The New Social – Reflections – 4

Reflections #4 discusses a workshop series called "New Ways of Reading. Between Experiment and Accessibility" organized by Framer Framed, Ania Molenda, Andrea Prins, and Martin de Heer. The workshops aimed to explore the tension between experiment and accessibility in online forms of cultural and critical publishing, with each event focusing on the perspectives of readers, writers, and publishers separately.

Workshop series: "New Ways of Reading. Between Experiment and Accessibility"

The series of events co-organized by Framer Framed, Ania Molenda, Andrea Prins and Martin de Heer focused on exploring the tension between experiment and accessibility in online forms of cultural and critical publishing. During each event the workshop organisers and the participating audience looked at three different perspectives of the reader, writer and publisher separately.

During the first workshop we focused on the notion of the missing reader. We invited readers to share their experiences, express their needs, and engage in several reading experiments addressing close reading and critical reading using CryptPad, Miro, a PDF reader, and pen and paper. In the second session we explored the position of writers and discussed their methods and desires on how to bring their work closer to their audiences. We worked with three writing experiments, executed individually or collectively: collective writing experiment (in PubPub), non-linear or side-line writing experiment (in Miro) and AI assisted writing experiment (using GPT-3 of Open-ai). In preparation of the workshop, we also experimented with Twine, a potentially interesting non-linear writing tool that would need more time to explore and work with.

During the third event we brought the perspectives of readers, writers and publishers together in a hybrid presentation-workshop format. We invited six respondents, including participants to the workshops and experts in the field, to open the discussion with the audience. Subsequently we invited everyone to speculate on future forms of experimental and accessible publishing and to share critical annotations on our research and the potential for change in the publishing sector. The event concluding the series and the first research phase of ‘Beyond the Essay’ by Ania Molenda and Andrea Prins ended with a rich and intimate discussion documented by an extensive collection of ideas and critiques as well as a general expression of appreciation for creating a space where the future of critical online publishing could be discussed beyond disciplinary silos.

Overall, it was inspiring to see that during the three events the participants\' ability to (collectively) interact with text was creatively stimulating and allowed them to rediscover the playfulness and joy of reading and writing. On a more political dimension, the new ways of relating to texts we proposed contrasted with a typical institutional static form of publishing, allowing for more permeability of the institutional boundary, and encouraged poly-vocality. In their follow up research Ania and Andrea will further explore how a playful multi-version and poly-vocal approach to publishing could look like and how to deal with their pitfalls such as difficulties with the upkeep and moderation of such dynamic publishing spaces. On a more general level we saw that a sense of community and ‘safe space’ for (online) conversations are key to any such collective experiment.