International Scientific Conference:BOOKS AND SCREENS AND THE READING BRAIN

How intimate can digital reading practices become?

Abstract:
This paper sets out to consider and position current thinking traverse two main threads.

First, whether the terms and conditions of intimacy in digital reading practices needs a reevaluation in view of how we handle the expectations of the reader. Second, to develop an understanding of how onscreen digital reading practices are mediated in and through aesthetic form, and how intimate that aesthetic experience may be.

Ways of reading in the physical form are often talked about in terms of the warmth and intimacy that prevails – thus increasing its emotive value and worth. This paper intends to consider whether intimacy in the digital realm can move beyond notions of say, bespoke virtual typography, and consider whether intimacy in digital reading requires a fundamental shift in design thinking.

The idea is to map an aesthetics of intimacy in digital reading praxis through positioning historical, conceptual and theoretical frameworks. The paper argues that digital reading practices and aesthetic form co-evolve through technogenesis - reciprocated immaterial relations between the human condition in reading and the neural networks in the brain [Hayles, 2012]. The paper will look at how some of these digital reading processes unfurl.