"Whatever is to become of books?": The next Gutenberg press is a camera

SOJOURNPOSSE MULTIMEDIA HOSTS “WHATEVER IS TO BECOME OF BOOKS?” WITH PIONEERING  BOOK PUBLISHERS & DIGITAL STORYTELLERS AT THE LONDON DESIGN FESTIVAL 2011

Multimedia storytelling collective Sojournposse will be showcasing another event at The London Design Festival 2011, this time on the future of books in the digital age.

“Whatever is to become of books?”, a seminar and multimedia event to be held at the Department of Anthropology, University College London (UCL), on 17 September 2011, will see speakers from Design, Publishing, Multimedia and Digital Anthropology discussing the change in traditional publishing platforms and its effect on the labour landscape. It will also address the issue of the shift in narrative in design, literature and journalism, from traditional storytelling to digital storytelling, and how this changes the way consumers ‘memorise’ and document information.

On the panels of speakers are The British Library (digital curation of books), Blurb Books (digital publishing for independent photographers), Oxford Brookes International Centre for Publishing Studies (technology and design of new publishing platforms), The Comic Grids (the effect of digitisation on the comic books), The Photo Book Club (preservation of the photo book culture), the NUJ Books & Magazine (labour landscape) The Ballet Bag (narrating the ballet in a digital medium) and Not On The Wires (digital storytelling and intellectual property).

The event will also feature “Homer”, a book scanner developed by digital anthropologists using a digital camera, an open source software used by Google Books and a laptop – a digital nod to the Gutenberg press. It will be used to scan the King James I bible (completed in 1611), to mark the 408th anniversary of the accession of James VI, King of Scots, to the throne of England, thus uniting Scotland and England under one monarch. This is also line with the festival’s main showcase at St Paul’s Cathedral.

Backed by the Department of Anthropology, this event will be held in support of the Anthropology programmes MSc Digital Anthropology, MA Material & Visual Culture and MA Culture, Materials & Design – all of which were developed by the Material Culture division to examine group behaviours around artefacts, including digital applications.

The event will be held at the Department of Anthropology, UCL, 14 Taviton St, WC1H 0BW, London. Contact: info@sojournposse.com. 

Twitter: @sojournpossef8. We are also on Facebook and Google+. For more details, go to http://www.sojournposse.com/?page_id=6625 

Book tickets and see details of the day’s programme here on Eventbrite.

Five Minutes With: Interviews on the future of the book Read

Press contact: To find out more about the event and the bricolage ‘Gutenberg press’ prototype, contact editor@sojournposse.com.