Over 930 years ago, William the 1st commissioned a survey of the land he had conquered in what became known as The Domesday Book (the middle English spelling of ‘doomsday’). Now, in the year 2021, we are conducting a survey of a different kind – a survey of ideas about our climate, energy, and planetary future.
In what we hope will be the first of many global contributions to public understanding of a future of life on earth that we might create, we are producing a book of the future that is a hybrid print-interaction device that will stimulate and contribute to public debate and understanding of the climate emergency and our human capacity to adapt and design for the future.
We are inviting contributions from scientists, authors, filmmakers, musicians, scholars and futurologists to submit visual, oral and written works that will feature in an edited collection. Because the book comes in a hybrid form, readers will be able to read contributions and – using the photo-sensitive ‘magic bookmark’ that can read the location of pages – readers can trigger the playing of video and audio clips on a nearby screen.
The first custom-made book, to be published by Curtin University, Western Australia, will be exhibited publicly in Perth at the John Curtin Gallery on 15-22 March 2022 and then at the University of Surrey, UK.
Our project is ‘open-source’ and we will be releasing a publishing platform for other cities around the world to design and produce their own local versions of The Climate Domesday Book, as part of a global sharing of ideas for a better future.
The research team – Dr Philip Ely (Curtin) and Professor David Frohlich, Dr Haiyue Tan and George Bairaktaris (Surrey) – are looking for thought-leaders, provocateurs, creatives and philanthropists to help us realise our ambition to create a ‘worlds-first’ in hybrid interactive content. We want to simulate debate and action around the climate emergency, imagining possible futures that will benefit not only humankind but all living beings on spaceship Earth.
This Book of the Future project is based on previous work conducted on Interactive Newsprint by Frohlich & Ely (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1071581917300320) and Next-Generation Paper by Frohlich, Yuan and Bairaktaris with the publisher Bradt Travel Guides (see https://www.surrey.ac.uk/news/next-generation-paper-markets-project-finishes-flourish and the project film at: https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/615931275
If you would like to contribute to the project – either as a contributor or a donor – please email philip [dot] ely [at]curtin.edu.au or d [dot] frohlich [at] surrey.ac.uk with the subject line ‘Climate Domesday Book’.
Contributions need to be submitted to Dr Ely by the end of January 2022 at philip [dot] ely [at]curtin.edu.au
Word count:
No limits. Full-bleed images; double-page spreads. 500 or 5000 words. You decide. However, the book will be exhibited in a public gallery, so shorter submissions will suit this environment. An online version of the book may be made available for at-home reading (copyright clearance permitted), so longer essays are more than welcome.
Images supplied at print-ready dpi if possible. Our printer, Bambra Press recommends that lineart bitmap files should be at least 600ppi.
Specifications
Single Page Size: 372mm [h] x 246mm [w]
Flat Size: 372mm [h] x 492mm [w]
Text & Image Pages: 150gsm Sovereign Offset Digital
Endpapers: 140gsm Black Uncoated
Deboss cover (printed White on Wibalin Buckram)
252pp