A Repository of Information
Some with fresh visions of the book's potential have elected to present the book as a repository of information - presented as data, pictures, etc. This "subgenre" of books imagined and realized as repositories most typically utilize the codex form, but not always. Most repository books present either one datum per page, or alternatively present a collection of uniformly placed data to fill each page. So why could one even consider this vision a subgenre of an artists' book?
Books as repositories of information are interesting. They are frustrating. They can even be maddening. The driving factor behind this seems to be that these remediated repositories blur the line between book and inventory. Is it still a book if there's no narrative? What can the a repository book tell the reader? Perhaps they allow us to glean insight from the author/artist themselves, under the assumption that our STUFF - whether it be something self-constructed, purchased, or even imagined - says something about US.
It is my hope that learning more about each one of these repository book examples will leave you with answers to the aforementioned questions. To demonstrate the subtle variations of repository books, see the groupings below that categorize example books by content. I have elected to put all the information you will probably ever care to know about repository style books within this one page. This is because I want to mimic the "dumping" of information and homogeneity of presentation that a repository style book is typically characterized by. This leaves it up to the reader if they find personal interest in a certain datum and wish to spend more time looking at that section. Every book discussed below will simply be all added to this page in the same format, letting the reader intuitively choose whichever book - unhindered by my own subjective presentation of the data - that interests them.
Books containing repository of information personal to author/artist:
1. Autobiography - Sol LeWittSol LeWitt published this artists' book in 1980. The title Autobiography is somewhat misleading without any knowledge of the book's contents. That is, instead of a "typical" autobiography that is created using words, Lewitt has elected to solely use photographs. Each page (with the exception of a couple curious blank spots) is comprised of nine equally sized and spaced photographs. The front page follows the same style, but features some photographs with words in them, like the bottom leftmost picture depicting a sign that reads "Dr. A. LeWitt." In addition, it seems that LeWitt tends to group certain types of items together. For example, one page features only pictures of clocks. Another only contains nine equally sized and spaced pictures of books. Autobiography is presented in the codex form.
Then what characterizes this work as a book, let alone an autobiography? A little bit of background information is required: each one of these objects was found in LeWitt's own home. So in a way, one could call LeWitt a materialist. Not necessarily because his things are extremely lavish in nature or because LeWitt places materiality above all, but rather because Autobiography seems to make the statement that one can exist through their possessions. Moreover, Autobiography seems to suggest that one doesn't just exist through their possessions - these possessions can also reveal the narrative of one's life.
So by telling his story through grouped photographs rather than literal words, LeWitt has left the reader to "read" between the lines. The signs on the front cover insinuate LeWitt's father or other relative practiced medicine. An article of clothing lays draped over a chair - was this perhaps LeWitt's favorite shirt? We don't know. LeWitt's artistic choices do not allow us to know - and perhaps this is exactly what he wanted: to let the reader see his daily life literally through his eyes. Photographs allow one to see that object as the author/artist saw it when they took the picture. Describing his favorite shirt in words would allow room for imagination - which is not what an autobiography is meant for. An autobiography is a collection of facts that characterize one's life, and that is exactly what LeWitt has done here.
2. Break Down Inventory - Michael Landy
Break Down Inventory was published by Michael Landy in 2002. The thick codex-style book contains a uniform list of every single thing that Landy had in his apartment in 2001. Possibly the only distinguishing feature (other than the front cover) would be that the items are listed across pages vertically instead of normal horizontal text. Besides that, every page is formatted the exact same and in total contains 7,227 possessions. Break Down Inventory is a book published the year after Landy's large artwork Break Down debuted. In this demonstration, Landy and a crew of 10 helpers formed a backwards assembly line of sorts and destroyed all 7,227 items on this list in two weeks. In the true spirit of artistic dedication, even Landy's car, birth certificate, and passport were on the list. All the rubble - which totaled around 6 tons - was tossed in a large receptacle, which is what the above picture depicts. This two-week process was open to the public, but afterwards the items were never exhibited or sold again. They were simply treated to match their form now (i.e. trash) and were either recycled or sent to a landfill.
Landy himself has stated that this project was a reaction to a consumerist society. So in a sense, Break Down Inventory really does what a "typical" narrative would do: present information that has some deeper theme or meaning. Well, you might ask, then why didn't he just write an essay about consumerist society? That's where the form and function of Landy's work come into play. If one were to just walk into Landy's apartment in 2001, it wouldn't seem so "consumerist" - it would just seem like a regular apartment. But by immortalizing these possessions, line by line, page by page, into one book conveys the sheer mass of it all. Some books even smaller than Break Down Inventory can narrate an entire lifetime. Break Down Inventory is 300 pages and only narrates the stuff that comprises a couple years of adulthood. Putting every single datum in like he did speaks volumes to the true amount of stuff we can accumulate in such a short amount of time, which is in itself a comment on the frivolous nature of modern consumerism. So in this way, Landy's creativity does not lie in the literal book Break Down Inventory. Obviously anyone could open up Excel and start putting their possessions in there. Rather, his creativity lies in how he de-mediated a complex topic into homogeneous pages of objects, thereby synthesizing a new way to think about consumerism.
As we have seen, this work involved a heavy performance aspect. If you are interested in more works that involve a performance aspect, check out this page.
