time passes, things get done

It feels like ages since I posted anything up here. That's because it is. But contrary to how it may appear, things have been happening. The end of 2013 and the beginning of 2014 were mainly focussed on writing.  

Several peer-reviewed papers were published. I was particularly pleased with The Architecture of Conversation in Message: Mapping Eclecticism Through Practice (published 2013, by University of Plymouth Press) which was an epic to both write and design, as I tried to represent the temporal nature of the dialogue (various communications, events, emails and notes over an extended period) and the qualities inherent in conversation through a print-based version of an immersive text (if that's even possible). I'll get a pdf of it up on lizzie.ridout.com soon. A few pics above in the meantime - click to read.

A paper called Showing Saying: On Speech Balloons was also published in Semiotics & Visual Communication: Concepts & Practices (published 2014, Cambridge Scholarly Press).

More backwards gazing soon.

words, words, words

words take form

Look at this fella:

Kuya Shonin (Saint Kuya) by Kosho

Kuya Shonin (Saint Kuya) by Kosho

"Kosho’s St. Kuya shows the holy man in the act of recitation. In striking contrast to the realistic figural representation, the artist has added a more conceptual element to the work. The syllables of the nembutsu—namu Amida butsu (meaning 'Praise to Amida Buddha')—are given physical substance in form of six small buddhas that emerge from the statue’s mouth. Paradoxically, the contemporary viewer would have identified the figure not by his carefully rendered face (which could not have been based on Kuya’s actual features), but by the presence of these visualized syllables, along with his traveling attire and gong. In the context of the temple, the manifestation of the recitation serves other purposes as well. It both attests to Kuya’s own salvation and acts as a model for temple worshippers, allowing the saint to continue teaching even in death."

From here. 

thinking radio

Listening to the Open Air series of sound pieces on Radio 4, commissioned by Artangel's Open project and broadcast earlier this year.

At just 3 minutes long, I particularly enjoyed Christian Marclay and Ruth Ewan's pieces which reminded me of this previous post, about Murke's Collected Silences by Heinrich Böll, from this time last year.

And timely, when I'm reading this article Outloud by Steven Connor too.

voice

'The voice is supposed to be suffused with spirit, and itself often have such an insufflating action. But the voice is not always quite itself, for there is much in the voice that is not altogether voice. Only that which has soul in it can give voice, says Aristotle, but then adds, almost in the same breath, there is more to voice than soul. For there are things in the voice that, while coeval with it, are not indigenous to it. The voice is not all Geist, it is full of poltergeists, noisy, paltering parasites and hangers-on, mouth-friends, vapours and minute-jacks. We must be on our guard against the encrustations and adulterations of this infinite interior malady.'

These texts about talking, the voice, thinking aloud by Steven Connor are interesting.
I love the multitude of words he uses to describe talking.
Here, here, here and here.

library of congress

Very nice to be here…

of others

Illustration by Catrin Morgan in The Age of Wire and String by Ben Marcus

While hooning around the internet (I do a lot of that these days while lounging at my nursing throne. That and reading) I was pleased to see that:

i) Ben Marcus is publishing a new book called Leaving the Sea — A New Collection of Short Stories in 2014.

ii) Granta has just republished The Age of Wire and String in a new edition with illustrations by the awesome Catrin Morgan (a PhD student at the RCA. I saw her speak a few months ago at the annual Falmouth University Authorial Practice Forum and it was great to hear someone talk so very intelligently and thought-provokingly about images and time). See a a review of the book here.

iii) On Ben Marcus's own blog there was this interesting piece of text from a never-completed questionnaire with David Markson:

The title of your book, Reader’s Block, draws attention to the fact that a reader can fail at something too.  The book evokes something not so frequently discussed: readerly ability, willingness, motivation.  While it would seem dangerous to become nostalgic for a time when reading was a skill and not just the opening of a slack orifice, it does create a challenge for an artist who happens to work with language.  Is being demanding a function, or a necessary result, of writing artistically?  If the actual ability to read and decipher a sentence is diminishing, does that concern you as a writer?  And do you have a particular relationship, at least in theory, to readers? 

