art, fact, and artifact
"The art of the book has been at once visionary and documentary, imagining a future that has yet to exist while finding inspiration from the resources of the past. The first biennial conference of the College Book Art Association seeks to bridge the worlds of book art, book history, cultural criticism, and curatorial work through appreciation of the book as an aesthetic sensorium."
Matt Brown
The College Book Art Association Biennial Conference,
Art, Fact, and Artifact: The Book in Time and Place will occur January 8-10, 2009. The conference will be hosted by the University of Iowa Center for the Book. Presentation Proposals due June 1, 2008.
Iowa has more to offer than the firery heat of summer as presented in the 2005 Changing Book conference. Try us in January. Be there and be square.
books threatened by new format
Early in the 18th century journals, newspapers and other periodicals emerged to capture the attention of readers. Book and stationers shops were suddenly magazine stores and newspaper stands appeared in the streets. Coffee houses opened in London where readers scanned the freshest dispatches. New scholarly journals enlivened communication and debate.
But books continued to flourish alongside the new format and in context with new readership. Books flourished as a complement of the changes.
"The implications of communications technologies will, of course, be wide ranging and significant, but they are unlikely to be monolithic or hegemonic. They can best be understood and mastered with an appropriate knowledge of the cultural dynamics involved, and an appreciation of their appropriations by users as well as their impositions on them. History can make a contribution to this debate."
Adrian Johns
secret and overt
Our own
Emily Martin is revealed as a book artist of secret powers in the excellent exhibit
Secrets and Lies.
Alex Appella of
Transient Books is the winner of the Purchase Prize.
inert
"Although the locus of scholarly discourse is slowly but clearly moving from bound/printed pages to networked screens, we’ve yet to reach the tipping point. The printed book is still the gold standard of the academy."
if:book
Notice the loaded language of screen reading advocates. (Of course, we do the same.) Notice that "gold"suggests inert, though well regarded, "bound" suggests intellectually confined, 'tipping point' suggests screen reading will suddenly win big, and "academy" suggests backward looking. And "slowly but clearly moving from" wishfully projects that screen reading and print reading are functionally equivalent. Defining only to discount is not helpful.
|
