report

Geoff Cox

1. Intro

https://www.nica-institute.com/event-computational-writing-and-publishing-workshop-with-geoff-cox-and-winnie-soon/

Expub is a consortium between Nero Editions (Rome), Institute for Networked Cultures (Amsterdam), Aksioma (Ljubljana), and Echo Chamber (Brussels) for a biennial of experiments on new publishing formats. The idea is to bring to light knowledge and practices developed by members over the past years in publishing, which continues to expand beyond the classic terms of traditional linear publishing. The idea is to create an operational model for Expanded Publishing.

[+chloe to take notes]

• You are partecipating in an expert sprint -> an informal space to discuss freely about your practice and ideas. While our focus is on expanded publishing, we want to know about your field a seires of 10 interviews with experts, artists, editors to understand the whys, hows, whos, and whats of expanded publishing. That is how the interviews will be structured, allowing 10 minute for each, with a moment of open discussion. The other interviewees are Clusterduck, Silvio Lorusso, Thomas Spies, Irene de Craen, Geoff Cox, Open Source Publishing, Yancey Strickler, Kenny Goldsmith, Dušan Barok, Caroline Busta.

We are recording this with plans of creating a hybrid report, and eventually a toolkit or publication, but mistakes silences and uncertainty are part fo the plan

1. Why: Politics of Publishing (Mission/Theory/References/Ideals/Goals) - 10 mins

Can you describe your practice and interests?

What references do you usual include in syllabus on publishing practices - what are your main references, theories, materials?

Professort of Art/Computational Cultural at LSBU - a particular, vocational uni - also part of https://www.centreforthestudyof.net/ - CSNI

• MA programme - curating art and public programme

interests - AI image literacy / software studie / publishing as social / atistic practice

Interested in collaborative writing / write a bit for journals (try to avoid it ‘cause it’s slow, inefficient, low readership, etc)

authonomy over publishing process

operate outside of academia as are outdates practices, operate with paywalls

• more on self-publishing

QUESTION: define community

2. How: Infrastructures of Publishing (Tools, workflows, operations, (revenue) models for Writing, Editing, Printing, Distributing, Promoting, etc ) - 10 mins

What are the main tools you are using and which ones would you like to use more in the future?

What can open access/open tools offer that proprietary software doesn’t? and what are their challenges?

• legacy of free and opens software production together with feminist pedagogy

ongoing collab with transmediale / aarhus uni - students write and comment on each of their publications:

• • wiki to print - also with OSP (Gijs de Heij) and Varia (Mannetta Berens/Simon Browne)
• • minor - reference “towards a minor literature” - what does a minor tech look like/ is like? (vs big tech)
• • server in the same space, everything was materially present in the same space

• wiki to print publishing in collective spaces

• publishing as organizatinal form

• publishing = way of setting up cerain social dynamics (Stevphen Shukaitis and Joanna Figiel) Publishing to Find Comrades: Constructions of Temporality and Solidarity in Autonomous Print Cultures:

https://csalateral.org/issue/8-2/publishing-comrades-temporality-solidarity-autonomous-print-cultures-shukaitis-figiel/

fred moten - management - higher education more atuned to neo liberal structures, market, big tech companies and education dependency

3. Who: Community of Publishing (Network, Collaborations, Readers, (sustainable) engagement) - 10 mins

How have you created your community of readers and collaborators?

community SERVPUB - people in universities / art schools –> https://servpub.net/

SISTER SERVER

the audiene is self-contained within the tm festival

4. Open Discussion - 15

ilan mentions a book – @ilan can you insert here?

define publishing? what is the role of publishers?

• publishing as making public / put it in the public realm but also consistuting publics

reference on article about Simon & Schuster - what is the role of the publishers if they dpeend on influencers? the big ones dont sell let alone the small ones ? how can the small ones survive?

• not concerned about the big ones - the small publishers are often funded by research grants (then again dpeendent on big insitutions?)

the circulation of ideas matters (small publishers)

print on demand

academy as subsidy

lorenzo: why do we turn into a paper book as outcome for research/circulating ideas?

• we receive information in different ways

• book as companion object

lorenzo: we turn to traditional publishing because of economic sustainability // - constant negotation with institutions

geoff: serv pub is an ateempt to think about what is autonous publishing? what could that be like - aesthetic programming book - open source project, you could trandofrm the text, fork it - authors make one iteration but it can evolve

https://aesthetic-programming.net/pages/the-book.html

• becoming a systems administrators - own server etc - more autonomy how publishing takes place + a portable server

• open book futures project - coventry university - https://copim.pubpub.org/open-book-futures-project

• superorganism

-> tightening the links between distributors, editors, writers, printers, etc.

forking a book for different local audiences

lookinhg at books through frame of github, branching

new metaphors for books

reputation economy

collective names

tommaso: many tools and collectives? are we reinventing the wheel? how to make sustainable? book as computational object

despite working with ethics of ops, people get protective over their own work/code/income streams/want to be accredited, ownership of tools is false but it always comes back to that

federated models of access and development of tools would be wonderful

expub course in rotterdam - collective like varia -> lost in the process/burnout

Tommaso: should we need to reconsider the open source model, not politically as it is solid, but how to sostain it

lorenzo: tools for this collaborative working? federating/distributing work? blockchain?

goeff - turn to collectives that are doing this for the answer

5. What: Future of Publishing (Defining and Speculating together on Expanded publishing) - 10 mins

What are the more urgent aspects that need to be addressed in the future of publishing?

sharing major challenge, networking pratcices in a comprehensible way

mechanics and politics of acadmeic publishing - dependency on companies - encourage academics and students ot intervene and realise that publishing isnt just a passive cycle - the choices made are part of the work, the content

set up means of publishing

collaborative phds

annette decker,

small univerities connecting https://criticalinfrastructures.net/

federated model -> not quite sure what it means

permacomputing

low tech

scalability/no scalability

the whole earth catalogue

expanded

“poor publishing” –> poor image