I mentioned this set of Storycubes briefly in one of my first ever blog posts, “Comics, Cubed”, but it’s elaborate concept deserves another shout-out. Warren Craghead, an artist and curator, created ten Storycubes depicting a fictional autobiography, each representing a decade of his life (the last, in a touch of dark humour, simply shows an urn). Starting with his birth in 1970, and ending with his “death” in 2060, the cubes are drawn in different style and tones, the surreal, abstract illustrations portraying the world view and imagined future of a man who, in his own words, “is constantly drawing”. Warren’s cubes have received some pretty positive reviews from the comic scene as well – Matthew Brady described it as “a sweeping, fascinating portrait of a life” on his blog.
Download and make “A Sort Of Autobiography” for yourself here.
Back in September Frederik posted a case study of Cambridge Curiosity and Imagination‘s use of bookleteer. They’ve continued using it as a creative and documentary resource, and in doing so have created a Library of Traces – a series of eBooks which enable both participants in their professional development workshops, and others, to follow the traces of their experiences and share reflections and observations.
To help CCI widen the audience for their work we’ve posted 7 eBooks on our diffusion.org.uk library and will be making others available there as they are created. All are welcome to download and share eBooks from the Library of Traces.
Rob Annable, an architect at Axis Design Architects, used bookleteer to create this eNotebook whilst visiting Germany to study Passivhaus design principles. Using a blank eBook complete with trip itineraries and QR code web links, he wrote down observations, and placed in photographs taken and printed on site with a Polaroid PoGo printer. It was then scanned and uploaded it for anyone to view and use. This custom notebook, combining essential trip information and a means to record data in a single artifact, avoids carrying excess documents, and allows for easier cross reference.
This week we’ve published the last two of four commissioned eBooks from our guests at the City As Material events : Tim Wight’s The 2nd book of Urizen and Simon Pope’s Skylines and Sightlines. These add to the other two already published by Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, Deep City and Ben Eastop, River Gap. Haz and I are working on a final book for the series which will present and overview of the events, our aims and feedback from the participants. This will complete the full set of 10 eBooks for City As Materials series 1, including the 5 collaborative eBooks published last Autumn : Situated Moments from the City, Ebb & Flow, Ancient Lights, City Shadows, Layered and Sonic Geographies.
In the next few weeks we’ll be printing up a limited edition set (50 copies) of all 10 eBooks through our PPOD service and are currently designing a special slipcase to hold them. The slipcases are also being designed as templates which we’ll incorporate into bookleteer later this year as an option for people to customise and create their own. We think they will offer a convenient way to organise or collect your own Diffusion eBooks. As with the other shareables, the slipcases will be designed so that they can be printed out and made up by hand (using an A3 printer/sheet size).
We’ll be hosting an event to launch the limited edition City As Material set this Spring – look out for updates on the date and venue.
In August last year, I lent a hand to the Graffito crew whilst they were running an installation at the Vintage at Goodwood festival. Whilst festival-goers doodled on the iPhone app, their drawings were displayed on a huge L.E.D screen, along with everyone else using it. Giles prepared a blank eBook with the Graffito emblem, and lent us a portable pogo printer, so that we could instantly print screenshots onto stickers and place them in the scrapbook. It was later scanned and published on Diffusion, so anyone who played with Graffito at Vintage can therefore own a tangible souvenir of the event. Something so digital and temporary is saved from dissipating, and recorded somewhere other than the imagination.
A report by Julie Anderson, British Museum
In January, I returned from Sudan where my co-author Salah Mohamed and I distributed the eBook we produced last autumn. Frederik Lesage has previously written about the development of our eBook, which deals with the archaeological excavations conducted in Dangeil, Sudan, as a case study for eBook usage, in this blog. students on their way to school
Salah and I have been excavating in Dangeil for more than 10 years. Over this period, we have lived in the community and have come to know our neighbours well. Every year many work with us in the excavations. The archaeological site is situated in the centre of the village and an increasing number of tourists, both Sudanese and foreigners, are visiting the ruins. There is also a large primary school situated along the northern edge of the site. Students cross the site daily on their way to and from classes. As a means of engaging further with the local community, school children and site visitors, we decided to create a resource which would help them to better understand the excavations, the ancient temple and its importance, and to place Dangeil in its historical context. We were also driven by a need to explain what we were doing and why, in an accessible fashion. The key was communication and the end result was the eBook.
