Unfolding:Electric Field

ELECTRIC FIELD

Electric Field

wiki-to-pdf: how this publication was made

This publication (whether you are holding it in its paper format or looking at it on a screen) has been written and laid out with a wiki-to-pdf system installed at http://titipi.org/wiki-to-pdf. The code and ongoing documentation of the system is hosted at https://gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/wiki-to-pdf

wiki-to-pdf

wiki-to-pdf is a contraption for ongoing publication efforts. It combines the collaborative editing possibilities of Mediawiki with the pdf-in-the-browser approach of the pagedjs library to produce paginated, elastic, malleable and re-editable publications for printing and on-line reading.

The system proposes a hybrid publishing toolkit that blurs the boundary between digital and printed publication. It enables different workflows and labour division that divert from the traditional publishing models in which textual and visual material are submitted to a designer that carefully works towards a final layout of the materials. In wiki-to-pdf the work on content and design happens in parallel on the very same system: the CSS files that set the style for the publication are stored in a wiki page, just like all the texts and images that compose the book content. This allows continuous re-editions - diverse in content and design - of ongoing research. Individual articles can keep being edited even after a publication is released, and they can be included in multiple publications on the same system.

The system is composed of:

• Mediawiki, that allows collaborative text writing and editing, using a simple and accessible markup and holding a history of all the different versions of a text.
• Pagedjs, a Javascript library that expands the possibilities of web-browser CSS styles to include pagination and printing tasks, allowing to act on non-screen issues such as page numbers, crop marks, sheet sizes.
• Flask, a framework to make web-pages with python, that can join together in one system the output of mediawiki and the processing made by pagedjs.

COLOPHON

This zine is by Regenerative Energy Communities (2023)

We are artists, designers, technologists, farmers, and organisers exploring what possibilities lie in practices that aim to be regenerative. This involves experimenting with a range of different “regenerative” prototypes together with others. We are working on practices for energy alternatives and regenerative media that begin with the soil as a grounding for creative practice. Collectively defining and cultivating a plurality of material practices of resistance, recovery, generosity, flourishing and pleasure.

'Published: The Energy Giveaway at the Humuspunk Library, AIA, Zurich (2023) https://www.weareaia.ch/energy-giveaway/

Thanks to: Brände Udde farmers, VXO Farm Lab, the AIA team and everyone who joined our REC open labs and workshops. Femke Snelting and TITiPi for Wiki-to-print kinships.

Tools: wiki-to-pdf, cryptpad
Fonts: Asul, SpookySquiggles, Bitwise, Garden
Images: Copyleft REC. All materials available under the Collective Conditions for Re-Use (CC4R) 1.0. You may copy, distribute and modify them according to the terms of the CC4R: https://constantvzw.org/wefts/cc4r.en.html

Download latest edition of this publication here: https://titipi.org/pub/MFC.pdf