Thematic project: Do Kindles Dream of Spirit Duplicators?

What is a book?

Throughout its history, the book has been declared dead many times, last with the Internet. With the current boom of e-book readers, the opposite seems to happen: electronic documents are becoming books again. All these developments seem to be based on a firm common sense of what a book is. Thorough historical and artistic investigations of the medium book will however reveal that there is no clear answer to the question of what a book is.

The Thematic Project will approach this issue from three angles: Historically (in the Theory Sessions) as an investigation of book utopias from Aldus Manutius to Mille Plateaux, artistically (in the afternoon sessions) as encounters with practitioners of book art and experimental writing, technically in a series of pioneering hack sessions on e-books.

Documentation

Each participant is supposed to create a wiki page to document the following aspects:

Outcomes of weekly assignments
Project plan
Project concept
Annotated bibliography

Final project and essay

The final project and essay should evolve from the weekly assignments. The project is supposed to be based on the role and transformation of the book in the networked media age. Use of the knowledge acquired in the technical sessions is encouraged.

Required readings and audiovisuals

Text books

Alessandro Ludovico, The Mutation of Publishing (inofficial pre-published electronic manuscript, to be circulated)
Johanna Drucker, A Century of Artists' Books
O'Reilly Labs: EPUB Resources and Guides, http://labs.oreilly.com/2009/03/epub-resources-and-guides.html

Bibliography

Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy (74-75, 124-127, 155-158, 206-208), scans to be distributed
El Lissitzky, Topography of Typography, 1923
Francesco Colonna/Aldus Manutius, Hypnerotomachia Polifili, 1499
Sebastian Brant/Albrecht Dürer, Das Narrenschiff, 1499
Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy, 1759
Stéphane Mallarmé, Un coup des dés, 1914
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Zang Tumb Tumb, 1912-1914
Roland Barthes, The Death of the Author, 1968
Yvonne Rainer, Film about a woman who..., 1974
Robert Coover, The End of Books, 1992
N. Katherine Hayles, Writing Machines, 2002 (in the library)
Deleuze/Guattari, A Thousand Plateaux (introduction), 1980 (in the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, library)

Audiovisuals

Peter Greenaway, Prospero's books, 1991 (animated book scenes can be watched on YouTube)

Guests

Jan Voss, Amsterdam, owner of the Boekie Woekie bookstore for artists' books, editor of the works of Dieter Roth
LAFKON, Germany, 3-days-workshop on generative graphic design with TeX
Chris Meade, England, Institute for the Future of the Book (via Skype)
mez breeze, Australia, net artist and writer (via Skype)
Caitlin Fisher, Canada, theorist, creative writer and web artist (via Skype)
Stephan Saaltink, director WdKA, former art director NRC Handelsblad and Vrij Nederland

Thematic Project Planning

Please refer to the Trimester overview planning for important dates and project schedule.

Theory Sessions
Tech days
EPUB Hacking Sessions 1, 2, 3 and 4
workshop LAKFON