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Tag Archives: communication

Book of the Week — Mercury: or the Secret and Svvift Messenger

05 Monday Feb 2018

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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alphabet, Bishop of Chester, chaplain, cipher, codebook, communication, cryptology, English, Fleetstreet, George, Iohn Maynard, John Wilkins, Lawrence Strangman, London, Oliver Cromwell, Royal Society, Saint Dunstans Church, Timothy Wilkins


“There is no safety but by flight.”

Mercury: or the secret and svvift messenger…
John Wilkins (1614-1672)
London: Printed by I. Norton, for Iohn Maynard, and Timothy Wilkins, and are to be sold at the George in Fleetstreet, neere Saint Dunstans Church, 1641
First edition
Z103 W68 1641

This codebook has charts and figures describing how the reader can master the art of secret communication. It is the first book in English on cryptology, published anonymously in 1641. John Wilkins, a chaplain who married Oliver Cromwell’s sister and became Bishop of Chester and a founder and first secretary of the Royal Society revealed himself to be the author when the second edition was printed that same year.

Mercury introduced the words “cryptographia” (secret writing), and “cryptologia” (secrecy in speech) into English. Wilkins defined “cryptomeneses” as the art of secret communication, in general. Wilkins described three kinds of geometrical cipher, a system in which a message is represented by dots, lines, or triangles.

The letters of the alphabet, in normal or mixed order, were written out at known spatial intervals, serving as the key. This line of letters was held at the top of a sheet of paper, and the message was spelled out by marking a dot for each plaintext letter underneath that letter in the key alphabet, each dot lower than its predecessor. The dots could then be connected by twos to form lines, by threes to form triangles, or all together to form what would look like a graph. Or, they could be left as dots. The receiver, who had an identically proportioned key, noted the positions of the dots, the ends of the lines, or the apexes of the triangles against the alphabetical scale to read the plaintext.

The end papers and flyleafs, front and back, are 17th century printer’s waste from an unidentified French to English dictionary. Ex libris Lawrence Strangman, a collector of 16th to 20th century English literature.

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A Donation Makes a Difference in Denmark

25 Thursday Jan 2018

Posted by rarebooks in Donations

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20th century, article, Brooklyn, commercial, communication, composing, Compugraphic, Compugraphic Universal V, Dad, Danish Association for Communication, Denmark, Design & Media, Don Gale, donation, electrical, electronics, ephemera, Fotosetter, Garamond, GRAKOM, gravure, Henning Impgaard Madsen, industry magazine, Intertype, Intertype Corporation, KSL, letterpress, lithographic plates, machine, manuals, marketing, media production, museum, offset, Outcome, paper, photographic, platemaking, plates, printer, rare books, Royal Danish Library, Special Collections, technology, type specimens, typographers, UDKOM, United States, Viborg, Vingaard Officinet


“These showings of Intertype “Fotosetter” Garamond mark an important event in the history of Intertype Corporation. All of the composition was produced on an Intertype Fotosetter photographic line-composing machine. The original film positives were used to make deep-etch lithographic plates, from which this booklet was printed. Quite appropriately for such an occasion Garamond, considered among leading typographers to be one of the most successful type faces ever introduced, was selected for these introductory specimens of Fotosetter technique.”

Fotosetter Garamond
Brooklyn: Intertype Corp., 1949
Z250 F75 1949


Any one of a certain age living in Utah knows who Don Gale is. Three times a day, in the seventies, eighties, and nineties, KSL aired Don’s short, stern, fair editorials. Don was the Vice President for Public Affairs and Editorial Director at KSL.

Over the years, Don has donated personal papers, videos of his editorials and other material to Special Collections. In 2006, Rare Books was the happy recipient of a collection of books and printed ephemera concerning twentieth century commercial printing technologies, including manuals and type specimen books.

Don’s dad was a printer.