Books containing repository of found information:
3. Working on My Novel - Cory ArcangelThis book was published by Penguin books in 2014 and was created by programmer and artist Cory Arcangel. Each page contains one tweet that Arcangel found from real Twitter users. All the tweets are from different people, but each contains the phrase "working on my novel" somewhere within it. Small illustrations of tea kettles can also be found in a few places throughout the book. As you can see from the picture above, Arcangel also chose to put these into a codex form. The back cover also features a somewhat ironic "author" excerpt on Arcangel, closely mimicking the common format for a traditional novel's back cover.
There is also an associated Twitter account for this book with the handle @WrknOnMyNovel. The official website for Working on My Novel calls the book a "timeline" that represents @WrknOnMyNovel. The bot's method for choosing the tweets is simply described as choosing the "best posts." From personal experience, flipping through this book is amusing. There are some funny tweets. There are simply some tweets that just say "working on my novel." But what is definitely striking is the uniqueness of each tweet despite sharing a common phrase. Moreover, one shortly begins to realize the ironic nature of everyone tweeting a phrase that they obviously cannot be performing at the same time. This, combined with the mimicked "author" bio on the back cover, create a cheeky - yet oddly endearing - "novel."
There is no solid narrative, as a traditional novel would have. Yet Arcangel has found a way to include different "characters" (i.e. the people who tweeted the excerpt) who each have a unique view on the same process. For example, some tweets can be characterized by their frustration with the task, while others romanticize the task paired with things like coziness, tea, and rain. So in this sense, Arcangel has essentially created a novel about the process of writing novels in the modern day. Using the original tweet form within the traditional codex form creates a wonderful dichotomy of the new and old that perfectly sums up how the traditional task of writing a novel has changed to complement the mini-novels (tweets) of the modern day.
4. Everyword- Allison Parrish
Everyword is both a twitter bot (@everyword) and a codex-style book (@everyword: The Book). The twitter bot was created by Allison Parrish in 2007 and completed its "task" by 2014. The bot was programmed - hence the name - to tweet every single word in the English language. Parrish subsequently published @everyword: The Book, which is just everything the bot did translated to a page. It also includes the number of favorites and retweets a particular word got from the bot.
This has been dubbed a "conceptual dictionary" of sorts. It here seems that Parrish has done two things: first, she has de-mediated the dictionary, and secondly she has taken this de-mediation and remediated it to fit the digital age. Parrish has de-mediated the typical dictionary by only presenting the word itself - no definitions, phonetic spellings, or anything. She has then taken this data and handed it off to a twitter bot. Social media bots are extremely common nowadays, and aren't just limited to Twitter. So Parrish has chosen to place her data in a platform that successfully supports her de-mediation. The twitter user interface completely does away with page numbers, and instead offers the reader only the number of favorites and retweets associated with that word.
By treating the words as she does, Parrish has given her audience data that is thought about purely by its aesthetic and audience outreach. That is, stripping all words of their definitions allows readers to evaluate words as a combination of characters rather than an actual word, which implies a corresponding definition. In addition, readers (on both the actual account and in the printed book) can see how many favorites and retweets are particular combination of characters received. This interesting aspect forces the reader to consider why a combination of characters received the number of favorites and retweets it did. Do we find interest in the implied definitions, the pronunciation, the unusualness, or some combination of these? Obviously we cannot be sure right now, but Parrish's work does an excellent job of prompting people to face that question.
Books containing repository of found information personal to author/artist:
5. Googled English Frontier Deedbook - Josh HockensmithGoogled English Frontier Deedbook is an artists' book created by Josh Hockensmith in 2008. This repository-style book is unique from the other examples for two reasons. First, it is the only repository-style book we've looked at that did not utilize the codex form. Second, it is the only repository-style book we've looked at that combines found information and aspects personal to the artist/author. When the pages are not splayed open as you can see in the picture above, Googled English Frontier Deedbook looks like a soup can with a very aesthetically pleasing label. However, opening this "front cover" reveals a burst of pages shaped much like the rays of a cartoon sun in warm colors. These are all bound to a soup can. When looking from above, like the picture shows, one can see how the string binding the pages to the outside comes together to form a star shape inside in the can. Each page contains one unique phrase - in every sense of the word. What makes these phrases special is that all of them return zero results when searching for them in Google. Obviously, I cannot include examples of some of the phrases, as this would leave a trace of the phrase that Google could find. I can let you know that the words used in these phrases are very unusual, but when combined together, can be very entertaining! Impressively, Hockensmith created these phrases without consulting a dictionary.
So this book artists' book is both personal and impersonal. It is personal in the sense that Hockensmith's own creativity went into forming each phrase. However, in the book's technical realization, the phrases are displayed in a homogenous manner with no subjective input from the artist/author on each page. So in that way, this does everything a traditional deed book does, just with different content and remediated to the organic form with a soup can binding. Referring to Hockensmith's work as a deed book speaks to the homogeneous, organized display of the content. A traditional deed book contains things like deeds of sales, estate settlements, and things like that. So each traditional deed book contains something extremely unique in that only one person is given the rights to whatever is discussed in the deed book, just like there is only one combination of words that creates unsearchable phrases.
Hockensmith's choice to present the book in a non-codex form was also intentional. His website states that the structure "represents the sublime, cosmic proportions the internet has reached - almost infinite and still expanding." So utilizing this form was indeed a good choice because the form of a codex is linear with defined start and stop point, and this does not relate well to internet's function at all. By choosing the star shape, Hockensmith has successfully created a deed book that reflects the internet theme well; there is no technical start or stop point.
