south by southwest
BookLab II has a new look with a great scroll of coverage on the top page. Its an important portal for the book arts community.
divider
The AIC Certification proposal appeared assured of membership certification. The uncertain appeared a fringe 15%, and we all, separately, cringed with a sense of isolation. Now, on the listserv exchanges, we appear to be thoughtful dissenters that are suggesting resilience and self certification in a busy world. Perhaps discertification unites us.
hybrid book
“Please join us, a diverse group of artists, designers, educators, publishers and collectors, to discuss the potential of book arts and its multi and interdisciplinary dimensions and to experience examples of this art that are sure to please, excite, move, and confound.”
Just now in the intermingling of book arts educators at the
Art, Fact and Artifact conference, we can also anticipate the
Hybrid Book conference at the University of the Arts. Will the book be a plug-in or true hybrid, electric in town and combustion on the highway? And what about the highway infrastructure of cultural transmission?
Over 230 book arts educators showed up for the present event. This must be a sidebar to the amazing growth of SHARP as all kinds of advocates for the wider future of the book layout their agendas and working careers.
gaming
“There is no other medium that produces so pure a cultural segregation as video games, so clean-cut a division between the audience and the non-audience. Books, films, TV, dance, theatre, music, painting, photography, sculpture, all have publics which either are or arenít interested in them, but at least know that these forms exist, that things happen in them in which people who are interested in them are interested. They are all part of our current cultural discourse. Video games arenít.” John Lanchester from
Lorcan Demsey
Innovative portabilities of the cell phone and video game excursion into imaginary terrain tell us about the advent of new book like experience. The GPS augmented hand-held adventures into physical terrain while the video game examines the lost and found nature of excursions. Paper books have accomplished this guidebook function but electronic media glamorize the travel.