"If you read alone, it's just a dream. When we read together, it's
reality! "1
- Description
"Reader" is a collective form of reading. In front of a book
as well as a computer screen, the reading remains an individual experience.
One reads mostly alone. Etienne Cliquet, Robin Fercoq and Erational have created
a new programming language called TRML
(Temporized Reader Markup Language). It defines the speed of text by character,
word, sentence, ponctuation or line in millisecond resolution. To define the
same rhythm for everybody make the reading a collective experience. Our aim
is to organize collective readings that could take place everywhere with a
simple videoprojector and a computer. By sharing reading we should share our
dreams.
- Framework of reading
The web is extending access to textual ressources. Each connected family own
a virtual international library. Thus, our conditions of reading have changed.
Jakob Nielson has revealed that reading from computer screens is 25% slower
than from paper 2. The experiences made by Proffessor Lewenstein
at the Stanford University and published in 2000 point the differences between
print and screen reading 3. On-line articles should be read
more (75%) than print versions because the reader is less active. By thinking
of how we read today, Reader has emerged. Different exemples have furnished
us several reflections about reading of our time:
- Shell
Shell used by programmers are scrolling text automatically. The relation
to text with this kind of interface seem very exclusive because it is
impossible to go backward. The message comes to you: You must read it
right now like a speech. In another hand, CHAT interface are developping
collective reading and remains rare exemple of possibility by users to
read simutaneously the same text on the Network.
- Cinema
A scrolling text appears in Matrix movie when rebellion is contacting
Neo. Letter by letter, Neo's computer displays "Hello Neo...".
This scene also takes parts of the credits film. Credit films have foreseen
collective reading . May be one day, we'll go to cinema to read a book...
- Public display
Valentine day 2003 in Paris will remain very specific for the citizens
of Paris 4. It has been possible to use government website
to send personal love letter on public information screen. Those interfaces
has become for one day very interactive and democratic because usually
these are showing very official, anonymous and repetitive messages.
- Speed of reading
Our speed of reading is different for each although it is around 200 words
per minutes. Have you ever try to read a book with somebody else ? It is impossible
because the moment to turn the page is not the same for each other. Reader
considers text from a temporal point of view. It is not a spatial conception
of text like HTML. TRML transform text but make it readable and legible.
- Utopia:
- Reading together
Reading together is like dreaming together. Reader wish to developp a
time for sharing ideas and projects. Collective reading have been used
by a important Peruvian community since 1971 to define a political conscience,
to fight against illiteratism (linked to right of vote) and to developp
their culture and history 6. Development and democratisation of home-cinema
apparatus may engage people to organize public readings.
- Expert of flux
The flux is surrounding us in the digital age. Downloading (e-mails, web
pages), Loading (programs, Operating systems) and uploading (FTP, Streaming)
have integrated our more common activities. It is like our forerunners
who were getting water on the river. We identificate to flux. In our network
society, we have begun flow expert. Many different authors associate technologic
progress with dramas or disasters (Wilèm Flusser, Paul Virilio,
Walter Benjamin 6). The langage and softwares we've created
are simutaneously object of critical study of the technology and its context.
- Referencies:
- Derivated from a Brazilian folk song : "If
you dream alone, it's just a dream. When we dream together, it's reality!".
- http://www.sun.com/980713/webwriting/wftw9.html
Jakob Nielsen personnal website: http://www.useit.com/
- http://www.poynterextra.org/et/i.htm
- http://www.paris.fr/fr/actualites/saint_valentin/
- ""Lecture
et identité dans les bibliothèques rurales péruviennes" by Marie-Annick
Bernard (french only)
- In 1937, Walter Benjamin had already foreseen our transformation
in experts:
"It is inherent in the technique of the film as well as that of
sports that everybody who witnesses its accomplishments is somewhat of
an expert. [...] At any moment the reader is ready to turn into a writer.
As expert, which he had to become willy-nilly in an extremely specialized
work process, even if only in some minor respect, the reader gains access
to authorship.". Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen
Reproduzierbarkeit , Walter Benjamin, 1936
- The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
is currently developping "Timed-text"
specifications which is close to Reader project whithout applications
for the moment.
- artist Claude Closky has developped an scrolling interface for the
on-line magazine of Luxemburg
Museum.
www.teleferique.org - Utopian Reader
- 2003-07-03