We’re now just over halfway through our kickstarter campaign for Outside The Box : a “game engine for your imagination” designed to inspire storytelling and improvise play. We’re trying to raise £4k to manufacture a 1st edition of the complete set to get it into people’s hands and see what they do with it. Its had a slow start but we’re hoping we still may pick up momentum.

Outside The Box has no rules, nothing to win or lose, it simply provides a framework for you to imagine stories and make up your own games. It’s made up of 27 cubes, 3 layers of 9 cubes, each layer being a distinct game : Animal Match, Mission Improbable and StoryMaker. Check out the whole OTB collection of cubes and books on bookleteer.

Animal Match starts out as a puzzle – match up the animal halves to complete the pattern. From there you can make it much more fun : mix the cubes up to invent strange creatures; what would you call them? What would they sound like? How might they move?

Mission Improbable is for role-playing. There are 6 characters: Adventurer, Detective, Scientist, Spy, Storyteller and Superhero, each with 9 tasks. Use them to invent your own games, record your successes in the mission log books or take it to another level by designing your own costumes and props.

StoryMaker incites the telling of fantastical tales : Roll the 3 control cubes to decide how to tell your story, what kind it should be and where to set it. Then use the word cubes as your cue to invent a story on the spot.

Outside The Box began as a side project when illustrator Mandy Tang joined Proboscis. Inspired by the Love Outdoor Play campaign to get more children playing outside, we came up with the idea of using our StoryCube format and our bookleteer self-publishing platform to make a set of cubes that would inspire playfulness. We think its a lovely thing worth getting out into the world – we hope you agree.

Our new goal for May is to reach at least 80 subscribers and we have a very exciting special extra to give to new annual subscribers. As you may know, Proboscis is leaving its studio space in a couple of months and we are undertaking a major review of our archive and back catalogue of projects built up over 19 years. We frequently make things as part of our creative process that don’t come to light for a while, or are never made public. In opening one of the archive boxes I came across some special things which had been planned to form part of a larger special edition artists publication which didn’t in the end come to pass. However, they make a fabulous set on their own and we are pleased to offer them as this month’s special extra inducement to take out an annual subscription to the Periodical.

Between 2008-2011 I commissioned a series of eBooks and StoryCubes by a diverse range of writers, artists, performers, thinkers and makers to respond to two questions from different perspectives, “Why are we who we are?” and, “What do we want to become?” – Diffusion Transformations. I had hoped from the beginning to publish a limited edition containing all the books and cubes, but funds weren’t available to do so, however I did manage to print several of the contributor’s pieces.

We have a small number (around 20 or so) which will be sent out on a ‘first come-first served’ basis to any new annual subscribers. Subscribe now for your chance to have this rare set.

Pharmaceutical Cubes by Kenneth Goldsmith
Legendary concrete poet and founder of UbuWeb, Kenneth Goldsmith created these 6 StoryCubes as a form of writing as texture.

3 Cubic Conundrums by Raqs Media Collective
Delhi-based Raqs Media Collective (Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula & Shuddhabrata Sengupta), co-founders of Sarai, created these 3 StoryCubes for the series : “The Curse of Invariable Good Fortune”, “Door to Door to Door” and “The Fugitive Never Escapes Himself”.

The Octuplet: Story of Our Lives by Babette Wagenvoort
Babbette Wagenvoort’s beautifully illuutrated cubes tell “tells the strange story of eight human-beings living inside their mother, while they prepare for their future. One of the octuplets seems better equipped for life than the others…”

A Sort of Autobiography by Warren Craghead
Described by comics reviewer, Matthew Brady, as “three-dimensional comic strips”, veteran comic artist, Warren Craghead created a set of 10 StoryCubes as a “possible autobiography”.

Why not use bookleteer create your own record of what you’ve seen and done this summer – here’s one I created from a visit to the hauntingly beautiful Achamore Gardens on the Island of Gigha this summer.

Super Cheap StoryCube ‘Taster’ Packs
We’ve put together 25 ‘taster’ packs of blank StoryCubes – containing 8 medium and 8 original size cubes) for just £5 plus post and packing.

It super easy to create storycube layouts with bookleteer and print them onto sticker sheets which can be cut out and stuck onto the pre-cut and scored card cubes. Lots of fun for sharing your memorable moments or building up blocks of memories for storytelling and games.

