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= the physical bootleg library =
= the physical bootleg library =
 
[[../The physical bootleg library]]
The physical bootleg library is housed in a disused champagne crate. It contains books that I have bootlegged myself, or ones that others have. It also contains books donated by visitors to wherever the library is (temporarily) installed. The library travels, and is part of bootleg library sessions held at PZI and at other locations.
 
<gallery>
Bl varia 01.jpg|At Varia, Gouwstraat 3, with books distributed on table
Bl kdh 04.jpg|At the Library, Karel Doormanhof 45, ready to be unpacked
BL Meeting Grounds 07.jpg|At Onomatopee Projects, before the bootleg library session
BL Meeting Grounds 11.jpg|The IKEA trolley the physical bootleg library usually travels on. Biyi lent me the trolley, and in return, I bootlegged the IKEA logo to read AIKE (Biyi's husband's name)
</gallery>


= books i've bootlegged =
= books i've bootlegged =
[[../Feminist Art Manifestos]]<br>
[[../Almost Transparent Blue]]<br>
[[../Rewire Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection]]<br>
[[../THE MANUAL]]<br>
[[../The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction]]<br>
[[../The Electronic Revolution]]<br>
[[../Dumbstruck A Cultural History of Ventriloquism]]<br>
[[../Literary Machines]]<br>
[[../A Voice and Nothing More]]<br>
[[../Information Ages]]<br>
[[../Writing_Machines]]<br>
[[../Tools for Conviviality]]<br>
[[../The Garden of Branching Paths]]<br>
[[../Cybertext]]<br>
[[../The Alphabetic Labyrinth]]<br>
[[../The Open Work]]<br>
[[../Flusser Writings]]<br>
[[../Deschooling Society]]<br>
[[../Guerilla Warfare]]


