Hamburger Automatenverlag

A new creative vending machine project is hitting the streets of Hamburg, Germany. I just wish I could speak German so I could be better informed, because what I can tell from looking at the pictures and reading the Google translation, what they’re doing looks pretty awesome!

Machines are where people are, where the time is even or the desire to buy the greatest. For a good machine do you make a detour, in a desolate train ride or a party would do a machine not possibly.

In other words, they’re using cigarette machines to vend books. I must confess, I’m a little envious of the cigarette vending machines the Germans get to use. Apparently, it’s still legal to sell cigarettes from vending machines in Germany, so they can still get them new there. Also, they appear to be ruggedly made, vandal and weatherproof, and much smaller than their American counterparts. So, while Art-o-mat® is confined to indoor locations, Automentenverlag can get out on the streets!

This is where projects like this really need to be. All the Callithump! machines are in or near galleries and I really regret this. It feels like we’re preaching to the choir. The only people who are going to encounter these art objects are people who are already seeking out art in the first place. Creativity should be part of everyone’s day-to-day lives, not confined to galleries. Callithump! machines should reside in the same spaces as mainstream toy capsule vending machines (Why this is unlikely to happen is too complicated to get into right now. I’ll come back to it another day). It makes me really happy to see Automatenverlag pull it off!

It really is a perfect idea. In the States we used to have small, cheap, paperback books that were designed to fit into a purse or pocket. In other words, they were designed to fit into people’s day-to-day lives. Now even the cheapest paperbacks are oversized and expensive fetish objects. A project like Automatenverlag could make books cheap, convenient and portable. You could put them into bus stops and subways for people to read on the commute to work. They could be priced cheaper than eBooks, and would provide a much more satisfying experience. They load instantly and don’t crash. Drop them and they won’t break. If they get lost or stolen, you aren’t out $hundreds. You can share them with friends.

The cigarette pack is a perfect form factor. It’s been carefully tailored to fit into our ambient extra spaces; shirt pockets, rolled up in a sleeve, tossed into a handbag. It’s a shape we can fit into our daily lives without ever noticing until we want to. Automatenverlag isn’t the first think this shape is perfect for book publishing. Tank Books publishes a series of books in cigarette boxes:

Automatenverlag takes this idea and raises it above level of novelty and into utility by providing it with a very public venue. I’m really looking forward to seeing where this goes!

If this were happening in the States, it would be part of an anti-smoking campaign. I was about to make a snarky comment about the loss of our freedoms, but hey! That’s really not such a bad idea! “Knowledge is more addictive than tobacco,” or something. Use banned books to promote the idea that reading is dangerous, too. You could even set the price point to match the cost of cigarettes to force people to compare what they’re getting for the price. Temporary satisfaction that can ultimately kill you vs. something that lasts forever & is fundamentally healthy.