It’s true that the ignorant consumption of QR Codes, hastily scanned without any accompanying information and without ensuring the source is safe, could lead to malware or undesired material. However, I think the mystery of these codes – strange, enigmatic symbols, able to instantly transport the user to a digital realm which bears no relation to its signage – is their appeal. The word ‘Talisman’ can be interpreted as “to initiate into the mysteries”. In this way, QR Codes might be deemed their modern-day versions.

After the test run for Storycube Cairn, where we used QR Coded Storycubes and mobile phones as wayfinding devices, I was inspired by ideas on how these codes might be embedded into the urban fabric of a city. The notion of encountering one of these cubes by accident in an odd location, which, when scanned, leads you on a winding quest to discover more, or reveals a short story or video piece relevant to its found location, is undeniably alluring. Perhaps even, a cube or code is partially glimpsed in a seemingly unreachable place, rewarding the explorer when they have found a means to get there – parkour and geolocation intertwined. I’ll try not to gush over the possibilities for sculpting codes into walls and pillars. Digital hieroglyphs for the modern city.

Of course, they have more traditional, functional benefits. They could be a great help for those with sight or motor skills problems when placed alongside small print, summoning an enlarged text version on whatever device is being used, as well as enabling access to links without entering complex URLs. Our recent changes to bookleteer lets readers access a digital version of a book by scanning a QR Code on the back cover; instant, free distribution of content.

I would hazard a guess that developing their capability, whilst finding innovative ways in which they might be used, will be essential for QR Codes to stick around throughout the coming years, becoming a technology that can evolve beyond novelty uses or simple shortcuts.

Beyond being quickly scanned over.

The ability for visitors at these kinds of shows to take a small souvenir away with them that serves as a contacts resource and reminder of the experience is key, particularly if the exhibitor is engaged in conversation or demonstrating their work to someone else, leaving no opportunity to directly talk to them and forge a link. I gathered quite a few cards at TENT – mostly as a trigger for later research – storing them in the back of my notebook so they wouldn’t get lost.

Often, there is a disparity between the design and information on these cards, and the intrigue I had when looking at the product or concept on display. It struck me that creating StoryCubes that act as keepsakes from the experiences might bridge this gap; shouldn’t high-end design work have a suitable counterpart for promotion? Obviously a cube is a lot more unwieldy than a card, even when folded flat, but perhaps in the process of taking the care to protect it, having to physically carry it rather than stuffing it into a wallet or pocket, it becomes more than just a scrap of details – a three-dimensional memento, almost a trophy, that can sit on a desk or shelf, hopefully stirring up the same interest its new owner had when looking at its source.

• A free bookleteer account

If you haven’t signed up for a free bookleteer account yet, do so here.

• A4 single label paper, suitable for Inkjet or Laserjet printers

Full sheet label paper, available from any decent stationers (Avery code: DSP01).

• Blank StoryCubes

Read about StoryCubes, and order blank packs here.

Firstly, design your StoryCube.

Sign into bookleteer. If you’re a new user, read the help page.

Design your cube using the bookleteer templates, export the file as a PDF, then upload to the Create A StoryCube page, or upload each image individually.

Select Generate StoryCube and download the file, from the top right corner of the screen.

Next, print and make.

Print using the label paper, and cut around around only the faces of the cube, not the tabs – it should look a crucifix (You can also protect your cube by using adhesive cellophane, by affixing a layer on top of the label sheet, then cutting out).

Peel off the backing paper, and stick onto a blank cube.

Fold your StoryCube, and voila!

You can even use this method to make your own A3 size StoryCubes, without even owning an A3 printer.

Simply crop the A3 cube PDF into two documents, so that it can be printed across two sheets of  A4 paper.

Then, cut out the two segments as shown, to form a two-part crucifix shape.

Stick onto to a blank A3 cube and fold…

… and you now have an A3 cube, using a standard home printer.

If any bookleteers discover more clever ways to make StoryCubes, do share!

On Wednesday, Simon Pope, Gordon Joly, and Stefan Szczelkun joined us in the Proboscis studio, to talk about the StoryCube Cairn project, and embark on a group walk using a QR coded cube and a mobile phone as wayfinding devices.

Before the event, we were asked to devise walking routes to create individual cubes, each side featuring a QR code, linking to a particular geographic spot on an online mapping service (Google Maps, OpenStreetMap, etc) – a start point, four waypoints, and a destination. Using an API Gordon coded, and the bookleteer API, entering the six location URL’s automatically generated a StoryCube. My route, based around memorials and tributes in different forms is available here.

