THE INFERNAL METHOD

This is an essay about legibility, about legibility in printing. This is an essay that seeks to examine the notion of legibility, of readability, and to open it out onto a productive way of thinking through process in printing.

This is an essay about printing, about “good” printing and about “bad” printing, about how printing can articulate and make legible different modes of reading.

This is an essay about reading, about how things are read, how printing affects reading, and about multiple threads of reading in a multiply legible text.


This is an essay about writing, about writing for maximum and multiple legibilities.

This is an essay about writing-printing-reading as a single cluster of interconnected activities connecting and opening out onto other clusters of other activities.

This is an essay that attempts multiple legibilities, that is aware of itself as an act of writing-printing-reading as a single cluster of interconnected activities connecting and opening out onto other clusters of other activities.


Text/object by NewLights Press: Aaron Cohick, et al.
12 pages, no cover, saddle stapled, 7” x 5.5”
Letterpress printed on newsprint, with additional elements added by hand
Edition of 350
2009
Released as part of Issue #3 of Mimeo Mimeo. Available here.
 

Open publication - Free publishing - More artists books

PRODUCTION IS RECEPTION (1): WHAT YOU WILL (1)

Figure 11.09.01
The first page of notes/brainstorming for What You Will.

What You Will is a book of poems by Kyle Schlesinger. It is scheduled for release in February 2010.

One of the first things that I do when planning a book is make a bunch of notes and sketches, just to get some ideas down. You can see in the image above that there are sketches for a general page layout, for the main title spread, and some vague ideas about some new ligatures for the title type.

These poems pose an interesting visual problem in that they are very long and narrow. Does one make the pages long and narrow to accommodate the poems, or make them short and squarish to provide contrast? The sketches here show an idea for wider pages.

The final book always changes from these initial ideas. The point is to let them grow and develop, and to learn something new along the way. But you have to jump in somewhere.

THIS IS A GOOD BOOK

Lettering & Type: Creating Letters and Designing Typefaces, by Bruce Willen and Nolen Strals (the gentlemen of Post Typography), Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2009. As one might guess from the title, it’s a book about type. But it’s not just another book about type, it’s an accessible book about designing and drawing letters and type, which is something I’ve been thinking about lately. I’m working my way through it right now. It will have some bearing on the next book….

PRODUCTION IS RECEPTION 1: ABOUT

Soon, soon there will be a new feature, called PRODUCTION IS RECEPTION, running on this blog. This new feature (which grows out of the documentation of the new NewLights broadsides) will demonstrate, explain, and comment upon the various steps of the various processes that go into producing books. I have a few hopes for this new feature:

A) That it will show and make accessible (and thus demystify) steps and processes that usually remain hidden.

B) That it will help to generate ideas and discussion for other producers of book-text-objects.

C) That it will help me and the readers of this blog connect the manifold activities of making to larger practices and ideas, allowing us to elaborate an investigation and critique of the modes of production of meaning(art?)-objects, and of how those modes are rendered and inscribed in the final form and distribution of the object(s) in question.

D) That it will give practical “how-to” oriented tips and techniques (an ongoing demo).

E) That it will be interesting, entertaining, and maybe even educational.

F) That these posts will not explain away or close off the process, but that they will break open, occupy, and explode it. Everything generative, always.

This feature will be starting up soon, as I finish off one piece and begin another, a series of an-Others from here on out.

And speaking of process, here is a really fun bookmaking process stop-motion animation made by Abigail Uhteg about her recent project at the Women’s Studio Workshop:

ADAM ROBISON AND OTHER POEMS

By Adam Robinson, the proprietor of Publishing Genius Press. It’s on pre-sale now, over at the Narrow House.

PROCEED AND BE BOLD, part 2

So now I finally get a chance (have made myself a chance) to sit down and write about the film Proceed and Be Bold, (trailer below, or here). The film is a documentary about the letterpress printer Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr., about the challenges that he’s faced in his career and life, and how he has met them—aggressively, intelligently, and with a sense of humor and play. This film knocked something loose in my head.

