Moon River: Books

Reality is...

Sat, 02 Sep 2006 20:31:42 GMT

Jean Baudrillard

"Reality itself founders in hyperrealism, the meticulous reduplication of the real, preferably through another, reproductive medium, such as photography. From medium to medium, the real is volatilized, becoming an allegory of death. But it is also, in a sense, reinforced through its own destruction. It becomes reality for its own sake, the fetishism of the lost object: no longer the object of representation, but the ecstasy of denial and of its own ritual extermination: the hyperreal. Realism had already inaugurated this process.
AXEL HÜTTE, Covbile de Pizza, Venezia, 1988-1989, Color coupler print

The rhetoric of the real signaled its gravely altered status (its golden age was characterized by an innocence of language in which it was not obliged to redouble what it said with a reality effect). Surrealism remained within the purview of the realism it contested - but also redoubled - through its rupture with the Imaginary. The hyperreal represents a much more advanced stage insofar as it manages to efface even this contradiction between the real and the imaginary. Unreality no longer resides in the dream or fantasy, or in the beyond, but in the real's hallucinatory resemblance to itself.

An excerpt from "Symbolic Exchange and Death," originally published in Paris, in 1976.

A Humument - A Human Document

Mon, 21 Aug 2006 10:20:42 GMT

A HUMUMENT is a work in progress by Artist Tom Phillips (whom i find out about via thingsmagazine), who started his treatment of W.H. Mallock's Victorian novel "A Human Document" (published in 1892), in the mid sixties and an initial complete version was privately published by the Tetrad Press in 1970. The Thames and Hudson's first trade edition in 1980 made it a cult classic. It was seen to be a defining product of post modernism linking traditions as various as medieval illumination, experimental poetry and non-linear narrative with the procedures of modern art. I have 'fallen' in to his Art only last night, and I want to share this with who ever you might be, that is visiting here. For me this have a Biomorphic-Chartographic as well as poetic and aesthetic affinities. more

via thingsmagazine

גיאוגרפיה של העתיד

Sun, 06 Aug 2006 20:13:28 GMT

לעיתים אני חושב בהנאה (באופן חצוי) על האפשרות העתידית של גיאוגרפיה של תודעת עצמינו. על-פי שיטתי, ההיסטוריון העתידי של תחושותינו יוכל אולי לצמצם את גישתו לתודעת נפשו שלו לכדי מדע מדוייק. בינתיים אנו מתקדמים בעיקרון באמנות קשה זו - שהיא עדיין בגדר אמנות: כימיה של תחושות שלעת עתה מצוייה בשלב אלכימי.

מדען זה של מחרתיים יהיה בעל דקדקנות מיוחדת כלפי חייו הפנימיים.

עמודים 304-305

ספר אי הנחת

פרננדו פסואה

תרגום לעברית: יורם מלצר

book of stars

Wed, 12 Jul 2006 07:47:43 GMT

"There´s Heavens inside buidings, there´s Heavens inside the pages of books.
There´s Heavens above us. We can see the constellations, the winds,the cosmos if we search well."

sais magic fly paula in her Book of Stars

Above our cities there is the sky. Above our cities we can found the stars, planets, constellations,galaxies. Don't forget your place in the Universe.

Apocryphal maps

The 3,600 year old Sky Disk of Nebra is the world's oldest image of the cosmos... see more:

Tribute to Giordano Bruno.( 1548-1600 )

literature-map

Mon, 22 May 2006 22:04:36 GMT

Gnooks is a self-adapting community system based on the gnod engine. Discover new writers you will like, travel the map. of literature and discuss your favorite books and authors.

the literature-map is a part of gnooks

franz kafka map
*The closer two writers are, the more likely someone will like both of them.

books iconography part IV

Sun, 21 May 2006 20:08:44 GMT

Giuseppe CRESPI, Bookshelves c. 1725
Oil on canvas. Civico Museo Bibliografico Musicale, Bologna

The Librarian

Sun, 21 May 2006 13:29:14 GMT

Giuseppe Arcimboldo - The Librarian (1566)

