About
<intro>Since the dawn of personal computing, the paper document has taken center stage. The PARC User Interface—or the PUI, as information technologist Ted Nelson named it—embodies the success of the personal computer: The familiarity of paper files and desktops, simulated on computer screens, transitioned the PC from geek territory to commonplace through the 80s and 90s.
Since then, the PUI has been replaced, in part, by the nondescript image of the cloud. Now, computing is pervasive and part of the daily experience. Publishing is transformed in infinite ways—and yet, the physical print prevails. And for good reason. The physical print is finite. And it’s yours. To read, copy and circulate as you see fit.
‡ DobbeltDagger is an art publication, that makes use of the web and the paper document—with all of it’s conceptions, from physical entity to symbolic mechanism—as a means to publish and think about art and connectivity in the post-digital era.
Each edition of ‡ DobbeltDagger is a work of art, produced by artists working with contemporary technologies. </intro>
<editor>So, why the name ‡ DobbeltDagger? ... The symbol of the double dagger derives from my work with the publishing house * [asterisk], which I co-founded and co-edited from 2002 to 2012. At that time, the asterisk signified a small, light-footed art publishing platform, based in Denmark, producing and circulating artists books and other art related printed matter—most of which were published as the art periodical * [asterisk] and distributed by postal mail ...
‡ DobbeltDagger is inspired by that work.
‡ DobbeltDagger is also inspired by the information technologist Ted Nelson, who invented a poetic vocabulary for describing interconnectivity in the digital realm. A vocabulary that anticipated the daunting task of organizing the world’s information as a hypertext—prior to the first working models of the world wide web.
… But originally the double dagger is off course part of a referential system, linking parts of a text to a marginal comment. The traditional order of these referential symbols is the asterisk *, the dagger † and the double dagger ‡ ...
Anders Visti, editor of ‡ </editor>