Dear Community Members,

2017 has been a quiet year on the blog, since the active participatory phase of our artistic research project TransCoding | What if? came to an end. In February, the artwork Slices of Life with image, text and music contributions by our community members was premiered at the the beautiful concert hall “Mumuth” of the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz.

The rest of the year, I spent writing a book on the artistic research project which will be published in May 2018 at the renowned publisher [transcript] (Germany). (The featured image shows a detail from the book cover).

The book will come with an annotated website on which the artworks Slices of Life and Read me will be featured along with interview snippets and different sound samples that help to understand and enjoy the text of the book even more deeply. A big part of the book is dedicated to contributions of single community members: beautiful texts, images or sounds that you sent to us in the course of this project.Thank you!

And here the good news: I will publish the book under Gold Open Access, which means the book will be available for free (as PDF) directly from the publisher. Of course there will also be the printed version for those who still like to feel paper and see their work printed in ink.

This is how the publisher [transcript] announces the future release:

“Between 2014 and 2017, the artistic research project “Transcoding – From ‘Highbrow Art’ to Participatory Culture” encouraged creative participation in multimedia art via social media. Based on the artworks that emerged from the project, Barbara Lüneburg investigates authorship, authority, motivational factors, and aesthetics in participatory art created with the help of web 2.0 technology. The interdisciplinary approach includes perspectives from sociology, cultural and media studies, and offers an exclusive view and analysis from the inside through the method of artistic research. In addition, the study documents selected community projects and the creation processes of the artworks Slices of Life and Read me. ”
(Source: http://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-4108-0/transcoding-from-highbrow-art-to-participatory-culture, accessed on 30.12.2017)

To all of you my many thanks for your creativity and support,
and a Happy New Year 2018,

Barbara