Dennis MoserDennis Moser is currently an Associate Professor of Information Science and the Head, Alaska and Polar Regions Collections and Archives at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. His prior training and work in rare book conservation at institutions such as the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center of the University of Texas, Austin, and the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C., have afforded him the opportunity to work with and examine a wide range of rare books and special collections. As a visual artist, he has worked with historical and experimental photographic process, as well as the Japanese marbling technique of suminagashi, to create hybrid book creations. As a performing musician, his work in virtual streaming live music led him to explore — and perform in — the areas of augmented and virtual reality and looking at how these technologies might be utilized in artists' books has become an area of his academic research.
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'Between Page and Screen': More than a Love Story
The printed book’s long history has been one of tremendous flexibility and accommodation to some quite profound technical challenges. Looking at the book as an information “device,” the transition to digital production and digital delivery can be viewed as inevitable; considering it as an information “object,” the transition to the digital realm is still unfolding and holds considerable promise of a continuing rich history.
The artists’ book is a perfect example of the evolution from a purely analogue information object to a digital information object to a distinctly hybrid information object. As physical analog objects, artist’s books have historically incorporated other visual art forms such as sculpture, painting, various forms of printmaking, and photography. Today, they incorporate an increasing number of digital technologies that demonstrate their hybrid nature in new ways. Exploring a number of examples, we will examine the specifics of how each reflects shifts in technology that suggest future directions for the artists’ book. The emergence of the network as a medium, allowing the congruence of traditional media and social media to be incorporated into the book is but one such manifestation of the new directions being taken.
Starting with the historic collaboration of William Gibson, Dennis Ashbaugh, and Kevin Begos, Jr, “Agrippa (a book of the dead)” from 1992, continuing with physical examples, including the joint project of Amaranth Borsuk and Brad Bouse in 2012, “Between Page and Screen,” and several recent offerings, including Scorpion Dagger’s “Do You Like Relaxing” and Wiggle Planet’s “Peck Peck’s Journey,” the book as a hybrid incarnation of “ebook” and physical object will be examined. We will conclude with some considerations on the impact these changes have on the audiences of these works, and how collecting individuals and institutions are responding.
The artists’ book is a perfect example of the evolution from a purely analogue information object to a digital information object to a distinctly hybrid information object. As physical analog objects, artist’s books have historically incorporated other visual art forms such as sculpture, painting, various forms of printmaking, and photography. Today, they incorporate an increasing number of digital technologies that demonstrate their hybrid nature in new ways. Exploring a number of examples, we will examine the specifics of how each reflects shifts in technology that suggest future directions for the artists’ book. The emergence of the network as a medium, allowing the congruence of traditional media and social media to be incorporated into the book is but one such manifestation of the new directions being taken.
Starting with the historic collaboration of William Gibson, Dennis Ashbaugh, and Kevin Begos, Jr, “Agrippa (a book of the dead)” from 1992, continuing with physical examples, including the joint project of Amaranth Borsuk and Brad Bouse in 2012, “Between Page and Screen,” and several recent offerings, including Scorpion Dagger’s “Do You Like Relaxing” and Wiggle Planet’s “Peck Peck’s Journey,” the book as a hybrid incarnation of “ebook” and physical object will be examined. We will conclude with some considerations on the impact these changes have on the audiences of these works, and how collecting individuals and institutions are responding.