Meeting just after 2.00pm, Simon and Gordon gave a summary of the project, and a recap of the development process so far. We talked about the current limitations of Google Maps when creating the cubes, particularly the inability to share manually added, user designated routes with other people (they require two waypoints to locate the route), and had some interesting ideas regarding the next stage of the project. What about a mix of map links, audio files and videos – an interactive tour, scanning QR codes near points of interest to access audio descriptions and related videos? Or, a quasi treasure hunt, requiring players to obtain QR code stickers for the cubes (discouraging them from scanning all the codes at once – cheating!)  from certain spots to get the next destination?

We decided to use Simon’s cube for our first trial, his route focusing on locations acted on by “centrifugal and centripetal” forces – each point “acting as an attractor of sorts, which in some instances cannot be reached, yet which pulls the walker towards it”.

After departing from the studio, Giles scanned the first code to get our start point – the ramp under West Smithfield. Once there, we scanned the next spot, the middle of Charterhouse Square. All was going smoothly. However, after reaching the third spot, the omnimous brick circle in Golden Lane estate (the “Unplace” we featured in the City As Material: Streetscapes event), we were unable to load the next, despite trying with numerous phones – bad signal, or bad omen? Despite this, we were afforded time to ponder its unusual acoustic properties once again, and plot a cunning plan to subvert this synchronised failing of technologies… cheat!

Simon told us his next waypoint, the Curve Gallery in the Barbican Centre, which we arrived at via its winding walkways (after ceremonially scanning the code we missed). Another hurdle faced us here, as to gain entry to the exhibition, we were expected to don quarantine-esque shoe covers, and couldn’t enter as a group. Bah. The penultimate spot, another circle, on Monkwell Street, beckoned.

From there we were awarded our destination, the Museum of London, or more specifically, outside its entrance. Here, we asked if we were able to get into the recently renovated green space below, and were told “perhaps, but you might not be able to get back up!”. Rather than risk it, we retired to the pub right next door, content in a mostly successful first run of a StoryCube Cairn route.

We’re brimming with ideas for what might be possible next. Until then, view all our routes, and download the cubes yourself here.

“When folded into cubes, these warnings – secretly embedded into the pills we take – are reconstituted into three-dimensional forms, creating a new type of placebo.”

Download and make them for yourself on Diffusion.

(You can also read a more in-depth post about these cubes, penned by our former blogger, Karen Martin, here.)

It is now a year since we launched the short run printing service so now seemed like a good time to reflect on what people in different areas have been using the printing service for. In this post we reflect on its use in two projects connected to the British Museum.

Julie Anderson, the Assistant Keeper of Egyptian and Sudanese Antiquities at the British Museum used Bookleteer to create 1000 books in Arabic and English about the 10 year Sudan excavation to share the findings with the local community in Sudan.

Following the distribution of the book, teenagers began coming to our door in the village to ask questions about the site / archaeology / their own Sudanese history… 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 Book immediately and began to read it or look through it….The Book 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.

Bookleteer was used in the Melanesia Project to record, Porer and Pinbin, indigenous people from Papua New Guinea discussing objects in the British Museum collection. Bookleteer was used first to create simple notebooks that were printed out on an office printer and handmade. Anthropologist James Leach used them to note the discussion in both English and Tok Pisin, next to glued in polaroid images, to produce a record that involved;

capturing the moment of what we were doing and what we were seeing.

Once filled in, the notebooks were scanned and professionally printed to share with the local community in Papua New Guinea (who have a subsistence lifestyle without electricity).

“[…] As something to give people, they’re an extremely nice thing. People are very keen. I also took some to an anthropology conference before I went [to Papua New Guinea] and would show them to people and they’d immediately say “Oh, is that for me?” People kind of like them. They’re nice little objects.”

Researcher and community education worker Gillian Cowell has used the books as part of a community project with Greenhill Historical Scoiety:

“I think, for community work, it’s really important that you engage in much more unique and creative and interesting ways as a way of trying to spur some kind of interest and excitement in community work […] The books are such a lovely way for that to actually fit with that kind of notion.”

Bookleteer is an online service to help you create and publish booklets and StoryCubes. It’s simple, quick and free – print and make them in minutes using only a pair of scissors, or share them online, anywhere there is an internet connection, computer and standard inkjet or laser printer.

If you are interested in finding out about how you could use Bookleteer, come along to one of our Pitch Up & Publish Workshops or Get Bookleteering sessions this summer.

