The Art Institute of Chicago Van Gogh’s Draft: for review November 24, 2015 Bedrooms

Digital Findings catalogue

School of Design DES 440/441 College of Architecture, Design Thinking and Design, and the Arts Leadership The University of Illinois at Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago Van Gogh’s Bedrooms: digital catalogue 2 3 Findings document

Acknowledgments Design Thinking Findings and recommendations

On behalf of the students of the senior practicum and Leadership students Design Thinking and Leadership, we want to thank Sarah Guernsey, Executive Director of Publishing at the Art Guen Bogue The findings and recommendations cited in this document Institute of Chicago, for entrusting us with the task of Savanna Campoli are drawn from research undertaken during the fall 2015 semester; investigating the digital version of Van Gogh’s Bedrooms. Justin Demus Colleen Ehrhart from an interview with Sarah Guernsey, Executive Director of We also want to extend a special thanks to Marcia Lausen, Luis Flores Professor and Director of the School of Design, for allowing Gabriela Cruz Gentile Publishing at the Art Institute of Chicago; and from a field visit to this exceptional opportunity. Brynna Hohl-Perrie Kristine Lee the Art Institute. Meghan Ferrill and Cheryl Towler Weese, faculty Samantha Lopez DES 440: Design Thinking and Leadership Hailey Mabrey Juliet Mak Together these findings and recommendations represent Bridget Miller Agnieszka Pasterczyk the thinking that precedes the doing: revisiting and designing the Ashley Sanchez Brian von Kaenel the digital publication Van Gogh’s Bedrooms.

School of Design faculty

Meghan Ferrill, Instructor Cheryl Towler Weese, Associate Professor

6 The Art Institute of Chicago Van Gogh’s Bedrooms: digital catalogue 7 What makes a Findings document a book?

In his essay, “The Enkindling Reciter: E- in the Bibliographical The book was published in an edition of 800. Its immediate Imagination,” author Alan Galey uses the award-winning novel popularity, and the fact that the book won the prestigious by Johanna Skibsrud, The Sentimentalists, as a case study, intent Scotiabank , drove demand up beyond the small on addressing the ambiguity of surrounding the status of ‘the press’ capacity to deliver. The Kobo eReader acquired the rights book’ at the present time, “both materially and in the cultural to publish an version to meet the growing demand. The

imagination.” [Galey 210] printing firm Douglas & McIntyre acquired the rights to publish an ‘industrial,’ versus ‘artisanal,’ version of the book. The Sentimentalists was originally published by Gaspereau Press, a small Canadian artisanal publisher “dedicated to editing, The situation begs the question: What is a book? designing and manufacturing their books in a fashion that honors their content as well as the great humanist tradition of printing We like Ulises Carrión’s assessment: “A book is a sequence of and publishing.… Every project carries some trace of the human spaces. Each of these spaces is perceived at a different moment —

mind, eye, and hand.” [Galey 220] a book is a sequence of moments.” [Carrión 31] The Art Institute of Chicago Van Gogh’s Bedrooms: digital catalogue 8 9 Findings document

