Spanish artists Luzinterruptus seized the Square with their illuminated book installation for The Light in Winter 2012. Read about their time in Melbourne at luzinterruptus.com
(via bookron)
September 17th, 2012
August 9th, 2012
c16 calligraphic collage (Taken with Instagram)
July 18th, 2012
The Art of Google Books
Somewhere between medieval marginalia and the Google Street View based works of Jon Rafman and Doug Rickard lies The Art of Google Books.
The manuscript digitization process, along with the gestures of the scanning archivist’s hand, and the idiosynchracies of the printed page, can occasionally lead to strange and beautiful new images—”re-photographs” as described by Krissy Wilson, the creator of the blog.
The rephotography I am talking about is what happens when you take a photograph of a photograph — the idea that, were one to take a photo of the Mona Lisa, you would not have a copy of the Mona Lisa, but a photograph, authored by the photographer. I see the images produced by Google Books employees as photographs, in that sense.
The above is a selection of recent discoveries:
1. Marble paper endsheets, from the Bavarian State Library, digitized January 26, 2010.
2. “Poor scanning creates text whirlpool,” from Oxford University, digitized August 2, 2006.
3. Hand Transit, via microecos.
4. Extreme text-stretch, submitted by microscopic.
5. “Who is to blame (for this distortion)?” from the University of California, digitized July 13, 2007.
6. Armand Seguin, Les fleurs du mal, 1892, as found on the digital cover of Dario Gamboni’s Potential images: ambiguity and indeterminacy in modern art, via mythologyofblue.
7. Elaborately designed endpapers digitized in high contrast, from the University of Michigan, digitized May 29, 2007.
8. “Apparently the front and back cover of the book.” from the Bavarian State Library, digitized September 27, 2011.
9. Intermittent autolinking on the title page, from the Bavarian State Library, digitized February 6, 2012.
10. Aurora Borealis plate with neon color distortion, from the New York Public Library, digitized February 2, 2009.To submit your own “unexpected peculiarities” found in Google Books, or to browse the archive beyond the above selection, visit theartofgooglebooks.tumblr.com.
i like this concept of rephotography. kind of like reproductive engravings, just more modern.
(via bookron)
May 7th, 2012
what’s on the menu?” and similar projects “could potentially be the building blocks of a new kind of library,” anthony marx, the library’s president, told _the chronicle_ in an e-mail. “by rethinking the way we present our collections to the public and making them deeply interactive, we are extending the reach of the research libraries more than ever before.
from breaking down menus digitally, dish by dish (in the chronicle of higher education)
April 10th, 2012
March 14th, 2012
think this is an octavo? or a duodecimo?
(according to soupsoup, the “second coolest iphone case i’ve ever seen.“ <— click on caption to get to product site)
March 13th, 2012
the mla has come up with a standard citation format for tweets. as alexis points out, the lack of a url (i.e., permalink) requirement is quite puzzling, the kind of thing that suggests the people who make this stuff up are a bit disconnected from reality.
venturebeat reports that the encyclopaedia britannica has been “wiped out by wikipedia” — a sentiment that the appended video hopes to refute, i’m sure, but which reiterates the importance that crowd-sourced, constantly updated information gathering has begun to take on vis-a-vis top-down curated knowledge presentation (especially if presented in fancy multi-volume form with leather bindings).
(Source: venturebeat.com)
March 12th, 2012
instagram announces android version
yessssssssssssssssss.
March 10th, 2012
think of all those boring cloth or buckram bindings, brought to life with paint!
March 8th, 2012
short film of the day: A fascinating short film about how the now-iconic “keep calm and carry on” wwii propaganda poster went unseen by the public for decades before being [re]discovered and distributed by a small secondhand bookshop in alnwick, northumberland, called barter books.
ps: i so want to work at this bookshop… the toy trains! the old waiting room! the fireplace! zomg.
(Source: thedailywhat)
supposedly an alley of books in boston (by rare book room). where was this when i lived there??
do you ever read the same book twice?
(bibliofila, via facebook)
March 7th, 2012
March 6th, 2012
the 25 billionth app downloaded from apple...
… was downloaded by someone chinese.
… was called “where’s my water” (no jokes).
… was rewarded with a $10,000 itunes gift certificate. what do you even do with that much fake money?!?