MUSE and RESTRAINET

Wed, 03 May 2006 19:32:22 GMT

"People think of art as pictures, an experience beyond words. They may never know how recently painting grew apart from text..Right into the Renaissance, manuscripts teemed with images. In the world between two hands, shared by only a reader and an anonymous artist, art held individual experience rather than public spectacle." text taken from: Picture books John Haber

LUKAS FELZMANN Dictionary

"All over the world, images grew apart from the architecture of a page, but very slowly. ..The change came in fifteenth-century Europe, and it took people getting used to painting, from portrait panels and altars. Book illustrations at last turn into windows, rectangles conceived apart from the text and marginal decoration...Even then, painting remained all about text. It told stories about God or mortals, and its method had a lot in common with a rebus..So painting started out as a kind of animated gif."

LUKAS FELZMANN. From "Open Series", Installation with objects, photographs and text at the Ansel Adams Center/ Friends of Photography

LUKAS FELZMANN "Library" - The Headlands Center for the Arts, 1991
Installation with motorized pendulum, books and photographs

"Reduced to a single frame of the gif, the storyteller found a glorious silence. That silence for its own sake is what the average person today means by fine art. Picture books are for children. Thanks to Postmodernism, however, art is once again becoming child's play. Is it a matter of stories, words, or nostalgia for the hand made? Is it an allegory, and of what?"

Artist Nicholas Galanin explores his own Thingit culture and art derived from the people of Alaska. Creating forms of faces from books, Galanin brings a new medium to the art form of sculpture. Link. via makezine

"Yet books refuse to let go. They compile, interpret, and catalog signs; they describe and contain a world."

Hydrolibros-Carved wooden books covered with earth from different river and ocean shores are embedded with natural matter from each site to create 'words' and 'paragraphs', forming an international ecological language.

River of Seeds, Volume III, 1991 This book is covered with red earth from the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico. Imbedded in the pulverized sandstone are small pine cones and a stream of tiny seeds, ready to nourish a new generation.
Sage Volume I, 1989 Created in Taos, NM Red earth, sage, carved wooden book

Anselm Kiefer The secret life of plants (La vie secrète des plantes) 2002
lead collage

"Anselm Kiefer takes the hand-made book for civilization's forgotten history...For artists in love with the hand made, text is again something fearsome and yet something to be transcended. It made me wonder again about Western art and private readers. They grew up together and grew apart, and what happened then? Why did the metaphor of art as text catch on recently, and why do artists keep returning to its limits?..Modern art already recovers a love of text. For Russian art, words meant a revolution. For Dada art learned happily to mix propaganda posters with Cubism. René Magritte stuck all the wrong words into the modern still-life. "

John Haber 'By the Book'

Invisible Cities

Sun, 30 Apr 2006 07:12:45 GMT

This entry is dedicated to the web - A huge Invisible entity of clusters and cities and worlds and it's inhabitants.

This ancient scroll is an artistic rendering of the early history of networking and ARAPNET, celebrating the key people who created it. The scroll was produced by Roland Bryan, himself an ARPANET pioneer at University of California Santa Barbara.

Acuatic Space © Oscar Guzmán

"All this so that Marco Polo could explain or imagine explaining or be imagined explaining or succeed finally explaining to himself that what he sought was something lying ahead, and even if it was a matter of the past, it was a past that changed gradually as he advanced on his journey, because the traveler's past changes according to the route he has followed: not the immediate past, that is, to which each day that goes by adds a day, but the more remote past. Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreigness of what you no longer are or you no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places." - Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

Glen Small. Vertical City 1965-1967

"It is easy to get lost in Eudoxia: but when you concentrate and stare at the carpet, you recognise the strets you were seeking in a crimson or indigo or magenta thread which on a wide loop brings you to a purple enclosure that is your real destination. Every inhabitant of Eudoxia compares the carpet's immobile order with its own image of the city, an anguish of his own, and each can find, concealed among the arabesques, an answer, the story of his life, the twists of fate" Italo Calvino from Invisible Cities