In late November we received an email from Henning Impgaard Madsen in Denmark, who had discovered through the internet that we had “some information about the first Fotosetter in the world.” The Royal Danish Library did not have “any information.” Mr. Madsen said that he was helping a museum get an Intertype Fotosetter working but that he needed “some details about the electrical parts and how to work it.”

Thanks to Don’s donation, we were able to provide Mr. Madsen with all the details he needed.

Like Mr. Gale, Mr. Madsen is “retired,” although neither one of them is spending much time retiring. He studied electronics in school. Among other things, he worked with Fotosetters, “mainly Compugraphic from US.”
After he retired, Mr. Madsen and his wife visited museums featuring typesetting, but never ran across a Fotosetter. Then, in a museum in Viborg, the Vingaards Officinet, he found an Intertype Fotosetter. “I had no idea that the first Fotosetter looked like this.

“I talked to the people at the museum and asked why they did not have a Compugraphic, the one I knew from the 1970[s]. They answered, ‘If you can find one we would very much like to have one.’ Mr. Madsen thought to himself, no problem, easy job. “I started to call around, but all the machines or my old customers [had] disappeared. [Someone] gave me the idea” to contact, GRAKOM, the Danish  Association for Communication, Design & Media. That contact led to an article about Mr. Mardsen in UDKOM (Outcome), an industry magazine covering issues and news for companies straddling design, media production, communication and marketing.

The article eventually led to a phone call from a man who had a Compugraphic Universal V. It wasn’t working, but Mr. Mardsen found some parts, did what he could and donated it to Vingaards Officinet.

The museum staff then asked Mr. Madsen to get their Intertype Fotosetter running.

And that is how Don Gale’s donation made a difference in Denmark. We supplied Mr. Madsen scans of a manual for operating the first Intertype Fotosetter, from Mr. Gale’s collection. And Mr. Madsen got the mid-century Fotosetter running. A generation made to last.

Thank you, Don Gale and good work, Mr. Madsen!

###


“The Fotosetter is an automatic, photographic line composing machine. It produces justified composition in galley form directly on film or photographic paper in one operation. This composition can be reproduced on offset-lithographic, gravure and letterpress plates, using standard platemaking methods in each case.”

Introducing the Fotosetter: the photographic line composing machine
Brooklyn, NY: Intertype Corp., 1950
TR1010 I58 1950



“The greater party of this manual is devoted to suppplying the Fotosetter operator with the information which he must have to set up, operate, and maintain his machine, and to understand the principles of its operation.”

Operators manual for the Intertype Fotosetter photographic typesetting machine
Brooklyn, NY: Intertype Corporation, 1955
Z249 O643 1955

Rare Books copy is a gift from Don Gale.



“Following a three year period of field testing in the U. S. Government Printing Office in Washington the first commercial installation was made in 1949. Since then Fotosetter photographic line composing machines have been installed and proven highly successful in all types of printing and composition plants throughout the United States and the world.”

Fotosetter type faces
Brooklyn: Intertype Corporation, ca. 1950
Z250 I58 F6

Rare Books copy is a gift from Don Gale.

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DOC/UNDOC — Part 3/6, “This Type of Trespass”

23 Wednesday Dec 2015

Posted by rarebooks in Uncategorized

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accordion, Alexander Calder, archival, art, artist, audio, books, border, borders, boundary, Carl Andre, ceramic, children, codex, comments, communication, definitions, dialogue, dialogues, dice, DOC/UNDOC: Documentado/Undocumented Ars Shamánica Performática, Donald Judd, experiences, fashion, fragmented, Francisco X. Alarcon, Guillermo Gomez Peña, Gyula Kosice, ideas, iguanas, impression, Isabel Dulfano, J. Willard Marriott Library, Joaquín Torres-García, Jorge Luis Borges, Joseph Beuys, literary analysis, Luise Poulton, Lygia Clark, Marta Minujín, medium, mobiles, mystery, objects, oils, Pablo Neruda, performance art, performances, performative, Peter Tanner, Piedras del Cielo, plexiglass, rare books, Rare Books Department, reader, requests, rhetoric, Santa, sculpture, Siete Poemas Sajones, sounds, Spanish, sweat, three-dimensional, toys, transgressive, trespass, University of Utah, videos, viewer, visual

