The Momentary Zine—5 questions for Anja Groten
@Interactive Storytelling Meetup #3 –10 March 2016
Interview by Klasien van de Zandschulp
Anja Groten is an independent designer and researcher and co-initiator of Hackers & Designers. At the Interactive Storytelling Meetup #3 Anja presented the installation ‘The Momentary Zine’: an open publishing station, consisting of a thermal printer (receipt printer), and a microphone and a stapler.
We asked Anja 5 questions about her work, installation and her point of view on the future of publishing.
5 Questions for Anja Groten
#1 Can you tell us about Hackers & Designers and the project you presented during the meetup, The Momentary Zine?
Hackers & Designers (H&D) is a non-profit cross-disciplinary community of programmers, engineers, designers, and artists. H&D began in 2013 and has organized meetups, where collaborative and inclusive workshops are given. By organizing hands-on workshops with design, art and technology practitioners, H&D aims to stimulate a cross-disciplinary vocabulary and discourse about technology and innovation. H&D believes designers and artists, should be empowered with the tools of the digital realm including coding and hardware usage and construction. Conversely technologists should be more comfortable and effective in engaging in creative processes through familiarity with the vocabulary of designers and artists. All disciplines should become more comfortable in theoretical and social discourse, and thus be asking questions such as not only “can we” but “should we”.
“The Momentary Zine consists of a microphone, a small thermal printer, internet connection and some simple bookbinding tools”
During my presentation at the Interactive Storytelling meetup I live-demonstrated the publishing installation we call The Momentary Zine.
The Momentary Zine is an interactive publishing station, previously exhibited and performed at Zinefest Berlin. The station consists of a microphone, a small thermal printer, internet connection and some simple bookbinding tools. The zine content is exclusively accumulated by speaking into a microphone. With the help of speech to text technology the spoken word translates to text. Simultaneously an algorithm runs an automated image search on google, querying the spoken words and adding the image results accordingly to the zine layout. The outcome is a one-off printed zine!
“The user literally starts a conversation with the technology”
#2 What message do you want to give to the users of the Momentary Zine installation?
I didn’t intend to communicate one specific message with the project, but rather open up a possibility for the audience to experiment with speech to text technology and think about editorial design and particularly self-publishing in a different way.
The project evolved throughout a longer research period about cross-publishing publishing. What I like about the zine station particularly; it’s really simple and hands-on and there is a low-barrier to interact with it. The user literally starts a conversation with the technology, by speaking into the mic. Most people first say: “Hello, do you work? You do work! That’s great.” Some users challenge the technology after a while to see what the possibilities and what the flaws are. They speak in diverse languages for example. In my opinion the best results occur when the user appropriates the experience and claims the moment at the mic to create an own, personal zine. The layout can be altered by using the voice only. For example, by pausing at specific moments an image search is triggered. By speaking very long sentences so you will get longer text passages.
“A friction between the static character of printed matter and the fast moving and uncontrollable character of information online”
I also like the friction between the static character of printed matter and the fast moving and uncontrollable character of information online. As a designer and story-teller with an interest in technology I regard that friction as an exciting matter to explore further.
#3 What is the most funny or interesting result you got after someone used the installation?
One cute interaction with the Zine installation was with a girl at the Zinefest in Berlin, who was mostly interested in exploring the temporary aspect of the zine. We had to promise her that we are not saving the data on our machines. She then made us leave the installation to confess something. That was the most intimate use-case I saw so far. Very sweet. I observed her from the distance and she looked very excited and cheeky while speaking into the mic.
“I like to explore spontaneous and situation-based publishing possibilities”
#4 Why did you decide to use a temporary paper?
Thermal print, better known as receipt print is very cheap and has the characteristic of vanishing after a while. What I like about the temporary aspect of the paper is that it’s addressing the proclaimed vanishing of printed matter as such, which I actually don’t believe in. I like to explore spontaneous and situation-based publishing possibilities. Both the mic and the receipt paper are very nice experimentation tools, as they offer a very low-barrier to interact. Printed content has another status than digital content. It’s not necessarily more or less important but content does present itself by the media or platform it is published on. The thermal print seems to live somewhere in-between and therefore offers a nice bridge and space for questioning and investigating cross-media publishing.
The printer and the whole installation is also a rather small and therefore lends itself well to show at events and capture the temporality of these physical get-togethers of like-minded people.
“With every new technology introduced, printed matter seems to reinvent and improve itself”
#5 From your point of view as a designer, what are your thoughts on the future of publishing?
As I before mentioned, I am pretty sure that print is not dead, and will remain as an important technology for distributing information. With every new technology introduced, printed matter seems to reinvent and improve itself. However I am very curious to see how other devices, software and services will progress in the field of publishing. As a designer I am very excited about exploring the hybrid possibilities of cross-media publishing.
“My dream is to make publications that manifest themselves not only in one form but live in different realms, inhabiting both rich and poor media content, curated and moderated matters as well as user generated content and commentary”
