Photomediations: An Open Book is the most eye-catching result of Europeana Space Open and Hybrid Publishing Pilot, that will be celebrated and empowered within the Hack the Book! Festival organized in Athens in January 2016.
But which had been the challenges and curatorial choices that drove to the concept and realization of this exceptionally beautiful and innovative “virtual” book? One of the Pilot’s member, dr. Kamila Kuc (Goldsmiths), tells more about this in a interesting article published on Photomediations Machine, a online space curated by prof. Joanna Zylinska (Goldsmiths) about the dynamic relations of mediation performed in photography and other media.
“Remediating a traditional design of the coffee-table book, Photomediations: An Open Book carries numerous implications for contemporary art book publishing. An experiment in ‘open and hybrid publishing’ undertaken in 2015 as part of the Europeana Space project, Photomediations: An Open Book features a comprehensive introduction and four chapters illustrated with over 200 images. The images have been drawn from various open repositories such as Europeana, Flickr: The Commons, Wikimedia Commons and The Public Domain Review. They are tagged with Creative Commons and other open licences.”
The book, or better said the open and interactive platform which constitutes Photomediations: An Open Book, brings together and juxtaposes images and texts, in the form of a living archive rather than as a repository of curated content. This approach fosters in the reader a creative process of knowlegde production and it is based on open access materials or CC-licensed material, which allow and invite the reader to remix and interact with the the various sections of the book.
“Every book, like every archive, library or exhibition, is a curatorial arrangement (see Springer and Turpin, 2015).1 Photomediations: An Open Book features a number of fixed chapters, as well as three living sections: ‘The Reader’ (to be published as a paper book and a downloadable open access pdf with Open Humanities Press later in 2015), ‘The Social Space’ and ‘The Exhibition’.2 These parts are open to continuous experimentation, mutation and transformation so that the book can be constantly reworked and reimagined. (…) Celebrating its different formats and the technologies behind them, Photomediations: An Open Book explores the constantly evolving nature of the book.”
Read the whole essay here on Photomediations machine
Enjoy Photomediations: An Open Book here.
About Hack the Book! Festival event in Athens (22-23-24 January 2016)