During Fall Semester, 2015, University of Utah graduate students in SPAN6900-2 Analyzing Texts: Form and Content visited Rare Books. During the third and final session with Rare Books, the students were introduced to late 20th century/early 21st century fine press and artists’ books. The session ended with the premiere viewing of our copy of DOC/UNDOC Documentado/Undocumented Ars Shamánica Performática, purchased in September. Student response was so strong that managing curator Luise Poulton, in her typical over-enthusiastic way, exclaimed, “You should post your thoughts on Open Book!” Prof. Isabel Dulfano, in her own enthusiastic way, immediately took up the suggestion and made this a new assignment, right then and there. Bless the beleaguered grad students! Rare Books is pleased to present these responses, one post at a time.

 

Doc/Undoc photo courtesy of Moving Parts Press

Doc/Undoc photo courtesy of Moving Parts Press

From Peter Tanner

The work of Guillermo Gómez-Peña has always caused quite a stir. The manner in which he has maintained a dialogue with, around, and trespassed over the subject of borders and in particular definitions that have been accepted as fixed in defining such borders, has always raised open questions that his viewer, or reader in this case, must confront in order to establish their own relationship to his work. The art book/performative book DOC/UNDOC: Documentado/Undocumented Ars Shamánica Performática (2014) is a work that questions the fashion in which the book is both a static and malleable medium for communication of both ideas and experiences. When one interacts with this work one is forced to cross one’s own limits as to what can and should or should not be done with an object of obvious value, which is also meant to be used and discovered. To illustrate I will describe my first encounter with this phenomenal performative work/performative book.

Several colleagues and I from my department (Spanish) were viewing many extraordinary limited edition artistic texts that are held by the Rare Books Department at The University of Utah’s J. Willard Marriott Library. Works such as Francisco X. Alarcon’s De Amor Oscuro, Pablo Neruda’s Piedras del Cielo, and Jorge Luis Borges Siete Poemas Sajones are just a few of the amazing collection held by the library. All of these texts were developed with the highest quality craftsmanship and when possible the direct collaboration and input of the artist. While these texts were fascinating for their quality, and the fact that the text in some cases they had actually been handled and signed by the author, for example the Borges book, they are none the less texts that are beautiful books to be owned and perused with the hands, mind, and eyes of the reader. However, the performative text by Guillermo Gómez-Peña was a different experience entirely.

De Amor Oscuro, 1991

De Amor Oscuro, 1991

Las Piedras del Cielo, 1981

Las Piedras del Cielo, 1981

Siete Poemas Sajones, 1974

Siete Poemas Sajones, 1974

The case for the performative book contained several traditional collections of works of visual art that, while much more visual oriented than those of the texts listed above, were still in book format (either codex, accordion format or a more contemporary edge book binding were used). The difference between these more traditional texts and the more performative text of Gómez-Peña was apparent in the reaction of my colleagues to my exploration of the text. Before I explain my experience delving beneath the protective plexiglass, which separated the traditional texts from the more performative elements found below, I should say something regarding the history of interactive art.

From arguably the 1920’s forward there has been a movement in art that involved the idea of not just having a work of art to behold, but rather one that must be manipulated to be fully appreciated. Some early examples are Alexander Calder’s mobiles, and Joaquín Torres-García’s manipulable toys for children. Later works such as Lygia Clark’s Bichos and Máscaras sensoriais; Gyula Kosice’s kinetic sculptures, Carl Andre’s minimalist tile patterned floor displays, as well as Donald Judd’s sculptures required either manipulation or activation by the presence of the viewer/participant to complete the experience with the work in a three-dimensional world. This of course also relates to the dialogues that performance artists such as Joseph Beuys and Marta Minujín present to the world that must relate in some fashion to their work, and in the case of Minujín the environments that she produces. These types of works are fantastic examples where art breaks down the barrier between life and art, the more common interpretation of the effect of these works. They also reinforce the fact that the viewer, unless initiated to the need to trespass, will not understand that they are supposed to interact with the work and allow the work to facilitate their crossing the border between life and art. It is this very transgression of the boundary between visual witness of a work versus participation that Gómez-Peña seeks to break down.

