Dear Reader … some contemporary books by artists

Artists’ books have evolved over the last sixty years into a significant, international contemporary arts practice. In the 1960s, the artist’s book grew in popularity as a means of bypassing dealers in high end galleries, taking artists’ works out to a wider public through self-publishing and distribution. The genre has evolved further through access to new technologies and affordable publishing tools in the twenty-first century. Many artists are engaging with the book format today, creating artworks that allow the viewer/reader to engage closely with the subject matter that they are holding in their hands. And in the digital age, hand-held can include works made for viewing on tablets and e-readers, some produced exclusively for digital platforms, and some that play on the instability of such platforms such as books created from images of broken Kindles. Some artists making books conduct the whole editioning process by hand, producing their own papers, using traditional printmaking and binding processes in celebration of the book as a timeless, physical artefact.

Artists' books have evolved over the last sixty years into a significant, international contemporary arts practice. In the 1960s, the artist's book grew in popularity as a means of bypassing dealers in high-end galleries, taking artists' works out to a wider public through self-publishing and distribution. Since then the genre has evolved further through access to new technologies and affordable publishing tools in the twenty-first century.
Today, many artists are engaging with the book format, creating publications that allow the reader to engage closely with the subject matter of the artwork they hold in their hands: including works made for viewing on tablets or e-readers; some produced exclusively for digital platforms; and others that play on the instability of such platforms. There are artists' books created from images of broken Kindles, and whole collections by artists who use the Internet to gather source material in order to produce physically printed books, thus turning the tables from digital back to paper. Some book artists conduct the whole editioning process by hand -producing their own papers, using traditional printmaking and binding processes -in celebration of the book as a timeless, physical artefact. Artist books act as containers for documentary narrative, transforming one thing into another, creating manuals for instruction and performance, rearranging, erasing, rewriting and reforming existing texts or image-based materials to create new narratives. This paper considers a small sampling of contemporary artists' books produced to engage personally with the audience. I will use these publications to demonstrate how contemporary artists' books add value to the notion of the book as a cultural artefact in the digital age. This idea extends beyond the 'ordinary' reading experience in books to reveal how artists can offer new ways of presenting and sharing knowledge and ideas. I will consider the physical, human experience of interacting with books and their materialitywhether physical or digital. I will also show how artists give new meaning to existing novels or poetry through creative interventions, and how the artist's book is used as a vehicle for collaboration with other artists/writers to extend the potential audiences for the book.
Paradoxically, these books appraise and evaluate the experience of reading and holding a book while simultaneously being the very thing that they are evaluating. All they are waiting for is you, 'dear reader' to open the book and let the messages within unfold.

From physical to digital and back to physical …
Early in the twenty-first century, many commentators predicted the death of the printed book (Barnett 2011), imagining a future of reading experienced through screen-based devices.
Artists, being magpies, are adapting mainstream and mechanical processes into something with which to create, and look at these devices as a means of connecting with larger audiences, but soon realised that along with greater connection and distribution, digital also brought similar malfunctions and inky deposits to those previously delivered by broken typewriter ribbons and human error. The following examples flit creatively between digital and physical: some re-create a tactile, on-screen experience; others use digital processing to create physical artworks; some utilise the Internet to gather subject matter for social commentary; and still more revel creatively in glitches that can occur on electronic devices. Helen Douglas's e-book The Pond at Deuchar (2013) was a digital iteration of her paper scroll book of the same title (2011). The scroll version was produced in an edition of four, each measuring 1,400 cm x 27 cm, printed on Chinese Xuan paper (a thin pliable paper traditionally used for calligraphy and painting) with high-quality, durable ultra chrome inks. The initial prototype made exclusively for the iPad was commissioned by Tate Research for a joint project with the University of the Arts 'Transforming Artist Books;' 1 a research network exploring digital transformations in the creation and reception of artists' books. Each of the scrolls explored the local habitat of the pond, from skimming across the surface admiring the light on water and flora, to delving underneath to discover fish and tadpoles in the undergrowth. The beauty of each is that they revealed their contents through touch: whether unfolding the delicate paper scroll or interacting with the screen of a tablet, each version was intended to fit in the viewer's hand. Douglas further expanded the scope of the e-book version with software developed by Armadillo Systems (a digital agency specialising in content development for museum and library users) and additional funding from The South of Scotland Visual Artist Awards 2 so that the final e-edition can be accessed at weproductions.com to be viewed on any computer, tablet or mobile device.
