The following is my Academic Poster submission, with project proposal for MA in Creative Media.
Research Question
Identifying Irish Medieval Scribes as Designers, can their innovation and expressive typography inform an exploration of codifying meaning in ‘future-publishing’?
Poster description:
It is a nonlinear document, without a beginning, middle or end.
There are many entry points, making it a hypertextual document, within which text reveals itself progressively.
Information is contained within paper folds, which represent ‘paper pixels’.
These are discrete packets of information that may be consumed individually or in combination with other ‘pixels’, making it modular in design – a concept borrowed from web design.
It is an open document that can be appended or deducted from on an ongoing basis.
The sculptural form of the folded paper invites interaction and exploration to access the text.
The paper pixels placed under the ‘screen’ are inaccessible and static.
These pixels are coarser and larger, as digital pixels invite distance – they only make sense from a distance, close-up they loose their ability to render.
These pixels are both enclosed and closed. They do not offer up the meaning encoded within them as easily as their paper counterparts. Their envelope-like form hints at secrecy. It is my contention that the apparant code required to render online content (HTML) obscures the meaning that is already encoded within, for example, written content, expressive typography or descriptive prose.
The pixels beneath the screen have an emphasised paper-quality, as many digital publications do, with skeuomorphic page transitions.
These pixels look preserved, if somewhat withered, beneath the screen.
Three pixels beneath the screen break the grid, echoing the trend in digital visuals and audio for ‘glitches’ - intentional imperfections.
The story revealed beneath the screen is one that first led me to make the connection that medieval scribes were in fact designers. The irony is I cannot find the story in print. It’s only instantiation exits digitally.
The content of the poster comprises of research that is informing the development of the project. The text is laid out fluidly in zones. Medieval material is placed at the top-left and flows down through the document, leading to definitions of design and thoughts on the impact of the digital on our way of seeing, culminating in a QR code at the bottom-right, which links to a typographic video, ‘Paper is dead’. The video is an experiment in reverse poetry, exploring the tension between paper and pixel.
Although crude, QR codes give paper digital functionality, bridging the gap between the real and the virtual.
One of the themes of the larger project is mitigating the tension between the real and the virtual by exploiting the strengths of both (in terms of publishing) and proposing a hybrid alternative.
