Karen ann Donnachie

Books are always transforming. The book we hold today has arrived through a number of materials (clay, papyrus, parchment, paper, pixels) and forms (tablet, scroll, codex, kindle).

The book can be a tool for communication, reading, entertainment, or learning; an object and a status symbol.

The most recent shift, from print media to digital technology, began around the middle of the 20th century. It culminated in two of the most ambitious projects in the history of the book (at least if we believe the corporate hype): the mass-digitisation of books by Google and the mass-distribution of electronic books by Amazon.

The survival of bookshops and flourishing of libraries (in real life) defies predictions that the “end of the book” is near. But even the most militant bibliophile will acknowledge how digital technology has called the “idea” of the book into question, once again.

To explore the potential for human-machine collaboration in reading and writing, we built a machine that makes poetry from the pages of any printed book. Ultimately, this project attempts to imagine the future of the book itself.

In this essay, we will describe how and why the reading-machine was ideated, what the reading-machine does, as well as definitions of the terms we have adopted within the research.

We will begin by outlining how the reading-machine uses computer vision and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) in order to identify the text on any open book placed under its dual-cameras, we will then describe how the system leverages Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to uncover brief ‘poetic’ combinations of words on the page, which it preserves, while erasing all other words. Finally, we will describe how the reading-machine automatically searches for an illustration from the Google Image Archive to ‘illuminate’ the page according to the meanings of the remaining words.

Once every page in the book has been read, interpreted, and illuminated, the system automatically publishes the results using an Internet printing service, and the resulting volume is then added to The Library of Nonhuman Books. In this essay, we are primarily focusing on the design and functions of the reading-machine, and we will address the books it creates, and the implications of the literary and aesthetic outcomes these embody, more closely on another occasion.

The Library of Nonhuman Books centres around a custom-made reading-machine which uses machine-learning to abridge and ‘artificially illuminate’ physical books through a combination of algorithmic interpretation and digital palimpsest. Newly illuminated texts are offered as alternative futures of the book. The project speculates on the book to come, where a post-literate society defers its reading to nonhuman counterparts.

This paper explores the artistic legacy of Stéphane Mallarmé’s 1897 poem “Un Coup de Dés Jamais N’Abolirà le Hasard” through a selection of derivative works, in order to demonstrate how the poem can be interpreted in digital environments as a self-replicating machine, programmatically facilitating the ongoing production of potentially countless ulterior works, including our own internet recasting called www.athrowofthedicewillneverabolishchance.com. Through a detailed discussion of this work, we will attempt to draw a lineage between Mallarmé’s original poem/book of 1897 and Google, incorporated a century later, in 1997. In conclusion, we will speculate on the potential that our interpretation of Mallarmé’s work may provide a form of poetry for non-human readers, which we interpret as a metaphysical search for meaning by the kinds of Artificial Intelligence programs currently in development by corporations such as Google.

This research addresses the ‘Selfie’ as a significant phenomenon of contemporary photography, its unique methods of production and distribution, as well as the possible motivations driving this particular genre of the (amateur) self-portrait. I will argue that the Selfie happens at the crossroads between performance, narcissism, social tick, an intrinsic desire for self-projection and a possibly irrational quest for authenticity in the contemporary photographic image, and that its ubiquity cannot help but change the idea of the photograph as we know it.

This paper will argue that contemporary artists have redefined the boundaries of their disciplines in seeking new channels for expression in electronic environments available to them since the introduction of the Internet, continuing a tradition of alchemic activities  designed to resist normalizing forces (heirarchies and hegemonies) perceived to be at work in networked society through the appropriation, disruption or deconstruction of their architecture.
The tools at the service of the artists are the building blocks and languages of the very constructs themselves, so while the artist labours over the code his role, practically speaking, is arguably no different from a software professional or computer scientist, however it is the perspective and ephemeral concern of the artist that sets his activity apart. The interdisciplinarity of the artist’s practice remains fleeting – time and (Internet) space specific.
Beyond those who deliberately infiltrate the network, artists who exploit networked services (www, social media) in their artistic production as medium or channels of distribution are extending their practice into other dimensions, transposing, translating or extending their relative disciplines. Beyond whether this demands a redefinition of the disciplines themselves or requires attributing to these artists the label of interdisciplinary, this paper will demonsrate that the works being produced in post Internet environments and the practices established by netartists are outpacing our taxonomies.
This paper will present the work of an array of artists who’s work from in and around the Internet can serve as case studies for contemporary interdisciplinary methodologies as they work in in those ephemeral, fleeting, liminal spaces, occasionally re-wiring the circuitry that surrounds and contains us.

