Post-Monograph-Monograph

Drawing by Oskar Schlemmer 1921 "the meta-physical forms of Expression"

My subject matter is a refinement and exploration of a topic I brought up way back in the first blog posts for The Future of the Book, wondering about book design informed by certain modalities of the digital environment, particularly a kind of impatient or distracted disposition to content consumption.

My angle on it at present, rings with a certain Bauhausian kind of modernism, as I am imagining an optimized aesthetics and design sensibility for a modernity (or really post-modernity) to better facilitate dissemination of ideas through the printed word and image.

Particularly I'm interested in the intersection of page, word and image as a nexus of attention and satisfaction whereby one encounters meaningful enthrallment, pause and meditation, or one experiences friction and boredom. That I have read very interesting academic things in the past that are, none the less, so dry and dense as to constantly throw my mind and eye into a glaze, makes me think there are some conventions or techniques that could be altered to manufacture a more compelling kind of idea-laden corporeal document for the 21st century. Our own idea of academic and discursive forms have come through a long evolution and there's no reason to think we have arrived at the optimal format in the current form of writing, because the audience itself has evolved as our other forms of media have evolved, even if the academy is generally conservative in this matter.

Importantly, however, I'm not just throwing in the super-hyper-text-multi-modal-social-media-audio-visual-matrix as a logical conclusion to information presentation. I'm still very much interested in the empowering limitations and necessities of narrow focus commanded by a corporal bounded document like a book. Rather, I want to rethink the possibilities and mechanics of it, as informed by our altered internet-age consciousness.


-Ben