{{User:Simon/Feminist Art Manifestos}}
{{User:Simon/Almost Transparent Blue}}
{{User:Simon/Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection}}
{{User:Simon/THE MANUAL}}
{{User:Simon/The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction}}
{{User:Simon/The Electronic Revolution}}
{{User:Simon/Dumbstruck A Cultural History of Ventriloquism}}
{{User:Simon/Literary Machines}}
{{User:Simon/A Voice and Nothing More}}
{{User:Simon/Information Ages}}
{{User:Simon/Tools for Conviviality}}
{{User:Simon/
{{User:Simon/
{{User:Simon/
{{User:Simon/
{{User:Simon/
{{User:Simon/
== Tools for Conviviality ==
Printed: 28.11.19<br>
Dimensions: 113x170mm<br>
Cover stock: Clairefontaine Trophee (white) 210gsm<br>
Text stock: Laser 80gsm<br>
Binding: Perfect bound, cold glue<br>
Pages: 128pp
This book was made quite quickly - by using a script in InDesign to place a multi-page PDF into a blank document. The cover was also made quickly, on the photocopier. The economy of speed produces what looks like a poor image zine aesthetic. This is becoming an interesting methodology for me - making books quickly by any means necessary. I just want the printed text, in a format that is going to be somewhat durable - detailed typographic consideration is hardly applicable here.
<gallery>
TFC_A01.JPG|Front cover
TFC_A02.JPG|Spread
TFC_A03.JPG|Spine
</gallery>
== Writing Machines ==
Printed: 16.12.19<br>
Dimensions: 139x190mm<br>
Cover stock: Clairefontaine Trophee (white) 210gsm<br>
Text stock: Laser 80gsm<br>
Binding: Perfect bound, cold glue with book tape on spine<br>
Pages: 148pp
N. Katherine Hayles' ''Writing Machines'' is a book that has a very particular materiality. Hayles worked closely with a designer to create the printed book, reflecting the concepts contained within of new forms of textuality in technotexts and cybertexts. I made a quick bootleg of this book, working from a PDF I found on Monoskop. It was only when the PDF was printed and bound as a book did I see the design come to life - particularly in the lenticular effect of the edge printing on each page, which when held at the right angle, reads the title; in one direction "WRITING" and in the other "MACHINES". Small discoveries like this often come up when printing a PDF - not just size, weight, and the haptic experience of the codex form but also other features that reveal themselves only when the book is printed and bound.
<gallery>
WM 01.jpg|Front cover
WM 02.jpg|Spread
WM 03.jpg|Fore-edge text, visible when bent toward the back cover
WM 04.jpg|Fore-edge text, visible when bent toward the front cover
</gallery>
== The Garden of Branching Paths ==
Printed: 16.12.19<br>
Dimensions: 130x210mm<br>
Cover stock: 3mm Kraft board with Clairefontaine Trophee (white) 210gsm glued on<br>
Text stock: Laser 80gsm<br>
Binding: Perfect bound, cold glue with book binding tape<br>
Pages: 108pp
I printed this book from a PDF found on aaaarg.fail. Tancredi had told me about Borges short story "The Library of Babel", which is contained in this anthology. Norman di Giovanni, the translator worked with Borges on quite a large selection of his works. Ultimately he was given a cease and desist order from Borges' estate. This PDF has been redesigned and bootlegged by a user at aaaaarg, with a nice sensibility (and respect) for producing a well-designed text. I wanted to try a different method for attaching the cover for this book, one I had seen before but never figured out how to do. I first bound the text block with cold glue, then I attached a strip of book binding tape to reinforce it. Then, I glued the printed front and back cover sheets to two thick pieces of kraft board for the cover. Finally, these thick boards were glued to the first and last pages of the book. It produced a strong binding, but unfortunately the covers warped, despite having left the book in the press immediately after gluing. At the Publication Station, Kim said that the way to remedy this is to glue paper on both sides of the kraft board, which is quite absorbent, and will easily warp with PVA. Gluing paper to both sides evens out the warp, which will want to pull in the direction of the glue.
<gallery>
JLB_01.jpg|Front cover
JLB_02.jpg|Spread: The Library of Babel
JLB_03.jpg|Back cover
</gallery>
== Cybertext ==
Printed: 17.12.19<br>
Dimensions: 131x216mm<br>
Cover stock: Clairefontaine Trophee (white) 210gsm<br>
Text stock: Laser 80gsm<br>
Binding: Perfect bound, cold glue with book tape on spine<br>
Pages: 214pp
Espen Aarseth's ''Cybertext'' is a book that found its way towards me through a couple of other sources - first of all Tancredi recommended I read it, then I came across it when reading ''Writing Machines'' by N. Katherine Hayles. Aarseth's PhD dissertation proposes the idea of "cybertexts", which are part of the genre of what he calls "ergodic literature". In a nutshell, these are texts which require "non-trivial effort" to read. These texts are in both printed form (e.g. Danielewski's ''House of Leaves'') and also in digital form (the book contains a section on MUDs - Multi User Domains - which are large gaming environments in which texts (both in the sense of software, and also narratives) are assembled on the fly. I printed this from the PDF, retaining all the marks that had come from its scanning, then bound it with cold glue and a strip of book binding tape on the spine for extra strength.
<gallery>
Cybertext 01.jpg|Front cover
Cybertext 02.jpg|Spread, with annotations from the PDF
Cybertext 03.jpg|Spread, with dark marks around edges from the scan
Cybertext 04.jpg|Back cover
</gallery>
== The Alphabetic Labyrinth ==
Printed: 20.12.19<br>
Dimensions: 190x260mm<br>
Cover stock: Heavy green stock (unknown brand) - around 210gsm<br>
Text stock: Laser 80gsm<br>
Binding: Perfect bound, hot glue<br>
Pages: 330pp
Johanna Drucker's ''The Alphabetic Labyrinth'' is a book that traces the history and development of the alphabet. Full of diagrams and densely populated with these histories, it demands printing and reading in physical form. A PDF just won't do. I printed this from a PDF that I laid out quickly in InDesign using my trusty placemultiplePDFpages script. The cover was made on the photocopier, a technique I was well-acquainted with from my days as a teacher, where lessons would be literally cut and pasted together to be copied on the glass. The task that took the most time was making sure the pages would be printed at reasonable size, while economising on paper. For this reason, I wanted to print it double-sided on A4 paper with minimal excess. The annotations (interestingly, many in Greek - a coincidence as the book focuses for some time on development of the Greek alphabet) and artefacts from scanning were retained (such as darkened page edges), creating a materiality that reminds one the book is most definitely loved, copied, and shared.
<gallery>
TAL 01.jpg|Front cover
TAL 02.jpg|Annotations
TAL 03.jpg|A spread
TAL 04.jpg|Closeup, featuring darkened edges from scan
