Center For Book Technology
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Welcome
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“For centuries a small number of writers were confronted by many thousands of readers. This changed toward the end of the last century. With the increasing extension of the press, which kept placing new political, religious, scientific, professional, and local organs before the readers, an increasing number of readers became writers – at first, occasional ones. It began with the daily press opening to its readers space for “letters to the editor.” And today there is hardly a gainfully employed European who could not, in principle, find an opportunity to publish somewhere or other comments on his work, grievances, documentary reports, or that sort of thing. Thus, the distinction between author and public is about to lose its basic character. The difference becomes merely functional; it may vary from case to case. At any moment the reader is ready to turn into a writer. As expert, which he had to become willy-nilly in an extremely specialized work process, even if only in some minor respect, the reader gains access to authorship...Literary license is now founded on polytechnic rather than specialized training and thus becomes common property.” ——Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media, Harvard University Press, ISBN 0-674-02445-1
Introduction/Explaination(s)
The Center for Book Technology is a resource for publishing and producing limited edition books and publications. The CFBT is interested in producing books as efficiently and cost effective as possible, while retaining a respect to the finished piece. Solicited content conceived within a "conversational-autonommy" design aesthetic. The Center For Book Technology project will take on two forms. The first being the bound pages—the second will be the collected work within downloadable files and continued conversation within an Internet based presence. PDF files will be contained within the pages of this Wiki.
The CFBT is modeled after(list on-going): George P. Landow SST Records, William Morris, Ed Ruscha, Moveable Type, Johannes Gutenberg, Georeges Perec, Oulipo, Mies van der Rohe, Dischord Records, Walter Benjamin, Open Source, Jacques Ranciere, Dischord Records
What We Do
The Center for Book Technology wants to apply creation through Internet application and transpose that working model within the printed and bound pages of the book. The collaboration between author and designer(s)—takes on the second form of narration—and creates a metatext—this metatext between image, text, and production becomes the vessel for reading into text and image.
The CFBT was started with the hope of developing an operating system of invited contributions to a larger library—this collected volume will the the culmination of multiple authors and designers. Each book is part of a larger whole. Each author is invited to write on any interest. The design is based on a set standard of rules, with illustration based on the designers 'read' of the text. Based on Internet generated resources, the illustrative contribution will subjugated to web search engine and a retrieval system technology. The CFBT will be based within material available through Fair Use.
The Center for Book Technology wants to investigate the gesture of producing texts. For the CFBT—the same action that produces written content—produces a the paired image. The questions to be asked: 1) When paired with its linguistic counter part, when does the image read ‘complete.’ 2) What is the role of “correlative sign-work’’? (Ball and Smith 48) 3) Can the image live without the text? 4) Can the text live without the image? 5) What is read?
Image
The CFBT is navigating the conversation between image and text within its produced works. The solicitation from the CFBT is for written works (text). The image is produced through web search engine and retrieval system technologies. The aforementioned questions: 1) When paired with its linguistic descriptor, when does the image read ‘complete.’2) What is the role of “correlative sign-work (juxtaposition)’’ (Ball and Smitn) when placed within a text? 3) Can the image live without the text? 4) Can the text live without the image? 5) What is read?. Provide for intensive study by the CFBT and its handling of image. Techniques on handling this image/text relationship will remain in study through out the project. In regard to Cinema vs. Photographic image, an alignment begins with suggestion from theorist Edgar Morin, suggesting: "Reciprocally, cinematographic reflections and shadows are themselves supports of corporealization and reality. The real original is perceived, but through its double."—The Cinema Or The Imaginary Man (1956). For the CFBT and how the digital image is treated as content, the digital image becomes the double and presents itself as such for pairing with content.
All solicited work for the Center For Book Technology will be created within a pre-determined time cycle. Each author will be given a 30-day time frame from initial solicitation to delivered piece. This constrictive time frame acts as a catalyst for quick decision-making and fast production. Each author’s production schedule is specific to the authored piece and its assemblage of congruent images.
Text
As Barthes describes as the Level of Description: "From the onset, linguistics furnishes the structural analysis of narrative with a concept which is decisive in that, making explicit immediately what is essential in every system of meaning, namely its organization, it allows us both to show how a narrative is not a simple sum of propositions and to classify the enormous mass of elements which go to make up a narrative." Aforementioned handling of text reveals that the metatext created between supplied text and image will be of interest to the development of the CFBT.
The guidelines:
- The Center For Book Technology acts as the initiator for collected work.
- The Center For Book Technology will operate under an ideology that all pieces will become a resource as much as a finished work. These pieces will work as an opportunity for authorship of instant ideas, quick theory, and unrehearsed or tested declarations. All works are to be viewed as an extension of moments of discovery and dedicated ideas, physically locked into the bound pages of the book and in the open space of the Internet.
- The author will receive a copy and a second will be added to the Center For Book Technology Library.
- There will be no dedicated page count—texts continue where others cease. There is no reason why these individual volumes can not act as moments of shared experience between author—designer—and reader.
- Each participant will be asked to continue discussion the Center For Book Technology wiki—allowing for collaborative and unfinished work to continue.
- There is no final editor within this work. Each author participates with the intent of adding to the collected body of work.
Who We Are
The Center For Book Technology.
Current Showcased Authors/Designers
Current Works
- The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction—Adpt. #1 2010
- The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction—Graphic Design 310 #2. 2010
- Junior Show" #2. 2010
- Electronic Prose" #3. 2010
- Mona Lisa 0985 #4. 2010
- Mona Lisa 0985 (Excerpt) #4. 2010
- Girl With The Pearl Earring #4.1. 2010
- Girl With The Pearl Earring (Excerpt) #4. 2010
- Burying the Future With the Past" #5. 2006
- A Sequential Reader" #6. 2010
