Butterfly Hunt

Pre-conference activity week: 15th-21st November; main conference sessions: 22nd-25th Nov. Twitter: @jiscel2011, #jiscel11. Looks vey cool. 

Via padminiraymurray:

Hello world—

I’m writing a paper (and latterly an article) on webcomics, comics apps and how the comic reading ecosystem is changing. What ramifications does such convergence hold for the way we read, create and buy comics? The abstract for the paper this research will be used for is below—please feel free to contact me at padmini.raymurray@stir.ac.uk if you have any further questions.

Thanks very much for your time!

Webcomics vs. the World: Scott Pilgrim and the future of comics publishing

My paper will focus on how the internet has created an environment that fosters new ways to package and present text, and will examine the phenomenon of the webcomic and comic apps. I will address how webcomic creators are challenging the role of producer-publishers by directly accessing fanbases online and are consequently moving closer to a model where readers and consumers can be considered their patrons, and have increasing influence on what is being produced, thus changing the nature of the market radically. This encounter between traditional print comics and an emerging virtual comic culture challenges creators and producers to find ways in which to exploit this medium and is reshaping how producers, readers and consumers relate to comics, image and text. This paper will demonstrate the impact these alternative channels of self-publishing has had an on major publishing houses and the role of the producer.

Sequential art and comic books have been profoundly influenced and transformed by, to use Scott McCloud’s term, the “infinite canvas” that digital spaces allow, as well as by a flourishing download culture. The commercial forces to reckon with in the comic book industry such as Marvel and DC, whose stable of superheroes have given rise to numerous film versions and merchandising are now being challenged by a surge in independent comics publishing, both in virtual and print media. There appears to be a renaissance in comic book culture due the increasing commercial acceptance of the graphic novel as part of contemporary literary culture, as well as the role of the internet in growing new audiences. A recent success story has been Bryan Lee O Malley’s comic book series, Scott Pilgrim that despite its modest independently-published beginnings, was bought by Fourth Estate and then made into a major motion picture in 2010. The books themselves, while never having been published online themselves, drew on an aesthetic inspired by webcomics, which are comics that are originally first published online. O Malley’s paratextual material in the comics, for example, echoes the modes that webcomic creators often deploy to allow readers insights into their creative process, through blogs and personal websites.  I am using O Malley’s work as an example of how webcomic and comic creators have been more nimble than others in the publishing industry in creating a seamless continuum between their print and online worlds, and how this might be possible by investigating their pro-active relationship with their audiences. 

Worldviews conference, Toronto, June 16 2011. 

Open access! :)

Open access! :)

No single medium is going to win the battle for our ears and eyeballs. And when will we get all of our media funnelled to us through one box? Never.

Full report available on PDF. 

5:12. via Lourdes Fuentes @e_archiviste 

Via the Association of Research Libraries. 

“If you face facts, vinyl still sounds a lot better than CD or digital. If you listen to a lot of modern music like dubstep many times on CD – a lot of the UK funky stuff, a lot of harsh, very bottom-heavy, very percussive, very dynamic music – it sounds quite brittle and two-dimensional. You cut the same thing on to vinyl and, when you listen to it in a club, the bass has real depth to it. It’s not like a flat wall of sound that’s beating you down, it’s almost like you can “get inside” the music a lot better.

There is something magical about vinyl. I love the way music sounds on it. Part of the reason I love it is that I don’t quite know why it sounds that way. There’s alchemy to the process of putting sound on vinyl that engineers still don’t understand to this day, but somehow it works. I’ve been DJing and collecting music for about 25 years now, and it’s still my favourite way of listening to music.”