Nanna Bonde Thylstrup: The Politics of Mass Digitization (2018)
Filed under book | Tags: · book, cultural memory, digitisation, europeana, google, infrapolitics, infrastructure, knowledge, library, media infrastructure, monoskop, networks, shadow library, speed, ubuweb
“A new examination of mass digitization as an emerging sociopolitical and sociotechnical phenomenon that alters the politics of cultural memory.
Today, all of us with internet connections can access millions of digitized cultural artifacts from the comfort of our desks. Institutions and individuals add thousands of new cultural works to the digital sphere every day, creating new central nexuses of knowledge. How does this affect us politically and culturally? In this book, Nanna Bonde Thylstrup approaches mass digitization as an emerging sociopolitical and sociotechnical phenomenon, offering a new understanding of a defining concept of our time.
Arguing that digitization has become a global cultural political project, Thylstrup draws on case studies of different forms of mass digitization—including Google Books, Europeana, and the shadow libraries Monoskop, lib.ru, and Ubuweb—to suggest a different approach to the study of digital cultural memory archives. She constructs a new theoretical framework for understanding mass digitization that focuses on notions of assemblage, infrastructure, and infrapolitics. Mass digitization does not consist merely of neutral technical processes, Thylstrup argues, but of distinct subpolitical processes that give rise to new kinds of archives and new ways of interacting with the artifacts they contain. With this book, she offers important and timely guidance on how mass digitization alters the politics of cultural memory to impact our relationship with the past and with one another.”
Publisher MIT Press, 2018
ISBN 9780262039017, 026203901X
ix+200 pages
Reviews: Paul Conway (Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 2019), Logan Brown (New Media & Society, 2019), Marc Kosciejew (Information & Culture, 2019), Lizzie Martin (Convergence, 2019).
Commentary: Seb Chan (2019), Bill Caraher (2019).
Johanna Drucker: The Century of Artists’ Books (1995)
Filed under book | Tags: · art criticism, artists book, book, publishing
“The seminal study of the development of artists’ books as a twentieth-century art form. By situating artists’ books within the context of developments in the visual arts, Drucker raises critical and theoretical issues as well as providing a historical overview of the medium. Within its pages, she explores more than two hundred individual books in relation to their structure, form, and conceptualization.”
Publisher Granary Books, New York, 1995
ISBN 1887123016, 9781887123013
xii+377 pages
Reviews: Kristine Markovich (Art Documentation, 1996), Paula Frosch (Library Journal, 1996), Buzz Spector (Art Journal, 1997), Tom Trusky (Afterimage, 1997), Eric T. Haskell (SubStance, 1997), Kranz (Bloomsbury Review, 2002).
Interview with author (Tate Shaw, The Journal of Artists’ Books, 2006).
PDF (74 MB)
Introduction to 2nd edition by Holland Cotter (2004, added on 2018-12-18)
Joan Lyons (ed.): Artists’ Books: A Critical Anthology and Sourcebook (1985)
Filed under book | Tags: · artists book, book, conceptual art, publishing
“This anthology is the first in-depth look at artists’ bookworks. A series of essays, written by longtime participants in and observers of the field, address the following questions: what are the origins, attributes, and what is the potential of artsists’ books; what are their historical precedents; what issues are they addressing; who is making and publishing them? The essays are supplemented by extensive bibliographies and a list of collections.”
With texts by Richard Kostelanetz, Ulises Carrión, Lucy R. Lippard (2), Shelley Rice, Barbara Moore and Jon Hendricks, Clive Phillpot, Susi R. Bloch, Betsy Davids and Jim Petrillo, Felipe Ehrenberg, Magali Lara and Javier Cadena, Alex Sweetman, and Robert C. Morgan.
With a preface by Dick Higgins
Publisher Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, NY, 1985
ISBN 0898220416, 9780898220414
269 pages
Digested version
Publisher Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, NY, 1985
68 pages
via kaackattack
Review: M. Kasper (Papers of Bibliogr Soc of Am, 1986).
WorldCat
WorldCat (Digested version)
PDF (13 MB, added on 2019-10-26)
Digested version: PDF (28 MB)