(Aside: the whole experience of seeing the film was wrapped up in an amazing convergence of events. The movie was playing as part of the SF Doc Fest, and my friend James and I were talking about going to see it. Then an hour or two later, Amos himself randomly walked through our studio door. It seems he was walking down the street, saw the presses in the window, and decided to stop in and say hello. A great surprise on an otherwise regular day. We showed him around the studio, and chatted about presses and other printerly things for a bit. He gave us some gorgeous posters. We went to see the film on its opening night at the Fest, and he and two of the filmmakers (editor and director) were there, and they answered questions afterwards, which was every bit as incredible as the film itself. I am grateful that things proceeded the way they did, to put me in that theater at that moment in time.)

(A loop back to the beginning: So now I finally get a chance (have made myself a chance) to sit down and write…. It’s amazing when you see or hear or read something that fires you up, that gets your mind going quickly, that makes you expand, and it’s amazing how the quickly the stone fingers of “real life” (the ever-solidifying movement of fear through our minds) get a hold of you again, and hold you down until all of those wonderful things that you thought and dreamed are as distant as the film itself now, flickering images, only dimly remembered, abstract. This is the constant struggle of those of us who refuse to give in. This relates to the film.)

It doesn’t seem appropriate to write out a full synopsis of the film, of Kennedy’s life. What’s important about it to me, at this moment, is how, through the example of Kennedy’s work and career, it challenged some ideas that I’ve held, that I’ve felt myself slipping into, about art and what it does and how it works and how one can get it made.

Kennedy did not discover printing until he was in his forties. He left a “good” programming job to pursue this new thing that he felt so strongly about. He worked hard, went to school, taught for a bit, and moved his studio many times. He currently lives in Gordo, Alabama. He sells his posters, printed in many runs from handset lead and wood type on chipboard, for $15 for one, $20 for two. Twice a year he packs up his Vandercook, puts it in his pickup, and drives it to a festival where he shows people how to print. He lets interested people come and work in his studio. After the film he talked about generosity, about how it makes us human.

(At least a few times I have written about the shape that art makes out in the world. Here is one such tracing of one such shape, in one in which it has rendered deeply.)

[I wanted to put the link to the film site here, but it doesn't seem to be working at the moment. My apologies. I will check back and hopefully update that later.]

THE REVOLUTION WILL BE COPIED

The editors of the journal Mimeo Mimeo, Jed Birmingham and Kyle Schlesinger, have begun to post to the Mimeo Mimeo blog on a regular basis. (Prior to this it just had ordering information for the first two issues.) What is Mimeo Mimeo? The text from the site:

Mimeo Mimeo is a forum for critical and cultural perspectives on artists' books, fine press printing and the mimeograph revolution. This periodical features essays, interviews, artifacts, and reflections on the graphic, material and textual conditions of contemporary poetry and language arts.

There are already some pretty interesting posts up there. Add it to the list!

A BRIEF DISRUPTION

Figure 10.09.05
An excerpt from the essay-insert currently in production. An example of (mostly) analog disruption. But the two of you are not so easy to separate these days.


Figure 10.09.06
An excerpt from the essay-insert currently in production. An example of (mostly) digital disruption. But the two of you are not so easy to separate these days. But the two of you break apart in the same language.

PROCEED AND BE BOLD, part 1

Hey letterpress and book people, all art people, really (in San Francisco). Go see this movie tonight at the Roxie. I saw it on Saturday and it was really great. There will be a longer post about it tomorrow….

w00t, &, ETC.

A series of things, sparked by conversational collision. [Citations at the end]:

W00t: W00t is a Leet corruption of the exclamation "Woot!", meaning "Hooray." The term rose to popularity sometime during the 1990s and is popular on the Internet, especially in MMORPGS. Both the exclamation and the Leet spelling are of uncertain origin.

