Conceptual Art

Unbinding the Book: A New Era of Book Creation

Kate Morrell Unbinding the Book is a collaboration between the independent publishing platform Blurb and the visual arts studio Jotta. The challenge: push the boundaries of how books can be experienced, by evoking the storytelling properties of print and the way in which images evoke a narrative, whilst bringing to life the materiality, form and physicality that make books so alluring and different from their digital counterparts. [vimeo width="640" height="300"]http://vimeo.com/106487007[/vimeo] Nine artists and designers were commissioned to get to work creating a "book". Here is a sampling of some of the great stuff that has materialized so far: -Exploring the temporality and tactility...

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Books with Sami

Lost in the library. 02.17.14 Sami is conceptual / fine art photographer hailing from Sheffield, England. She works under the moniker Manadh, which means ‘omen’ or ‘good luck’ in Gaelic and everyday since January, 1, 2011 she has taken at least one photograph. Lucky for us she incorporates books in some of her shots. Enjoy this sampling. Of an investigatory nature. 03.08.14  Gone camping.  06.12. 13 Nothing like a good book. 02.03.13 Overgrown. 04.22.14 Carrying the weight of the world. 10.15.13 Manadh's website Manadh's Photostream on Flickr

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Future Library: Publication date 2114

 Scottish artist Katie Paterson is a patient women. Her current project Future Library will take 100 years to consummate!  You heard right; a century from inception to completion. Here's the deal: A forest has been planted in Norway, which will supply paper for a special anthology of books to be printed in one hundred years time. Between now and then, one writer every year will contribute a text, with the writings held in trust, unpublished, until 2114. The texts will be held in a specially designed room in the New Public Deichmanske Library in Oslo. Tending the forest and ensuring its...

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Bookworks of Maskull Lasserre

Image II, 2007 . books, frame, twine  "My work is always halfway between a song and a punch" says Canadian sculpture Maskull Lasserre. From his serene well groomed and painted works to his sculptures featuring carved and altered books Lasser blends "elements of nostalgia, accident, humor, and the macabre... into works that induce strangeness in the familiar, and provoke uncertainty in the expected." Here's some song and some punch for your enjoyment: Harlequin, 2007.  Political ideology texts, steel   Vanishing Point, 2010. Pencil on the sanded edge of compressed newspapers In March 2010, Lasserre traveled to Kandahar province in Afghanistan for two weeks as...

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The Book Architecture of Thomas Ehgartner

  It took 8,000 books for Thomas Ehgartner to complete his 2006 installation  "Meaning minus truth conditions"at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Completed for his senior project the piece also included two computer-generated voices that recited content from Wikipedia and Project Gutenberg. For Ehgartner the current state of information overload that permeates much of our waking life becomes the foundation for creating a "limited archive from a infinite whole."         and check out his follow up to the above, a facade built with chopped books!       View more of Ehgartner's portfolio at ARTDOXA 

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