Week 9: William Morris, SCALAR, and Artists' Books, Oh My!

I wish it were as easy as writing a succinct and insightful post about my proposed final paper topic. Unfortunately, my mind is swimming with ideas and I’m having some difficulty narrowing them down let alone turning any one of them into something very specific. So I will use this as an opportunity to write about my various ideas and if anyone has any suggestions about how to narrow one of these, or alternative approaches I could use, they would be more than welcome.

Double Bough, William Morris & Co., 1890,
Historic New England Wallpaper Collection

1. William Morris. I know there is an abundance of scholarship on Morris and the Kelmscott Press, but I figure that I should take this, my final opportunity, to write about something and someone that interests me. I spent two months in Walthamstow in London, England in 2014 and was staying about a 10-minute walk away from The William Morris Gallery. I spent a lot of time in this gallery and became increasingly interested in his work—wallpaper, furniture, literary works, book art & publishing—as well as the Arts and Crafts Movement in general. I feel like it would be a daunting task to try to come up with a unique perspective on Morris’ approach to the book arts, however I know it would be an interesting exploration. I also came across the Historic New England collection, which has over 30 digitized samples of William Morris’ wallpapers and textile fragments. However, as these are wallpapers and not books they can’t be read in the same ways as we have been discussing in the course. Interestingly enough, I haven’t been able to find any William Morris book collections that have been digitized so this could also be a worthwhile thread to pursue.

To see the Historic New England digitized William Morris wallpapers, visit:

http://www.historicnewengland.org/collections-archives-exhibitions/collections-access/results?search=william+morris&category=wallpaper&preserve-filters=1

2. SCALAR. While I was at the ARLIS/NA + VRA joint conference in Seattle this past week, a librarian from Auckland, New Zealand presented on her experience with using the scholarly publishing technology SCALAR. She amusingly described it as the “love child of a website and an e-book.” She explained that users can apply a variety of elements including paths, tags, annotations, comments, pages, media etc. to create a book that is both liberating and engaging for the reader. From what I have seen, you can use many different layout/style options with varying levels of interactivity. Archival content can also be easily displayed and shared using this platform. This would be interesting to explore as a tool in its own right, as a sort of website-eBook hybrid, or else experimenting with my own content, perhaps about William Morris’ book art. This platform is designed for authors to take advantage of digital technologies for scholarly publishing while incorporating elements of data visualization as well.
For samples, visit:

http://scalar.usc.edu/works/pathfinders/index

&

http://freedomsring.stanford.edu/

3. Last, but not least, is the concept of 3D printed artists’ books. This semester I have become increasingly interested and curious about this art form. I find Johanna Drucker’s description particularly telling because the artist’s book does not have to conform perfectly to some kind of artistic canon:

“Artists’ books take every possible form, participate every possible convention of bookmaking, every possible “ism” of mainstream art and literature, every possible mode of production, every shape, every degree of ephemerality or archival durability. There are no specific criteria for defining what an artist’s book is…” (Drucker 2004, 14).

'Map ed Veveiis', artist's book, Genevieve Seille, 1990,
Victoria & Albert Museum Collection 

While at the conference last week, I went to every session offered on artists’ books, which centered on these objects as vehicles for social change, for community interaction and engagement, social inclusion and creativity. One of the presenters had brought in a sample of a 3D printed artist book, which got me thinking about the future of this type artwork and the future of the book. How do technologies beyond the digital impact the book. What does 3D printing mean for the future of the book? How can/are artists employing these technologies in creating their own works? I’m not quite sure about the extent of research that has been done on this topic, but I think it could be a fascinating way to look at the current landscape of creating, publishing, displaying and preserving the book arts in contemporary society.

These are just a few of the ideas that are now swimming in my head. I’m sure they each have potential, but what I need to do next is solidify a perspective and get working. 

References:

“About SCALAR.” Alliance For Networking Visual Culture. http://scalar.usc.edu/scalar/.

“Artists' Books.” Victoria And Albert Museum. http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/a/books-artists/.

Drucker, Johanna. 2004. The Century Of Artists' Books. New York City: Granary Books.

"Freedom’s Ring: King’s “I Have A Dream” Speech.” Alliance for Networking Visual Culture. http://freedomsring.stanford.edu/?view=Speech.

“Pathfinders.” Alliance For Networking Visual Culture. http://scalar.usc.edu/works/pathfinders/index.

“Wallpaper.” Historic New England. Accessed March 12. http://www.historicnewengland.org/collections-archives-exhibitions/collections-access/results?search=william+morris&category=wallpaper&preserve-filters=1.