Arthur Buxton launched Colourstory in 2015: not an artist's book, but an example of some of the interesting things that digital can do with physical books and data. Buxton developed a system that has been converted into an app that allows people to create their own Colourstories through adding their own data such as routes taken on a holiday trip. As part of Buxton's creative research he produced printed artwork editions based on his colour analysis of classic children's books including The Snowman, Where the Wild Things Are and The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
Using custom software, I reduced each page in all three books to its main five colours proportionally according to size, then arranged each resulting chart in sequence. As well as the dramatic difference in each illustrator's palette, narrative information such as day and night times are revealed -if you look closely you can even tell what kind of fruits the Caterpillar ate for breakfast. (Buxton 2014). (2012) and Networked Optimization (2013) are two collaborations between the Italian artist and designer Silvio Lorusso -creator of the Post-Digital Publishing Archive -and Berlin-based artist Sebastian Schmieg. 56 Broken Kindle Screens came in both paperback and Kindle versions, and presented a series of images posted online by users of Amazon's e-reading device, showing the broken displays. The book, as the artists stated, 'serves as an examination into the reading device's materiality. As the screens break, they become collages composed of different pages, cover illustrations and interface elements.' (Lorusso 2012). The images are appealing, formed from the collaged-effect of the various layers of 'ink', reminiscent of Robert Rauschenberg's screenprints and paintings from the early 1960s. Networked Optimization was a collaboration between 'Silvio Lorusso, Sebastian Schmieg and Amazon Kindle Users.' As the Kindle is linked to Amazon's data storage, each time a reader highlights a passage it is recorded on Amazon's 'popular highlights' pages, creating a kind of 'Top 100' sentences. Amazon also records and publishes a list of the e-books that receive the most public notes. 3 Schmieg and Lorusso replicated the three most popular self-help books from the list: The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, The 5 Love Languages, and How to Win Friends & Influence People. Each book was purchased as a Kindle edition from the Amazon store, and re-published in paperback detailing only the highlighted passages and the number of highlights. The artists note that the 'popular highlights' list contains 'a striking number of self-help books. This points to a multi-layered, algorithmic optimization: from readers and authors to Amazon itself. Harvesting its customers' micro-labour, the act of reading becomes a data-mining process.' . It also brings attention to something of which not all Kindle readers are aware: public notes are fed back to Amazon to record the metrics of their use, gathering data that could influence which books may be published in the future.

Broken Kindle Screens
A more positive aspect to harvesting data from the Internet is visible in the 'Library of the Printed Web' a curatorial project by New York-based artist Paul Soulellis. Founded in 2013, it brought together physically published books by artists who use the Internet to provide material content, converting digital into analogue. Working under the motto 'Search, compile, publish' the 'Library of the Printed Web' offered a diverse collection of self-published artists' books covering a range of subject matter. The project extended critical discussion of artist books that utilised the Internet as a source for material for printed production. Some artist books featured in the collection included: Fraser Clark's Mona Lisa (2013), a collection of 240 images of the Mona Lisa gathered from the Internet, arranged by file name and printed over 480 pages. The pages were compiled so they could operate as a large-scale flipbook, the spine of which offers a complete portrait when closed. 4 Heidi Neilson's Details from the Least Popular (2013) (Figure 1), contains 208 pages of 'uninteresting detail areas from the 100 least popular images in the Hubble Space Telescope image gallery, in order with the least popular first.' (Neilson 2013) Although the images were voted least popular by visitors to the Hubble Space Telescope's online gallery, Neilson's curation brought a new perspective: when assembled and printed the photographs were transformed from the perceived mundane into images of intense depth, colour and beauty.
More complex in its translation from the Internet was Where Is God (2007) ( Figure  2), by Dutch artist/writer Elisabeth Tonnard, which converted targeted data accrued through asking questions of an online phone directory into colour gradients to create an enigmatic book. In the introduction the artist writes: This book followed from the wish to make color surfaces that would be based purely on color numbers instead of aesthetic choices, and that could meanwhile still be read as aesthetic objects and physical substances… Thinking about this project coincided with thinking about Baudrillard's thoughts on simulations and simulacra. One of the points Baudrillard draws out is that simulacra, as images of God, are only possible if we believe that a sign can be exchanged for a meaning, in other words can represent something. Without that belief signs, including simulacra, will appear to be no more than exactly what they are. A rose is a rose is a rose… I tried to locate God in a database and searched an online directory for the phone numbers of names connected to my question: Where Is God. These numbers were then used in Photoshop to determine the percentages of CMYK for the color fields and the opacity of the gradient applied. The gradients understood the images to be of an ephemeral nature. In this manner each of the 'namenumbers' became visualized… If there are any real substances involved in all of this, it must be us; myself in the stage of manipulating the unsubstantial; this book, in the phase of its printed form; and finally of course you, as you are holding it. (Tonnard 2007) Holding was also central to the context of Apparition of a distance, however near it may be (2013) by Paul Soulellis. In this slim volume, Soulellis trawled Google Books searching for images containing evidence of the hands scanning physical books. These rarely appear on Google Books, having been examined for evidence of human interaction and removed before upload. The images of individual hands captured on the scanner were a reminder that Google's online books were -and remain -physical artefacts, containing real pages touched and transformed by humans during the digitisation process.