Readers who purchased the e-book version of The Sentimentalists From here to ... where? Physical vs digital took the digital edition to be a replica of the award-winning “Reading has become a more intensely public and culturally It has been five years since Steve Jobs introduced Apple artisanal edition, whereas readers fortunate enough to have loaded act than ever before.” [Galey 213] When Steve Jobs iBooks and digital publications are still in their infancy. presented the first iPad, while demonstrating the iBooks Publishers continue grappling with the question, and it purchased a first edition considered the Gaspereau Press e-reading app, it was a true performance. Jobs went on is incumbent upon designers, typographers, authors, stage in front of a large audience of Apple enthusiasts and programmers to take the time to examine and publication the only ‘true’ book. and astonished them all. “iBooks integrates images ... understand exactly what a digital publication is, which the layout can be whatever the author wants. This,” he goes hand-in-hand with what digital publications can do. said triumphantly, “ is what it’s like to read a book.” The Market research affirms that the printed book is hardly A printed book is a product of human artifice. An e-book is so too. audience fell in love with the eBook and undoubtedly have endangered. Rather what we are seeing is that there is yet to forget the theatricality of the event. They had room for both print and digital publications because, while They are material artifacts with distinctively different attributes. witnessed the beginnings of a new era of the book. there is cross-over, the one medium can do what the other medium cannot. “ are human artifacts, and bear The question we are asking ourselves is: How do we incorporate the traces of their making no less for being digital, though they bear those traces in ways bibliographers have yet to traces of the human mind, eye, and hand in the digital publication explain thoroughly.” [Galey ---] This means that a digital of Van Gogh’s Bedrooms? publication leaves traces behind just as a physical object does. How so? The field of computer forensics has developed a body of knowledge about the recovery of data that resembles analytical bibliography and textual criticism in Architectural space both aims and spirit. That field is premised upon the idea that digital texts are anything but ephemeral; rather, In his seminal essay, “The New Art of Making Books,” first they work in specific ways and interact with media and published in Spanish in 1975, Ulises Carrión writes,“In order information systems according to identifiable patterns. to read the new art one must apprehend the book as a structure, identifying its elements and understanding their function.” [Carrión 42] This quote speaks to his premise that a book is a sequence of spaces. One might take this a step further and suggest that an e-book is a sequence of rooms within a three-dimensional architectural space, because unlike a printed book, an e-book exists on multiple, albeit virtual, planes. Therefore, the screen must not be considered as a page but as a three-dimensional space possessing height, width, depth. 11 In his essay, “Languages, Books, and Reading from the Printed Word to the Digital Text,” Roger Chartier asks: “How are we to view reading when we are confronted with textual offerings that are increasing even more rapidly through electronic technology than they ever did with the invention of the printing press?” [Chartier 140]

Order of discourse Order of property

Electronic textuality, to use Chartier’s term, calls into The order of property refers to “property both in a juridical question the order of discourse. “Reading in front of a sense, that of literary property or of copyright, and in a computer screen is generally a discontinuous reading process textual sense, that of the characteristics proper to each that seeks, using keywords or thematic headings, the written text or genre. The electronic text as we know it or fragment that the reader wishes to find: an article in an have known it is a moving, malleable, open text. The reader electronic periodical, a passage in a book, information on a can intervene not only in the margins, but in its very content, website. This is done without the identity or coherence of the by removing, reducing, adding, or reworking textual units.” entire text from with the fragment is extracted necessarily [Chartier 144] being known. In a certain sense, one might say that in the digital world all textual entities are like databases that offer fragments, the reading of which in no way implies a perception of the work or the body of works from which they come.” [Chartier 142]

Order of reasoning

“For the author,” Chartier writes, “electronic textuality enables the develop of demonstrations and arguments following logic that is no longer necessarily linear or deductive, as is the logic imposed by the inscription, however it is done, of text onto a page.… For the reader, the validation or the refutation of an argument can henceforth occur by consulting texts (but also images, recorded speech, musical compositions) that are the very object of the study, provided, of course, that they are accessible in digital form. If that is the case, the reader is no longer constrained to trust the author; he or she can in turn carry out all or part of the author’s research.” [Chartier 143]

Goals 14 Appeal to a range of audiences, from general readers to scholars.

1. Appeal to a range of audiences, from general readers to The architectural structure that distinguishes a digital publication scholars. from a printed one makes for a multi-storied, multi-functional telling that appeals to a variety of audiences, incorporating 2. Situate content within the inherently interactive architectural content for the serious scholar as well as content with more structure that distinguishes digital publications from printed mass appeal. The ‘pathway’ forged for the scholar is different books. than that forged for the general public but both pathways are interconnected. All content can be accessed by all readers. 3. Design a digital publication that complements but in no way replaces the print catalogue, and that serves as means to explore Richard Kostelanetz wrote: “The principal different between the new approaches to future digital books published by the Art book hack and the book artist is that the former succumbs to the Institute of Chicago. conventions of the medium, while the latter envisions what else

‘the book’ might become.” [Kostelanetz 27]

Most eBooks and digital publications retain the conventions and chronology of the printed book — cover, frontispiece, title page, table of contents, etc. We have charged ourselves with the task of envisioning what else — what more — a digital publication can become, and to producing a digital publication that considers each of these conventions in new ways. Situate content within the inherently interactive Design a digital publication that complements but in no way 17 architectural structure that distinguishes digital publications replaces the print catalogue, and that serves as means to explore from printed books. new approaches to future digital books published by the Art Institute of Chicago.

