or-bits.com Blog

We are pleased to present On the Upgrade – WYSIWYG, a new or-bits.com publishing project.

On the Upgrade – WYSIWYG is a POD book, also distributed as a PDF, which includes artworks by Jamie Allen, Renee Carmichael, David Horvitz, IOCOSE, Michael Kargl, Sara Nunes Fernandes, Julia Tcharfas, Maria Theodoraki and Richard Sides along with interviews contextualising the artistic processes of the featured artists.

On the Upgrade – WYSIWYG is a book exhibition, or an exhibition in a book. It is a new configuration of selected material that was firstly presented online or for web broadcast and operates as an artistic, curatorial and design re-alignment of material originally compiled for online consumption for the book interface. The starting point of this project was that of conceiving the book format as an interface and reflecting upon the tensions that might exist between this holdable interface and the web interface along with that of the computer. Thereby reading patterns, the specificity of engagement with the material presented in a book and what site-specificity might mean in relation to moving between online and offline modes of presentation are some of the aspects that have been considered at the time of the making of the book.

“What are the representational languages of the interface? How does it work as text, image, sound, space and so forth, and what are the cultural effects, for instance of the way it reconfigures the visual, textual or auditory?” From Soren Pold, Interface Realism: The Interface as Aesthetic Form, 2005

We are holding two EVENTS to launch the project:

Wednesday 26 June 2013, 6:30 – 8:30pm
at The Northern Charter, Newcastle-upon-Tyne;
With a conversation between Ralf Brög (SITE magazine), Marialaura Ghidini (or-bits.com) and Sam Watson (CIRCA Projects) about intermedia publishing, and more.
Book a free place here, http://orbitsbooklaunch.eventbrite.co.uk/#
http://thenortherncharter.org/

Friday 28 June 2013, 6:30 – 8:30pm
at Banner Repeater, London;
With: AND, or-bits.com and Studio Hato in conversation: on modes of bridging online and offline publishing and distribution (6:45PM)> Jamie Allen‘s a Fluxus Score for Google Chat & Browser, ‘Sounding the Alarm with a Muted Bell’ (7:30PM)>Sara Nunes Fernandes‘ reading of ‘The Sideways boy and the levitating granny, the frontal man and the backside woman, the upside-down man and his wife who had her feet on the ground’ (8PM)
http://www.bannerrepeater.org/

On the Upgrade – WYSIWYG is available as a POD book and PDF on Lulu.com, our website and selected online distributors and bookshops. More info on our website, http://www.or-bits.com/editions.php

The design of On the Upgrade – WYSIWYG is by Studio Hato, London

On the Upgrade is the publishing series of or-bits.com that explores the relationship between artistic production and distribution online and print publishing. The projects within the series look at processes of translation of artistic material which, originally created for a website, migrate to a different site, taking up different forms and formats, in print. On the Upgrade considers the possibilities, limitations and characteristics inherent in the movement between sites of creation, display, dissemination and engagement in relation to the increasingly broader notion of publishing. It also functions as an offline archive of material and artworks firstly presented on or-bits.com that, with each new project, respond to the site-specificity of the chosen print format, a format conceived as an expansion of the original site of display, its source (our website). On the Upgrade started in September 2011 within or-bits.com off-site activities such as gallery exhibitions, events and workshops.