Merve Remix

This website is the outcome of a research project addressing Merve Verlag’s back-catalog of 150 books, and was presented at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2014. Merve is an independent Berlin-based publisher focusing on philosophy, art history and politics. Merve has published a book a month since the 1970s and its volumes have a reputation for being critical and concise. In the contemporary climate of rapid production and dissemination, Merve has embarked with the Data Futures project on a critical assessment and re-valuing of the back-catalog. This project investigated how digital publishing and distribution can support small publishers in this area and how the content of out-of-print publications can be re-delivered and restructured and contribute more effectively to the discursive life-cycle.

Industry pressures have left little else for digital publishing other than simulacra of the book form — notably the eBook (which degrades or completely loses the typographic or mnemonic qualities of the paper book — for example page numbering and notes essential to citation, folios, speed of browsing). This project transformed Merve’s back catalog to enable a wide range of dynamic publishing processes to be applied: rendered layout, multi-format conversion, re-mixing, translation, synchronized updates, print-on-demand and distribution, rights management, payment and reading metrics. In particular, the Hybrid Publishing Consortium's partnership with the Data Futures project of IMCC at University of Westminster, provides advanced digital collection management technologies for transformation of existing catalogs and comprehensive version control of new publications.

Further research following re-delivery of the Merve back-catalog will explore how books can be re-mixed, either by the reader-editor recompiling publications or by applying algorithmic analysis to make new collections. A case study — one of four under in the theme 'Designing the Book of the Future' is available at data-futures.org.

About Data Futures and IMC

The Data Futures project is based in the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture (IMCC) at the University of Westminster. It was established at the beginning of 2011 to focus on factors affecting long-term accessibility of research data and in particular on the growing importance of digital collections for scholarly research in the humanities.

Now comprising a multi-disciplinary team of computer scientists and theorists in an extended group of universities and companies, Data Futures has developed new software to improve the sustainability of digital humanities projects. Its freizo migration platform enables collections to be made portable and delivered repeatedly using contemporary technologies instead of becoming maintenance liabilities and ultimately risking loss as funding priorities change and institutions mutate. Collaborations with organizations including Heidelberg, Lyon and Princeton Universities and Fotomuseum Winterthur are using freizo to develop new future-proof projects as well as testing strategies for reclaiming existing collections that have become stranded on legacy technologies.

About Merve Verlag

Merve is an independent publisher located in Berlin Schöneberg, Germany, with a particular focus on philosophy, art history and politics. Merve was the first independent German publisher to receive the Kurt-Wolff Award, which recognizes extraordinary contributions to the literary landscape. Among the authors published are:  Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-François Lyotard, Heiner Müller, Paul Virilio, Alain Badiou, Jacques Rancière, and Nicolas Bourriaud, part of the International Merve Discourse (IMD).

Contact

Merve Verlag http://merve.de/

Data Futures Project, IMCC, University of Westminster http://www.data-futures.org/