Leetspeak: A form of chatspeak characterized most strongly by its alphanumeric substitutions.

Chatspeak: The blend of informal language, conventional abbreviations and emoticons typical of chatrooms. [1]

&&&&&&

These questions have relevance to an interesting test case: Bill Bissett’s special attention to the spelling of words. Bissett’s idiosyncratic orthography and the resultant effects on that minutest level of reading—the single word—has already enjoyed a large influence inside Canada. Yet the writers who have gone on to orthographic modifications in their own work have been judged as mere copiers of Bissett, rather than valourized as individuals adapting to their own purposes Bissett’s singular insight: that spelling should be an individual decision and not an imposed norm. Accordingly, the work of these writers is in danger of being ignored through the effects of an attitude that sees formal innovation as a novelty and, by extension, as unrepeatable. In the background of such an attitude lurks the hulking form of traditional literature as a pre-established, easily subsumed and hence “safe” finite number of technical solutions. [2]

&&&&&&&

Poetry that circulated in manuscript, of course, shared with printed books the current freedom from the standardized orthography. Shakespeare, for instance, spelled his own name half a dozen different ways. In “The Good-Morrow,” John Donne could render the word “be” three different ways (bee, beest, be) on the same sheet of paper. For Shakespeare and Donne and most of their contemporaries a written word was not confined to a single orthographic form: it could change according to the writer’s intuitive sense of how it should look or sound, showing shades of emphasis, intonation, color, perhaps even pitch in his own pronunciation. Written language maintained the fluidity, even volatility, of speech: a phrase or line was something a poet created with his mouth, not an arrangement of standardized parts that could be precisely interchanged. [3]

&&&&&&&

on Ellophants head with the teeth In it very large
on River horses head of the Bigest kind that can be
gotton
on Seabulles head with horns
All sorts of Serpents and Snakes Skines & Espectially of
that sort that hathe a Combe on his head Lyke
a Cock
All sorts of Shining Stones or of Any Strange Shapes

[…]

Any thing that Is strang.

[4]

NOTES
1. These definitions are from Wiktionary.
w00t: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/w00t
Leetspeak: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/leetspeak
Chatspeak: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/chatspeak

2. Steve McCaffery and bpNichol, “The Book as Machine,” Rational Geomancy, (Vancouver: Talon Books, 1992); reprinted in A Book of the Book: Some Works & Projections About the Book & Writing, eds. Steven Clay and Jerome Rothenberg (New York: Granary Books, 2000), 24.

3. Young, Karl, “Notation and the Art of Reading,” Open Letter, (Spring 1984); reprinted in A Book of the Book: Some Works & Projections About the Book & Writing, eds. Steven Clay and Jerome Rothenberg (New York: Granary Books, 2000), 37.

4. A transcription of part of letter written by Tradescant the Elder to Edward Nichols, the Secretary of the Navy, in 1625. Tradescant was making a list of things to be gathered for his “cabinet of curiosities.” Excised from: Lawrence Weschler, Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder, (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 95.

THE NEW MANTRA

Fig. 10.09.04
A photo of the wall in front of my desk, with inspirational signage.

The year is not officially upon us, but it’s best to prepare for these things before they happen….

THE DANGERS OF BINARY THINKING

Fig. 10.09.03
Photographer unknown. A view of the “Exposition Internationale,” Paris, 1937. On the left is the German pavilion by Albert Speer and on the right is the Soviet pavilion by Boris Iofan (sculpture by Vera Mukhina). Hitler's Germany facing off against Stalin's Soviet Union: the two ultimate ends of the left vs. right political spectrum, right before the war that would tear them both to pieces.

Whenever I see myself thinking, speaking, acting in a way that pits “Accepted Idea #1” vs. “the Opposite, Accepted Idea #2,” where both of those ideas are unchanging, oversimplified, locked in steel, and poised to destroy each other, I meditate on the photograph above. The way we think, the structure of how we frame, represent, and articulate ideas, has severe and disastrous consequences in the really real world. In the end, the differences between the two sides are arbitrary, because their effect in the world is the same. From George Orwell’s 1984:

[…] Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress toward more pain. […] always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever. […]

HERE

A strange excerpt from a new piece in and on process:


Here, like this, now.

