In aiming to have an organic process, I have begun to re-research the topic of Books through some of my favorite readings.
In the past, I’ve spent time studying Happenings, specifically the Alan Kaprow/New York style ones from the 60’s. This was a concentration of mine as an undergraduate, and in a dedicated way, I have picked it back up through the study of Situationism.
The Situationist City, a book I picked up during break, begins to deconstruct the theories of situationism by examining more closely the city and the urban experience.
In trying to relate Situationist works to my topic of Books, I pulled a lot of information from their critiques of everyday life. Quoting Guy DeBord from a lecture - one that he recorded on a cassette and submitted to the conference (where his embodied person was expected. Ha.):
Someone posed the question, “What is private life deprived of?” Quite simply of life itself, which is cruelly absent. People are as deprived as possible of communication and of self-realization. Deprived of the opportunity to personally make their own history.
My first reaction to this is the practice of consuming media. Whether books or blogs, one everyday practice is reading. Technology, however, has made the act of creation (or content generation) more seductive. There have always been writers and makers, those that consumed only to turn around and create. However, technology now allows us to document our own lives, creating specific histories as detailed as we choose to make them.
Examining the consumption of media through situationist perspectives leads me almost directly to Choose Your Own Adventure novels. It these situations, the reader is able to create his/her own course throughout the novel, deciding an individual future. It is a mimicry of everyday life, though a fantastical one, as many of us live in a world with limited choices, (very few of which result in any sort of monetary reward, like in the novels).
In a sense, Choose Your Own.. books, and their digital counterparts, Interactive Fiction/Storytelling , allow for the creation of histories. Although they are not documented (specifically as “history”), more recent digital ‘fictions’ allow for a degree of digital-derive (drift), which is a tenant of the situationist perspective. It leads me to wonder if situationists would discourage such types of distraction, and replace them with personal and psychic explorations of the physical environment.
In this light, it is clear how limited the format of the Gutenberg Book is. The object is used in a decided orientation, with only linear content. It doesn’t encourage the creation of a personal history during the reading. Whatever you were thinking at the time, or whatever visions you created in your mind, are lost as you turn the page. In a sense, it is like experiencing a situation without any form of documentation. However the situation isn’t coincidental or self-created; it is fed to you via the author.
