artist books

Event type
Date
-
Organization
Individual Organizers
Address

Archives Nationales
Paris
France

Bibliotheques Nationale de France
Paris
France

Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts Decoratifs
Paris
France

Short description

This international and transdisciplinary project aims at exploring hybrid objects: pop-up books, artists books, sculpture-books or animated books and new digital books, in the shape of e-books and applications that, because they belong to both litterature and graphic culture, actually avoid preexisting categories.

The idea is to work with the material to explore textual architextures as well as tactile possibilities, even kinetic ones. Book-bjects will be considered in their historical dimension — by retracing existing filiations between mechanical books and digital books — but also analyzed from the angle of materiality. We will try to understand the way these books, digital or not, stretch the limits or paper and operate on new types of surfaces to create innovative, playful, tactile and esthetic devices.

Ce projet international et transdisciplinaire envisage d’explorer la gamme d’objets hybrides que sont les livres pop-up, les livres d’artistes, les livres-sculptures ou encore les livres animés jusqu’aux nouveaux livres numériques, sous forme d’e-books et d’applications qui, par leur appartenance à la fois au domaine littéraire et à la culture graphique, échappent, de fait, aux catégories préexistantes.

Record Status
By J. R. Carpenter, 27 March, 2013
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Abstract (in English)

Adaptation of an artist's talk about the transition from making artist's books and zines to using the computer to create art work. First presented in 1998, adapted various times, but presented here in its original web design.

Pull Quotes

For the installation artist's conception of the relationships between discreet elements with in a space, for the collage artist's lust for the hybrid, for the writer's quest for the potential for the presentation of the non-linear narrative - the web provides the ultimate terrain.

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Description (in English)

The Card Catalogs (1976-1981; first exhibited in 1978) are collections of text and images on 3x5 cards.  Each catalog is a tray of cards containing 50-200 cards structured  by dividers that key the cards using small pictures or word phrases.  Although they can be read sequentially, they were meant to be non-sequential works that combine words and pictures so that neither are the words descriptions of the pictures nor are the pictures illustrations of the words. For example, the Woodpile  consists of 165  nodes of photos drawings or text, keyed by small photos and drawings.  Each node stands by itself but also functions as a molecular unit that, when combined with  other cards, builds up a story. As opposed to a linear book where the reader focuses on the front cover and normally proceeds linearly from there, the reader approaching a card catalog like The Woodpile sees the top of the entire work and is encouraged to begin at any place.

The electromechanical books (begun in 1982) house narrative information in battery-operated "address books." They are read by pushing buttons on the front which causes a series of images and text mounted inside to revolve and to be displayed on a small screen. The buttons can be pushed either sequentially or at random. Some electronic books were created as scrolls where pushing a button advances the narrative.

The Card Catalogs and Electronic Books were exhibited Internationally including at  Artworks, Venice, CA; the Berkeley Art Center;  Franklin Furnace, NY;  the Houston Center for Photography;  the Cleveland Institute of Art;  U.C. Irvine Fine Arts Center;  Texas Women's University;  CameraWork, San Francisco; Selby Gallery, Ringling School of Art and Design;  San Antonio Art Institute;  National Library of Madrid, Madrid, Spain; Eaton/Shoen Gallery, San Francisco;  University of Arizona Museum of Art; University of New Mexico Museum of Art; and the Walker Art Center,  among others.

The Card Catalogs and Electronic Books are documented in:Judy Malloy, "Uncle Roger, an Online Narrabase" in Connectivity: Art and Interactive Telecommunications, edited by Roy Ascott and Carl E. Loeffler. Leonardo 24:2, 1991.  pp. 195-202

By Jill Walker Rettberg, 27 July, 2011
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Pages
113-134
Journal volume and issue
26.1
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Abstract (in English)

Discusses what characterises digital artists' books, and looks at a few works in detail.

By Jill Walker Rettberg, 4 April, 2011
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Journal volume and issue
Vol. 24, No. 2
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Abstract (in English)

Uncle Roger is a "narrabase" or narrative database. It was first told as an online serial on Art Com Electronic Network (ACEN) and then was published as an interactive online database on ACEN. It is also available as computer software for both Apple II and IBM-compatible computers. The narrabase form uses a computer database to build up levels of meaning. The artist explains how this form evolved from her visual books and her information databases. She discusses the story and structure of Uncle Roger and describes how the story was told and published in an online community. In the conclusion she discusses the future of computer literature.

(Source: author's abstract for paper)

Creative Works referenced