HN30 was commissioned by KN for HN's 30th birthday. It is two illustrations for Trude and Ersilia from Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, by rodcorp

"In Ersilia, to establish the relationships that sustain the city’s life, the inhabitants stretch strings from the corners of the houses, white or black or gray or black-and-white according to whether they mark a relationship of blood, of trade, or authority, agency. When the strings become so numerous that you can no longer pass among them, the inhabitants leave: the houses are dismantled; only the strings and their supports remain. From a mountainside, camping with their household goods, Ersilia’s refugees look at the labyrinth of taut strings and poles that rise in the plain. That is the city of Ersilia still, and they are nothing.

They rebuild Ersilia elsewhere. They weave a similar pattern of strings which they would like to be more complex and at the same time more regular than the other. Then they abandon it and take themselves and their houses still farther away.

Thus, when travelling in the territory of Ersilia, you come upon the ruins of the abandoned cities, without the walls which do not last, without the bones of the dead which the wind rolls away: spiderwebs of intricate relationships seeking a form." Italo Calvino from Invisible Cities

Oscar Guzmán The City of Galvez

"If on arriving at Trude I had not read the city’s name written in big letters, I would have thought I was landing at the same airport from which I had taken off. The suburbs they drove me through were no different from the others, with the same greenish and yellowish houses. Following the same signs we swung around the same flower beds in the same squares. The downtown streets displayed goods, packages,signs that had not changed at all. This was the first time I had come to Trude, but I already knew the hotel where I happened to be lodged; I had already heard andspoken my dialogues with the buyers and sellers of hardware; I had ended other days identically,looking through the same goblets at the same swaying navels.

Why come to Trude? I asked myself. And I already wanted to leave.

"You can resume your flight whenever you like," they said to me, "but you will arrive at another Trude, absolutely the same, detail by detail. The world is covered by a sole Trude which does not begin and does not end. Only the name of the airport changes." Italo Calvino from Invisible Cities

Konstantin Gorbatov The Invisible City of Kitezh (1913)

100 Best Opening Lines from Novels

Thu, 13 Apr 2006 16:08:47 GMT

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair". — Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)

From The American Book Review -100 Best First Lines from Novels.

via orbis-quintus

NONSENSE BOOKS

Thu, 06 Apr 2006 19:12:42 GMT

NONSENSE BOOKS By Edward Lear.

The Fizzgiggious Fish...

There was an old Person of Cromer,
Who stood on one leg to read Homer;
When he found he grew stiff, he jumped over the cliff,
Which concluded that Person of Cromer. (via plep)

'Marvels of the East'

Sat, 18 Mar 2006 21:16:50 GMT

Lertices and Blemmyae from the 'Marvels of the East', in a Scientific Miscellany

This manuscript contains a calendar, a map of the world, astronomical materials, and and other texts of scientific and religious knowledge... (on the strange inhabitants of other parts of the world you can see more detail here).
It is Written in Old English and Latin, it is one of the most lavishly illustrated secular books of the early middle ages. Nonetheless, its origins are not easily determined. Its features point to Canterbury, Winchester and Gloucester, with current opinion supporting Christ Church, Canterbury. How it was used is unknown: it is so unique nothing compares with it. In the 12th century it belonged to the library of Battle Abbey. One of the most entertaining if not interesting 'scientific' treatises of the early middle ages, the 'Marvels of the East' draws upon ancient Greek and Roman traditions of writing on the exotic inhabitants of foreign lands. Here above is famous blemmyae, eight-foot square, headless men with eyes and mouths in their breasts.