In that image that you once had. In that image that you once had swallowed. Somewhere the world grows. Our objects fall from our hands. We swallow things, we drop things, thus they mean. The constructed book-objects of the world are the spaces that hold it together. Books are emptiness, not form. They are channels, moving time and moving through time. Impossible places. Shabby apartments in which we blink slowly with tremendous headaches. All the lights are on. Terrible places to live, terrible places to sleep, the spaces in which we speak and write. In the dark all of these ghosts of the Book cough at once. One thousand hands with one thousand fingers. No way to stop. It is under these lights that we labor.

There are those that would preserve the book forever in the silently singing crypt of authority and stability. And there are those would establish a new authority by burning the books in the pulsing tides of digital technology. But the Book will not rest and it will not die. The Book is the object that we cherish and the metaphor that guides the construction of its technological rivals. The Book is continuously between, it draws the past up to the present and flows out into the future. It is our job to be sure that no force manages to close the Book. Now is perhaps the best time yet to be making books, to be engaged with books, because their future, and the future of the culture at large, is so uncertain. There is more at stake here then just the preservations of traditions and/or the development of new technologies. What is at stake is the flow of information, the flow of power, and the construction of new, radical languages of objects, whatever objects, that we are engaged in, from which we constitute our images of ourselves and of others.

THE BLACK PAGES

A long weekend looms. In the meantime, this is kind of interesting:

http://blackpage73.blogspot.com/

It’s a collection of artists’ versions of the “black page” of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, an ur-artists’ book and/or postmodern text, however one wants to see it (though elements like the black page help to make the case for “artists’ book," but is it even worth worrying about?).

It’s a pretty good example of variations on a theme, and of some hand-mechanical processes. Many of the descriptions are underwhelming, but there are some interesting ones as well.

RESOLUTION

I don’t know if I’ve said this before. I’ve been preoccupied with economics lately, with trying to make this thing go, however slowly. Part of that plan has been a move toward placing some of the larger books with libraries around the country. And that is part of it, an important part, and I think that maybe public collections are the best place for the unique books. But I will do my best to archive them digitally and make those archives as widely available as possible (anyone want to host that party?). And I will make, make a concerted effort to make sure that I am always making NewLights books that you can make your own for $20 or less. From here to the end. There are several on-deck right now.

INSPECTOR, INSPECTOR

Figure 10.09.02
The NewLights Press Inspection Slip, shown front and back. Another free gift with every purchase.

Another cancerous extension of the Bureaucracy of One: the NewLights Press Inspection Slips. They are digitally printed forms that are cut down by hand and rubber stamped on the back. Before a book is packaged for shipping the slips are filled out and put inside the pages of the books, to be discovered by the owner/reader. The slips are a kind of social hand-mechanics, bringing that classic human-as-machine element back into these anonymous transactions.

THE PHILADELPHIA REPORT

Andrea Kirsh, a contributor to Philadelphia’s Artblog, visited the Poem Posters exhibition and reception last week and she wrote a nice review/description, which can be found here. During that reception, I was stationed next to Megan O’Connell of Dead Skin Press in Portland, ME. She had some really nice work, and was really nice too, which is the fun of these things. (She gave me a copy of her manifesto, which is sitting on the desk next to me, waiting. The world needs more printer/press manifestos.)

The exhibition itself looked great, spread throughout the rooms of the Kelly Writers House (a historic building where they can’t pierce or adhere anything to the walls, but they’ve come up with a good system) but still easy to see and appreciate. My favorite piece was a Charles Bernstein broadside by Jeremy James Thompson of Auto Types Press. Hot.