TAL 05.jpg|Spine
TAL 06.jpg|Back cover
</gallery>
== The Open Work ==
Printed: 20.12.19<br>
Dimensions: 123x180mm<br>
Cover stock: Heavy pink stock (unknown brand) - around 210gsm<br>
Text stock: Laser 80gsm<br>
Binding: Perfect bound, hot glue<br>
Pages: 322pp
I had a PDF of Umberto Eco's ''The Open Work'' that I wanted to read, but hadn't got round to it. Such a vast, sprawling text needs to be read and digested slowly, so I decided to print the PDF. Unfortunately, the file I had was a scan of spreads, not pages, so after placing all the pages in InDesign I had to make sure that each page of the file corresponded to each page of the book. I used a dark line at the centre of each page to align with the edge of the pages in the InDesign file. Little did I know or realise at the time that this was an artefact from OCR, and that the text was riddled with such quirks that at times made the text almost unreadable. This happens sometimes if you edit a PDF in a program such as Adobe Acrobat Pro, which includes the option to run OCR all over the document. However, this function doesn't just layer an invisible txt over the images in the PDF, it replaces the images with a text file, in a font (or fonts) specified by the editor. I think that is what happened here, because on printing I discovered that a multitude of artefacts resulting from this technique - unreadable lines, characters that most likely were interpretations of marks and smudges, and a change in font every three or four pages, making for a text that had what seemed to be multiple personalities. This would be a great design approach for such a text - which is about participatory processes making up an art work - but most likely just a happy accident. The cover was made on the photocopier, simply by cutting text from the PDF, pasting and copying it to a heavy sheet of pink paper.
<gallery>
TOW 01.jpg|Front cover
TOW 02.jpg|Spread
TOW 03.jpg|OCR artefacts
TOW 04.jpg|Spine
</gallery>
== Vilem Flusser: Writings ==
Printed: 20.12.19<br>
Dimensions: 123x180mm<br>
Cover stock: Clairefontaine Trophee (green) 210gsm<br>
Text stock: Laser 80gsm<br>
Binding: Perfect bound, hot glue<br>
Pages: 270pp
I wanted to read this collection of essays by Flusser during the holidays. Steve had sent me a link to an interview with Flusser in which he described the "magic" of linear writing and subsequent technologies, and I wanted to read more. I very quickly bootlegged this book by printing the PDF on the last day school was open for the year. In my haste, however, I trimmed the bottom edge a bit too close. It's still fine (at least the page numbers weren't cut off), but I wish I hadn't been in such a rush. The cover was made quickly at the photocopier as well, a no-frills effort.
<gallery>
VM_01.jpg|Front cover
VM_02.jpg|Spread
VM_03.jpg|Spine
</gallery>
== Deschooling Society ==
=== First edition ===
Printed: 13.01.20<br>
Dimensions: 110x170mm<br>
Cover stock: Clairefontaine Trophee (white) 210gsm<br>
Text stock: Laser 80gsm<br>
Binding: Perfect bound, cold glue<br>
Pages: 160pp
I made this book with and for Luke (a friend), as a favour, and also to show him how to bootleg a book. I'd already redesigned the text, and printed it double-sided on laser paper. What he wanted to know how to bind books. Luke had been helping me out a lot with getting the bookscanner running, and it seemed like a nice way to repay him. The problem came when we tried to bind the book using the hot-glue machine, which was once again not working as it should and the result we got was less than optimal. So, I showed him how to notch-bind using cold glue, and he took the text block home with him to try out the technique himself, using a DIY book press made from two chopping boards. One the text block was dry, he brought it back to me to show him how to apply the cover. I'd already printed the cover on a piece of paper, but had been using it to write quick notes on in the interim. It's ironic, I'm surrounded by paper, but scrap paper can be hard to come by. Rather than printing the cover again, I decided to tear away all the areas I'd written notes on it, and then photocopy this with the lid open, leaving black where there was no paper. It was another impromptu, make-do decision, but one that lent an interesting mark - removal of all that is not necessary - and in line with the type of radical pedagogical approaches the author of the text was aiming at.
<gallery>
L A book rig.jpg|Luke's DIY book press
DS first 01.jpg|Front cover
DS first 02.jpg|Spread
DS first 03.jpg|Spine
DS first 04.jpg|Back cover
Book with note 4 luke.jpg|The book, left with keys I borrowed from Luke while staying with him and Alice in January, 2020
</gallery>
=== Second edition ===
Printed: 29.01.20<br>
Dimensions: 110x170mm<br>
Cover stock: Clairefontaine Trophee (white) 210gsm<br>
Text stock: Laser 80gsm<br>
Binding: Perfect bound, hot glue<br>
Pages: 160pp
I decided to print another copy of ''Deschooling Society'' for the physical bootleg library when the hot glue machine was working properly again. It was interesting to compare the differences between the two different binding methods - not something I usually see as I don't often bootleg more than one copy of a book.
<gallery>
DS second 01.jpg|Front cover
DS second 02.jpg|Spread
DS second 03.jpg|Spread
DS second 04.jpg|Spine
DS second 05.jpg|Back cover
DS second 06.jpg|Spines: First edition (top), second edition (bottom). The difference in cold vs hot glue is apparent here - hot glue ensures a smooth, square spine
DS second 07.jpg|Back covers: First edition (left), second edition (right)
</gallery>
== Guerilla Warfare ==
Printed: 13.01.20<br>
Dimensions: 135x210mm<br>
Cover stock: Heavy pink stock (unknown brand) - around 210gsm<br>
Text stock: Laser 80gsm<br>
Binding: Perfect bound, cold glue<br>
Pages: 175pp
A copy of Guevara's ''Guerilla Warfare'', printed with/for Luke. We made the cover on the photocopier, make-do style. The text refers to Guevara's system of annotating - a pity the PDF I had wasn't available in colour. The text block was bound with cold glue, after trimming to the spine edge. The equations on the text block are ones I typically write down on the text block so that I don't have to do them at the guillotine, which is always busy and therefore stressful and easy to make a mistake.
The equation I follow goes something like this:<br>
    First cut: (page height - book height) / 2 + book height<br>
    Second cut: book height<br>
    Third cut: book width<br>


<gallery>
GW 01.jpg|Front cover
GW 02.jpg|Spread
GW 03.jpg|Guevara's annotations
GW 04.jpg|Detail of anti-tank tactics
GW 05.jpg|Spine
GW 06.jpg|The cold-glue bound text-block, ready to have cover applied and trimmed to size. Equations for trim sizes and cut sequence (see above) written in bleed area
</gallery>


[[Category: bootlegging]]
[[Category: bootlegging]]
[[Category: collection]]
[[Category: collection]]

Latest revision as of 18:58, 22 June 2020