Ureader

"If you read alone, it's just a dream. When we read together, it's reality! "1

• Description of Reader
• Framework of reading
• Speed of reading
• Utopia
  • Reading together
  • Expert of flux
• Referencies and links

• 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:
  
  
  1. Derivated from a Brazilian folk song : "If you dream alone, it's just a dream. When we dream together, it's reality!".
     
     
  2. http://www.sun.com/980713/webwriting/wftw9.html
     Jakob Nielsen personnal website: http://www.useit.com/
     
     
  3. http://www.poynterextra.org/et/i.htm
     
     
  4. http://www.paris.fr/fr/actualites/saint_valentin/
     
     
  5. ""Lecture et identité dans les bibliothèques rurales péruviennes" by Marie-Annick Bernard (french only)
     
     
  6. 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
     
     
  7. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is currently developping "Timed-text" specifications which is close to Reader project whithout applications for the moment.
     
     
  8. artist Claude Closky has developped an scrolling interface for the on-line magazine of Luxemburg Museum.