Abstract

The Radical Publishing Project, a new initiative at Columbia College Chicago, is intended to open dialogue on the fundamental nature of publishing today and in the future. The project is broad-based, but one of its source points is an NEA-funded program at the college’s Center for Book and Paper Arts, “Expanded Artists’ Books: Envisioning the Future of the Book.” Created as works of art, artists’ books widen the definition of authorship to include not only text but also visual form and design. These are expressive, dedicated objects, where every aspect of the book – text, image, materials, design, structure – contributes to a unified expression of concept. The Expanded Artists’ Books (EAB) project republishes artists’ books, with media augmentation, as apps for Internet-connected tablets, and in a second phase commissions media artists to create born-digital works with parallel iterations as physical books. The apps will be distributed free as a way of giving the art form greater accessibility. EAB is showing great promise in its early stages, with potential for pushing an evolutionary leap in the practice, and we are now at work to establish a publishing platform to sustain it – while both questioning and asserting the meaning and value of materiality in the future of distributed art, literature, and information.

Talk can be seen here starting at 34:21

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