ATTN: RECEIVING

This morning I put together and emailed a receipt for a recent purchase. Like the IDE(A/O)LOG(Y/UE) forms, the receipts/invoices are an integrated part of what the press does; they are functional-aesthetic objects that provide a record of the life and reach of the press. They are pre-designed forms that are filled out digitally and emailed and/or sent with books.

Fig. 10.09.01
The NewLights Press Purchase Record/Invoice, bringing a subtle disruption into even the most mundane interactions. Get one absolutely free with any purchase.

I definitely get a perverse enjoyment out of making these forms for myself. But there is more to it than that: A) It becomes a way of “performing” the role of publisher (the NewLights Press is a self-deconstructing institution) and B) as I get further and further into this thing, as more and more books are made and sent out into the world, it seems more urgent to somehow keep track of and preserve all of this information. When it all began, I sold pretty much all of the books directly (except a handful placed at the local bookstore), but now a fair amount are sold through this website, and they go off, faceless to a faceless destination.

I prefer to say thank you directly to the people who buy my books. These forms are a multi-threaded attempt to do that.

BACK IN IT

Found this (for the second time) while reading on the plane ride home last night. From Edmond Jabes's The Book of Questions:

"Where is the way? The way is always to be found. A white sheet of paper is full of ways.... We will go over the same way ten times, a hundred times...."

HEADIN' BACK TO THE OLD EAST COAST, LORD KNOWS...

Hello Everyone. I will be on the road next week (9/28-10/4), so I doubt there will be any new posts during that time. If you're someone that I know in Philadelphia or Baltimore, hopefully I will see you soon. If you're in Philly, this should be fun:


The show is at The Kelly Writers House at UPenn. There will be a small press fair in conjunction with the opening at 6 PM on Tuesday, 9/29. I will be there, and so will some other really great presses, booked. The rest of the info:

In conjunction with the broadside exhibition Poem Posters, comprising letterpress work from small printshops around the country, KWH Art will present a small press fair to showcase a number of press projects from San Francisco to Brooklyn. There will be a selection of complimentary printed matter and a limited edition of take-away posters for the show. A reception will follow.

Poem Posters presses include:

Ugly Duckling Presse of Brooklyn, NY

The Common Press of Philadelphia, PA

Littoral Press of Oakland, CA

Dead Skin Press of Portland, ME

Hermetic Press of Minneapolis, MN

New Lights Press of Oakland, CA

Phylum Press of New Haven, CT

Propolis Press of Northamton, MA

Axel & Otto of San Francisco, CA

Intima Press of New York, NY

Auto Types Press of New York, NY

C&C Press of Pajaro, CA

Punch Press of Buffalo, NY

Poltroon Press of Berkeley, CA

Small Fires Press of Memphis, TN

*The exhibition's title is borrowed from Charles Henri Ford's short experimental film featuring (and named after) his 1965 "Poem Posters" exhibition at New York's Cordier & Ekstrom gallery.

TRACING THE SHAPES

Two nights ago I saw Jonathan Richman play a show at the Make-Out Room, a small bar/cub in San Francisco. Mr. Richman lives in the Bay Area, and he was playing four nights in a row. The show cost $15. It was really fun.

But the whole situation got me thinking about the question(s) of scale and sustainability and economics and community in the arts, about the light bleeding into the heavy, about the malleable becoming the monolithic, about the nomadic settling down, digging in, and becoming the gated community.

These are debates (one big debacle perhaps) that have been going on for a long time. No need to go over all that fall again, here. But still:

The publishing industry is in crisis. Physical books vs. electronic books? Will it be Saturn or Oedipus? Regardless, this is the most exciting time to be a maker of books, to be a publisher or writer of books, to be involved in the radical changes of one of the most important parts of civilization and culture. And we face many difficult and complex questions as we refine what we do, as we blow up what we do, as we draw breath through what we do.

In this gorgeous morning a series of lines are drawn. Not only to consider how each book looks, reads, or moves, but to consider the shape that it makes out in the world—socially, economically. Each object moves. The shape of our endeavors is determined by, kept open by, the endeavors that we connect to.

