Ways of Reading - Experimental Performance/Projection

So yesterday saw our first MA group show; put together by a very organised and patient member of the book art student group; a big thanks to Estelle for all her hard work. 

It was a mixture of Book Art and Printmaking students work in our freshly painted shared studio. I wanted to test out an idea and so tried something I have never ventured into before....performance! 

'Ways of Reading' was really more of a live projection rather than a performance but I have no idea how to name these things. And it was an experiment so some parts of it were not how I ideally wanted them, but the whole experience was positive and made me think a bit more about the initial concept, which was the whole idea of the experiment I guess. 

So the book that I used was The Readies by Bob Brown, and I only used a certain section of the book where he is describing a new method of reading and the example of a READIE story that might be read on his proposed Reading Machine. [I will do a proper post later with more on Bob Brown and his Reading Machine]. 

The idea behind this silent read-along was to do with how we read and how reading is changing now. The viewers who are reading on the screen have no control over how fast I am reading and when I turn the pages or move the book around. It is a reading machine of sorts, forcing you to miss bits, read faster and get frustrated by the way you are reading is being controlled by another person and also by the mechanism it is being transmitted with. 

I have some ideas on how to push this further alongside other Reading Machine ideas like the barrel from the last post, but I think I need the feedback to sink in from yesterday a bit before I comment on this any more. 

Ps. I have to thank Di for taking photos for me too; they are great! 

Reading Machines

An excerpt from my MA proposal: "In a time when the act of reading is changing significantly, the physical book as a mechanism for reading text is being brought into question. I propose an investigation into what that means for book art as well as the wider world of reading and information cultures.

I am extremely interested in the machine as book, or reading machine, and how that has developed throughout history as well as how much potential it has now as an artistic device within my practice. I am also interested in how that relates to the current trends of e-reading."

So this is my attempt at a prototype reading machine. The idea came from thinking about how we now read and 'turn the pages' of articles or text on our smart phones and tablet devices; the way we swipe the touch-screens to move the text and read more. Ideally there would be several 'barrels' that you swipe with your hand to move all at once.

I have also, quite obviously, been influenced by Ramelli's Book Wheel and Daniel Libeskind's machines, both of which you can see images of in my 'reading machines' pinterest board.

This needs more work; and although I might go forward with it I also want to work through some smaller models/maquettes of other machine ideas...or even ideas that deal with the act of reading and how it might be changing....

Will keep you posted.

A Spot of Bookbinding

Before Christmas happened I taught a few friends how to bind a simple notebook/sketchbook; it was a fun if exhaustingly long day! And it made my knowledge better by doing so; amazing how teaching someone else a technique helps cement it in your own mind better. 

 Didn't they do well??! 

Oh, Zero, One [and other exhibitions cont.]

And so the exhibition write ups continue....


Oh, Zero, One: Ruth Beale & Una Knox, Cell Project Space


Knowing Ruth Beale's work from previous exhibitions I knew this would be worth going to, and I wasn't disappointed.  Oh, Zero, One looks at the collection of knowledge and how we perceive and interact with them. Beale's work All the Libraries in London  is literally an alphabetical text list of the names of the libraries in London on the wall. There appears to be some sort of system, some names are in italics, some in other fonts, but there is no key to decipher the differing elements; I can assume that the differences are to distinguish between public, private, and institutional libraries. The list even includes the library from which I was made redundant just a few months ago, now closed and the books waiting to find out their fate. In the centre of the room there is a bench with headphones, upon which loops an audio piece; my assumption is that it is Ruth Beale's voice talking about each library, but as you listen you realise she is talking about libraries that are closed or abandoned, ones that I haven't heard being abandoned.....the scene she sets seems quite apocalyptic and it makes me wonder about the line between fiction and reality; she could be describing the reality of the library closures around London, and yet somehow it seems to speak of the future, a dystopia that could come from the pages of  Huxley's Brave New World.