So, what sort of reaction did the eBook receive? Simply put, its reception, both in Khartoum and in the rural farming village of Dangeil, exceeded expectations. We produced 500 English copies and 500 in Arabic, the local language. We ran out of the latter. In retrospect, we should have produced a greater number of copies in Arabic. Copies were given to the local school and arrangements were made so that every household in the village received a copy. Unloading eBooks and textbooks at the school
Following the distribution of the eBook, teenagers began coming to our door in the village to ask questions about the site / archaeology / their own Sudanese history. In the past, usually they had wanted to have photographs taken, but now instead were connecting with their history as made possible through the booklet. It was astonishing. More surprising was the reaction people had upon receiving a copy. In virtually every single case, they engaged with the eBook immediately and began to read it or look through it. This occurred regardless of location or other business being conducted. Many of our workmen looked for images of things they themselves had helped to excavate and of people they knew, though the latter was true for almost everyone seeing the eBook.
Although our eBook takes the form of a more traditional and perhaps somewhat static publication, its impact cannot be underestimated. The Dangeil villagers, and indeed university students and antiquities staff in Khartoum, viewed the publication as written for them, about them, and in their own language. The eBook has served not only as an educational tool, but has empowered the local community and created a sense of pride and proprietary ownership of the ruins and their history.
Julie Anderson
Assistant Keeper
Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan, British Museum
This was created alongside cartoonist Seth‘s model city installation, “Dominion”, shown at the Dundas Museum & Archives in Ontario, Canada. Seth constructed a scale cardboard city, inspired by the aesthetic of Canadian cities and towns like Hamilton and Dundas, infused with a detailed fictional narrative and history. The eBook showcases a selection of buildings from Dominion, alongside exhibition notes and a biography of the artist. It’s main purpose however, was to encourage visitors to recount their own tales and memories of Dundas, record them in the book, and leave it with the Museum to be read and shared. Sparking the imagination of readers, by relating the fictional Dominion to their experiences, this eBook allows the Museum to enrich it’s knowledge of Dundas and it’s inhabitants.
Here at Proboscis, we’ve just recently finished a prototype of “Outside The Box”, created by Many Tang. The project was conceived back in September, spurred by the Love Outdoor Play campaign, and we’ve been constructing and tinkering with it since. Last week blazed past in a frenzy of activity, with everyone pitching in to get a working set finished. On Saturday, Alice took a set to “Re-Thinking Space”, a day-long discussion in Nottingham organised by Learning Space, to play around with.
A set of 27 Storycubes to inspire children’s play, indoors or out, alone or with others, this cube of cubes has 3 layers of games which can be used in endless variations. We’re currently thinking about different ways to play, and producing an eBook of game suggestions, so we’ll soon be having fun testing them on ourselves and with kids. See more photos here.
Next in the Songs trend is “Sea Shanties” – two volumes of songs sung at sea, selected and introduced by Francis McKee. He states “Beyond society’s canons of literature there are the outlaws – songs and stories that survive in the wild.” It seems these songs are memorised and passed on through their performance alone, rarely being recorded on paper, so it’s unlikely they would be heard outside of sailing circles. Shanties are work songs, the rhythms in time with sailors hauling, and barely sung today due to modern rigging changes. This compilation ensures these tales are not lost to time; these eBooks can be downloaded and reproduced anywhere – perhaps even on deck!
Continuing the theme of songs and music, I’m looking at the “New Worker’s Songbook – Song Writing Work Book for New Songs” (phew). In collaboration with the Worker’s Arts and Heritage centre in Hamilton, Ontario, Dodolab and Tiny Bill Cody (Tor Lukasik-Foss) created this eBook to inspire songs that reflect the current realities for workers in Hamilton. It asks the reader about their working experiences, both positive and negative, as well as their identity and responsibilities, to form verse and chorus for their own personal chant. The songbook also provides techniques to memorise lyrics, and how to sing with emotion and purpose, complete with iconic stick figure illustrations.
