Penn Today: An experiment

In examining experimental bookwork of 400 years ago, Penn's Whitney Trettien wrote a publication that is itself an experiment.

How do early modern media underlie today’s digital creativity?

In examining experimental bookwork of 400 years ago, Penn’s Whitney Trettien wrote a publication that is itself an experiment, both a printed volume and an open access edition online, with extensive accompanying digital resources critical to fully understanding the project.

Her first book, Cut/Copy/Paste: Fragments from the History of Bookwork, journeys to the fringes of the London print trade in the 17th and 18th centuries centuries to uncover collaborative maker spaces where works were cut up and reassembled into radical publications.

“I’m really interested in the fact that we tend to see print and digital as oppositional or in an antagonistic relationship,” Trettien says. “In my work, but also my teaching, I try to blur that boundary because there’s a long history of print and new media being mutually beneficial or working together.”

Read the full interview with Whitney Trettien at Penn Today.