Transient permanence

In amongst all the digital talk at SXSW there was one panel that felt very analogue. In fact, it was about physical things. Titled “Maps, Books, Spimes, Paper: Post-Digital Media Design” or “Get excited and make things”.

The panel took turns to present some of their projects which by and large involved creating physical, printed objects. Yeah, print. That dirty, high-friction mechanism for disseminating information.

Chris Heathcote kicked things off with a core argument that ‘puter screens are inherently boring and mundane and that ‘digital’ is natural and not special anymore. He used Russell Davies‘s term ‘post-digital’ which is about moving screen experiences into the real world.

Michal Migurski of awesome-ists Stamen Design described his work for Open Street Map (OSM) project - Walking Papers. This allows people to download portions of the map, print it out and draw on edits. They can then use this, once scanned back in, to make micro-level edits to the online maps.

James Bridle talked about his own publishing exploits, creating a fieldnotes book for his trip to SXSW which included maps, notes pages and the conference schedule. In one project he created a book containing all of his tweets from a two year period packaged in a classical-looking hardback tome. Cute.

The panel presentations finished up with Ben Terrett of Really Interesting Group talking about their Newspaper Club. This is a web-based service allowing anyone to set up and print their own newspaper. They’ve already created loads, take a look at their blog.

The session finished by giving out a limited edition paper to all attendees.

Photo courtesy Ben Terrett under Creative Commons

What I find interesting about all of this is how the printed page has, once again, become a cherished souvenir – in some eyes at least…

The once monolithic, elitist printing industry has had their tools taken and repurposed for micro-niche, hyper personal, custom printing.

It’s the transience of the web that has prompted this rediscovery the world of physical objects. Coming from a print background myself I love beautifully printed books, pamphlets, magazines anything really – especially in limited runs. I have a bookcase full of the stuff at home.

I definitely feel that there’s a place to elevate your most cherished ‘stuff’ into some kind of permanent state. I created a lovely book of our honeymoon pictures using blurb. The reaction that it received when I gave it to my wife was on a completely different level to if I’d given here a flickr login or DVD slideshow of images.

Most of the stuff I do in my professional life lives online. A decade-long career has left me with a bunch of screen-shots and very little else to show for it. Sites go up and die or get reworked. I completely understand the want and need by some to record things in printed form.

But, that’s all about being very personal. One-offs. A permanent record that transcends hard drive failures, format obsolescence and is sharable in the most personal way possible – the act of physically handing it to someone.

To be honest, I’m not really *that* into filling my house with mass-produced paper products. And I don’t know the answer to this, but are Millennials that into this analogue nostalgia?

What excited me more during the talk, however, was Michal Migurski’s Walking Papers.

As I mentioned earlier, the service allows you to download a portion of a map from OSM to print which you can then use or edit on a micro level in the real world. Adding a kink in a footpath whilst walking along it or adjusting the contour of a building whilst stood in its shadow. On scanning the annotated map back in to your home PC, the QR code on the page orientates and aligns the map thus allowing it to be traced easily using OSM’s regular web-based editor.

Now we’re talking.

Actual, physical, printed materials, created cheaply at home that are both created from and, more importantly in my mind, used to augment online data. In this case, locations and mapping.

Who needs rocket packs? This is the future.

How about every newspaper printed by Newspaper Club containing some kind of RFID chip or QR code? This could allow you to go to the site, pull up the original artwork, edit it, add to it or create your own derivative works.

How about linking it to your phone location services? The data provided could update the information in the paper on the server so that the next run of print is totally current. Any statistical data or time-based information in the paper would be brought up to date with no manual intervention.

The freebie handout at the session contained a dataviz of Foursquare checkins around Austin at different times of the day. I could see how this might change with subsequent ‘issues’ of the paper based on the paper’s physical presence in each location.

Photo courtesy Ben Terrett under Creative Commons

How could this be used for tourist brochures or sports programmes for example?

The whole thing would become some infinite loop of data and information creating more data and information.

Now *that’s* a spime.

This sort of overlaps with Tara’s excellent post from a few weeks back about giving objects online memories via RFID.

There is a problem with all this print stuff, however, and it was pointed out by Ben in the talk. There’s a tremendous friction with creating physical, printed stuff. 5000 newspapers, for example, is a big lump of paper and needs space for storage. Paper prices fluctuate and there’s obviously a cost to delivery.

So, tell me again why the internet has started to replace traditional newsprint? The business model is dying, but there’s is still something quite nice about the physicality of a paper and the possibilities Newspaper Club presents.

As Ben finished…

We have broken your business, now we want your machines

Much as I love the idea of Newspaper Club, I don’t know what shape its future will take as a service in its current incarnation. It feels a little one-way. Do I cherish the handout from the session? Despite the limited edition number on the front cover, not really.

I don’t think it’s personal enough for me to bestow any emotional value on it.

But mix some cheap technology into the physical object and it takes it beyond some quaint English obsession with ephemera and into a whole new mash-up of digital and real world.