Another serendipitous find: This is a page from an issue of MERZ, the Dada journal published by Kurt Schwitters in 1923. ( I was actually looking for merz, a German journal on media education.) It features extracts of El Lissitzkys text “Topography of Typography”. El Lissitzkys proclaims pen and ink dead and stresses the importance of the relationship between content, typography and the mechanics of print, and the predominance of the visual over the phonetic. Ah, I just found a translation here. The text ends with this enigmatic sentence:
“The printed page transcends space and time. The printed page, the infinity of the book, must be transcended. THE ELECTRO-LIBRARY.”
Its odd, no? It sounds like he is talking about the internet and world wide web – in 1923.
After the success of the first two volumes of Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne was commissioned to produce more. The bookseller who had sold copies of Volumes I and II, James Dodsley, published Sterne’s sermons under the title The Sermons of Mr. Yorick in 1760. In January 1761, Volumes III and IV of the novel became available to purchase, so 2011 marks not only the publishing of the volumes but also the 250th anniversary of Sterne’s most remarkable literary stroke of genius – the marbled page contained in Volume III.
If you carefully examine page [ 169 ] in Vol. III in the original edition, four fold marks define the edges of the marbling and also create the surrounding margins. The central section of p.169 was laid upon the marbled mixture in order that a coloured impression could be taken as cleanly as possible. It was left to dry and then reverse-folded so the other side of the paper could also receive a marbled impression. This side of the paper became page [170]. So, the marbled page in every copy of Vol. III (in every edition*) is different – each impression being a unique hand-made image.
In the text opposite on p.168, Sterne tells the reader that the next marbled page is the ‘motly emblem of my work’ – the page communicating visually that his work is endlessly variable, endlessly open to chance. *contemporary editions have printed marbled pages, the majority in black and white, so the whole point of the multi-coloured marbling is rendered meaningless.
As other people have said, the iPhone is actually not such a great phone, but I love the fact that I have a reasonably decent camera in my back pocket. This picture I took a while ago . It says what it is: BILD = image.
Tree of Codes by Jonathan Safran Foer is the second book published by Visual Editions, according to S.Oliveros “Tree of Codes has done something no other literature has done before, and that is; every page has a different die-cut. It is a sculptural masterpiece as well as being an incredible story.”
I did not realize altering book is part of a contemporary trend, when I started blogging about them. There is a growing collection of altered books on my blog, so I am considering atarting a new category. This one looks particularly interesting as it becomes a sculpture while remaining a readable book. So delicate.
My son is in the process of applying for universities, the whole family involved in the game. I am happy that he sucessfully completed school, and that he is clever and mature for an eighteen year old. But I cannot help worrying about his first steps into this strange world of academia. This pie chart from graphjam.com makes me laugh, as there is some truth in it. It could be turned into a tool for teaching students how to write essays:
You cannot brag if you don’t know something about your subject, which you can show off, so do it. Ass Kissing means that you have to know the important players in the field, who said relevant things. You should acknowledge, what you have learned from them. You don’t have to be sycophantic, though. Sometimes clever Name Dropping is enough, to show that you know what you are doing, and that should be included in the chart. And well, the slice of Relevant Content could be bigger.
Of course there is also the other side, the bitter truth about the essays you get from students. No comment on this chart, it speaks for itself:
I have made another version of this quote from the Blade Runner, this time with an image of Orion found on Wikipedia. Why do I bother? Because I am curious about many things, painting, filmmaking, writing, craftwork and more. Experiencing the process of making things adds another layer to my understanding of certain cultural practices. And I have seen things you people wouldn’t believe. At the same time I don’t know if this will avail anything. So here we go, this is my first shot at digital remix, or fan art.
Detail from Letter to a Genera 1963, by Leon Ferrari
Tangled Alphabets is a current exhibition at the MOMA in New York about the work of Mira Schendel and León Ferrari, There is also a publication.
León Ferrari (Argentine, b. 1920) and Mira Schendel (Brazilian, b. Switzerland, 1919–1988) are considered among the most significant artists working in Latin America during the second half of the twentieth century. Their works address language as a major visual subject matter: the visual body of language, the embodiment of voices as words and gestures, and language as a metaphor of the worldly aspect of human existence through the eloquence of naming and writing. They produced their works in the neighboring countries of Argentina and Brazil throughout the 1960s and 1980s, when the question of language was particularly central to Western culture due to the central role taken by post-structuralism, semiotics, and the philosophy of language. Although their drawings, sculptures, and paintings are contemporary with the birth of Conceptualism, they are distinctively different, and have not yet been exhibited in their entirety in the United States.
The exhibition can be viewed in detail also through an interactive flash site.
Detail from Objetos Graficos by Mira Schendel, 1972
This piece is really a sculpture, and should be seen large. I love the way the alphabet swirls out of the vortex, a galaxy in the making, a big bang. In biblical cosmology “in the beginning there was the word,” in Asian cosmology in the beginning there was the sound, the AUM. Here we have vision of how the language and signs came into being.
The Letter to the General above is beautiful piece of calligraphy in an imaginary script as a part of a series of “deformed writing”. It reminds me of “pretend writing” – emergent writing of children. Apparently the artist said “it is difficult to write a ‘logical’ letter to a general” so there we have a play with nonsense and mystery.
I discovered this multidirectional poem by Amelia Walker – it can be read left to right or down the columns on the first issue of verbeatehim. It is called “garden”.
Through her website I found out that she also does poetry and performance workshops with children and it seems she has great ideas. I wonder how the poetry pets work. Here is also a neat little warm up exercise for writing poetry with children:
word and image 