The book is far from dead Doing what printed books can’t The new art of making books Digital artifact

Books and digital publications exist not in opposition but in The notion that a digital publication is ‘just like a book’ Ulises Carrión wrote: “In order to read the new art” — Authors, editors, agents, publishers, wholesalers, retailers, a kind of inclusive correspondence. The experience of reading belies the fact that the experience of reading a printed and here we might swap out the words ‘the new art’ for and readers are seeking to strike a balance between the a printed book is intimate, private, linear. The experience book is distinctly different from the experience of reading ‘digital publications’ — “one must apprehend the book as a relatively inexpensive to produce, immediately accessible of ‘reading’ a digital publication is performative, social, a digital publication. One communes with a book. One structure” — architectural, multi-dimensional — “identifying digital publication that privileges the digital world, and the episodic. A printed book is a physical presence; bibliophiles engages with a digital publication. New reading conditions its elements and understanding their function.... The new more costly, labor-intensive book-as-artifact. often refer to the ‘friends’ that occupy the shelves of their are introduced. The content is navigable, multi-layered, art creates specific reading conditions.... The new art personal libraries. A digital publication is there and not animated, searchable, accessible, translatable, updatable, doesn’t discriminate between its readers; it does not address We are seizing upon this opportunity to envision and design there; a disembodied avatar, readily accessible anywhere at and accommodates various modes of telling: text, itself to the book-addicts or try to steal its public away a digital publication that is an artifact in its own right. any time. Both have their advantages. hyperlinks, graphic display and video interpolation, 360° from TV.” [Carrión 42, 43] spin, the display of multiple panels, and other multimedia Canadian novelist defined publishing as “a functions. A digital publication enables readers to engage We will be keeping Carrión’s ideas in mind as we work to transfer from brain to brain, via some sort of tool.” [Galey with the content in a variety of ways. Discoverability is part establish the parameters of the burgeoning new art of 213] The tool mediates the experience. of the experience. digital bookmaking.

Ulises Carrión articulated ideas relative to the emergence of the artist’s book in the 1960s and 1970s that are relevant now with regard to digital publications: “Everything is an element of structure. Every structure is in its turn an element of another structure. A text that is part of a book Room for invention isn’t necessarily the most essential or important part of that book.“ [Carrión 39,40] Steve Wasserman, Executive Editor-at-Large for Yale University Press wrote in an article entitled “The Effect,” published in 2012: “The boundaries are blurring all over publishing.” Indeed, the industry is undergoing profound change as publishers seek to embrace the digital and to maintain the physical. There are lots of kinks to work out, lots of competing and not always conciliatory interests, but there are also a lot of opportunities for re-imagining the norm.

The production and market for digital publications continues to grow and there is every indication that, rather than supplanting the printed book, digital publications are in fact contributing to the revitalization of the printed book while securing a place for themselves on the shelves of virtual libraries.

20 The Art Institute of Chicago Van Gogh’s Bedrooms: digital catalogue 21 Data Findings document

Clarification of terms Tablet ownership over time eReader ownership over time

% of American adults ages 18+ who own a tablet % of American adults ages 18+ who own an eReader “The term eBook implies a unity that does not exist in For the purposes of our project for the Art Institute of practice.... The term can refer to a variety of contexts, Chicago we are holding to the term “digital publication” from a text read on a dedicated device like a Kindle or Kobo as we seek to determine, define, and design a digital eReader, to one read on an app for other multi-use devices publication featuring content published in the print like and , to an electronic text read on a catalogue accompanying the exhibition entitled Van Gogh’s 40% personal computer.... eBooks raise the question of the role Bedrooms, published by Yale University Press. Given the of designers, typographers, printers, programmers, and nature of the medium, the bounds of which are much more all those involved in the making of books in any form as fluid, the digital publication will complement, enrich, and products of human artifice.”[Galey 213] perhaps expand upon the catalogue. 30 30%

20 20

10 10

0 0 May ’10 May ‘11 Dec ‘11 Nov ’12 Sep ’13 Jan ’14 May ’10 May ‘11 Dec ‘11 Nov ’12 Sep ’13 Jan ’14

Source: Pew Research Center surveys, May 2010-January 2014. Interviews were conducted on landlines and cell phones, in English and Spanish. The Art Institute of Chicago Van Gogh’s Bedrooms: digital catalogue 22 Findings document “The average eBook user reads more books overall than non-eBook readers, and most eBook readers still also read print books.”

Source: Pew Research Center surveys, December 2011–January 2014. Interviews were conducted on landlines and cell phones, in English and Spanish.

