Open Books (2008)

It is the dawn of the third millennium and Google Book Search, the Gutenberg Project, Open Content Alliance, and other educational and cultural institutions maintain projects to digitize, archive, and distribute literary works. These digital books become text or images displayed on 2-D computer screens. They become representations of their printed version. The book, its cover, dust jacket, blank pages, and index are parts of the physical container. They ease transportation, standardize features, and encourage production. During digitization, a translation occurs; book-container-words transform into representative format, code, and symbols. The book has been unbound and reformed as a container consisting of information wrapped in computer code. This process pertains to the informatics of electronic literary distribution. The archived digital texts portray an order and flatness that is inherent to the printed word. Similar to books they also allow for non-sequential viewing, albeit at a much faster rate with high searchability. This transformation streamlines and expands dissemination.

I am dealing with the perceived flattening of these books into essential file and format. The information and the container become intermixed, resulting in a composite of imagery, literature, and function. The book as an object, becomes free from its boundaries and contextual meanings. It becomes a printed production.

The container has become part of the message. The book: the story.