Beyond the Blog – new waves in digital arts publication

Scheduled:

Abstract:

New technologies and design innovations have inspired a nascent renaissance in digital publishing.  These advances in web publishing can be largely attributed to the Apple iPad that launched in 2010.  Many of the emerging innovations improve the experience of digital reading, often by craftily emulating features from print publishing, such as columns, horizontal page ‘turning’, and inline imagery. This panel presents examples of new directions in digital arts publication from the Art Institute of Chicago, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the online arts magazine Triple Canopy. Unlike the more pragmatic content delivery of web pages and blogs, the projects presented focus on delivery of a superior reading experience. The panelists will discuss successes, challenges and the exciting future of digital publishing.  

Session Description:

Envisioning a Scholarly Research and Publishing Ecosystem at the Art Institute of Chicago

The Art Institute of Chicago has a long history of publishing highly regarded printed collection catalogues. Recently, a cross-departmental team has been deeply immersed in envisioning a new technological environment to support authoring and publishing scholarly catalogues in a digital form that will meet or exceed our established ink-on-paper quality threshold.  This work was motivated and generously funded by a grant from the Getty Foundation as part of the Online Scholarly Catalogue Initiative (OSCI).

This presentation will discuss early results from a catalogue preview published in October 2011. We will also discuss our aspirations for integration between the online catalogue and our collection management system, CITI. We intend to augment CITI such that it becomes an active agent within the AIC’s scholarly research and publishing ecosystem. No longer just a data repository, and newly capable of propagating research by storing scholarly references and nuanced commentary underpinning text entered into its fields, CITI will play an even more central role in the scholarly life of the institution.

Whitney Stories from the Whitney Museum of American Art

Whitney Stories (http://whitney.org/whitneystories) is an interactive magazine designed to provide a space for readers to engage with the multiple histories and narratives that make the Whitney a compelling place to visit—in the galleries or online. Launched in the summer of 2011 to commemorate the breaking of ground for the Whitney’s new building in New York City's Meatpacking District, Whitney Stories is an iterative project that will grow and change as the Museum does. Published by Museum staff on a bi-monthly basis, each issue of Whitney Stories will feature a series of illustrated articles; custom-produced videos; social media and other user-driven features also figure prominently in the design.

In this session, the Whitney’s Digital Content Manager and editor of Whitney Stories, Sarah Hromack, will discuss the process of developing and launching an iterative digital publication from within an art institution. The challenges of rallying institutional support, maximizing the use of internal resources, and scale will be discussed, with a particular focus on editorial process and content development.

Triple Canopy

Triple Canopy is an online magazine, workspace, and platform for editorial and curatorial activities. The magazine facilitates projects that engage the Internet’s specific characteristics as a public forum and as a medium, one with its own evolving practices of reading and viewing, economies of attention, and modes of interaction. In doing so, Triple Canopy is charting an expanded field of publication, drawing on the history of print culture while acting as a hub for the exploration of emerging forms and the public spaces constituted around them.

Molly Kleiman, Triple Canopy’s deputy editor, will discuss historical publishing models, the magazine's collaborative "workspace" methodology, and future plans for the publication.