Farther reading: Monsters at the Edges of the World: Medieval Visions of the East

'Dehumanisation of Humanity'

Fri, 17 Mar 2006 11:38:03 GMT

"...I was born in a so-called civilised society that kills everything that is human and tries to make everything saleable, beastly, naked, dark, vulgar and worthless. I should have been born in a different time where I could have been a good and pure human who could have earned a meaning by living a human life where I would not have been merely staying alive! Where I would not have 'lostlife in living'. But I am here and I am in now and must say I feel a foreigner to this civilisation (in the east, west, north, south, up, down, left and right of it). Because I see its vulgarity, I see its insanity, I see its lunacy, I see its waste. I myself alone cannot change it. But this ought to be changed (made better) for the sake of humankind. And what ought to be changed, that must be changed. What ought to be and must be changed, that can be changed. And if anything can be changed, that should be changed and it will be changed..."
The Dehumanisation of Humanity by Munayem Mayenin

via loveecstasycrime, wood s lot

Borges & quantum mechanics

Fri, 17 Mar 2006 08:43:44 GMT

"In the world of Ts’ui Pen, all possible outcomes occur; each one is the point of departure for other forkings. Sometimes, the paths of the labyrinth converge: for example, you arrive at this house, but in the possible pasts you are my enemy, in another, my friend… [Ts’ui Pen] did not believe in a uniform, absolute time. He believed in an infinite series of times, in a growing dizzying net of divergent, convergent and parallel times. This network of times which approached one another, forked, broke off, or were unaware of one another for centuries, embraces all possibilities of time. We do not exit in the majority of these times; in some you exist, and not I; in others I, and not you; in others, both of us." The Garden of Forking Paths - Jorge Luis Borges

A quoting i liked from a book by Seth Lloyd, "Programming the Universe : A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes On the Cosmos" that I've read in the excellent blog: orbis-quintus

Reading machines — past and future

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 18:15:01 GMT

This early modern reading machine was designed by Agostino Ramelli who published the idea in his Le diverse et artificiose machine del Capitano Agostina Ramelli in 1588. It was apparently never built in the early modern period itself, but rumour has it that Daniel Libeskind built a version for the Biennale in Venice in 1985.

The machine consists of a big wheel that can house several books, and which can be turned in order to bring the right book in front of the reader’s eyes. Ramelli writes:

"This is a beautiful and ingenious machine, very useful and convenient for anyone who takes pleasure in study, especially those who are indisposed and tormented by gout. For with this machine a man can see and turn through a large number of books without moving from one spot. Moreover, it has another fine convenience in that it occupies very little space in the place where it is set, as anyone of intelligence can clearly see from the drawing."

Some see this reading machine as the forerunner of the modern computer. The funny thing is that the latest developments in the field of computer screens are paradoxically directed towards the emulation of the old-fashioned sheet of paper. Philips and Polymer Vision are developing the Readius: a screen so thin and flexible that you can roll it up and put it in your pocket, like a scroll of paper. Ideal for reading e-books on.

via

Mythical Kingdom of William Faulkner. [Map of Yoknapatawpha County]

Wed, 15 Feb 2006 13:03:46 GMT

William Faulkner. [Map of Yoknapatawpha County]

William Faulkner was born on September 25, 1897, in New Albany, Mississippi. Soon the family moved to Ripley, Mississippi, but by the time William was five, they were settled in Oxford, the county seat of Lafayette County.

The layout of the real Lafayette County became, in Faulkner's imagination, the basic outline of Yoknapatawpha County: the same rectangular space divided by roads, rivers, and a railroad into four quadrants, divided further by diagonal secondary roads.

Faulkner drew two maps of this territory, one to accompany the first edition of Absalom, Absalom! in 1936, and the second more condensed and including the titles of his Yoknapatawpha novels in big capitals, prepared in 1946 for the Viking Portable Faulkner. Both indicate that Faulkner is the creator of the region, either the ׂsole owner and proprietor׃ or the person responsible for the surveying and mapping.

Of all Faulknerױs novels, by far the majority are concerned with Yoknapatawpha County and its people. Read More

via incoming signals

SPIRAL LANDSCAPE and TOPOGRAPHIC TEXT of the BOOK of ISAIAH

Thu, 19 Jan 2006 17:07:58 GMT

visual poetry-

A series of sketches where one can read Isaiah mapped on a virtual landscape.

