I’ve recently come across two BBC documentary series, The Genius of Photography and The Genius of Design. Both are absolutely brilliant, serving as visually-rich and engaging encyclopedias of their respective subjects. Best of all, they have a focus on the content, rather than some smarmy host. They are also packed with interviews with key people who actually matter, so will surely serve as excellent historical reference.

Be sure to look for them at your favourite DVD retailer or purveyor of online video

“ Illutron is a collaborative interactive art studio located in Copenhagen south harbour”

Apologies for the long run-length. It ended up being a bit of an evolving noodle, due in part to being a rank amateur. Live audio recording, no cuts or alterations.

Featuring:
Moog Slim Phatty, Moog Moogerfooger MF-104Z Analog Delay, Moog Moogerfooger MF-107 Freqbox, Native Instruments Maschine, Novation SL MkII, Novation Launchpad. Canon 5D MkII on video duties.

This Christmas, I was lucky to receive both the new Amazon Kindle 3, and Helmut Newton’s Sumo (2009 edition). The unintended juxtaposition of gifts seems to highlight brilliantly the differences in the physical form of books as we know them today, and the still maturing form of digital books.

The Kindle 3 (or K3) is an excellent digital book reader, perhaps the best in its class, although by many accounts Sony produces some good models too. E-ink is something that needs to be seen to be appreciated, a common initial reaction being that the screen is magical in some way. It is readable at any angle and can show output even when switched off. It is cool, calm and passive. Although still enframed in a plastic bezel, the display somehow feels more organic and natural than bright, shiny, heat-producing LCD panels. iPad, I am looking at you. On that note, I can’t help but feel that the Kindle as a whole is a much softer, warmer experience than the iPad, with its chiselled, hard metal body terrible to hold in the Norwegian cold.

E-ink is not without its drawbacks, one of the biggest complaints is the way in which changed content is shown on the screen: the display briefly flashes black as it resets the e-ink particles and then shows the new content. The refresh latency is getting better with each new revision in underlying e-ink panel technology, and while not suited for displaying many types of content, it’s really not so bad for reading text.

Amazon touts the Kindle’s ability to hold many books at once. Of course this is an easy feat with digitised books and today’s cheap memory. Unfortunately however it is quite difficult to organise lots of content on the Kindle. Wanting to use the Kindle to read academic papers, I copied a whole tree structure of PDFs onto the Kindle – a snap since you just have to plug it in via USB and it appears as a drive. I can’t however browse this directory tree as a tree, and the only way I can navigate these hundreds of PDFs is paging through title listings or thinking up some magic keywords which might bring up what I need. Surely it wouldn’t be so difficult to make this possible. Third-party apps such as the Kindle Collection Manager can help out, allowing you to create “collections” for each directory. Amazon does offer some experimental features on the side, such as a web-browser and music player which provides a little bit of added-value, but it’s quite apparent that the device is really just designed for reading books purchased through the Amazon store. That’s really not such a bad thing, and I applaud the idea of a device such as the Kindle being designed for reading first and foremost, rather than trying to be a jack-of-all-trades portable device.

Purchasing books from the store is easy enough, although a sticking point seems to be the low monetary incentive to buy digital over printed, especially considering the uncertain rights around digital books: will I be able to read it in 5 years time? Will I be able to lend it to people? Can I give it to my children? I quite like how some artists in the music industry let you instantly download and buy digital versions of their music, with a physical product being shipped a week or two later. I only buy books that I want to keep; digital-only versions seem far too ephemeral to be worth buying in this way. Digital-only versions need to be priced so that it is more attractive to buy them than go to a local library and borrow the book. As the music industry as discovered with low-cost unit pricing for music (iTunes), you have to dangle the carrot low enough so that people will cough up a few dollars because that’s less “costly” (in whichever metric you choose) than acquiring the same content some other way. None of this is Amazon’s fault – publishers are to blame here. The sooner publishers get on board with Google the better too. Numerous times I have come across a tome which has been digitised by Google yet is entirely unavailable for purchase in digital form, resulting in a inter-library loan and half a day at the library.

Most of the papers I read in my academic life are in a two-column format. They are horrible to read on a computer screen and slightly less horrible to read on the Kindle. The small size of the K3 means it’s quite difficult to make out a full letter-sized two-column page displayed full screen. I’m experimenting with a variety of tools to slice up two-column PDFs into single column PDFs better suited for, well, reading. The sooner publishers adopt a reflowable document format the better.

So, Newton’s Sumo. The original Sumo was 30kg monster fully intended to be a luxury book out of reach for the average person. The 2009 edition is thankfully of a more modest size and cost and is a simply delightful book to engage with. Due to its sheer size, it’s simply not possible to have sitting around within reach for casual flicking through. Like much of Newton’s work, the book itself is rather confronting and dominating. The experience of Sumo makes it clear that there will always be a place for printed books. Many types of books rely less on their embodiment, and thus work equally as well as literature whatever their readable manifestation. Perhaps this is a large segment of the publishing industry. Perhaps rather than all book-like work being ultimately destined for physical book format, publishers, authors and artists will specifically choose when it makes sense to publish in hard copy and design for that.

When I first arrived in Norway, I was struck by the ridiculous number of baby carriages around the place. Norway, or at least Oslo – or at the very least, Grünerløkka – is serious about making babies. The sight above, in front of the newly-opened and rather popular Nighthawk Diner is a typical one.

It’s no wonder, though, when there is excellent paid leave for both parents and attitudes are such that having a baby during university or early career is not seen as terribly unfortunate.