QUESTIONS FOR QUESTIONS

Last night I gave a brief, informal presentation about my work to a small group of people, and I wrote the paragraph below (imagining myself saying it) in order to get started. I didn’t use it as part of the “presentation,” but here it is:

The question that I ask myself, as a maker of books, is, what does it mean, today, to be a maker of books? What can it mean to a make books? From this flows a multitude of related questions that are provisionally answered in each piece: What is a book? Why are books important? Why should this text be a book? How is this book like other books? How is it different? How is it made? Why is it made that way? How is it read? Why is it read that way? Does it expand the tradition/history/genre? Or does it ossify? Does it make connections outside of itself? Outside of the tradition/history/genre? What is it doing, how does it function, really? How many more questions can I get this book to ask?

ROADWORKS THIS WEEKEND!!!

If you’re in the Bay Area this weekend, you should come out to the Roadworks Festival at the San Francisco Center for the Book. I will be there pushing my books (along with many other vendors and interesting things to see, do, and eat), as usual.

The info (from the SFCB website):

Join us for the Center's sixth annual Roadworks: Steamroller Printing street fair. The event includes dozens of vendors (with books, prints and other handmade items), community artists, music, and amidst it all we'll be making prints from large-scale linoleum blocks - carved especially for the occasion--with a steamroller.

"The massive, crushing force of a two-ton-steamroller and the beautiful, intricate markings of an artist's linoleum-cut print might seem to exist in completely separate worlds, but in a unique and fun event called the Roadworks: Steamroller Printing Street Fair, these worlds will collide. Six featured artists: Megan Adie, John Hersey, Rik Olson, Jenny Robinson, Michael Wertz, and Rigo 23, and many additional artists and community members will have their work printed as the steamroller rumbles up the road, while handmade arts and craft vendors, music, food, and kids' activities attract many additional onlookers. Join us for this amazing experience, and perhaps leave with a one-of-a-kind souvenir!"

For more info:
http://www.sfcb.org/php/event.php?id=T3-091909-EVT

91% BATTERY POWER REMAINING

Text by Justin Sirois, from the book MLKNG SCKLS
Letterpress with hand-mechanical printing and delamination
Variable edition of 25
12” x 18”
2009
$200

SOUTH OF THE BEAST

Text by Brian Evenson
Letterpress with hand-mechanical printing and delamination
Variable edition of 25
12” x 18”
2009
$200

HOTEL RULES

Text by John Yau
Letterpress with hand-mechanical printing and delamination
Variable edition of 25
12” x 18”
2009
$200

FULL SET OF THE SERIES 1 NEWLIGHTS DELAMINATED BROADSIDES

The complete set of the Series 1 Delaminated Broadsides (2009 - 2011) are available for $900. "91% Battery Power Remaining" by Justin Sirois, "South of the Beast" by Brian Evenson, "Meat Cove, Cape Breton" by KC Trommer, "The Tragedy of Cymbeline" by Brenda Iijima, and "Hotel Rules" by John Yau.

TEXT-OBJECT-PROCESS: IDEATION & DESIGN

Acting on a very good suggestion from Mr. Sirois, I have attempted to thoroughly document the production of these first three broadsides, and it seems appropriate to post those photographs here on the IDE(A/O)(B)LOG(Y/UE) along with a written description of how they were made—or of what went wrong—however you want to look at it.

Whenever I start a new project, I try to think through the common assumptions that we all (or myself mostly) make about certain objects and/or the way that those objects function. When I first thought of doing broadsides, my mind first went to the ones that I have done in the past (for the Dolphin Press at MICA), and to other really nice ones that I have seen. I realized that there were basically two types of broadsides: 1) all text, elegantly composed and typeset, or 2) that same well-composed text plus some sort of “appropriate” image. Sometimes the text and image will be integrated in some way, but usually they are not. There is a long, fine tradition of work of these two types and new, wonderful examples are produced by presses around the world on a regular basis. So no need for me to do that as well.

