Technology and Experience

When: 1 April 2025 from 10:00 to 17:00

Where: KMi Podium, Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK and Microsoft Teams

This study day – focused on “technology and experience” – is the first of a series of events on the future of reading. The study day proposes three open panels and a seminar. Panels will be introduced by two speakers each, framing a historical perspective on the technology of reading, practices that cross and are enabled by ecosystems of technologies and a theoretical take on the nature of machines as reading devices. The initial introductions to the topic (30min) will be followed by a discussion (45 min) open to contributions from the audience in addition to the canonical Q&A with the panellists. The seminar completes the day with a deep dive on the remediation of interactive novels out of obsolescent platforms, touching on practical and conceptual challenges of preserving the original experience.

10:00-10:30 Arrival and welcome

10:30-11:30 – Media technologies in Reading Experiences

Speakers: Shafquat Towheed & Sally Blackburn-Daniels (Teesside)

The panel will draw a landscape on the history of reading with a focus on the role of media technology in reading. The panel will highlight and debunk myths around reading innovations will provide a novel perspective on individual and social reading practices and engage the audience with reflections on the difference between scholarly narratives and the day-to-day experiences of reading, pushing for a reframing of the questions around technologies of reading.

11:30-13:00 – The challenges of born-digital fiction

Speakers: Dene Grigar (Washington State) & Mariusz Pisarski (Rzeszów)

How can early interactive novels, hypertext fictions and narratives be maintained and kept accessible? These forms of born-digital literature were produced before or shortly after the mainstreaming of the World Wide Web with proprietary software and on formats now obsolete. Preserving and extending them for a broad study by scholars of book culture, literary studies, and digital culture necessitate they are migrated, translated, and emulated. This seminar will address three key challenges facing such efforts: (1) precision of references; (2) enhanced media translation; and (3) media integrity.

Speaker bios:

Dene Grigar is Professor and Director of Creative Media & Digital Culture in the Department of Digital Technology & Culture at Washington State University Vancouver whose research focuses on the creation, curation, preservation, and criticism of born-digital media.

Mariusz Pisarski is Chair of Media and Journalism at the University of Information Technology and Management, Rzeszów. He is an electronic literature researcher, editor, producer and translator. Dene and Mariusz are the authors of “The Challenges of Born-Digital Fiction” (CUP 2024).

13:00-14:00 – Lunch break

14:00-15:00 – Transmedia reading

Speakers: Sam Brooker (University of the Arts London) & Edmund G. C. King

The panel will outline the key concepts and challenges of transmediality, how experiences cross both creative works and media resulting in new pathways and new feedback loops. The panel will provide novel conceptual tools for discussing the role of mass-media platforms in the development of transmedia spaces, blurring the lines between authoring and fandom (and authoring, social media platform, and platform-based discourse), and acting as essential engines of today’s distribution cycles and modes of audience creation. The panel will question the audience on how transmedia shape experiences and how we adapt our life to best engage with inherently transmedia ecosystems.

15:00-16:00 – Machine readers

Speakers: Alessio Antonini & Francesca Benatti

The panel will propose a new take on intelligent systems and new AI technologies as machines that engage in reading. Following this premise, the panel will investigate the nature of machine reading in day-to-day applications, highlighting the relationships between common-sense human understanding and specific characteristics of machine reading. The panel will engage the audience in rethinking the classic roles of author, reader, editor and publisher to find a framing and a new language that includes reading machines.

16:00-17:00 – Open discussion

With thanks to OpenARC for the funding received for this event.