2nd-year MFA candidate, Poojana Prasanna was awarded a Digital Scholarship and Publishing Studio Summer Fellowship. Here is how she spent her time:

I spent this summer with a versatile and talented cohort of graduate and PhD students as a part of the Digital Scholarship and Publishing Studio Summer Fellowship. This fellowship gave me the time to think, read, and inquire into a question that has been on my mind for quite some time: What is the best way to portray an Artists' Book on a digital screen?

My eight-week research went something like this — analyzing current practices and techniques to rephrasing the starting question since it was incomplete to eventually deriving the right questions.

The studio fellows spent the eight weeks attending a single credit course and dedicating time to our project. We would discuss its progress, clear doubts, and ask for feedback.  

In the first few weeks, I studied a long list of book artists, books arts journals and catalogues with the trends in parameters, like the methods of display used, background colors, photography angles, etc. Midway through the fellowship and after many discussions with my studio point of contact, I realized I needed to update my question. It was missing the aspect of context. Photography is a tool, and there are countless tools at our disposal — stop motion, metaverse, photogrammetry, 3d model, a read-aloud, and whatnot. But what experience will it serve to the online audience is an important question to consider. Is the purpose of having an online presence to create a repository of all my work, to showcase my skills and creativity, or to gain a following and sell my work?

The question then becomes: How can I craft a digital presence for my Artists’ Book in a way that does justice to the experience of interacting with the physical book itself?

This is where my project is right now, making sense of the ‘experience’ of an Artists' book online and how various tools can aid this experience. I had more questions buzzing as I ended the fellowship with a 5-minute presentation. I haven’t reached the answer I am looking for, and the project will continue beyond the fellowship.