{"id":6970,"date":"2021-08-05T12:15:02","date_gmt":"2021-08-05T17:15:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/?p=6970"},"modified":"2021-08-05T12:15:02","modified_gmt":"2021-08-05T17:15:02","slug":"more-meaningful-and-expressive-digital-artists-book-models","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/2021\/08\/05\/more-meaningful-and-expressive-digital-artists-book-models\/","title":{"rendered":"More Meaningful and Expressive Digital Artists\u2019 Book Models"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Video<\/a>
Production studio setup with lightbox and turntable.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A primary motivation in my working within the book arts mediums at the University of Iowa has been a growing interest in creating printed works that elicit more interactive and dynamic viewer engagement\u2014the communication of print across varying forms and sequences. Before artists’ books, I\u2019ve restricted my work in printmaking to the creation of static, two-dimensional artworks\u2014beholden to the qualifications of a \u201cproper printed work.\u201d <\/em>An emphasis, then, was placed on generating a printing matrix, qualities of inking and printing, and of the printed image itself rather than qualities of engagement with the art object\u2014such as the various tactile, time-based, and dimensional qualities of belonging to artists\u2019 books.<\/p>\n

As a book artist, then, my concurrent studies in library and information science, and my work in various galleries, exhibitions, and repositories, have likewise focused on improving the quality of viewer\/patron engagement with art materials. Just as I desire to make artists\u2019 books, I desire to improve their accessibility in collections. Many access restrictions are placed on artists\u2019 books in traditional analog repositories and exhibitions of which disservice both the artwork and viewer alike, such as being unable to feel, hold, perform, and view a book in motion at one\u2019s own, desired pace\u2014all the things that make an experience with a book so rich and meaningful. It\u2019s even worse for digital repositories where entire artworks have been reduced to single still images and are explained, rather than experienced, in paragraphs of contextual metadata. A viewer’s engagement with a sculptural, hand-printed, and hand-bound codex is reduced to a jpeg with a caption; such digital surrogates are of little value to anyone.<\/p>\n

Presently, during the pandemic, when art viewership has been made exclusively available through digital repositories, shortcomings in access and engagement have been exacerbated. Marsha Taichman, in her article Teaching with Artists\u2019 Books During the Pandemic<\/em><\/a>, shares her dissatisfaction with the digital experience:<\/p>\n

\u201cOne advantage of teaching with artists\u2019 books is that some of the objects speak for themselves\u2014they can be shocking, fascinating, and thought-provoking in their formats and structures. So much of what appeals to me about artists\u2019 books is their tactility, and seeing digital images strips them of much of their dimensionality and some of their character.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As a result, my fellowship project proposes to learn and employ video and photographic processes toward the generation of more meaningful and expressive digital artists\u2019 book models. Toward this end, I\u2019ve begun my project with researching audience and the visual languages associated with existing digital artists\u2019 book collections such as the Joan Flasch<\/a> and MICA<\/a> collections, as well as existing artists\u2019 book videos<\/a> like those created by our own UI Digital Studios for the Fluxus Digital Collection<\/a>. And, moving on from this initial research, I\u2019m currently treading, neck-deep, in the ocean of photo and video production-based online courses.<\/p>\n

\u2014Ryan Kangail<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A primary motivation in my working within the book arts mediums at the University of Iowa has been a growing interest in creating printed works that elicit more interactive and dynamic viewer engagement\u2014the communication of print across varying forms and sequences. Before artists’ books, I\u2019ve restricted my work in printmaking to the creation of static,Continue reading “More Meaningful and Expressive Digital Artists\u2019 Book Models”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":298,"featured_media":6634,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"syndication":[30,21],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6970"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/298"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6970"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6974,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6970\/revisions\/6974"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6970"},{"taxonomy":"syndication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/syndication?post=6970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}