The need for participation now explained, I was absolutely giddy at the chance to interact with the work of so transgressive an artist as Gómez-Peña. As a group we looked at the traditional texts and looked at all the objects behind the plexiglass resting in the bottom of the case. The plexiglass rested upon the tops of small partitions within the bottom of the metal case that serves as the container of all the books, objects, sounds, and videos that form this piece. Each partition below the plexiglass contained a collection of objects, some of which were easily visible, though much remained invisible, placed with in small velveteen-looking bags. Extending from the partitions tops and protruding through holes in the plexiglass are buttons that could be pressed by the viewer to activate a recording that would be played by the sound system also contained in the “books” box-like metal case.

While my colleagues looked on I couldn’t help but ask if we could remove the plexiglass and examine, that is touch, fondle, and explore the items within the case. At that moment there was a sort of awkward laugh that went around the group. The laughter seemed to express two feelings: the first, there he goes again with odd requests and comments; the second, of course he will not be allowed or actually ever touch the items in the case, it is after all behind the plexiglass. In retrospect this perceived reaction illustrated to me the way that we all seem to let ourselves be contained by the expectation that the glass, the plexiglass in this case, is not meant to be transgressed when it comes to those objects that we are visually told are archival, and thus separate because someone has set them apart.

When I was told that the plexiglass could be removed, and that I could examine, that is touch and explore the objects, I waited with anticipation while my colleagues watched, seemingly unsure of what to do. I further asked if I could touch everything and get into each and every velveteen bag. I was told I could, and so I did. A plethora of objects that were at times both disparate though connected fell out of each bag into my hands, including collections of fragmented body parts: ceramic heads, arms, legs, and even an iguanas severed and preserved paw. There were two sets of dice, which I picked up and rolled, to see if they were loaded (they weren’t). I tried on the pair of flip lens sun glasses and said to my colleagues, “I am seeing you with the artists’ eyes.” They laughed. There were only two things I did not get to either use or try on, the luchador mask (which I did hold but did not wear), and a metal container that was shrink wrapped. I was not permitted to open it this final container (a mystery never to be solved). Only one or two of my colleagues handled any of the objects, and no one handled them all like I did. It was amazing to hold them, to see the mystery unfold and realize that, as the video and audio performances state, I was leaving my impression or trace upon each object that I held, with my own oils and sweat. More importantly, I feel that by transgressing the plexiglass border, that I was fulfilling not only the intention of the artist as he sought to have his viewer/reader move beyond their own boundaries, but also, and I do not mean to be egotistical but I cannot think of another way to say it, modeling this type of trespass for my colleagues that seemed more or less unwilling to cross the boundary.

20151201_154843

This type of work is meant to cause the viewer/participant to not only trespass the art/life border of the object imbued with the aura of artistic production, but also to cross over the porous definitions that we use around us. To investigate something unfamiliar one must experience something outside of one’s comfort zone. It is the very investigation of definitions beyond those that one sets upon oneself that facilitates the reformation and discovery of perspectives beyond one’s own, both conceptual and physical as this work demonstrates. By this kind of questioning the significance of the boundary as a fixed and defined concept is also redefined as more porous and flexible than perhaps previously believed. Ironically, for those that choose to not cross such boundaries, even in the most cursory way, their choice is one that solidifies the boundaries defining rhetoric. This then, at least to me, presents a third option, one which Gómez-Peña has always had as a guiding influence, what is the place of those that are undefined within a system that requires definitions? Are rights only available by functioning within established definitions? What is lost when is one is left undefined? What is their relationship to the definitions and those who both define as well as leave undefined all such positions? Works such as this one by Gómez-Peña, et al., open up all sorts of new concepts for the viewer’s/reader’s contemplation. Not the least of which is, is this a book or a work of art or both in a new hybrid performative format? You can choose for yourself, but I beg you, please move past the plexiglass.

