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 texts/poetry from tutorials about making textures with 3d printing. 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.