Critical Publishing
IDCE, 2025 — PART I
This font is not Helvetica. It's an homage to Marjorie Perloff.
Designed by my friend, Rémi Forte.
Bibliothèque Kandinsky
Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2013
Didier F. Faustino
AA Publications, London, 2015
Architectures CREE
Beemedias, Paris, 2016
Paged.js workshop
ENSAD, Paris, 2016
Pre Post Print
Research Group, Paris, 2017
Tactical Publishing
PhD Thesis, Lyon, 2018 – 2022
MA Design Éditions
ésam, Caen, 2019 – 2023
PART 01 History and Theory of Publishing
PART 02 Publishing Manifestos
PART 03 Emerging Publication Infrastructures
PART 04 Social Publishing Practices
PART 05 Exploring new modes of dissemination
Publishing
is the activity of making information, literature, music, software, and other content available to the public.
– Cambridge Dictionary
Writing
Clay tablet
– 4th Century B.C.
Odyssey (papyrus)
– Last quarter of 3rd century B.C., ©BNF
Vindolanda tablets (wood)
– British Museum, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Epistles of Saint Paul (parchment)
– A.D. 902
Ming Banknote (paper)
– A.D. 1375
Aesthetics
Attic black-figure Amphora
– 540-530 B.C.
Egyptian satirical papyrus
– 1095 B.C.
Trajan's Column (detail)
– A.D. 113
Bayeux Tapestry
– A.D. 1066
Scribes, copyists, illuminators
Seated Scribe
– around 2450–2325 B.C.
Rufillus, copist
– A.D. 12th Century
Claricia, copist
– A.D. 1200
Tommaso da Modena, copist
– A.D. 1352
Workshops
Jean Mielot busy at work
– A.D. 1456
Scribe and apprentice
– A.D. 1450-1475
Stages for the production of a manuscript
– A.D. 12th century, Bamberg
Stages for the production of a manuscript
– A.D. 12th century, Bamberg
Illuminated manuscript
Hurault Gospels
– A.D. 825-850
Swash
– a typographical flourish, such as an exaggerated serif on a glyph.
Historiated initial
– an enlarged letter at the beginning of a paragraph that contains a picture.
Biblia Pauperum
– Albrecht Pfister, 1462-1463
A library in Basra, Iraq
– Bagdad, 1237
Illustration of Djami's Rose Garden
– Iran, 1553
Lion attacking a buffalo, miniature from Kalila and Dimna
– Istanbul, 1429
Printing
Johannes Gutenberg introduce the first type printing system in Europe
– around 1450
Gutenberg Bible (B42), incunable
– 1455
First incunable with illustrations, Ulrich Boner's Der Edelstein
– 1461
Gheraert Leeu, Dialogus creaturarum moralisatus
– 1480
Fasciculus Medicine, De Gregoriis
– 1495
Distribution
Book peddler, Anciens cris de Paris
– 16th century
Book peddler
– 17th century
Letter printer's suit, Nicolas de Larmessin
– 1695
Censorship
Catalog of books censored by the Paris Faculty of Theology
– 1544
Courrier de Provence,
– 1791
"Ceci tuera cela", in Notre Dame de Paris, livre 5 chapter 2
– 1831
Press
Literary supplement of the Petit Journal
– June 2, 1901
Honoré Daumier, "Comme c'est heureux pour les gens pressés qu'on ait élargi les voies de communication !!!"
– Le Nouveau Paris, 1862
Le Charivari, first illustrated newspaper in France
– 1832
Le Charivari, lithography
– November 8, 1835
Telegraphy
Morse telegraph (receiver)
– 1891
First Atlantic Telegraph Cable
– 1858
Recording of Queen Victoria's message to James Buchanan
– 1858
Hachette, Bibliothèque des Chemins de fer (Railway Library)
– 1853
Sophie's Misfortune, Comtesse de Ségur
– 1858
Les Contes de Perrault, Little Red Riding Hood
– 1864
Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
– 1865
William Morris, Kelmscott Press
– 1891
William Morris, Kelmscott Press
– 1891
Virginia Woolf, Hogarth Press
– 1917
Cinematograph
Cinématographe Lumière
– 1895
Radio communication
New York University
– 1918
Radio broadcasting, The Brox Sisters
– around 1920
Titanic (incident because of competition between British and American Marconi)
– 1912
Artist Publications
Edizioni Futuristi
– 1919
Walter Gropius, Bauhausbücher
– 1925
Ed Ruscha, Twenty-Six Gasoline Stations
– around 1963
Television
Watching black and white TV
– 1950-1960
Chicago Sunday Tribune
– 1959
1.2 Information technology (1960-2000)
Information and communication technologies (ICT)
Technological tools and resources used to transmit, store, create, share or exchange information: computers, the Internet (websites, blogs and emails), live broadcasting technologies (radio, television and webcasting) and telephony (fixed or mobile, satellite, visio/video-conferencing, etc.).
First data transmission between two computers (ARPAnet)
– 1969
Alain Resnais, Toute la mémoire du monde
– 1956, LINK
Pierre Otlet, Mundaneum
– around 1920
ISBN
International Standard Book Number
– 0-9548366-7-7, first ISBN in 1965
Michael Hart, Gutenberg Project (first digital library)
– 1971
Cybernetics
the science of communications and automatic control systems in both machines and living things.
– Oxford dictionnary
Michael Noll, Gaussian Quadratic
– 1963
Eliza, first chatbot
– 1964-1966
Xerox book, Seth Siegelaub
– 1968
Software, exhibition curated by Jack Burnham
– 1970
Xerox Star, WYSIWYG
– 1981
Desktop Publishing
the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal ("desktop") computer. The first DTP software (Type Processor One) was released in 1984.
Lumitype (phototypesetting)
– 1965
Linotron 505 CRT phototypesetting machine
– 1983
http://recherche.julie-blanc.fr/timeline-publishing/
Adobe PDF (Portable Document Format), will become ISO in 2008
– 1993
World Wide Web
is a global collection of documents and other resources, linked by hyperlinks and URIs and accessed using HTTP or HTTPS.
– Tim Berners Lee, 1991
Tim Berners-Lee (left) and Vint Cerf (right)
Internet
a communications protocol that enables computers to communicate using different network infrastructures: television cables, telephone systems, satellites, etc.
Web
a communications protocol that links pages together via a http://www-type addressing system.
First website by Tim Berners-Lee
– 1990
Mosaic, First web browser
– 1993
A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace
Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.
– John Perry Barlow, 1996
The Mexican Zapatista website
– in 1995
Artists Online Publications
Antoni Muntadas, The file room
– 1994
Martine Neddam, Mouchette
– 1996
VNS Matrix, All New Gen (videogame)
– 1993
Alexei Shulgin, Form Art
– 1997
Gatt.org, The Yes Men
– 1999
computer-grrrls.gaite-lyrique.net
– 2019