Il primo impatto col volume Red, wine and green è atipico. Per chi ama sfogliare pagine inconsuete è un’autentica manna. Se a questo primo aspetto si unisce la qualità dei progetti raccolti, allora si può dire che il testo diverrà un must del graphic design. Il tutto nasce da un’idea semplice del curatore. Giorgio Camuffo ha selezionato i singoli o i gruppi che ritiene si esprimano al meglio in quell’ambito.
Red, wine and green. 24 Italian Graphic Designers
A cura di Giorgio Camuffo
Grafici: Enrico Bravi, Cristina Chiappini, Codesign, Convertino & Designers, Designwork, Dolcini Associati, Fsd/Fabrizio Schiavi, Alessandro Gori, Grafco3, Humm Design, Ldc/Gianni Sinni, Lifesaver, Massimo Pitis Design, Marco Morosini, Paolo Palma, Polystudio, Rauch Design, Studio Camuffo, Studio FM Milano, Studio Orange, Studio Tapiro, Matteo Vianello, Omar Vulpinari, Why Style
Testi: Giorgio Camuffo, Federica Palmarin, Ries Straver, Sergio Schito, Anna Vera, Massimo Vignello, Sergio Polano, Gillo Dorfles, Matteo Vianello, Alan Fletcher, Francesco Messina, Elisabetta Sgarbi, Andy Simionato, Karen Ann Donnachie
444 pp

[Karen ann Donnachie, PhD // Doctoral Thesis: Full-text]
This multidisciplinary, practice explores the phenomenon of the selfie (understood as a networked, vernacular, photographic selfportrait) in order to propose a new critical understanding of its effect on wider photographic self-portrait practice, and photography in general.

Significantly, “The Human Use of the Human Face” depicts the selfie as more than a mere vernacular object or action and is not satisfied with the dismissal of the selfie as a direct remediation of the traditional self-portrait. Instead this thesis maps the complex, and sometimes controversial genre of amateur self-portraiture as it sits somewhere between performance, narcissism, social tic, intrinsic desire for self-projection and a possibly irrational quest for authenticity in the photographic image.

This practice-led research is articulated through the creation of original digital and electronic artworks including speculative camera design, social media web apps and immersive installation; through interviews with contemporary artists; and finally through the discussion of cultural, aesthetic and photographic theory. This research examines the privileged position the selfie holds inside a rapidly expanding and evolving social media ecology as it becomes both vehicle and tool, a symbol of personal, social, cultural and political identities. Along with the prevailing concerns surrounding the selfie and its reflection on contemporary society, this thesis inserts notions of human affect, connectedness, belonging and being human into the discussion concerning the motivations behind, and social consequences of, the selfie in three areas: first life, second life, and afterlife.

This thesis was presented in 2016 for my PhD (Art), awarded from the School of Design & Art, Curtin University, Western Australia, 2017.

Things Have Forgotten What the Shapes are For, (2022) is an automated-art-sys- tem consisting of a CNC (Computer Numerical Controlled) laser-enabled1 machine, driven by custom-coded software that removes parts of any book in order to re- veal relationships between the images and texts across multiple pages. Each au- tomated ‘reading’, or burning, generates a unique artefact while destroying the original, producing new ‘portals’ through the book. An experiment in post-digital publishing that explores the differences between the deconstruction and the de- struction of knowledge in the age of the mass-digitisation of the book.