All these books used the Internet as source material in order to comment upon the use of digital tools, and re-presented in the physical format of the artist's book. In many respects, they can be considered portals through which to question what we actually see when we view online or screen-based books. They invite consideration of our relationship with the wider digital world and what is gained and absorb from the mass of information so easily acquired.

Inner Beauty: revealing content through material form
The materiality of the handmade book in the digital age has been much considered and celebrated in recent years (Mornement 2013). As readers/viewers of books became used to receiving information digitally, the sensation of touching ink on paper became more appreciated. The artist's book is a democratic means of experiencing art: readers/viewers are encouraged to physically handle them, something discouraged in more traditional works such as painting or sculpture. The intimate experience of opening the covers and interacting with the pages encourages total immersion between subject and audience.
Readers' perception through engagement with touch has been the subject of a major project for the Australian artist Tim Mosely. In The Haptic Touch of Books by Artists (2014), Mosely argued that applying haptic theory (the idea of touch) rather than visual emphasis to the production of artists' books allows the reader to experience them completely. Through studio research he analyzed and interpreted Deleuze and Guattari's theories of smooth and striated space 5 and applied them to artists' books intertwining Derrida's concepts of touch with more formal aspects of haptic aesthetics. Using haptic modes of production, Mosely considered the following factors: using Awagami Kozo (a lightweight, Japanese printmaking paper) for its lightness and malleability in response to touch; using sustainable rainforest ply as relief printing blocks; and using the same ply to bind the editions, in order that readers could literally touch the subject matter of the books. Wrapping the covers in thick felt invited interaction; printing with multiple overlays of inks created textures that could be altered through physical interactions such as tearing, folding and sculpting. Mosely experimented with over 2000 hand-printed, relief assemblages to create a suite of twelve artists' books exhibited as 'Re/membering Touch: an anthology of artists' books' at the State Library of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, 2014.
Mosley's books drew attention to the importance of touch: artefacts are created to be held, but are often out of bounds when displayed behind glass, or handled using white gloves in galleries and collections. Equally he reminded the reader of the value of physical contact with the book in the screen-based era. Mosely's books were rich in aesthetic appeal and material content and reading them akin to navigating through unknown terrain at the readers own pace and direction, using all senses. Firstly, 19 mm felt covers engaged the sense of touch. The rainforest ply covers denoted a sense of place for the journey on which the reader was about to embark, turning them to reveal densely printed papers within. Mosely deliberately printed off all edges of the paper: there were no margins on which the reader's fingers could alight; they had to touch the art in order to turn the page. The ink on the paper was simultaneously delicate and dense; it was difficult to navigate the book through sight alone. In places where layers meet it was impossible to tell without touching if they were deposits of ink on the same sheet, or if the sheet had been torn and placed over another. Small, handmade apertures revealed glimpses of further pages, gradually building in depth as the journey continued, and folding sections opened to reveal previously hidden printed imagery. In Touching Rainforest (2014) (Figure 3), Mosely included a curved folding folio, flat within the covers, to be assembled by the reader at the end of their journey through the book. Considering the subject matter of this series of books, the plight of the Samberigi people's loss of a way of life through the interventions of commercial mining and drilling in Papua New Guinea, the book could be read as an ode to the original beauty of the rainforest through to a lament as the pages progressed. On physically folding the insert to create a curved folio at the end it transforms into a ridge, bright green and full of light, as if the reader were hovering above the canopy of the rainforest itself. But, as their hands alighted the curve and looked back across the vast flat landscape of the book, what seemed lustrous red and black on the page then appeared bloodstained and murky, the canopy suddenly heavy and foreboding. It was a clever ploy, giving readers the freedom to become immersed in the book, and to understand these beautiful books are also full of sadness.