Gómez-Peña, Guillermo, et al. DOC/UNDOC: Documentado/Undocumented Ars Shamánica Performática. Santa Cruz, CA: Moving Parts Press, 2014.

Coming soon: Dallas Fawson

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DOC/UNDOC — Part 1/6, “Peruse, Inspect, Handle, Consider”

18 Friday Dec 2015

Posted by rarebooks in Uncategorized

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1552, 1770, 1859, 1885, 1934, 1998, Aristotle, Ars Shamánica Performática, artists' books, Baroque, Bartolomé de las Casas, book artists, books, codex, Codex Espangliensis, Codex Ixtilxochitl, communication, Doc/Undoc, documentation, Emily McVarish, Enlightenment, ethnography, Felicia Rice, fine press, format, Gobierno General, Granary Books, Greco-Roman, Grolier Club, Guillermo Gomez Peña, Hernan Cortés, history, ideas, image, Isabel Dulfano, Jae Jennifer Rossman, Jed Birmingham, Jennifer González, Johanna Drucker, journal, Kathy Walkup, Kyle Schlesinger, language, Latin, Latin America, literary analysis, literary criticism, literature, Luise Poulton, Managing Curator, manuscript, Mimeo Mimeo, Moving Parts Press, multimedia, Nombres Geografico de Mexico, Open Book, parchment, political, printing press, rare books, Rare Books Department, readers, rhetoric, scroll, sequence, Spanish, stone, story, suitcase, text, The Bonefolder, type, University of Utah, Webster's Dictionary, Women's Studio Workshop, writing

During Fall Semester, 2015, University of Utah graduate students in SPAN6900-2 Analyzing Texts: Form and Content visited Rare Books. During the third and final session with Rare Books, the students were introduced to late 20th century/early 21st century fine press and artists’ books. The session ended with the premiere viewing of our copy of DOC/UNDOC Documentado/Undocumented Ars Shamánica Performática, purchased in September. Student response was so strong that managing curator Luise Poulton, in her typical, over-enthusiastic way, exclaimed, “You should post your thoughts on Open Book!” Prof. Isabel Dulfano, in her own enthusiastic way, immediately took up the suggestion and made this a new assignment, right then and there. Bless the beleaguered grad students! Rare Books is pleased to present these responses, one post at a time, beginning with comments from Dr. Dulfano.

Introduction
Isabel Dulfano, Ph.D
Associate Professor of Spanish, The University of Utah

This commentary tells the story of how our class came to view the artist book, DOC/UNDOC Documentado/Undocumented Ars Shamánica Performática (2014, Moving Parts Press) by Guillermo Gomez Peña, Jennifer González and Felicia Rice at the Rare Books Department in the University of Utah’s J. Willard Marriott Library. Our reading of this extraordinary, groundbreaking book object came as the culmination of our interrogation of form and content of literary works during a class called “Analyzing Texts: Form and Content.”

Doc/Undoc photo courtesy of Moving Parts Press

Doc/Undoc photo courtesy of Moving Parts Press

During three library sessions, Luise Poulton, Managing Curator of Rare Books, provided an eclectic sampling of Latin American-themed pieces for the students to peruse, inspect, handle, and consider. Touching and examining a wide variety of books from over a 600-year period turned literary analysis into a visceral as well as intellectual practice. Luise challenged us to think about the history of books, from technological milestones and inventions, to the conceptual remapping and physical reshaping of the concept of book over time.