Ariel Malka is a designer and programmer from Tel-Aviv, working freelance on a wide range of new-media projects. Occasionally teaching at Camera Obscura School of Art, he spends most of his spare time developing the concept of chronotext.

Given a certain acquaintance with the Metaphysics of Spirals, it is possible to represent a landscape using one single continuous line...

Naturally using the underlying spiral as a medium for the text: The Book of Isaiah, Chapter 40.

This book is the only Dead Sea Scroll found in its entirety and chapter 40 deals with the return of exile, from Babylon to Jerusalem, through the wilderness.

Starting to look for readability solutions...
In this sketch, it is possible to read the whole chapter by positioning the camera at the zenith.

All this images can be viewed and experienced within the program designed by Ariel Malca, all you

need is a Java Applet that can safely be downloaded, follow the instructions

via time is Art

The Diary of a Nobody

Tue, 27 Dec 2005 20:38:54 GMT

Diary of a Nobody. A Victorian satire in diary form.

"Why should I not publish my diary? I have often seen
reminiscences of people I have never even heard of,
and I fail to see -- because I do not happen to be
a 'Somebody' -- why my diary should not be interesting.
My only regret is that I did not commence it
when I was a youth. " - Charles Pooter 1892.

The Invisible Library

Mon, 21 Nov 2005 09:49:02 GMT

The Invisible Library is a collection of books that only appear in other books. Within the library's catalog you will find imaginary books, pseudobiblia, artifictions, fabled tomes, libris phantastica, and all manner of books unwritten, unread, unpublished, and unfound.

nice idea- but perfromed poorly...

THE FLIGHT of The Old Woman

Mon, 14 Nov 2005 21:53:33 GMT

THE
FLIGHT
of
The Old Woman

who was
TOSSED UP IN A BASKET
Sketched & Etched
by
ALIQUIS

Large panorama
The Lovely story

ונתנה תוקף

Wed, 12 Oct 2005 19:26:29 GMT

ונתנה תוקף קדושת היום/ כי הוא נורא ואיום

ובו תינשא מלכותך/ וייכון בחסד כסאך

ותשב עליו באמת/ אמת כי אתה הוא דיין

ומוכיח ויודע ועד/ וכותב וחותם ומונה וסופר

ותזכור כל הנשכחות/ ותפתח ספר הזכרונות

ומאליו ייקרא/ וחותם יד כל אדם בו

ובשופר גדול ייתקע/ וקול דממה דקה ישמע

ומלאכים ייחפזון/ וחיל ורעדה יאחזון

ויאמרו הנה יום הדין/ לפקוד על צבא מרום בדין

כי לא יזכו בעיניך בדין

וכל באי עולם יעברו לפניך כבני מרון/ כבקרת רועה עדרו

מעביר צאנו תחת שבטו/ כן תעבור ותספור ותמנה

ותפקוד נפש כל חי/ ותחתוך קצבה לכל בריה

ותכתוב את גזר דינם.

בראש השנה ייכתבון/ וביום צום כיפור יחתמון

כמה יעבורון וכמה יבראון/ מי יחיה ומי ימות?

מי בקיצו ומי לא בקיצו/ מי במים ומי באש

מי בחרב ומי בחיה/ מי ברעב מי בצמא

מי ברעש ומי במגיפה/ מי בחניקה ומי בסקילה

מי ינוח ומי ינוע/ מי ישקוט ומי ייטרף

מי ישלו ומי יתייסר/ מי ירום ומי יישפל

מי יעשיר ומי יעני

ותשובה ותפילה וצדקה – מעבירין את רוע הגזרה

כי כשמך כן תהילתך/ קשה לכעוס ונוח לרצות

כי לא תחפוץ במות המת/ כי אם בשובו מדרכו וחייה

ועד יום מותו תחכה לו/ אם ישוב, מיד תקבלו.

אמת כי אתה הוא יוצרם/ ואתה יודע יצרם

כי הם בשר ודם/ ,אדם יסודו מעפר:

וסופו לעפר/ בנפשו יביא לחמו

משול כחרס הנשבר/ כחציר יבש וכציץ נובל,

כצל עובר וכענן כלה/ וכרוח נושבת וכאבק פורח, וכחלום יעוף.

