aliteracy and aculture
“Putting it too starkly, in the 1830s and 1840s the photograph overcame time and the telegraph overcame space.” John Durham Peters,
Speaking into the Air, A History of the Idea of Communication.
Was the paradigm shift of these precursors of photo imaging and instant communication accentuated with the advent of screen based reading? Well, yes and no. While space is ever more dissolved by computer connectivity, time has reasserted its grip. Not only is hourly currency a measure of meaning for screen readings, but the consequence of a time transcending witness, of archival persistence, has been demeaned and made impractical. Like aliteracy (a disinclination to read by those who can) this reversion may be a projection of things to come in a culture (or aculture?) without historical position.
font
The
ambience of a type font is as interesting to appreciate as the haptics of a book.
“Helvetica has played a crucial role in providing shape and tone to the modern visual landscape ñ the “perfume of the city” in M¸ller’s florid words. And Helvetica’s Q-Score will skyrocket next weekend when filmmaker Gary Hustwit (director of I Am Trying to Break Your Heart about rock band Wilco) screens his documentary Helvetica at Hot Docs (April 21 and 22).”
triads of the book
“The printing curriculum points in at least three directions,” said Matthew P. Brown, director of the Center for the Book. “The studios provide an historical awareness of how print shops operated in the past. They nurture fine press and artist’s book production in the present. And, through this creative practice, they offer research environments fostering innovations in design crucial to future incarnations of the book.”
This very useful triad of
UICB printing instruction can be extended to the other specializations of book making as well. Lettering and writing and book illustration, bookbinding, book papermaking and book designing all can move in at least these three directions.
And one good triad deserves two others. Such as the domains of book making, book art and book studies or another triad of industry supporters in book paper industry, book publishing industry, and book printing industry. There is also a triad of reading contexts for the book. The context of reading from paper, a counter context of reading from screen and aliteracy (the context of readers who choose not to read).
er, now we have four triads.