11 December 2011

A book and its background

One of my ongoing personal research projects concerns the different ways that artist's books are presented on the internet, and indeed in print sources. In a book, you might see the book stood up with pages spread to give an intriguing glimpse of what's on the edges of the pages, or laid down and opened up to one spread, or perhaps unfolded to show the structure. The internet, of course, offers many more possibilities - a clickable sequence of pages, a video of the book being "read" - and web pages that let the reader delve into the history and components of the work, as here - you can watch an animated video clip, see the studio sketch and the finished page, as well as click to read the text and the colophon -
Not quite as good as handling the actual book, but "it's all there". Completed in 2009, "Fabulous Fictions / Peculiar Practices" is the result of a collaboration between artist Tony Calzetta, writer Leon Rooke, and master printer Dieter Grund of Presswerk Editions.
Nine texts and drawings are housed in folios inside a slip case. One of the drawings and its text was re-imagined as a paper sculpture and attached to the front of the slip case. Ten texts and drawings are published  as a separate project--a series of black and white broadsides presented in a red clam box.


No comments: