Reviewed by:
Chelsea M. Stone, MLS, Digital Asset Manager
OpenText
Stonec@opentext.com
https://doi.org/10.17613/bf0p-nz41
Tilt West is a Denver-based non-profit that engages in publication activities as well as hosting community round tables. The board members are supported by a team from the region’s budding arts and culture community. Founded to “elevate, amplify, and support the growing arts and culture scene in Colorado,” Tilt West believes in the essential role of critical discourse in supporting a healthy artistic ecosystem. Tilt West Journal is a manifestation of this goal and is complimented by open invitation community talks.
With the first two volumes of Tilt West Journal freely available online, Tilt West released the third volume, Art and Labor, on September 1, 2021. Volume one, Art and Language, was published March 2020 and volume two, Art and Community, was published December 2020. Publications, created using the Getty’s Quire publication system, are freely available in multiple formats including a browser-based viewer, PDF, EPUB, Kindle, and Mobi. Additionally, print versions are available for purchase for $30. Tilt West usefully provides citations in both Chicago and MLA formats and carry a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license. This review will primarily discuss the browser-based experience of Tilt West Journal.
The cover display for the three journal volumes is a piece of art featured within the publication, an enticement to draw the reader in. Navigation is fairly intuitive, although not especially conspicuous, and there is no journal homepage to speak of. Within a particular volume of Tilt West Journal, once the user locates the navigation arrow and/or the expandable sidebar table of contents, it is easy to browse and identify areas of interest. Users who choose to navigate through the digital publication in sequential order will find the application a bit clunky and lacking smooth transitions. Additionally, unlike a traditional print publication, interaction requires scrolling to engage with all the content. The digital publication allows you to click a “Next” button at the bottom of the page, which improves the navigation. While it is a benefit to have multiple output offerings, they are not intuitive for less tech savvy users and each provides a different experience. The browser-based digital publication version loads images slowly, although the quality of the digital images is high. On the positive side, the digital format allows for multimedia such as embedded videos and GIFs, which are unavailable in other formats. Volume two features the digital animation piece Test by Anthony Garcia, Sr. and the video piece unoccupied by Kim Shively. The inclusion of multimedia sets Tilt West Journal apart from other arts journals. Multimedia enhances Tilt West Journal’s digital reading experience and empowers readers to create connections with content.
Socially we are in a connected ecosystem of technology and communication; further emphasized by the Covid-19 pandemic. Tilt West is making technology work for humanity and utilizing it to preserve and further people’s interaction with “community exchange, critical dialogue, and provocative conversations on art, ideas, and culture.” This transformative publication will continue to challenge itself and its readers.