Subject: Design, Book Crafts & the Digital Age
NINCH-ANNOUNCE (david@ninch.org)
Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2000 14:11:56 -0400
Message-Id: <v04210137b61dfde7bf44@[192.100.21.22]> Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2000 14:11:56 -0400 To: ninch-announce@cni.org From: NINCH-ANNOUNCE <david@ninch.org> Subject: Design, Book Crafts & the Digital Age
NINCH ANNOUNCEMENT
News on Networking Cultural Heritage Resources
from across the Community
October 26, 2000
On the Digital Brink: Notes from Printing History Conference
http://printinghistory.org/
http://www.forewordmagazine.com/
These informal, but well-written, notes from part of the annual
conference of the American Printing History Association I think bring
a fresh perspective on much of our work.
David Green
===========
>Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2000 16:43:44 -0400
>From: ForeWord Magazine <circ@traverse.com>
>To: Multiple recipients of Foreword - Sent by <circ@traverse.com>
>Subject: Foreword this Week
>
>ForeWord This Week is a weekly e-mail news service covering
>independent publishing of interest to booksellers, librarians and
>other trade professionals.
>
>FOREWORD THIS WEEK 10.25.00
>
>1. T-SHIRT BACK ON: SUBPOENED FOR B. . .
>2. POSTCARD FROM ROCHESTER, NY
>3. POST SCRIPT ABOUT A UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY
<<SNIP>>
2. POSTCARD FROM ROCHESTER, NY
On The Digital Brink at the 25th Annual Conference of the
American Printing History Association.
Swept along by the onrush of digital developments, it can be both
useful and necessary to pause and take stock of where we're going and
where we came from -- and to celebrate the enduring values which lend
meaning to what we are up to from day to day.
Because of the intriguing theme of its 25th Annual Meeting, I decided
to drive up to Rochester from Woodstock, New York, and attend my
first APHA meeting. I've been a closet member on and off through the
years, relishing the association's newsletter and its journal,
"Printing History," for the discussions of the history and art of
type and printing, and for the ads and notices of what is going on in
the world of collecting and private presses -- all framed in elegant
design and illustration. (For membership information:
www.printinghistory.org ).
So, on arriving I found some one hundred diverse keepers of the fine
traditions of printing and typography - designers, librarians,
scholars, printers, calligraphers, collectors, publishers - friendly
and eager enthusiasts all -- assembled at the Rochester Institute of
Technology for two days on October 20th and 21st. There we examined
how the new technologies are being used to explore and reveal book
and graphic arts history as well as used to develop new ways for
their expression and dispersion.
But this was not a hand-wringing conclave of traditionalists
bemoaning the loss of art and craft in the face of progress. To the
contrary, I found the best of all possible worlds where true lovers
of the uses of graphics and type apply their classic verities in new
forms. In fact, one of the high points was a demonstration by
Australian born artist, photographer, lecturer and author Douglas
Holleley. He presented some exquisite digitally scanned paper
sculptures in final images enhanced by PhotoShop. Yet not out of
sight or out of mind were the handiwork of the great printers and
type designers from Aldus Manutius and Claude Garamond to Frederick
Goudy and Stanley Morison.
There could have been no better setting for all of this than the
comfortable lecture hall at the Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging
Science (named after the inventor of Xerography) and RIT's Carey
Graphic Arts Collection of rare books and manuscripts at its Wallace
Library, and the adjacent gallery and letterpress print shop.
Among the highlights:
We were treated by two RIT professors and a Xerox scientist to some
of the outcomes of their fascinating application of infrared and
ultraviolet analysis and digital imaging technologies in the recovery
of degraded images in the Dead Sea Scrolls as well as in uncovering
the original texts erased and overwritten on medieval parchment
palimpsests. A set of original Archimedes essays was the object of
the latter.
Frank Romano, one of the foremost authorities on digital publishing
technology, demonstrated the need for historic preservation. He
examined the emergence and disappearance, in the space of fifty years
(1946-96), of the scores of businesses which brought into the market
the many forms of photocomposition that provided the bridge between
the old hot metal and today's computer driven image setting.
In the course of his lecture, Czeslaw (Chet) Grycz, CEO and Publisher
of Octavo (Adobe Founder John Warnok is their Chairman of the Board),
presented a view of his organization as a digital scholarly
publishing and preservation company. Octavo (http://www.octavo.com)
is working with libraries and archivists to create digital editions
of some of the most "important milestones of thought and culture" in
works such as those by Galileo, Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin,
William Shakespeare and many others. The imagination, quality and
functionality of the images, tools and commentaries that accompany
these editions are superlative.
Grycz's topic was "Perdurability: Digital Books and Beatrice Warde's
Vision of Permanence." As written in the program, "in her celebrated
broadsheet announcing Eric Gill's Perpetua typeface, Beatrice Ward
compared the permanence of a text printed in multiple copies on
flimsy paper to that of one deeply chiseled on a massive Roman
monument." Look which one prevailed.
The entire conference was framed by a powerful opening keynote by
Robert Bringhurst, noted scholar and lecturer and author of The
Elements of Typographic Style. Bringhurst's words were so substantial
that I can only poorly characterize, but I will attempt to provide a
small portion here (the full text of it hopefully will appear in
"Printing History").
The first and original book given to us is the world itself - all
people read it - and in the development of letter forms and writing
people make their own books - miniatures encompassing portions of the
original. And it is the extent of our connection to this world that
calibrates the uses of our mind.
Bringhurst's breathtaking concept followed his imaginative
development of the ways in which images, letter forms, and
linguistics are in themselves complex forms of art as well as modes
of human gesture that connect us to our own stories as well as to
those of others.
The digital era finds us telling these stories in a setting several
times removed from the sensory surround of the world "outside" - - of
the original book -- and from the highly tactile experience of the
physical books we have used and the very personal trade marks
reflected in our speech and handwriting. The values and messages
communicated by these forms of expression are replaced by the uniform
ASCII code, which creates indistinguishably uniform letterforms as we
tap out our messages on keyboards around the world. However different
the touch, the result is the same, Bringhurst observed - and the
experience of reading, detached from its physicality has become a
spectator sport.
That is not the whole of , or the end of the story. It is simply the
beginning of a new one, I inferred. Whole new extensions of language
and the preservation of cultures are opened up by this digital
revolution - as is the challenge and the opportunity to stay
connected with our original book.
-Gene Schwartz
Editor-at-Large
<<SNIP>>
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