The Russian book artist Dmitry Sayenko also takes great care over every part of the production process. Sayenko began making artist books in 1996, establishing Nikodim Press in 2000 in order to publish visual interpretations of works by historical poets and writers such as Daniil Kharms or Samuil Marshak. More recently he began writing his own texts. Sayenko refers to himself as a 'primeval' artist, using traditional tools that have changed little over time. He makes his own paper, prints from his own hand-cut blocks, composes and prints the type before binding and slip-casing his books by hand. His labour intensive books are produced in editions limited to 10-15 copies, which are purchased by museums and private collections internationally. Sayenko is not against using new technologies, he simply prefers to use historical tools of the trade, or as he calls them 'archaic methods'.
It is probably due to my personal propensity for classics … I love to read books and magazines published in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It's the stylistics of the word formations, another culture, other aesthetics. It's comparable with people striving to escape from the noise of big cities… to solitude with no signs of "civilization". It's a certain protest against the glamour and gloss of contemporary mass culture. But I am not revolutionary; I am an artist and prefer to do what I love.
For me it is part of my internal freedom. (Bodman 2010: 45).

Sayenko's own short texts range from celebrations of human pleasures -The Book About
Food (2013) -to tales of historical characters' real or imaginary fears and phobias. The Circus (2012) (Figure 4) is an example of his visual play with corresponding texts. During a chance opportunity to glimpse life backstage at the circus, Sayenko realised how ordinary and hard everything was in daylight when unaccompanied by the external atmosphere of the crowd and circus band: 'The circus performers take their turn in the arena, training, brushing up their seemingly well-polished tricks. It requires a brilliant skill and faultlessness of movement for the performance to look easy. The circus people do not like the word performance. They call it work, for them the show is really hard labour. It will not be until the evening, when the usual light goes out, that the show will begin: the circus walls will become full of music and colourful lights, with trapeze acrobats flying under its dome and elephants dancing on its arena. (Sayenko 2012) Sayenko's book was a tribute to the craft and skill of those occupying the ring as much it as celebrated the circus from the audience's perspective. Sayenko worked the same transformation of narrative through his own craft and skill: for this edition he handmade the paper; printed 27 sheets both sides for each book; hand cut and printed 30 colour woodcuts; and letterpress printed the text using four different typefaces. The cover and slipcase with colour woodcut and leather spine opened to reveal the light and excitement of the circus ring in action, the book is a joyous experience, transporting the reader back to another era through its design and colour palette.
Sally Alatalo of Sara Ranchouse Publishing has a motto for artist's book publishing: it is 'recycling language one word at a time' (Bodman & Sowden 2010: 63). Alatalo reworks romance novels from her collection into contemporary works to be performed and enjoyed as new narratives. Alatalo publishes both her own books and those of other artists including Alison Knowles, Buzz Spector and Ann Tyler. Unforeseen Alliances (2001) by Alatalo writing as Anita M-28 ( Figure 6) was an ordinary looking pulp-fiction paperback, which on opening, revealed itself to be a book of poetry arranged by the artist from titles of romance novels. Legendary, Lexical, Loquacious Love (1996) by Karen Reimer -writing as Eve Rhymer, took an existing romance novel, rearranged and reprinted it alphabetically. Alatalo's releases have been stocked in bookstores including Barnes & Noble. Her wish is that people pick the books up because they appear to be ordinary books and can therefore reach a wider audience through happy accident: I like that it is also about recycling material. There is a lot of language out there that it is not terribly interesting, but it can be used to generate different ideas.… I think that romance novels really offer quite an important diversion and distraction for many women especially, so I do not criticize that. But I do kind of want to add to that genre. I am fascinated by that genre because there is so much work being done. There are so many readers, there are so many publications, there is so much activity -it is a huge part of our culture. I am interested in exploring that as a way to access a broader audience. (Bodman & Sowden 2010: 63) The community of books, or how one book equals 100 books Collaboration often occurs in the production of artists' books. The book art community is a place where artists can work together on projects or towards a common theme. The following three examples explore collaboration from the perspectives of a duo of artists working together: an international, socially engaged, open book project; and a group project that grew from a chance encounter into a large-scale undertaking. My Place/Your Place was a collaborative book project by British artists Angie Butler andPhilippa Wood (2012-2014). Neither had worked with the other previously, so when they were invited to make work for the exhibition 'A Sense of Place in Artists' Books' at the University of Minnesota (2012), their correspondence developed into a collaborative exploration of how people occupy their homes. As they realised that, despite having previous professional and social contact, neither had visited the other's house, they decided to provide each other with a virtual (blog) 7 and physical (printed artist's book) 'tour' of their own homes. This resulted in discoveries of local histories, shared interests in items such as typewriters and '50s chinaware and a better understanding of each other's lives. Each produced a companion book in an edition of twelve, inspired by agreed keywords used to investigate the contents of their homes. The completed books Open House: No.18 & No. 42 (2012), were then sent out to artists, librarians and curators on an 'open house hosting' tour of other people's homes. The host readers were invited to view and respond to the books through describing an object of their own relating to one of the keywords in the books.