Print vs digital publication usage Print vs eBook readership Digital publication readership

% of those who read both eBooks and printed books in the last 12 months who say that this format is better for these purposes. As of January 2–5, 2014 Almost half of readers under 30 read an eBook in the past year.

Total Print eBook

Total (all adults 18+) 76% 69% 28% 80

Male 69 64 23

Female 82 74 33

60 40 Age group

18–29 79 73 37 30 40 30–49 75 66 32

50–64 77 71 27 20 65+ 70 66 12 20

Educational level 10

High school grad 64 57 14

0 Some college 83 78 32 0 Reading with a child Sharing books Reading books Having a wide Reading books Being able 18–29 30–49 50–46 65+ with others in bed selection to while traveling or to get a book choose from commuting quickly College grad 88 74 45

Dec 2011 Nov 2012 Jan 2014 Household income Printed books eBooks <$30,000 68 63 14

$30,000–$49,999 75 70 28

$50,000–$74,999 85 78 42

$75,000+ 83 74 46

Source: Pew Research Center’s Internet Project Omnibus Survey of 1005 American adults ages 18 and older. Interviews were conducted on landlines Source: Pew Research Center surveys, December 2011–January 2014. Interviews and cell phones, in English and Spanish. were conducted on landlines and cell phones, in English and Spanish. 24 The Art Institute of Chicago Van Gogh’s Bedrooms: digital catalogue 25 Brief history Findings document

1971 is the first digital library 2011 The idea of the next-generation digital book called ‘interactive eBook’ is proposed. Amazon.com September 22, 2015. The New York Times publishes an article, “The 1993 The Online Books Page is a list of free eBooks announces in May that its eBook sales in the U.S. now exceed all of its printed book sales. Plot Twist: eBook Sales Slip, and Print is Far From Dead,” asserting 1994 Some publishers get bold and go digital the fear of eBooks replacing printed books has subsided. “Five 2012 eBooks sold in the U.S. market collects over $3 billion in 1995 Amazon.com is the first main online bookstore revenue years ago, the book world was seized by collective panic over the

1998 Librarians get digital 2013 The Association of American Publishers announces uncertain future of print. Now, there are signs that some eBook that eBooks now account for about 20% of book sales. 2000 Digital information available in many languages Barnes & Noble estimates it has a 27% share of the U.S. adopters are returning to print, or becoming hybrid readers, who eBook market. juggle devices and paper.” 2001 Copyright, copyleft, and Creative Commons 2015 November: Amazon announces that it is opening 2003 eBooks are sold worldwide a brick-and-mortar bookstore in Seattle featuring roughly 5,000 titles; in-store and on-line prices will be 2004 Authors are creative on the net the same. Amazon anticipates some customers may use the store for the purposes of ‘window-shopping’ for 2005 Google gets interested in eBooks titles they will subsequently purchase online.

2006 Towards a world public digital library “The American Booksellers Association counted 1,712 member “The tug of war between pixels and print almost certainly 2007 We read on various electronic devices stores in 2,227 locations in 2015, up from 1,410 in 1,660 isn’t over. Already, a growing number of people are reading locations five years ago.”[NYT] eBooks on their cellphones. At Amazon, which controls 65 percent of the eBook market, digital books sales have “Hachette added 218,000 square feet to its Indiana maintained their upward trajectory. Last year, Amazon warehouse late last year, and Simon & Schuster is expanding introduced an eBook subscription service that allows readers its New Jersey distribution facility by 200,000 square feet.” to pay a flat monthly fee of $10 for unlimited digital reading. [NYT] It offers more than a million titles, many of them from self- published authors. Some publishing executives say the world “Penguin Random House, which has nearly 250 imprints is changing too quickly to declare that the digital tide is globally and print books account for more than 70 percent waning.” [NYT] of the company’s sales in the United States, has invested nearly $100 million in expanding and updating its warehouses and speeding up distribution of its books. It added 365,000 square feet last year to its warehouse in Crawfordsville, Indiana, more than doubling the size of the warehouse.” [NYT]

28 “Graphic features help us find our way; they keep us oriented to Library our location within the story and the publication, and help us chart our reading path section to section and page to page. The of resources layout punctuates and orchestrates the textual presentation. [Drucker 122]

