Post- Digital Print - Monoskop

market, or its deeply rooted status as a universal medium. Perhaps
this is all about to change, with the arrival of the newest generation of
mobile devices interconnected through wireless networks? Perhaps.
Nevertheless, the overblown tone in which the death of the paper
medium is currently being announced, should give us reason to pause
and consider more closely the qualities and drawbacks of the currently
emerging digital alternatives – and also how print, instead of disappearing,
may instead adapt and evolve, as it has already done several
times before. Historically, the unchangeable, static nature of the printed
medium has always been the main justification for declaring it to be
obsolete. Paradoxically, it is this very immutability of paper which is
now increasingly proving to be an advantage rather than a weakness,
particularly in the context of an ever-changing (thus ephemeral) digital
publishing world. At the same time, there can be no doubt that the role
of printed paper within the media landscape will have to be thoroughly
redefined.
But to help us avoid repeating earlier mistakes, or impulsively embracing
experimental developments whose time has yet to come, the second
chapter – A history of alternative publishing reflecting the evolution
of print – offers an analysis of the strategic use of print, by avant-garde
artistic movements throughout the 20th century, as well as in the
context of the underground press from the 1950s through the 1980s,
and finally in light of the most recent developments in underground
publishing (such as the production of technically perfect ‘fakes’ made
possible through digital technology). The actions, gestures, and strategies
of all of these types of press, while demonstrating how print can
be put to use as a ‘liberating’ medium, are also intimately connected to
contemporaneous technological developments. Such a parallel history
of technologies and artistic strategies reveals how cultural and social
passions have always found their way into print, using whatever means
happened to be available and appropriate at the time – thus significantly
reflecting and documenting the historical period in which they
existed. Even now this continues to be the case (although in a more
‘scattered’ way than before, across different cultural scenes and using
various combinations of technologies and strategies). As it will hopefully
continue to be in the future.
Whenever some newer and more powerful technology seems ready to
transform the established rules of any system, then the whole system
(in this case, the media landscape) will gradually respond to the challenge.
The third chapter – The mutation of paper: material paper in
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