Home > Research > Projects > Torque Editions
View graph of relations

Torque Editions

Project: Research

Description

Torque Editions is an itinerant publisher and curatorial platform, producing books, events and exhibitions focused on themes of mind, language and technology. Founded in 2014 by Nathan Jones and Sam Skinner.

The project seeks to explore what relationship publishing has to questions posed by new technology. This includes
- issues around distribution, finance, management and workflow that are opened up by tools such as the blockchain
- transformations of reception, reading, writing due to tools such as speed readers and AI

In particular, we have deployed N. Katherine Hayles' term "hyper-reading" to explore (without valourising) the potentials for an expanded sense of what reading is and might become in the context of the digital.

The project has resulted in three major collected editions, a number of supplementary publications, and two exhibitions with newly commissioned speculative art objects.

These are all documented on a project website
http://torquetorque.net/

The project includes partnerships with world leading institutions in new media and publishing such as FACT and Tate galleries in Liverpool, Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam and Furtherfield gallery in London, and appearances at Transmediale festival.

Our projects have engaged with subjects including surveillance, neuroscience, reading, and most recently blockchain. We develop projects through distinct phases of public research and experiment, including symposia, workshops, and artwork, bringing a wide variety of artists, researchers, and publics together. Resultant print and epub publications catalyse, document and disseminate the fruits of each project to a large and diverse audience.

To date we have collaborated with a wide variety of artists and academics, including Anna Barham, Charles Bernstein, Katherine Hayles, Lambros Malafouris, Erica Scourti, and art organisations including FACT, Tate Collective, the Grundy, Furtherfield, Radar, Constant, and Transmediale.

We are particularly interested in new and alternate modes of reading and writing, and the continuing life of print in a digital age. We welcome enquires from artists and organisation wishing to collaborate on innovative new media art and publishing projects.

Key findings

The question of what technologies "mean" to society can and must be addressed from interdisciplinary perspectives.
Fiction, poetry and visual arts offer methodologies that are useful in that they often speculate on the use and impact of new technologies.
Because of the pervasiveness of digital and networked media, the notion of publishing can be expanded to exclude a wider variety of media and live outcomes -- leading us to use the term Hybrid Publishing.
StatusActive
Effective start/end date17/01/14 → …

Activities

Research outputs