Slovenian book art 2

A sculpture in the harbor of Piran, Slovenia, reproduces the town in the form of heaps of books (courtesy of Lyn Watts).

Slovenian book art 1

A mural on an apartment house wall in Ljubljana, Slovenia (courtesy of Lyn Watts). Translation anyone?

Blog on book-like objects

A new blog about book-like objects, About Blooks: Discovering the Book as Object, has been started by Mindell Dubansky, who ishead of the Center for Book Conservation at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her early posts include pictures and descriptions of book clutches and hand-bags, a book harmonium, and this 1849 ceramic flask.

Xu Bing's Book from the Sky

Zak Braiterman has posted great pictures of Xu Bing's installation, Book from the Sky (1988), that is part of the Metropolitan Museum's current Ink Art exhibit.

This "book from the sky" consists of scrolls written in unintelligible characters that literally say nothing. Braiterman summarizes the effect: "Rendered object-like, the word has been made neither clear nor intelligible. Not really a book or a communication, “Book from the Sky” is just an idea, suggesting something infinite, the idea of a book, the idea of communication, pure writing, non-intentional."

(See this blog's previous references to discussion of Bing's installation.)

500 years of beautiful print

Arkyves, a collection of sources for the study of the History of Culture, showcases the beauty of print fonts with a zoomable collage of printed pages produced between 1469 to 1935.

(click to view)

Torah to the Moon

The Washington Post reports plans to send a Torah scroll to the moon. "The Torah on the Moon project, based in Tel Aviv, has been courting private firms to deliver a handwritten Jewish scroll called a sefer Torah to the lunar surface. Later flights would carry Hindu scriptures called the Veda and the I Ching, an ancient Chinese philosophical work. Each document would be housed in a capsule designed to protect it from the moon’s harsh radiation and temperature changes for at least 10,000 years." The Post article concludes by noting, "The texts would join a Bible left on the moon in 1971 by Apollo 15 commander David Scott. The red leather Bible sits on the control console of an Apollo moon buggy."

Ambassador takes oath of office on e-reader

The Wire reported that Suzi LeVine, the new U.S. ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein, "was sworn in ... by raising her right hand and placing the left on a digital copy of the Constitution. ... LeVine, a former Microsoft executive ...  used a non-descript "off brand" e-reader, so as not to stake an official U.S. government position in the Kindle vs. Nook wars."

Call for Journal Articles on "Religion and the Book"

The online journal, Mémoires du livre  / Studies in Book Culture, has issued a call for articles on the theme, "religion and the book." (This same theme is being used by the SHARP Annual Meeting in Antwerp this coming September.) Scott McLaren, the editor of this special issue of the Open Access peer-reviewed journal, "invites submissions in English or French that explore the relationship between religion and the book, broadly defined, in either historical or contemporary settings and from a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives. Articles concerned with print culture and Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as well as Asian and African religions are most welcome."

SCRIPT panels at SHARP

SCRIPT will present three panels of papers at the SHARP annual meeting in Antwerp, Belgium, on the theme "Religions of the Book: 

September 18, 8:30-10:00: Canonizing and Scripturalizing Iconic Books

• James Watts, Syracuse University, “Iconic Scriptures from Decalogue to Bible.” 
• Michael Como, Columbia University: “Canon, Ethnicity and Kingship in Ancient Japan" 
• Kristina Myrvold,  Linnaeus University, “Entextualization of Sikh Texts in Religious Historiographies and Performances”

September 19, 8:30-10:00: Literary and Iconic Canons

• Jonas Svensson, Linnaeus University, “The double Scripture: explaining diversity and conflict in Muslim perceptions and practices in relation to the Qur’an” 
• Rachel Fell McDermott, Columbia University, “When a National Poet is a Heretic: The Collision of Literary and Religious Canons”
• Karl Ivan Solibakke, Syracuse University, “Mimesis and Poesis: Walter Benjamin’s and Vilem Flusser’s Translational Approach to Script” 

September 20, 8:30-10:00: Scriptures as Icons and Talismans 

• Dorina Miller Parmenter, Spalding University,  “Saved by the Book: Exploring the Christian Bible as Effective and Affective Object.” 
• David Ganz, University of Zürich, “Clothing Sacred Scripture: Books as Holy Objects in the Western Middle Ages.”
• Bradford Anderson, Mater Dei Institute, "'This booke hath bred all the quarrel': The Bible in Seventeenth Century Ireland"