In Australia, artist David Dellafiora organises open calls and curates works for publication under the Field Study International imprint. Established in 1993 Field Study welcomes any artist as a member and invites them to contribute to its published editions.
These include an annual Field Report and KART Magazine of Multiplicity, in collaboration with the social enterprise organisation Karingal in Australia. KART has no deadlines, work is accepted on a continuing basis and each issue is produced in a boxed edition of 40 containing works by fifteen artists, and celebrated its 50th issue in July 2014. Field Study's ReSite publication in the tradition of Fluxus, is an open invitation to artists writers and musicians to send in manifestos, actions, instructions or scores for readers to perform. 8 International contributors (aka Site Workers) for ReSite No.8 Vol.2 (June 2014) sent pages in to be collated and bound from Australia, China, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Spain, South Africa, Netherlands, Ukraine, United Kingdom and United States. Each contribution is made as a reflection on or response to the current year and as such offers an alternative overview of events from an international, creative perspective. Dellafiora explains his approach to collaborative production and means of encouraging prospective readers as: Influenced by the Surrealist and Fluxus art movements, Field Study could also be considered a continuation of the free press movement of the 1960s. …The assembling books have an intentionally hand-made quality, with an emphasis on readily available means of reproduction such as photocopying and rubber-stamping. …This low-tech approach is not just an aesthetic decision but a means of challenging the aura of the artist's book as art object by making works that are meant to be handled, disseminated and used as tools, resources and sites for action. (Dellafiora 2012) In 2010, a simple book sowed the seeds for the creation of a further 100 artists' books. Africa and the United States were divided into groups, each making an edition of books to send to other artists in their group, a set for the Book Art Object archives and a set for myself as the lucky recipient of all 100 artists' books. Figure 7 shows one example of the 100 books in the collection' which has been exhibited in Australia and the United Kingdom. It was wonderful to see these new books evolve from the titles of short stories written four years previously.

Further Reading
These books are only a small selection of the activity found in the international field of artists' books today, and provided a sample of how artists work with books. They form part of a rich history of books as art and, as digital age progresses these physical works will become part of the wider conversation about the value of the book as a material object. There are already specialist galleries around the world with collections of artists' books including Tate Britain and the National Art Library at the V&A Museum in London; Museum van het boek in the Netherlands; and MoMA and the Yale Center for British Art in the United States. The British Library has at least a thousand modern artists' books by British artists, numerous works by international artists and extensive reference material for further research. In Australia Brisbane and Melbourne State Libraries have public collections by national and international book artists, as do many municipal libraries and countless art college libraries from Brazil to Helsinki. Printed Matter in New York and bookartbookshop in London stock publications by international artists and have regular programmes of events as does the Minnesota Center for Book Arts is the largest centre for artists' books. IN 2012, British artist Simon Goode founded the London Centre for Book Arts, the first centre of its kind in the United Kingdom. And, continuing the tradition of the artist's book as a democratic multiple, there are regular specialist fairs internationally, offering the public an opportunity to meet the makers and purchase affordable artworks for themselves. So wherever you happen to be 'dear reader', you are probably sitting quite close to an artist's book to open and discover for yourself.

CONTRIBUTORS DETAILS
Sarah Bodman is an artist and researcher at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UWE, Bristol, UK. Sarah is also Programme Leader for the MA Multidisciplinary Printmaking course at UWE. She is the editor of the Artist's Book Yearbook reference publication, the Book Arts Newsletter and The Blue Notebook journal for artists' books. Sarah also writes a regular column on artists' books for a_n, ARLIS and Printmaking Today. Her own artists' books explore the darker side of nature and human nature. They appear beautiful in order to lead the viewer into the underlying meeting point between the opposites of tenderness and cruelty. Some books include: Viola the story of a serial killer baker; Closure the end of an affair between a plane spotter and flower arranger, and How Do I Love Thee, a collaboration with JP Willis. Her latest work GIFT: I made this for you is about the 'Angel of Bremen'.