In the next part of the exhibition Una Knox has a video piece that seems to show a character that works in the storerooms of a big museum, he is talking about some sort of medical condition where he has episodes of sudden and very strange sensations of deja vu. As he walks around the old building describing the condition and the way he works at his job you start getting the feeling of deja vu too, the audio and the visual looping at different rates, or perhaps repetitive visuals. There are parts in the film which strongly remind me of a video that plays at the Wellcome Collection's permanent exhibition rooms, The Phantom Museum by The Brothers Quay. Ghostly legs run up a large staircase, gloved hands unlock rooms containing many objects and carefully unwrap things for us to see. You get an impression of the storehouse of an institution which you get with Knox's work also, in fact it could even be the same staircase.... Deja Vu again.....

Ugly Ebooks / What makes an Ebook an Ebook?

Ugly Ebooks
This article was written back in 2009; and yet ebooks are still ugly! The new version of the Kindle has not improved the look of the ebooks themselves because the publishers are not putting the time into making them work properly let alone look nice! To be honest I have only bought a few ebooks so far but from what I have seen and heard from others too it's just that no-one commercially seems to want to invest the same amount of time designing an ebook than they would designing a print book. I am extremely disappointed that all my bought Kindle books use the same font, have confusing, often double pagination (one page no. referring to the print version, one to the e version), and when it comes to non-fiction books their ease of use (contents pages and indexes) is just not really thought about. I would really like someone to come along and tell me I am wrong and that I am just looking at the wrong ebooks, but really until the books I want to read on my device are up to the standard I would expect I am still going to be disappointed and thinking twice about spending more money buying them. If they want us to spend almost the same amount on an ebook as we do on physical books they need to actually function well. Digitizing an already existing book does not make it an ebook!
[rant over!]

What makes an Ebook?
What makes an ebook a book? [and not a website/page or media file?] Should it now just be defined text with added extras, a form to read from? Is a PDF an ebook, or just a document that we can read on a handheld device? Is it the device itself that makes what we read on it a book? Is a book just a reading machine?
[just some questions I have had running through my head recently, especially after Elaine Treharne's (@etreharne) keynote 'The Numbered Days of The Page' at The Future Perfect of The Book symposium back in November.]

The Solace of Objects [and other exhibitions]

So I have been away from here a while, sorry! Happy New Year and all that. I have been busy going to talks and exhibitions over the seasonal holidays and before and I think a write up is in order. Firstly;

Charmed Life: The Solace of Objects by Felicity Powell @ the Wellcome Collection


Before I saw the exhibition I actually went to an Art Quest talk where she was talking and so found out a bit about the show before even setting foot in the space. The talk was about artists and collections and how and why artists work with institutions and their collections. Powell discussed her previous work with the V&A and the British Museum and then onto the recent work with the Wellcome. Having an interest in amulets Powell wanted to explore a particular collection within the institution. Edward Lovett's collection of Edwardian Londoners amulets intrigued her and so she has been working with this part of the collection. When you enter the exhibition it is clear that Powell has had a big part in the curation of the show as well as the making of her own work inspired by working with the objects. Artist as curator; which works extremely well when anyone engages with museums and their objects. People like to see artists personal choices of objects as well as the work they make from them, giving the artist a level of freedom to choose the objects to be put on display and how they are displayed produces a really cohesive show.

As in this case where Powell has designed this horseshoe shaped display cabinet for the myriad of amulet objects. You can really see the connections between objects and the work she has made. This case also makes you take a journey through the objects and so through types of amulets and perhaps gives you a sense of Edwardian London even. Another part of the show I liked was the way Powell offers the viewer to see her work in progress, her process in making through video, which you can also see on the website here. While I liked the wax drawings that made up the bulk of her work on display I think my favourite piece of hers there was the video (that she explained at the talk) of her writing out the Lords Prayer in a spiral to try to copy the process of a man who's amulet is one of the ones on display. His amulet was a tiny piece of paper on which he wrote out the Lords Prayer in a spiral and carried this around with him; the handwriting is tiny and so Powell had to go over the process many times before getting it exactly right. I loved to hear of this repetitive copying process in the talk but unfortunately it wasn't explained or made evident in the video itself.

This, and the accompanying exhibition, Infinitas Gracias,[which is a exhibition showing a large collection of Mexican miracle votive paintings] is on at the Wellcome Collection until 26th Feb 2012.

More reviews to come.....