Trails

In early 2006 we star­ted search­ing for a solu­tion that al­lows read­ers to store their on­line read­ing path. The key point of the pro­ject was the trans­form­a­tion of com­bined web­site frag­ments (texts and im­ages) into a lin­ear-lay­out print­able book­let. With the click of a but­ton, the web frag­ments be­come ed­it­able, and the book­let can be ex­ten­ded with per­sonal con­tent, notes etc. The struc­ture of the book lay­out is clean, but of­fers enough basic flex­ib­il­ity for in­di­vidu­al­ity. When a book­let is com­posed, you can choose to print, ex­port (PDF), or up­load it to the Trails Pub­lic Lib­rary, and share your re­search trails with the rest of the world.

Per­spect­ives

Per­spect­ives (2012) is not so much about pub­lish­ing new stuff as it is about weav­ing ex­ist­ing ma­ter­ial into new nar­rat­ives. For most of the young life of the World Wide Web we’ve been work­ing with blog posts, link lists and feeds. We’ve settled into an ar­chaic work­flow, full of new tabs and bland lists of book­marks. Every piece of on­line con­tent is an is­land, fetched and con­sumed in se­quence. Born out of a de­sire to guide an audi­ence through vari­ous on­line ma­ter­i­als, present­ing threads of per­sonal views while still keep­ing those threads firmly anchored, Per­spect­ives’ ap­proach is dead simple: a mut­able con­tainer for con­tent, next to a stable con­tainer for the guid­ing nar­rat­ive.

Lines

Lines (2011) so­lid­i­fies an ab­stract idea in the shape of a func­tional piece of soft­ware, serving as the found­a­tion for fur­ther dis­cus­sion and de­vel­op­ment. It is a re­ac­tion to the forms and frames in which we usu­ally write. The ver­tical hier­archy of the page, the blog, the list or the forum is flipped over. It is a play­ing field, al­low­ing one or more au­thors to cre­ate a weave of texts and im­ages.

Rough internal sketch

Here is a sketch that would typically be shared in the studio. It lays down the basic ideas for navigation and interaction, that only we need to understand.

Rough client sketch

The client sketch shows the content and structure, but with no design elements. It is mocked up in the computer template to help the client visualise the website in its real context. Key elements are highlighted with speech bubbles.

Detailed internal/client sketch

A PDF presented in the browser. This is the first time the client sees the website on their computer, with demonstrations of interactions and page transitions.

Writing
c. 3200 BCE

Cuneiform is a system of writing first developed by the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia c. 3500—3000 BCE. It is considered the most significant among the many cultural contributions of the Sumerians and the greatest among those of the Sumerian city of Uruk which advanced the writing of cuneiform c. 3200 BCE.

The Scroll
c. 2500 BCE

A scroll is a roll of papyrus, parchment, or paper containing writing. Scrolls were the first form of editable record—keeping texts, used in Eastern Mediterranean ancient Egyptian civilizations.

Punctuation
c. 200 BCE

Punctuation is “the use of spacing, conventional signs, and certain typographical devices as aids to the understanding and correct reading, both silently and aloud, of handwritten and printed texts.”

The Codex
c. 100 CE

A codex (from the Latin caudex for “trunk of a tree” or block of wood, book; plural codices) is a book constructed of a number of sheets of paper, vellum, papyrus, or similar materials, with handwritten content.

Silent Reading
c. 300 CE

People only began reading in their head around c. 300 CE. Before this all reading was spoken.

The Gloss
c. 1000

A gloss is a brief marginal notation of the meaning of a word or wording in a text. It may be in the language of the text, or in the reader’s language if that is different. A collection of glosses is a glossary.

The Summa
c. 1200

The Summa Theologiae (written c. 1265–1274 and also known as the Summa Theologica or simply the Summa) is the best-known work of Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274). Although unfinished, the Summa is “one of the classics of the history of philosophy and one of the most influential works of Western literature.”

The Printing Press
c. 1450

A printing press is a device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the ink. Typically used for texts, the invention of the printing press is widely regarded as one of the most influential events in the second millennium, ushering in the period of modernity.

The Mundaneum
1910

The Mundaneum was originally created in 1910, following an initiative begun in 1895 by Belgian lawyers Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine, as part of their work on documentation science. It aimed to gather together all the world’s knowledge and classify it according to a system they developed called the Universal Decimal Classification.

The Memex
1945

The memex (a portmanteau of “memory” and “index”) is the name of the hypothetical proto-hypertext system that Vannevar Bush described in his 1945 The Atlantic Monthly article, “As We May Think”. Bush envisioned the memex as a device in which individuals would compress and store all of their books, records, and communications, “mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility.”

Glas
1974

Following the structure of Jean Genet’s Ce qui est resté d’un Rembrandt déchiré en petits carrés bien réguliers, et foutu aux chiottes (What Remains of a Rembrandt Torn Into Four Equal Pieces and Flushed Down the Toilet), the book is written in two columns in different type sizes. The left column is about Hegel, the right column is about Genet.

Project Xanadu
1960

Project Xanadu was the first hypertext project, founded in 1960 by Ted Nelson. Administrators of Project Xanadu have declared it an improvement over the World Wide Web, with mission statement: “Today’s popular software simulates paper. The World Wide Web (another imitation of paper) trivialises our original hypertext model with one-way ever-breaking links and no management of version or contents.”

1978

Spatial Data Management is a technique for organizing and retrieving information by positioning it in a spatial framework. Data is accessed in a Spatial Data Management System (SDMS) via pictorial representations which are arranged in space and viewed through a computer graphics system.

Krise der Linearität
1988

“The hypothesis to be presented here is: Occidental culture is a discourse whose most important information is stored in an alphanumeric code. This code is in the process of being replaced by other, differently structured codes. If this hypothesis were accurate, we would have to count on a fundamental change of our culture in the near future.” Vilém Flusser

WWW
1990

The World Wide Web (WWW) is an open source information space where documents and other web resources are identified by URLs, interlinked by hypertext links, and can be accessed via the Internet. It has become known simply as the Web. The World Wide Web was central to the development of the Information Age and is the primary tool billions of people use to interact on the Internet.

Writing Space
1991

Writing Space is a book that studies the computer as a new technology for reading and writing.

Cybertext
1997

Cybertext is the organization of text in order to analyse the influence of the medium as an integral part of the literary dynamic, as defined by Espen Aarseth in 1997. Aarseth defined it as a type of ergodic literature.

Wikipedia
2001

Wikipedia is amultilingual, web-based, free-content encyclopedia project supported by the Wikimedia Foundation and based on a model of openly editable content. The name “Wikipedia” is a portmanteau of the words wiki (a technology for creating collaborative websites, from the Hawaiian word wiki, meaning quick) and encyclopedia.

The Glass Engine
2001

The IBM Glass Engine is designed to enable deep navigation of the music of Philip Glass. Personal interests, associations, and impulses guide the listener through an expanding selection of over sixty of Glass’ works.

Indexhibit
2006

“Indexhibit is a pioneering CMS web application founded in 2006 which is used to create websites in the established index + exhibit format.” Daniel Eatock and Jeffery Vaska

Blockchalk
2009

Blockchalk was a service built around the idea of leaving simple messages directly tied to a specific location. “Use your mobile phone to leave messages on your block, your street, at the coffee shop, or anywhere you happen to be. Respond privately or publicly to messages from people in your neighborhood.”

4D Scrolling
2010-12

4D scrolling, or also parallax scrolling, is a term used to define a website experience that when the user scrolls other events and interactions occur. A classic example is the New York Times article “Snow Fall”.