From the investigations and research we have engaged in thus American video artist Bill Viola refers in his writings to a quotation far, including an interview session with Sarah Guernsey, we have from the letters of Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh: “One may determined that the digital publication we are charged with have a blazing hearth in one’s soul, yet no one ever comes to sit designing for the Art Institute of Chicago can best be described by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke rising from the chimney as a “library of resources.” We envision a publication that is and continue on their way.” Viola makes the point that “a academically substantive, informative, inspiring, educational, and good teacher or an inspired presenter will ... start the fire in the multi-faceted; one that incorporates not only the content of the individual....” This is our aim for the digital publication feature original print catalogue but additional materials deemed relevant Van Gogh’s Bedrooms. [Ferrill 12] to the existing content and appropriate as digital content. A digital publication can after all incorporate various media sources: film, slide shows, curatorial interviews, archival materials, additional documentation, etc. The Art Institute of Chicago Van Gogh’s Bedrooms: digital catalogue 30 31 Findings document “The graphic devices that direct and structure reading in a print environment are conventions that encode and express assumptions about reading practices, users, uses, and knowledge-entertainment-aesthetics-form-and-format.”

[Drucker 136]

Keywords are beginning to emerge that are helping to shape AUX Magazine Cooper Hewitt and direct our thinking. Performative. Exploratory. Experiential. Digital edition Online collection and pen

Episodic. Multi-layered. Sensorial. Deliberate. Ambitious. The “first” digital music magazine designed for iPhone The Cooper Hewitt’s online collection is a feature-rich and iPad. Unlike publications that have print versions and website that relies heavily on tags. 92% of the museum’s Evocative. Design artifact. Dimension. Placemaking. Immersive. accompanying websites and maybe apps, AUX Magazine collection is accessible online, demonstrating a commitment Participatory. Groundbreaking. Inspiring. Utilizing different was designed for iOS from the ground up. Rather than to broad access. The online collection’s friendly, accessible migrating stories from print or the web to an app, AUX language and organization appeal to the personal interests narrative strategies: “narrative as the temporal unfolding of creates content for the app alone. Its functional design of a general audience while retaining more academic includes many opportunities for interaction: swiping from content, encouraging deeper exploration. events; transactional reader-based narratives.” [Drucker 122, 124] side to side lets you view two halves of an oversized photo; flipping through a series of videos within an article allows Cooper Hewitt’s “Pen” is an interactive tool that enables you to watch supporting interviews. visitors to “collect” artworks as they move through the “In my usage, the term ‘graphic’ includes all aspects of layout and museum. The Pen encourages extended learning and stimulates heightened engagement with the work based on composition by which elements are organized on a surface.... individual interests. When visitors finish their visit, they can take their virtual collection with them, and leave feeling In an electronic environment, the screen surface is clearly an more invested in the collection. illusion concealing a complicated model of narrative possibilities under a full-rendered digital interface.” [Drucker, 121] Cleveland Museum of Art Gallery One

Gallery One blends art, technology, and interpretation, prompting visitors to explore the museum’s permanent collection. Hands-on and technology-based activities provide new means for visitors to explore works of art. The gallery features the largest multi-touch screen in the U.S., which displays images of over 4,100 objects from the museum’s permanent collection. The grandness of scale and mesmerizing atmosphere makes a lasting impression, solidifying a personal relationship between visitors, the museum, and its art.

ArtLens is the museum’s downloadable app for iPad, iPhone, and Android. Before, during, or after one’s visit, over nine hours of additional multimedia content, including audio tour segments, videos, and additional contextual information can be consulted. The Art Institute of Chicago Van Gogh’s Bedrooms: digital catalogue 33 “In a digital environment, these workings are modeled at Findings document the level of data fields and their relations, as a logical structure. ... Graphic devices connect the space of navigation and narration, these directings and orderings shape what we can imagine the space of the narrative to be.” [Drucker 138]

Freer and Sackler Galleries Metropolitan Museum of Art Metropolitan Museum of Art Rijksmuseum The World of The Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History 82nd & Fifth Rijksstudio

