Exe0.2 Olle Essvik

Enemies of books.

I download the book from the Internet, https://books.google.com, “Enemies of books”, written by William Blades, published in 1881. A book on the decay of books. The enemies of the physical book – fire, water, gas, the bookworm, dirt, bigotry etc. A digitized book with no identity. Black letters on a white background. I buy a copy of the book from 1881. A yellowed, and stained copy. The book bears traces of a former owner, a certain Dr. Sarolea. Newspaper cuttings on his death and his extensive book collection. I compare the two texts, the original and the digitized copy. Using my computer I create a tool for binding books. I combine and modify traditional tools that have been used for hundreds of years and print out the components on a 3D-printer. The next day I print out another copy of the digitized book, and using the 3D-printed tool I make an exact replica of the book from 1881, in its original design. I construct a manual describing the process and upload the files to the Internet: Read more and see pictures:

This is a description of a project I begun in 2014 as an artistic development project financed by the University of Gothenburg – a project exploring digitization, human traces and the unique copy. The outcome of the project was a book, presented together with the tool used to produce it.

The project has been presented as a performance/workshop on materiality, time, death and human traces, see pictures[1]. In 2016 I recieved more funding to continue the project. Part of this is a project about marbling and randomness. I will create a book with old marbleised papers, which I bought from an old bookbinder – thousands of scrap papers left over from many many years of book production. This together with coded marbleising and virtual- textures will be a book. Every book will be unique. This will be combined with texts about randomness, and poetry made from tutorials about making textures with 3d printing and the code that creates marbling effects. I have not yet started working on the project, but it could be good idea to present it and get useful input.

About: Rojal The publishing project Rojal förlag was founded in the spring of 2014 by the bookbinder/artist Olle Essvik and the translator/artist Joel Nordqvist – as a vehicle for binding, publishing, collaborations, discoveries and distribution of stories, ideas, objects and images – too narrow to be viable in larger editions, expired, forgotten or unfit for conventional formats. From our shared studio/workshop at Såggatan in Gothenburg, we publish everything från artist’s books to multiples, computer games, theory and fiction, in small, carefully bound and designed editions, ranging from 1 to 300 copies, with a specific focus on media art and theory.