Time creates history and time changes history. From existing texts visual artist Nicola Dale painstakingly carves a new history, both for the texts themselves and for the those of us lucky enough to consume them.A Secret Heliotropism, 2006. Hand cut found book; full color, 320 pagesUsing a Walter Benjamin quote from his ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’ as a starting point Dale took a copy of “The People’s Century” and a very small pair of scissors and transformed the 320 page history book from a mass produced object to a unique piece of book art. Over the course of...
Fill ‘er up at Job Koelewijn’s ‘Sanctuary’
Dutch conceptual artist Job Koelewijn's new work Sanctuary includes this life-size gas station made entirely from the covers of books.Is it a telling omen that in the future both gas stations and books will be extinct? A homage to the divergent sacredness of books and gasoline. Books and gasoline, two essential elements of Western Civilization, joined to form a sort of surreal 22nd century filling station where one can go and pump the world's creative output into their vehicle of choice, whether it be a computer, e-reader, i-pod or quite possibly by then directly into our own bodies!In 2005 Koelewijn...
Icon Crossing: Harry Meets Darth
Photo by Esteban Diacono from his The Real World: Darth Vadar seriesvia Dark Roasted Blend and their image packed two part tribute to Star Wars.Part 1 January o7Part 2 December 07Avi Abrams contributed this:
The Guinness Book
Guinness is running a great new ad that ends in a hail of books. The huge domino sequence "culminates with the pages of 10,000 books flipping open to create a giant pint of Guinness."Bravo.Nicole Martin has the scoop on the making of the commercial in her piece in the Telegraph UK.Thanks to Lee Kottner for the lead
The Book Man at Burning Man
The theme of the 2000 Burning Man gathering was the body.This large book sculpture was created by Dana Albany and was titled the Body of Knowledge"A large-scale sculpture of the human body, entirely composed of out-date textbooks and discarded library books..The sheer presence of these books, what one could ultimately classify as discarded knowledge, re-used and sculpted into the human form, would silently speak. Each book represents a single cell or specific part of the body. Whether that book contains concrete scientific fact, fiction or poetry, its stories and tales help shape the human form, in its qualitative known existence...