Pitch up & Publish
One day workshops to create and publish booklets and StoryCubes using bookleteer: guiding you from concept to publication and beyond, bring a particular project you want to undertake, or come for an introduction and to experiment. The day will be tailored to your needs so you can bring a particular project you want to undertake, specific questions you want to address, or come for an introduction and to experiment. For new to experienced users, all are welcome. Book tickets on Eventbrite for these dates – 12 July, 13 Sept, £50 / £40 (early bird). Max 10 places per workshop.

Get Bookleteering!
Come along to one of our ‘Get Bookleteering’ 2 hour surgery sessions ranging from beginners to advanced, to answer your questions about specific projects as well as introduce new users to Bookleteer. Book places on Eventbrite for these dates – 28 June , 26 July,  £20 / £10 (Concessions). Max 6 places per session.

Both event prices include (complimentary Alpha Club membership, 5% discount off your first Short Run Printing order, free pack StoryCubes).

Bookleteer is an online service to help you create and publish booklets and StoryCubes. It’s simple, quick and free – print and make them in minutes using only a pair of scissors, or share them online, anywhere there is an internet connection, computer and standard inkjet or laser printer. Make field notebooks, workbooks, gifts, private journals and folios, or just test your design idea’s before using our short run printing service to print your book professionally in small or large quantities. Unlike other publishing platforms, Bookleteer enables quick and easy modification, as findings may change, mistakes made. It allows you use only the handmade versions or experiment with them before professionally printing. The opportunity to create is endless.

People who have been using bookleteer:
Bookleer has been used by organisations including The British Museum, University of Aberdeen, Cambridge Curiosity and Imagination, Axis Architects, The Empty Shops Network, Arts group Dodolab, and many others. These organisations have used Bookleteer in projects including outreach, architecture, community, consultation, literature, archeology, visual art, interpretation and exhibitions.

We look forward to seeing you!

The train from London seemed distinctly commuter-free compared to our journey to Bristol, with only a handful of people in our carriage. We bagged table seats, and sat down to some much needed coffee, battling against the dreary weather outside. Mucky, sepia-tinted windows gave the landscape outside a grainy, nostalgic vibe, the perfect accompaniment to tales of Tim’s childhood in Norwich.

Arriving there, after setting up the GPS tracker and sound recorder Tim had brought, we walked down the main stretch of tacky nightclubs and kebab joints, possibly not the best introduction to the city. However, we soon spied Norwich castle, a curious structure, almost too uniform and perfect considering it dates from the 11th century. Tim said it looked like a fairy-tale castle, a manifestation of the first thing you’d see when you heard the word “castle”. Next to it, a space-age cylindrical lift ferried visitors to and from the lower levels – a bizarre combination.

We descended to the city centre, passing the market, towards Elm Hill, a historic cobbled lane with houses and shops dating from the Tudor period. This amazing street is home to the Strangers Club, set up to entertain those from outside Norwich, and where Tim’s father regularly took him to lunch. I couldn’t resist a peek through a lofty window, and was greeted with the sight of a woman carrying flagons from the kitchen, hastily ducking before she noticed. Further up, the window of an antique and curiosity shop in a side court displayed Crowley-esque goat horns and all manner of surreal exhibits.

After passing through the beautiful cathedral and it’s ornate cloisters (and a hilarious sign outside which read “We apologise for the untidy appearance of these ruins”), we popped into the Writer’s Centre, recruiting Chris Gribble briefly as our tour guide. He mentioned that Norwich was barely affected by the industrial revolution, apparent in the structures pre-dating it which are so common. We cut through the shopping centre, past the cinema where Tim first saw Star Wars, and arrived by a huge derelict building adorned with a giant graffiti mural; originally zoned for development, but now a victim of the property crash. A dystopian counterpart to the medieval niches of the city.

Before departing, Chris recommended The Window, the “world’s smallest coffee shop” (appropriately next to the “UK’s best pizza and kebab” shop – a dubious claim). After lunch in the refreshingly different Cinema City dining rooms (housed in a building where parts date back the the 14th century, yet the courtyard is sheltered by a modern glass roof), we stopped by. It resembles a tiny kitchen, with only a small bench and a chair or two to perch on, but has a great atmosphere. We chatted with the owner and several locals, and left with the after-glow of a dynamic and friendly venture trailing behind. Tim’s previous statement that nothing much had changed since he left, and that the pulse of the city was definitely on the slow side, had a small, yet charming, contender.

