Yes, this is mainly a space for non-professor types, but following the discussions about our art books visit last week, this exhibition review of Ed Ruscha’s legacy in making and depicting books was too good to pass up.  Ed Ruscha is one of the granddaddies of American conceptual art (he has his own catalogue of his work online), and one of his big claims to fame is making simple, cheaply produced, almost “dumb” art books, usually involving photography.  This was a challenge to the “fine press” approach that dominated the rise of the art books (remember those fancy, large-format books on the first table last week?), and as desktop publishing became widely available for private individuals in the 1980s, this approach to books has stayed widely popular.  There’s a lot of sending-up, ripping-off, mashing-up, etc. in this area, maybe even more so than in the “regular” artist’s books we saw last week.  This probably makes such books more vulnerable to copyright lawsuits and criminal charges.  But let me ask: what is the social value of Ruscha’s style of book?  And what in copyright law (check out Goldstein here) might give his kind of work some protection?

Our most recent trip to the library was by far the most interesting one. Many of the books displayed on the tables were unorthodox to say the least. Their construction and content goes against most people’s basic definition of a modern codex. However, in a way, these pieces seemed to be sort of a throwback to the early days of manuscripts. Back in those times, books were seen not as just a form of technology used for sharing information or telling stories, but were in many ways an art form. That was clearly the goal in mind with the production of the books viewed in class. It was blatantly clear that a great deal of labor went into the creation of these pieces, and the results were beautiful works of art. I will try and keep an eye out for such artistic works in the future whenever I am in a place that sells books. Perhaps I will run into one of the examples we viewed on Tuesday.

I watched the “inventing the alphabet” documentary. There was a guy in the video that made an excellent point that I never thought of before: letters are very simple. Looking at the letters that constitute our alphabet, and almost any alphabet, they are very easy to write and are not very intricate.  He made the point that this is because of when early humans had to carve letters into clay, there was not a lot of room for precision because of the writing tools available, so the letters became easy to draw. I think it is interesting how even with the computer and more precise writing utensils, the simplicity of the letters of our alphabet is the same today as it has been for thousands of years.

This article from last week shows that, despite law and fines, illegal file sharing continues on a fairly large scale. And that is only just within Japan.  However, what surprises me more are the people in the forums who SUPPORT the file-sharing (I for one, refuse to associate with these people in general, and only come for the news). What surprises me isn’t the fact that they support it, but the fact that they’re open about it. In the case that they are kidding (which honestly does not seem to be the case), it would be in poor taste.

Overall, considering what they were sharing and how, should the people arrested get support, pity, or punishment?

When I think about how books would be different if they had some of the future technology, I think about how many more books at that time would have been published with color and photos. Before the printing press was invented, people wrote books and drew pictures by hand.Think about how much easier it would have been for these books to have some form of color or picture in them had they had the same technology we have today. When I think of books with pictures and colors, I think about children’s books. Before printing was invented, children were not able to go through a book and look at all the wonderful pictures. I try to imagine my childhood without these colors and pictures and I cannot. I can only imagine the wonderful children’s books that would have been created if people had the ability to create them during that time.

When looking at the prompt today, I found myself asking the question what if some of our most ancient text had been created during a time when computers existed. Many authors write their books on the computer these days. The computer makes writing and printing so much easier for us to do. I wonder if the computer had been around during the time of some ancient text if they would still be as important or worth as much to us today. These books were so unique because the process of making them was so incredible difficult. If the process had been easier like it is today would these books still be of such high importance?