Formatting… Press publishes narrative nonfiction works decoding the intricate relationships between formats and culture.
What is Formatting… Press?
Formats exist as an invisible connection between the technical, structured object and the unpredictable complexity of our collective human culture. The discourses around any given format reveal presumptions about what society values. We often take for granted formats as a surrogate between a platform or device and the content which emerges from that platform/device.
Our goal is to explore the how and why of formats somewhere between the minutiae of the mechanical and the structural of the social.
Our goal is to also highlight the passion at which individuals commit to formats whether digital or physical. After all, almost every major technological shift in media and knowledge production has come with its own format wars. We want to explore why some formats disappear into obscurity while others evoke cult-like nostalgia. Formatting… books interrogate the desires behind designing and implementing formats whether purposefully sustainable or designed to fail.
Finally, our goal is simply to turn formats inside out. We want to make connections between novice understandings of how formats operate and the bizarre actualities behind design choices by those who created our formats.
What is a format?
We realize that “a format” can mean a lot of things! As such we are hesitant to prescribe a definition onto what a format ought to be and instead imagine what a format could be…
- a pattern, plan, or arrangement (ex. cookbook, dance notation)
- a way to organize, encode, or structure other information (ex. ASCII)
- the reproducible, predetermined, thoughtful, structured way something is composed of, exists as, has the identity of, is made up of (ex. sonnet)
- a set of rules aiding in the standardization of citing and distributing knowledge (ex. APA)
- something created to store information (ex. floppy disc)
- something designed to record information (ex. Cassette tape)
- something designed to share information (ex. .eml)
- something designed to alter a pre-existing system (ex. Ransomware)
- something used as a surrogate for another format (ex. .rzx)
- a standard used to build larger more complex formats across systems ( ex. .xml)
- a physical or digital item which lays dormant until added to a pre-exist system (ex. An Atari 2600 cartridge)
- an object bound by its physical form and functions (ex. Handheld LCD video games)
- an information resource tied to now antiquated sociotechnical structures (ex. Built-in car GPS or Polaroid film)
…and most importantly, a format is a jumping off point to further interrogate the systems around us, their impact, and their meaning.