Pamphlet, instant public print.

Pamphlet, Helmut Smits, pamphlet.jpg

The need for physical print could be said to be ‘instinctual’. In fact how paper can still trigger our inner instinct to read is at the core of the ‘Pamphlet‘ installation by Helmut Smits. It consists of a laptop, software and a printer placed on the edge of a building window. People can type a message on the laptop. Bypressing the ‘send’ button a pamphlet is printed and dropped from the 10th floor by the printer. The falling down paper and the resulting ‘pamphlet’ on the street symbolizes the relatively short distance from the personal production to the public enjoyment of a printed product, and how the traditional product parameters has been disrupted. The fascination of take-away paper is the same at the base of newspapers that are starting to stretch their role and nature with downloadable and printable last minute editions. These are highly customized on one key factor: the updating time. They are meant to be read offline, so enjoyed with a relative calm, but with the most stretched and feverish time of production. This is part of a larger need: to put the virtually and real-time produced content out of the screen to affect real life or be enjoyed in it.