ואתה הוא מלך/ אל חי וקיים

אין קצבה לשנותיך/ ואין קץ לאורך ימיך

ואין שיעור למרכבות כבודך/ ואין לפרש עילום שמך

שמך נאה לך ואתה נאה לשמך/ ושמנו קראנו בשמך

עשה למען שמך/ וקדש את שמך

על מקדישי שמך

The Mirror of the World

Tue, 11 Oct 2005 19:34:42 GMT

This popular encyclopedia was the first illustrated book to be printed in England. Originally published by William Caxton in 1481. Caxton is extremely important not only for introducing the art of printing to England, but also for his influence on the development of English language and literature.

The work was translated from a prose version of the French L'image du monde; probably written by Walter/Gossuin of Metz, this was derived chiefly from the twelfth century Imago mundi. Encyclopaedic texts were very popular throughout the Middle Ages. During this period it was commonly believed that it was possible to create one volume digests of all knowledge. Aimed at a general audience, such works were incredibly useful at a time when access to libraries was limited and book ownership itself was relatively rare. Unlike vast modern encyclopaedias, these medieval works were not arranged alphabetically for quick reference. Rather they were organised systematically, and designed to be read all the way through.

folio a6v
Wherfore god med man lyke vnto his ymage and to his semblaunce

The book's purpose is explained in the general preface. It is a permanent record of the deeds and knowledge of ancient men - among all others, it ought to be visited, read and known as 'it treateth of the world & of the wonderful dyuision thereof'.

This version is divided into three parts. The first section deals with the power of God and the creation of the world before moving on to the seven liberal arts; this was the standard curriculum for medieval students, consisting of grammar, logic and rhetoric (the 'trivium') and geometry, arithmetic, astronomy and music (the 'quadrivium'). There is considerable discussion of the place of the earth in the world, its roundness and its relation with the planets. The second part is on geography, with descriptions of India, Europe and Africa and their beasts and birds; the elements, the weather, 'the turning of the firmament' and the stars are also examined. Topics covered in the last section include how day and night happen, the eclipses of the sun, why money was made, philosophy, the sizes of the sun, moon and earth, and the number of the stars. The book ends on a suitably devout note, with a description of heaven and celestial paradise. The acquisition of any knowledge was, of course, designed to lead to a better understanding of God and, therefore, to spiritual salvation.

more about the history of this specific book:

http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/month/aug2005.html

more fascinating ancient books:

http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/month/previous.html

The Republic of Dreams

Wed, 28 Sep 2005 12:35:00 GMT

for those who loved "The Invisible Cities" of itallo calvino, for those, who did found them selves swapt by jorge luis borges imaginary writings, for those who loved "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay " of michael chabon, and "W ou le souvenir d'enfance" of Georges Perec, and for those who loved "Solaris" by Stanislav Lem and Edgar Allan Poe, for those who love to dream, and day dream, or, sail away 'winged' to imaginary domains...

this link would be most satisfectory and highly enjoyble!

credit does again to this very interesting site:

http://www.spamula.net/blog/archives/000641.html#000641

Nabokov reads from L-o-L-i-T-A

Mon, 01 Aug 2005 22:55:00 GMT

Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze.
Hair: brown. Lips: scarlet.
Age: five thousand three hundred days.
Profession: none, or "starlet"
Where are you hiding, Dolores Haze?
Why are you hiding, darling?
(I Talk in a daze, I walk in a maze
I cannot get out, said the starling).
Where are you riding, Dolores Haze?
What make is the magic carpet?
Is a Cream Cougar the present craze?
And where are you parked, my car pet?
Who is your hero, Dolores Haze?

[ Nabokov Reads - Mp3 ]

was taken from this interesting blug:

http://luna.typepad.com/weblog/2004/02/_nabokov_reads_.html

that was recomanded, by a very inriching site:

http://growabrain.typepad.com/