How then to approach the broadside in a way different than the “text + image” formula? In order to figure out a (provisional, as always) answer I looked at the assumption that the formula rested upon; that is, that the broadside is a two-dimensional, single page expression of a text. Within that basic definition of the broadside there are three separate claims to consider:

1) The text as a thing that exists separately from the broadside itself. That a broadside must have some sort of text—if not, then it’s a print, right? Okay, so we’ll keep the text. Not that I would ever really want to give it up.

2) The broadside is a single page. It could be some sort of diptych or triptych or multi-panel piece, but that seems awkward and is edging towards a book on the wall, and if I am going to make a book, even a two-page one, I do not want to put it on the wall. (But could one go in some sort of Warholian direction with that?) So the single page remains.

3) The broadside is two-dimensional. The strange philosophical/phenomenological distinction between 2D and 3D (both of which do and do not exist in the world, it’s all 4D) is one that I find to be infinitely fruitful. One of the reasons that I find books so fascinating is that they are objects that move continuously between 2D (pages), 3D (the object in total), and 4D (the text-object as experienced in time). So that same idea can be carried into the broadside through a method extrapolated from some of the NewLights altered books—the articulation of a sheet of paper as a three-dimensional object (which it is, and is not) through delamination (cutting into and peeling away the layers of a sheet of paper).

After arriving at that general idea for an approach to the form, the next step was finding the content. I contacted a few different writers whose work I admire, that I have worked with before, and/or who knew and felt connected to my work. Justin, Brian, and John were the first three to answer. I proposed generally what I wanted to do and they sent back pieces that they felt could mesh with the process. When I approach a text with the purpose of deconstructing-actualizing (just thought that combo up) it, I try to locate some point in the text, some nexus or cluster of potential that can be opened up to maximize the meaning-potential of the (never) total object that I intend to make. The key is to access those potential readings in a way that transfers that access and its generative possibilities to the potential readers.

So I constructed a process (which will be explained in full) that simultaneously generates and is generated by the potential objects, that integrates with and runs in contrast to the texts being utilized, that imagines the text-object-process as a chaotically contingent bloom of the action of meaning.

I knew what I was going to do, and how I was going to do it. I did not know how it would end. It started with these first three digital layouts, all developed in concert with one another and with the authors’ input:

TEXT-OBJECT-PROCESS: PRINTING, or LET’S GET PHYSICAL

(First a quick note: please excuse the blurriness and/or changes in lighting on these process photos. I took them on the fly, throughout the course of many long days, under many different weather/lighting conditions.)

The next step was to make those digital files into photopolymer plates, so that I could print the basic layout (the letters in white, the negative space around them in black) quickly and accurately on a Vandercook. From the pictures below you can see the press and some of the plates. I tried to make these broadsides as big as I could on that press.

TEXT-OBJECT-PROCESS: PRINTING & CUTTING

After all of the letters were on the pages, I moved the operation to a different theater, my home studio. The next step is the one that contained most of the action—the simultaneous cutting and printing of the letters. Using a xacto knife, I cut around each letter, about 2/3 of the way into the sheet of paper. My other hand was inked up as I cut, leaving prints over the formerly empty shapes of the letters. They were two rounds of printing/cutting, one for the titles in red and one for the main texts in black.

TEXT-OBJECT-PROCESS: AN UNPLANNED DIGRESSION

It was after the printing of the black that I ran into my first (and only real) problem—some of the letters were being completely covered by the finger/hand prints, so I could not see the outlines in order to cut them. There was no way to reprint the letters, so I decided to make a stencil so that I could redraw the letters over top of the ink. It made sense to use the films that I made the plates from, seeing as how they were a) plastic, and b) a perfect match.



After the stencils were complete (for now) I redrew the letters where they were needed and finished cutting (sans inked hand, so as not to repeat the covering problem ad infinitum).