Hacking The Book

Su Blackwell, Out Of Narnia (2009)(Blackwell holds the copyright; image used here solely for purposes of commentary, i.e., non-commercial).

The more digital our world becomes, the more we remember to cherish its physicality.  Not in a fetishistic way, or with antiquarian longing, but in a visceral, "cut to the gut" joy...we sculpt with our slow food, we mash up our music, we slice and dice our tweets and chats....
....and our books, oh my yes, we may read on a countless array of screens, yet still return to the printed page and its binding... as works of art in their own right.
Thinking of an upsurge over the past decade of mixed-media, hand-crafted works involving books, sometimes building on the tradition of "the artist's book," in other cases stemming more from scrapbooking practices, and in others from the principles of collage and iconoclasm saturating the Internet.   Su Blackwell transports us into the world within the book.  (Click here for more).  Last July we blogged about Lisa Occhipinti and her re-envisioning of the book as object.  (Click here).  Gabe Cyr's Mixed-Media Books: Dozens of Experiments In Altering Books is a lovely collection.   (Click here). 
Other resources:  Printed Matter, Inc. (click here).   The Contemporary Artists' Books Conference (click here).   1,000 Artists' Books: Exploring The Book As Art by Peter & Donna Thomas and Sandra Salamony (click here).    The Center for Book Arts (click here).   Daniel A. Rabuzzi is author of the fantasy novel "The Choir Boats," available from ChiZine Publications in September 2009.
"The Choir Boats" explores issues of race, gender, sin, and salvation, and includes a mysterious letter, knuckledogs, carkodrillos, smilax root,
goat stew, and one very fierce golden cat.

(www.danielarabuzzi.com). Daniel blogs at Lobster & Canary about speculative fiction, poetry, history and the arts.