POSTDIGITAL PUBLISHING PRATICES: on hybrid and processual print

"The current questioning of the digital and appropriation of "old" techno-cultural signal a new hybridization of artistic production."

"The post-digital becomes a field for material but also imaginary, alternative practices that affect the sense of the contemporary."

"Post-digital is arguably more than just a sloppy descriptor for a contemporary (and possibly nostalgic) cultural trend. It is an objective fact that the age in which we now live is , neither in terms of technological developments with no end in sight to the trend towards further digitization and computerization nor from a historico-philosophical perspective."

[1]

"Then, provides sets of speculative strategies and poetics in an attempt to construct a complex architecture for thinking and creating within contemporary institutional, economic, environmental, and technological constraints and possibilities. These are contemporary concerns, but, as with all contemporary issues, they are shot through with conflicting temporal relationships not easily grafted onto the linearity of past, present, and future without seriously damaging understanding of the complexities involved."

[1] Bishop, Ryan; Gansing, Kristoffer; and Parikka, Jussi (2016). "Across and Beyond: Post-digital Practices, Concepts, and Institutions". In Ryan Bishop Kristoffer Gansing Jussi Parikka Elvia Wilk (Eds.). Across & Beyond - A Transmediale Reader on Post-digital Practices, Concepts, and Institutions. Developed by transmediale and Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton

To this end, "contemporary experiments are moving things a bit further, exploiting the combination of hardware and software to produce printed content that also embeds results from networked processes and thus getting closer to a ."

"This 'form' should define at the technical and aesthetic levels the hybrid as a new type of publication, seamlessly integrating the two worlds (print and digital) up to the point that despite its appearance and interface, they would be inextricably tied together through the content."

"A hybrid product should have a strategy composed by its software part, which would provide some content through a process, and an analogue part which would frame and contextualise it. The level that this can reach is only limited by the conceptualisation and the sophistication of the act and the process."

In this way, "postdigital print starts here, with the alchemic intertwining of the traditional print with the digital (finally taken for granted) that generates new type of publications and genres."

Thus, "this computational characteristic may well lead to , embedded at the proper level. It can help hybrid publications function as both: able to maintain their own role as publications as well as eventually being able to be the most updated static picture of a phenomenon in a single or a few copies, like a tangible limited edition."

[2]

"And since there is still plenty of room for exploration in developing these kind of processes, it's quite likely that computational elements will extensively produce new typologies of printed artefact, and in turn, new attitudes and publishing structures. Under those terms it will be possible for the final definitive digitalization of print to produce very original and still partially unpredictable results."

[2] Ludovico, Alessandro (2014). "Post-Digital Publishing, Hybrid and Processual Objects in Print". In Christian Ulrik Andersen and Geoff Cox. A Peer-Reviewed Journal About: Post-Digital Research. Volume 3, Issue 1. (pp. 78-85). Digital Aesthetics Research Centre, Aarhus University

"Categorising these publications under a single conceptual umbrella is quite difficult and even if they are not yet as dynamic as the processes they incorporate, it's not trivial to define any of them as either a 'print publication' or a 'digital publication' (or a print publication with some digital enhancements). They are the result of guided processes and are printed as a very original (if not unique) static repository, more akin to an archive of calculated elements (produced in limited or even single copies) than to a classic book, and so confirming their particular status. The can be less and less extensively defined in terms of the classically produced static printed page. And this computational characteristic may well lead to new types of publications, embedded at the proper level."

[2]

"It can help hybrid publications function as both: able to maintain their own role as publications as well as eventually being able to be the most updated static picture of a phenomenon in a single or a few copies, like a tangible limited edition. And since there is still plenty of room for exploration in developing these kind of processes, it's quite likely that computational elements will extensively produce new typologies of printed artefact, and in turn, new attitudes and publishing structures. Under those terms it will be possible for the final definitive digitalisation of print to produce very original and still partially unpredictable results."

"Since software is a prerequisite for any digital technology (and is also being used for the creation of most analogue works today), its 'processual' nature should be reflected in the structure and dynamics of future publishing: enabling local and remote participation, and also connecting publishing to real-life actions. The younger 'digital native' generation has no compunction in irreverently sampling, remixing and traditional and social media (as several adventurous small organisations, born out of the current financial crisis and the 'Occupy' movement, have already demonstrated)."

[3]

"Print is, unsurprisingly, an important component of this 'mashup', because of its acknowledged historical importance as well as its particular material characteristics. And so this new generation of publishers, able to make use of various new and old media without the burden of ideological affiliation to any particular one of them, will surely be in a position to develop new and truly hybrid publications, by creatively combining the best standards and interfaces of both digital and print."

[3] Ludovico, Alessandro (2012). "Post-digital Print - The Mutation Of Publishing Since 1894". In A Peer-Reviewed Journal About. Eindhoven: Onomatopee