Webster’s Dictionary defines books as “a handwritten or printed work of fiction or nonfiction, usually on sheets of paper fastened or bound together within covers” as well as a “division of a literary work.” However the artist book transforms a known form of the book, “which once toyed with, interrogated, or in any way manipulated, reveals itself as a complex composition, a work produced, upon reading, by the orchestration of its parts” (Rossman 10). Artists’ books rely on the reader’s operation of the component parts in a continuously generative process, which pushes the limits of what literary analysis may have to take into account in the contemporary world.

The first of three meetings in the Rare Books Classroom began with the hands-on display of original and facsimile copies of classic canonical texts, masterfully printed at the time of inscription and in the distinctive style of the individual printing press. Titles by Bartolomé de las Casas and Hernan Cortés or the Codex Ixtlilxochitl revealed historical and ethnographic information that maintained conventional print production formats and content appropriate to known genres. Acknowledging books as one of the principle forms of documentation used to convey and disseminate ideas, we queried the relationship between the use of a medium (stone, parchment, scroll, codex, manuscript, printed bound book) and its’ content (genre, message, symbols, themes, subject/stylistics) in these celebrated texts.

Entre los remedios q do Fray Bartolome de Las Casas, 1552

Entre los remedios q do Fray Bartolome de Las Casas, 1552

Histoira de Nueva-Espana, 1770

Historia de Nueva-Espana, 1770

The next sessions shifted in time to the late Baroque/Enlightenment period through the late XIXth century, eventually reaching the present-day. A gradual disruption of structure (physical and conceptual) followed this chronological timeline. Older documents were logical in their coherence and assemblage, adhering to what Johanna Drucker identifies as the two fundamental structural elements of a book: finitude and sequence (257). Sequence “participates in the distribution of elements into an organized system where location helps provide access” (258 Drucker). A hybrid book includes language and image (text, type, and format) to tell a story, which challenges conventional notions of sequence. The resulting fragmentation in the articulation of narrative sequence provides an “integral part of its meaning” (Drucker 262).

Gobierno General, 1859

Gobierno General, 1859

Nombres geograficos de Mexico, 1885

Nombres geograficos de Mexico, 1885

Contemporary ouevres may appeal partially to traditional literary print formats by utilizing canonical forms as at least one component, however simultaneously they reject the limitations and conventional parameters implicit in a manuscript. Modern works disavow orthodox arrangement, organization or configuration. Some recent examples even repudiate documentation aligned with the standard regimented form of a bounded print book, and instead experiment with democratizing form and defamiliarization techniques (McVarish, 2008). Many deconstruct authorial privilege, since the reader operates and manipulates the text to produce meaning. As Jae Jennifer Rossman points out “in artist’s books the hallmark of the medium is endowing the physical attributes of the book with part of the message” (86), thereby interleaving form and content inextricably together. The artist book uniquely transmits message through myriad surfaces, spaces, materials, concepts, and sequences.

West Indies, Ltd., 1934

West Indies, Ltd., 1934

Codex Espangliensis, 1998

Codex Espangliensis, 1998

As literary critics and scholars of literature we are engaged in the practice of approaching, analyzing and appraising literature, as well as instructing students to do the same. The act of literary criticism is a technical and esthetic evaluation of the oral and written forms of articulation of narrative sequence, discourse, and message of an author’s perspective on the human condition and spirit. It is based on certain known principles, outlined originally by Greco-Roman intellectuals in the Western tradition. The utilization of the tools of this trade, such as identification of, and interpretation of, structural elements or rhetorical and literary devices has taken place since Aristotle. Literary analysis involves a process of extracting meaning from literature, a word derived from the Latin littera, referring to an esthetic represented in written documents of one type or another. The book manuscript, principal medium used for conveying and disseminating ideas, especially in the Leporello and Concertina style, have served as the predominant Western medium for millennia.