Japanese Illustrated Book and Collection Online According to the museum’s website: “82nd & Fifth is the Rijksstudio is online presentation of 125,000 works in the Met’s address in New York City. It is also the intersection of Rijksmuseum’s collection. Rijksstudio invites the public to The World of the Japanese Illustrated Book is structured The Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History displays a plethora art and ideas. 100 curators from across the Museum talk create their own masterpieces by downloading images of similar to a number of other online scholarly works: it’s of information in a condensed and concise manner. about 100 works of art that changed the way they see the artworks or details of artworks in the collection and use objective, easy to read, and accessible, while providing The timeline — organized both geographically and world, and eleven Museum photographers to interpret their them in a creative way. The idea is simple: Help keep art scholarly tools including an extensive bibliography, detailed chronologically — presents information in a way that vision: one work, one curator, two minutes at a time. ” part of everyday life. The ultra high-resolution images of entries, note taking tools, and videos. The visual clarity of responds to the searchability and accessibility of the works, both famous and less well-known, can be freely the graphic elements enhance the publication’s legibility. Internet. It’s a library of resources, and is an important The project succeeds in forging a more personal and intimate downloaded, zoomed in on, shared, added to personal The simple,aesthetic functionality supported by an example of organizing and presenting content digitally. relationship with key works in the Met’s collection. It is an “studios,” or manipulated copyright-free. underlying grid ensures straightforward navigation; similar inspiring, enlightening, informative way to learn how to see, to social media sites, this functionality lends it a degree of The online collection offers free information and easy access. engage with and think about a work of art. Art can and does familiarity. One senses that the book is in some way an old This idea alone embodies a fundamental truth: it is a human change the way we see the world; we simply need to be made friend. right to experience art. The online collection is available to aware of how. The 82nd & Fifth iPad App is available in 12 a large audience and creates greater social equity; anyone languages. who has access to the Internet can enjoy the collection and learn from its content.

Google The New Yorker Wired magazine Art Project Digital edition Digital Edition

Launched in 2011, Google Art Project is an online platform Considered one of the best-executed magazine apps, An important aspect of this magazine is that the printed through which the public can access limited numbers of The New Yorker’s digital addition remains true to the version looks the same as the digital version; yet the digital high-resolution images of artworks housed in the initiative’s magazine’s no-frills layout, signature typefaces, and version allows users to interact with the work in ways not partner museums, of which there are presently 150. For scattered cartoons, while including occasional photo possible in print. Wired’s designers use the premise “design example: the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a participant, slide shows and bits of audio commentary. Navigation is follows content.” Editor Chris Anderson says: “We use the but only 80 of the Met’s 400,000+ works accessible online can intuitive: zooming out provides a complete overview of the visual tools at our disposal to tell stories in a way that is be viewed in Art Project. Users can experience museums from issue’s contents, elegant thumbnail navigation facilitates efficient, and multidimensional.” around the world using a familiar interface — Google Street movement between stories, and when returning to the app View — employed in a novel way. Art Project is a weightless, after exiting, it opens where the reader left off. Users can affordable, and portable way of experiencing collections optimize their reading experience with tools that provide large and small, popular and obscure. The navigation is control over content viewing and text size, a full-screen view “buttery smooth” in virtual spaces. for cartoons, and an in-app utility for entering the weekly caption contest.

36 We looked at a variety of digital publishing software. Three were Platform especially interesting in their different approaches, and relevant to our needs and capabilities.

Scholarship. Of those we reviewed, Chicago Codex was the only platform designed specifically for scholars. The digital catalogues published by the Art Institute to date contain in-depth curatorial and conservation research and include high-resolution, zoomable images and other interactive elements.

Scholarly comforts Responsive design

In addition to original curatorial essays and catalogues of While print publications retain their value as scholarly exhibition artworks, scholarly print publications provide resources, the digital realm affords opportunities to a number of additional resources, such as: detailed notes, organize, display, and cross-reference content in a variety of chronologies, indices of plates and figures, annotations, ways, and provides scholarly users with tools that support information graphics, and bibliographic information. their individual research.

Digital publications make the process of reading, Furthermore, digital publications can be easily updated, so examination, and cross-referencing much more fluid. that the content always reflects the latest scholarship. Responsive layouts and interative images enable the scholar to study the material in an immersive format. High Responsive design provides optimal viewing and interaction resolution images and zoomable features increase the level experience: easy to read and navigate with a minimum of of information provided. Additional “desktop” features can resizing, panning, and scrolling, making for a much more further enhance the experience. What once was a purely flexible environment. manual pursuit can now be fully digitized. With digital publication a “reader” is now considered a “user.” As Duchamp said of painting — that it is the viewer that completes the work — of digital publications one can say it is the user that completes the work.