Working with a custom-coded, automated-art-system of their own devising, Australian digital artists Karen Ann Donnachie and Andy Simionato have now archived a literary corpus for future study in what they have called The Library of Nonhuman Books. Yet it remains uncertain whether human scholars will visit Donnachie's and Simoniato's virtual library. Seeing as how "there are no human 'typewriters' now, how can we be sure there will still be human 'readers' in the future?"

This paper will outline the ideation, background and development of the electronic artwork The Trumpet of the Swan (Donnachie & Simionato, 2017) presented by the authors at the Electronic Literature Organisation conference in Porto, Portugal in 2017. The artwork is a custom-coded drawing-robot which automatically inscribes in natural media, every post published from the personal Twitter profile of the 45th President of the United States of America, Donald Trump, identified on Twitter as @realDonaldTrump. The machine, which has the appearance reminiscent of a swan, including a broad “body” balanced on two short legs that end in webbed “feet”, is a semi-autonomous robot that writes in a pen, crowned by a long white plume, on a continuous scroll of paper while producing bird-like sounds. The drawing-robot remains permanently in a state of attention and the demonstrated sequence of actions can only be triggered remotely and by the 45th President of the U.S.A. himself (or more precisely,...

[Karen ann Donnachie, PhD // Doctoral Thesis: Full-text] This multidisciplinary, practice explores the phenomenon of the selfie (understood as a networked, vernacular, photographic selfportrait) in order to propose a new critical understanding of its effect on wider photographic self-portrait practice, and photography in general. Significantly, “The Human Use of the Human Face” depicts the selfie as more than a mere vernacular object or action and is not satisfied with the dismissal of the selfie as a direct remediation of the traditional self-portrait. Instead this thesis maps the complex, and sometimes controversial genre of amateur self-portraiture as it sits somewhere between performance, narcissism, social tic, intrinsic desire for self-projection and a possibly irrational quest for authenticity in the photographic image. This practice-led research is articulated through the creation of original digital and electronic artworks including speculative camera design, social media web apps and immersive installation; through interviews with contemporary artists; and finally through the discussion of cultural, aesthetic and photographic theory. This research examines the privileged position the selfie holds inside a rapidly expanding and evolving social media ecology as it becomes both vehicle and tool, a symbol of personal, social, cultural and political identities. Along with the prevailing concerns surrounding the selfie and its reflection on contemporary society, this thesis inserts notions of human affect, connectedness, belonging and being human into the discussion concerning the motivations behind, and social consequences of, the selfie in three areas: first life, second life, and afterlife. This thesis was presented in 2016 for my PhD (Art), awarded from the School of Design & Art, Curtin University, Western Australia, 2017.

This research addresses the ‘Selfie’ as a significant phenomenon of contemporary photography, its unique methods of production and distribution, as well as the possible motivations driving this particular genre of the (amateur) self-portrait. I will argue that the Selfie happens at the crossroads between performance, narcissism, social tick, an intrinsic desire for self-projection and a possibly irrational quest for authenticity in the contemporary photographic image, and that its ubiquity cannot help but change the idea of the photograph as we know it.

This paper explores the artistic legacy of Stéphane Mallarmé’s 1897 poem “Un Coup de Dés Jamais N’Abolirà le Hasard” through a selection of derivative works, in order to demonstrate how the poem can be interpreted in digital environments as a self-replicating machine, programmatically facilitating the ongoing production of potentially countless ulterior works, including our own internet recasting called www.athrowofthedicewillneverabolishchance.com. Through a detailed discussion of this work, we will attempt to draw a lineage between Mallarmé’s original poem/book of 1897 and Google, incorporated a century later, in 1997. In conclusion, we will speculate on the potential that our interpretation of Mallarmé’s work may provide a form of poetry for non-human readers, which we interpret as a metaphysical search for meaning by the kinds of Artificial Intelligence programs currently in development by corporations such as Google.