In this class, we were able to witness the evolution of book formats as the concept passed through multiple permutations from scroll and parchment to bounded manuscript to the extreme case of DOC/UNDOC housed in a suitcase, with multimedia such as: “A traveling case for apprentice shamans, A reliquary for imaginary saints, A toolbox for self-transformation, A quiet call to heal yourself with fetishes and antidotes, A border kit to face the uncertainty of future crossings.” In fact, in DOC/UNDOC the abundant mixed media, hybridity of language and image, amalgamation of a hand-written contemporary codex, interactive suitcase with mirrors and paraphernalia, CD, and DVD video of (director, writer, performance artist, activist, and docent) Guillermo Gomez Peña’s Daliesque performance, destabilizes our quotidian understanding of the process of documentation. Many features of Doc/Undoc insist on deviation from the typical privileged form of written, sequenced, and finitely orchestrated communication.

Doc/Undoc -- photo courtesy of Moving Parts Press

Doc/Undoc photo courtesy of Moving Parts Press

In this manner it participates in what The Bonefolder, a journal dedicated to book artists, describes as the constant “challenge of defining art and craft, looking to the past for tradition and forward for new possibilities” (Fox, Krause, & Simmons 2009). As a consequence, the auto-referential title of Doc/Undoc is explored thematically and structurally to demystify the legal, political, literary, and philosophical ramifications of being documented or not having documentation. The outcome of this creation sui generis raises a host of questions about how to read, what reading is, what literature is, identity, genre, legitimate/illegitimacy, forms of documentation, the role of readers, and the mutability of the authorial/director’s hand that remain unresolved.

The history of literature begins with the history of writing. Analysis emerges as individuals start to engage in the interpretation and valuation of literary works. We have analytical tools that enrich and expand our comprehension of the informative, communicative, linguistic, stylistic, and aesthetic components of a literary work. For instance, we can determine the genre of a given oeuvre; or try to discern the author or oeuvres’ intention with respect to art for art’s sake, didactic/instructive ends, or postulation of an engagé committed message. These are rudimentary points of departure in analysis, yet as literature evolves, and documentation itself is brought into question, the entire repertoire of analytic tools will be needed in order to grapple with the changing format, structure and content.

Our interactions, alias sessions in Rare Books, with “books” from pre-conquest Latin America to more modern examples forced the class to think about literary analysis in a whole new manner rarely addressed in standard textbooks. Bringing home the very concrete, tangible aspect of a book, through our physical engagement, incited a distinct appreciation of the knowledge and wonder incarnate in hard copy, electronic, virtual, artists’ books or otherwise. Our task was to unlock their universe by questioning the implications of the form and meaning – the how and what – of their documentation or lack thereof. Coincidentally, DOC/UNDOC invites the reader to participate in a similar kind of intellectual endeavor; the analysis and reading of a provocative revalorization of the act of documentation in the twenty-first century.

20151201_155114

Drucker, Johanna, Granary Books, and Press Collection. The Century of Artists’ Books. 2nd ed. 2004: 257-285. Print.
Fox, A., Krause, D., and Simmons, S.K. (Fall 2009),The Hybrid Book: Intersection and Intermedia,The Bonefinder: An e- Journal For The Book Binder And The Book Artist,Volume 6, Number 1. Retrieved Dec.4, 2015 from http://digilib.syr.edu/cgi-bin/showfile.exe?CISOROOT=/bonefolder&CISOPTR=76&filename=78.pdf
Gómez-Peña, Guillermo, Rice, Felicia, Vazquez, Gustavo, González, Jennifer A., Watkins, Zachary, and Moving Parts Press, Publisher. DOC/UNDOC : Documentado/Undocumented Ars Shamánica Performática. 2014. Print.
McVarish, Emily. (Autumn 2008). Artist books Mimeo Mimeo No. 2 Jed Birmingham and Kyle Schlesinger
Rossman, Jae Jennifer. 2010. Documentary Evidence: The Aura of Veracity in Artists’ Book. In Walkup, Kathy., and Grolier Club. Hand, Voice & Vision: Artists’ Books from Women’s Studio Workshop 2010. Print.

Coming soon: Response from Sam DeMonja

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