'
Jonathan Franzen vs The ebook
February 1st, 2012 No Comments
Tags: creative process · eBooks · ideas · technology · writing
Poetry & short story pamphlets with bookleteer
January 26th, 2012 No Comments
I’ve been thinking a fair bit about bookleteer’s role in creating poetry pamphlets and short story collections, and the lack of much of either from budding bookleteers. It’s boggling – they suit the format perfectly as portable, pocket sized A6 books, or the grander A5 size, and can be made very quickly without any design [...]
Tags: bookleteer · bookreader · diffusion · eBooks · writing
Read to Write
January 10th, 2012 No Comments
I wrote a few months back about the level of Narrative Immersion amongst different mediums – books, television, film, video games – championing the depth and unique experience that the written word affords. I was concentrating on the effects of these forms when using them purely for leisure, but the specific focus I’ve placed on [...]
Tags: creative process · creativity · technology · writing
Mind, Pen, Page
November 7th, 2011 No Comments
My last few posts have concentrated on the different effects of various mediums on readers, their output if you like, but, triggered by this eloquent article championing pen on paper featured recently in The New York Review of Books, I’ve been thinking about the effects of various methods of input on writers and their work. [...]
Tags: creative process · creativity · handmade · ideas · notebook · technology · writing
Sorrows of the Moon: A Journey Through London
September 12th, 2011 No Comments
Hi everybody, my name is Elena and I have been working as an intern at Proboscis since mid June. On Proboscis’ website I posted some reflections of mine initially taking inspiration from a visual essay I am composing on the wall of the studio. The visual essay combines some impressions sprung from the observation of [...]
Tags: book · city as material · inspiration · writing
Night Haunts: A Journey Through the London Night
August 11th, 2011 1 Comment
“3AM is the dark heart of the city, when the carefully repressed anxieties, aspirations and dreams of its emotionally parched inhabitants can no longer be contained” Elena, who is with us at the Proboscis studio under the Leonardo Da Vinci scheme, used a very eloquent excerpt from Night Haunts: A Journey Through the London Night [...]
Tags: augmented · book · city as material · online · writing
Writer App
June 14th, 2011 No Comments
Instead of featuring a publication today, I’m looking at something which might aid in creating one. Writer, by Information Architects, is an ultra minimal word processing application for Mac and iPad, designed to hold your attention purely on the task at hand – writing. It has no formatting options, one font, one size, and can [...]
Tags: creative writing · inspiration · writing
Diffusion Archive Highlight: Three Essays by Samuel Johnson
June 10th, 2011 No Comments
Selected by writer and journalist Bill Thompson, this eBook compiles three of Samuel Johnson’s essays in a slim, portable format; Rambler 2, pondering the nature of ambition and self-deception, Idler 48, in which he speaks of how we ‘play throughout life with the shadows of business’, and Adventurer 95, exploring the process of writing and [...]
Tags: bookleteer · diffusion · eBooks · inspiring uses · writing
Sketches In The City
May 25th, 2011 No Comments
An offshoot of City As Material, Sketches In The City is an occasional series of observational expeditions in various locations across the capital. Mandy, Radhika and I sketch, take photographs and write poems and prose to form a collaborative eBook with underlying themes. Focusing mainly on people and interactions in public places – places that [...]
Tags: city as material · inspiring uses · making · photography · sketches in the city · writing · zines
Observational sketches – Field report
February 28th, 2011 No Comments
The other week I mentioned an impromptu City As Material expedition with Mandy and Radhika, to Victoria and Waterloo stations. Despite it being FREEZING, we captured some interesting moments (fingers glove-bound) from the trip. I found just being still and observing whilst people whizzed about, quite relaxing, and it inspired a completely different way of [...]
Tags: bookleteer · city as material · drawing · inspiration · making · writing
Guerilla City As Material
February 16th, 2011 No Comments
Tomorrow, myself and some of my fellow Probsocis team, Mandy and Radhika, will be venturing on a mini City As Material expedition, hopefully the first of many. We’re aiming to draw sketches and write observations of people and interactions in a variety of public places – places that shape, and are in turn shaped, by [...]
Tags: city as material · drawing · inspiration · writing
Can A Million Penguins be wrong..
July 20th, 2010 No Comments
“Software is rarely written in a vacuum and indeed the “open source” movement is built on the premise that collaboration is the only way to get bugs spotted and move forward. Scientific research, too, is more often than not a collaborative activity – and peer review is key to checking and honing the development of [...]
Tags: author · collaboration · sharing · writing
