In her new book Trading in Memories: Travels Through a Scavenger's Favorite Places Barbara Hodgson takes us on an unforgettable trip around the world. From the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul to an ephemera show in Portland, Oregon we get a front row seat as Hodgson works her magic unearthing relics of material cultural. As the collector knows, the pursuit, in many cases, is as fulfilling as the acquisition.The fruit of travel is in "collecting fragments of people's material lives" says Hodgson in the introduction; in Naples it was tearing posters off the walls, in Portland it was a mugshot, in...
Pop-Up, Walk In
“Space Book” is a life-size wordless pop-up installation by designer Jin-Hui Kim.Though I couldn't find the dimensions for the piece it seems to dwarf the largest pop-up book on record. The Guinness Book of World Records lists Roger Culbertson's version of Aesop's Fables as the largest pop-up book on record. Culbertson's creation is 48" x 30" and weighed in at 28.5 pounds.Thanks to Yanko Design for the lead
Tipping Point
“Maintain The Balance of Your Knowledge!” by Denis OhForget functionality this is a bookshelf with some interactive potential. Put this one up in your living room and invite your friends over or simply enjoy a book balancing evening alone.What you put on it determines how it will look.Think of all the possibilities?How many books of poetry would it take to balance out War and Peace?The book you are currently reading on one side with your e-reader and the e-book version on the other.Your 5 favorite books vs. your 5 least favorite.It could turn into a long night.Thanks to the Bookshelf...
Books as a War Casualty
"I wouldn’t be telling you anything new by declaring that wars create many casualties. Wars kill and amputate humans. This is a vérité de la palice. But there are other casualties: books stand first in line among them." Mai Ghoussoub in the introduction to her play "Texterminators"She goes on:Literature is inseparable today from the books that carry their stories. If we want to save literature we have to save the rectangular objects that carry and spread their words. We have to respect the book for what it is: an art object that we should defend, defend against censors, narrow-minded educators...
Fantastical Change and Ray Kurzweil
"The fact that we already have virtual robots standing in for retail clerks, and cell phones that read out loud, is evidence that the world is about to chance in even more fantastical ways"- From Gary Wolf's illuminating piece on futurist and singularity guru Ray Kurzweil in the April 2008 issue of Wired.How does Kurzweil fit into the book world? He is basically the godfather of digitization; his inventions include the first omni-font optical character recognition (a computer program capable of recognizing text printed in any normal font), the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first flat-bed scanner,...