All day we had noticed plaques underneath various street signs, some with slightly vague origins; the phrases “may have been named because” and “could be” were used an awful lot. Paired with peculiar names, such as “Rampant Horse Street” and “Tombland”, these gave us the idea of perhaps creating some Storycubes with street-sign images, and fictional explanations on the other side, which could be fun. We were also interested in using GPS data and sound recordings from the day for an eBook output, particularly Tim’s childhood memories, and the peaks and lulls in conversations when passing through certain areas, so that we could contrast the physical experiences with raw data, examining the correlations and disparities. We’ll be starting work on those soon, so keep an eye out on Diffusion.

View our photos from the day on the City As Material Flickr page.

Tuesday 22nd March 2011, 12.00 pm – 2.00 pm

Tuesday 12th April 2011, 12.00 pm – 2.00 pm

Tuesday 26th April 2011, 12.00 pm – 2.00 pm

at:

Proboscis Studio
4th Floor 101 Turnmill Street
EC1M 5QP London
United Kingdom

Event Details

A series of workshops to help you make the most of bookleteer : guiding you from concept to publication and beyond. The 2 hour workshops will be held at our studio every 2-3 weeks and will have a maximum of 6 places. We will help beginners get started and offer more advanced users a collaborative space in which to explore new uses and ideas, sharing our knowledge and experiences.

The sessions will cover everything from basic level introduction to specific topics – such as designing project notebooks, embedding multimedia links via QR codes and preparing books for printing via our Short Run Printing Service. We also plan to run specific themed workshops to share our experiences and methods of using bookleteer to work with kids in schools, with community groups and in other more specialist settings.

Participants will become Alpha Club members, getting early access to new and exclusive features (such as the bookleteer API) as well as benefitting from discounts on Short Run Printing service and a free pack of medium size StoryCubes.

Book A Ticket

Tickets will cost £20 plus booking fee and are available from http://pitchupandpublish.eventbrite.com/.

View photos from previous Pitch Up & Publish sessions below, read about them here.

Download and make “A Sort Of Autobiography” for yourself here.

Download, make and decipher them for yourselves here.

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.

Bird Song was created to accompany a sound installation at the Chiswell Walled Garden in Dorset, for this years b-side festival in September. Each side of the Storycube portrays a silhouette of a different bird in its natural setting, with its particular call represented in onomatopoeic text. It must have been a great visual piece when paired with the sound, especially with the three dimensional form of the Storycube, as the silhouettes start to resemble the shadows of actual birds.

I’ll be looking at the other song themed items soon, and starting to pick up on other collective trends when delving through the archive.

Picking a path, the player follows the line around the cube, until they reach one of six destinations, each with a different icon representing a personality type. The player then checks the eBook to read the corresponding description.

“What Type Are You?” really takes advantage of the cube form – the shape is integral to the game (as Mandy says: “When holding a cube you find yourself tempted to see whats on the other faces”). It’s also the first game in the archive – hopefully it will inspire fellow game-makers to create more. Download it here, and play it for yourself.

I love Matt Huynh’s style; wonderfully quirky and charming, they work so well on the small panels, almost resembling an abstract comic, or an illustrated Rubik’s cube. Whilst twisting the cubes into different forms, its hard to resist becoming mesmerised, as the different colours and shapes unfold inwards and outwards, kaleidoscopically.

It would be interesting to see comic authors working within this format, each set of panels representing short tales that can be switched around, letting the reader form the story by making different shapes. This relates to Hypercomics, which I’ve blogged about before, where different outcomes are possible with each read, shifting the reading experience from flat and passive, to three dimensional and interactive.

While Mandy was out at lunch Alice and I pounced on the StoryCube puzzle she’s working on because, well, because it looks gorgeous! Pencil sketches of farmyard animals, sea creatures, flowers, kittens, insects and snakes are scattered across a set of nine cubes and lie on a background of  shades of blue. The sketches cross over from one side of the cube to another but change as you rotate the cube so that viewing different sides give the sketches a fantastical feel where kittens have flowers for feet and cows have snakes instead of mouths.

The nine cubes are intended as a puzzle with the goal being to match up all of the sketches of one type across all nine cubes. Sounds simple doesn’t it.. well, Alice and I didn’t manage it in the time Mandy was out for lunch!

ps. I also have to say good-bye today. This will be my last regular post for the bookleteer blog because I begin a full-time research position on Monday. I’ve been working with Proboscis on and off for the past five years and it’s been an incredible journey. I can’t thank Giles and Alice enough for the opportunities I’ve had while I’ve been here – and especially for giving me the chance to meet and work with all the fabulous talented people who’ve been in the studio over that time. Good luck with everything, folks!