UNIT 1: BRIEF 3: WEEK 5
Publishing1
Publishing (n.) or publishing (v.)? What is the relationship between publishing the form and the act of publishing?
Project:
We re-published an image from Jeremy Sandfords book Down and Out Britain, 1971. Sandford immersed himself in the lower classes to form a position outting the Welfare State and how the very people they were suppose to care for were not being cared for. We thought about what has changed in 52 years and we felt the same problem existed. The man was still eating the same sandwich 52 years later. We split the task between the four of us. One created the GIF that went from black and white to colour to show the passing of time with a year clock counting the years since 1971 to 2023. One created the twitter post we were going to publish it within. One researched the best twitter feed to place our post. One wrote the post, researched and created the #. A fab team effort.
What are forms of publishing? We discussed as a group forms, media and technology of publishing and found lots of crossover. Magazines, newspapers, books, posters, journals, music platforms, social media, adverts. Extended; library van.
What isn’t publishing? We felt that was to do with form and context. A personal letter for instance is not publishing.
Why do we publish? To share ideas, to communicate, to educate, to entertain, to learn, as propaganda, as history, gathering ideas, generating ideas.
Who gets to publish? And who (or what) determines who gets to publish? Goverment, commercial, publishing houses, everyone online, access, resource. Social media was interesting as people noted that they ‘publish’ on social media with ‘no thought’ which raises a further question of responsibility through publishing and how context affects this? This is interesting as it was discussed how social media platforms devalue content, which is reflective of Steyrels argument In Defense of the Poor Image. A low res image reflective of lower value. It seems there is an inherent question over validity of social media content, yet the press love to quote it. Do people feel the publishing press should have more thought to publishing than themselves? If so why does publishing want to relfect social media so much?