Art Institute of Chicago Online Scholarly Catalogue: James Ensor: The Temptation of Saint Anthony The Art Institute of Chicago Van Gogh’s Bedrooms: digital catalogue 38 Findings document Storytelling. How does form influence the reading experience? Books are shaped not only by an author’s thoughts transcribed into words but by the design: typography, layout, images, spacing, pacing, dimensions, paper texture and heft, printing quality, and binding. Add to this media sources such as video, slide shows, animation, virtual reality, sound recordings and you have the makings of a content-rich, intersubjctive digital me dia environment.

Story matters What can Atavist offer the

The fluid, image-driven aesthetic of Atavist’s digital scholar? publishing platform provides the backdrop for an immersive reading experience without seeming overdesigned. Founded by a team of magazine editors, Atavist’s primary focus is on facilitating storytelling, rather than research or The inclusion of a broad range of templates allows publishers scholarship. to focus on content without necessitating intensive programming, though additional code can be added. Atavist Although people have used Atavist to distribute scholarly can integrate text, images, information graphics, video and writing, existing scholar-specific support is limited to static audio clips, and interactive media. footnotes and annotations in order to enforce its own standards of craft and consistent cross-platform support. Atavist provides flexibility for on- and offline reading: responsive layouts make Atavist-hosted stories suitable for browsers on all devices. Stories can also be downloaded as iBook, ePub, and Kindle formats, allowing readers to enjoy image-heavy content at their leisure.

“Snow Fall,” a New York TImes’ multi-chapter feature story made with the Atavist publishing platform. The Art Institute of Chicago Van Gogh’s Bedrooms: digital catalogue 40 Findings document Flexibility. Digital publications are remarkable for the fluidity of their viewing environment. The open-ended nature of Adobe’s Digital Publishing Solution enables designers to work outside of pre-existing templates to create truly original, interactive and immersive digital experiences.

Taking the digital offline “Form affects sense”

Adobe’s Digital Publishing Solution facilitates reflowable and “Mallarmé insisted upon a recognition of the meaning of fixed layout digital publications in a variety of file formats format: a recognition which moved against the ‘artificial and for a variety of devices. These publications work offline, unity that used to be based on the square measurements of allowing readers to download content to a personal device the book. ‘ He demanded a precisely reckoned and designed and view it regardless of the platform. This allows for an volume in which everything [achieved] an ideational, uninterrupted reading experience and performance concerns analytic, and expressive significance.” [Bloch 133] are not an issue. It is likely that, were he alive today, Mallarmé would concur: This is important for books that are not solely text-based, form affects sense. but have rich content such as high resolution images, videos and audio, or interactive visualization.

Wired’s cover story “Money Wants to be Free!” was adapted for its digital edition using Adobe Creative Cloud.

44 The Art Institute of Chicago Van Gogh’s Bedrooms: digital catalogue 45 Content Findings document

The printed book includes a range of content types that Other digital resources owned by the Art Institute that The exhibition catalogue Van Gogh’s Bedrooms embraces a series can be reorganized in the digital publication such as: could also be included: of life events that profoundly influenced the artist’s work. It is our intention to create a digital publication that complements the Acknowledgments Art Institute audio lecture: printed catalogue, featuring the same content but incorporating Appendices “Van Gogh: The Life” by a framework of alternative strategies for organizing, accessing, Bibliography Steven Naifeh and Gregory mining, and interacting with the content, perhaps including Captions White Smith, 2011 additional ancillary and supplementary material that the medium Chronology (Arles/Pre-Arles/ supports so well: film, audio, slideshows, sound. We envision a Post-Arles) Panorama of Gallery 205 digital publication that is at once both an instrument and a Conservation images Selections from the Art tool, an authoritative resource and an engaging experience that Contents Institute’s tour app with inspires and educates. Copyright information directions to Van Gogh’s work Essays on display at the museum Extended captions Figures Scale illustrations Footnotes Chronology images (homes and paintings) Index Letters to Theo van Gogh Map (homes) Plates Sponsors The three bedrooms Tombstone information The Art Institute of Chicago Van Gogh’s Bedrooms: digital catalogue 46 47 Findings document We propose exploring three different organizational strategies for the digital publication, each of which could exist alongside a more linear table of contents.