It reminds me of thoughts that I was having while making this some time back and which I would still really like to take further. 

sundays are for reading

Excerpt from Murke's Collected Silences, by Heinrich Böll, published in The Stories of Heinrich Boll. Unfortunately I only have GoogleBooks to read from, so great swathes of the text are hidden from my view. Will be buying on my return.

off the press

Photo © Steph Bell

Photo © Steph Bell

 

 

 

 

Am indebted to Bryn Sumner and Steph Bell who sent me through photographs last night of the two of them hard at work at WSW letterpress-printing my design for a card to promote Ways to talk and yet say nothing or ways to not talk and yet say everything. I received copies of the cards just before I came out to Finland and they are gorgeous. The bottom four pictures show what they were working so hard on…

Thank you, lovely friends!

ink + pressure

The folio printed - finally! Laura showed me how to make my own photopolymer plate and I printed the whole thing on a Chandler & Price (or platten press). So as the folio opens, the title is revealed.

Below - the next step. The pile of folios waiting to have u-flaps tipped into them…

 

them bleedin' corners

I have spent much of this week cutting out odd corner shaped pieces of book cloth (240 of them) to wrap around and glue into each of the two u-flaps that will hold the pamphlet in place in each folio.  I then spent almost two and a half days covering each of the u-flaps (120 of them). I still have about 35 to go. They take a long time.

While I've been doing this Anna and Chris have been working on the far trickier task of covering the main bases which the u-flaps will stick into. These are now finished and are about to be printed onto… 

Below you can see the stack beginning to emerge…

assembly

 

And introducing the production liners this week, from the top: Anna Haglin (our resident master bookbinding intern); Chris Petrone (studio director and problem solver extraordinaire); Cheyenne Mallo (an old-timer, my friend from last time and now WSW volunteer); Steph Bell (another old-timer, friend and volunteer (you may remember her scraped knees from my last trip…)); Monica (a new addition, a volunteer and very swift-fingered). And bryn mustn't be forgotten - no photo oddly, but she's been putting in late nights and keeping me entertained and just going after-hours. Lastly me and my favourite apron.

A busy week - but I think we may be on schedule. Just. Thanks to these folk: measuring, cutting, gluing, folding. Only possible to get through all of this with their hard graft.

blighters

It's these little blighters that caused all the trouble: the spines and hinges. If you've never made a hardbound book before it will sound like madness to say that it took us two whole days to get this sussed out. But we're there. As I sit here, I'm surrounded by piles of half-wrapped folio board and stacks of 'u-flaps' drying. It's 11pm and I've put in a 14 hour day folding cloth over awkward corners and wiping glue up and down my arms to keep if off my copper folder and so my precious book cover.

We're getting somewhere but it could still be tight.

More soon.

so where was i? vol. ii

So this is the final version. This is what we have to make 60 of. A rather beautiful, but troubling (it gets marked easily) grey-green cloth with a grey-beige lining. Picks up all the captions on the prints and in the booklet really nicely.

so where was i? vol. i

So a little under 6 months ago, this was where I was at. Trying to work out the design of the portfolio that would contain all my prints and my booklet. The above pictures were taken of the mock up that Chris made. We shimmeyed around all over the place, trying other ideas. But I always returned to this one as the one I liked the most. So this is what we'll be spending the next two weeks trying to make 60 of - with much help from Anna, Chris, Bryn, Steph, Cheyenne, Tara, Tana and Lindsay. 

Different colours, but essentially the same format. We're just out of the trouble shooting phase now - and have finally made a near perfect final dummy.

The production line commences this week…

the return

So I'm not sure that I mentioned it but today I'm getting on a plane back to this wonderful place to finish what I did not last time. This is one of many reasons why I've been a bit quiet up here lately. It's taken quite a bit of work to get things up together ready for me to work at break neck (and obviously also impeccable) speed. Not to mention how hard it is to design a casing (for 50 sets of limited edition prints and a letterpressed pamphlet) just using email and skype. No touch allowed. Tough, really tough. And then there's my ineptitude at grasping the simple concept of grain direction… Poor Chris…

Thank you hugely to PLymouth University for investing in me once again.

solo iii

Some tasters…