“Nineteenth-century critics and authors had seen the public in Geographically: By reader: relation to literature as passive admirers, while Mallarmé’s Belgium, England, France, Scholar, lifelong learner, idea was that society would become people with empowered Holland layperson readers. The book as ‘instrument’ or as a ‘tool’ for creative reading Devise a structure that correlates the content of the essays, Devise an organizational structure around the three main was a concept that allowed the public to engage directly in plates, and chronology with locations that were significant groups of readers: the lay person, the lifelong learner, in Van Gogh’s life and art-making. An interactive map could and the scholar. Using a multi-directional interface — the the book, not having to rely and follow the authoritative voice of be used as a touchstone and reference, highlighting Van ability to move both vertically and horizontally on a screen Gogh’s passage through different countries and his itinerant — provide different forms of access for different reading the author.” [Moyer 32] lifestyle. audiences while encouraging exploration “outside” of one’s primary interest.

Chronologically: Pre-Arles, Arles, Post-Arles

Devise a chronological structure, in keeping with the chronology essay, that organizes Van Gogh’s life into three periods: Pre-Arles, Arles, and Post Arles. This timeline could be serve as a reference and alternative organizing principle for many resources and sections including figures, plates, letters, and the map.

Sources

Alexandra Alter, “The Plot Twist: eBook Sales Slip, and Print Is Far From Dead,” Richard Kostelanetz, “Book Art,” in Artists’ Books: A Critical Anthology and The New York Times, Sept. 22, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/23/ Sourcebook, ed. Joan Lyons (Rochester: Gibbs M. Smith, Inc. and Peregrine business/media/the-plot-twist-e-book-sales-slip-and-print-is-far-from- Smith Books in association with Visual Studies Workshop Press, 1985): 27-30. dead.html. Steve Moyer, “Playing Against Type,” Humanities Vol. 34, Issue 5 (Sep/Oct Susi R. Bloch, “The Book Stripped Bare,” in Artists’ Books: A Critical Anthology 2013): 28-33. and Sourcebook, ed. Joan Lyons (Rochester: Gibbs M. Smith, Inc. and Peregrine Smith Books in association with Visual Studies Workshop Press, 1985): 133-145. Lee Raine, “The Rise of e-Reading,” Pew Internet Libraries RSS (April 2012): http://libraries.pewinternet.org/2012/04/04/the-rise-of-e-reading/html. Jorge Luis Borges, “The Congress,” in The Book of Sand, trans. Norman Thomas di Giovanni (New York: Penguin Books, 1979): 15-34. Felix Richter, “Infographic: U.S. eBook Sales to Surpass Printed Book Sales in 2017,” Statista Infographics (June 6, 2013): http://www.statista.com/ Ulises Carrión, “The New Art of Making Books,” in Artists’ Books: A Critical chart/1159/ebook-sales-to-surpass-printed-book-sales-in-2017/html. Anthology and Sourcebook, ed. Joan Lyons (Rochester: Gibbs M. Smith, Inc. and Peregrine Smith Books in association with Visual Studies Workshop Press, Yulia Ryzhik, “Books, Fans, and Mallarmé’s Butterfly,”PMLA Vol. 126, No. 3 1985): 31-43. (May 2011): 625-643m doi:10.1632p.la.2011.1263.625.

Roger Chartier, “Languages, Books, and Reading from the Printed Word to the Bill Viola, Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House: Writings 1973-1994, 1995 Digital Text,” Critical Inquiry Vol. 31, No. 1 (Autumn 2004): 133-152, http:// (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998): 172. www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/427305. Steve Wasserman, “The Amazon Effect,” The Nation (June 18, 2012): 13-22. Johanna Drucker, “Graphic Devices: Narration and Navigation,” Narrative, Vol. 16, No. 2 (May 2008): 121-139, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30219279. Kathryn Zickuhr, “A Snapshot of Reading in America in 2013,” Pew Research Center Internet Science Tech RSS (January 16, 2014): http://www. Alan Galey, “The Enkindling Reciter: E-Books in the Bibliographical pewinternet.org/2014/01/16/a-snapshot-of-reading-in-america-in-2013/ Imagination,” Book History 15 (2012): 210-247, doi:10.1353/bh.2012.0008. html.

Vincent van Gogh, letter to his brother Theo van Gogh, Cuesmes, Belgium, written between June 22-24, 1888, in the “Van Gogh Letters Project,” Letter 154/133, Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam, cited in Marlies Dekkers: Dekkers: 33 Propositions, by Meghan Ferrill (Rotterdam: TDS Uitgevers, 2003): 12.