a r t i s t ’ s b o o k
p r o j e c t b a c k g r o u n d
This artist’s book (sample pages shown above) was part of Art House Co-op’s “Sketchbook Project 2013”, once housed in the Brooklyn Art Library, as well as in the companion Digital Library. The Sketchbook Project was an evolving, growing collection of creative works, in the form of sketchbooks contributed each year by individuals worldwide. The 2013 collection toured North American cities for many months.
a r t i s t ’ s s t a t e m e n t
Words as symbols of ideas have allowed humans to explore, understand, communicate, document, and achieve. BinaReCodings – ‘In the beginning was the word‘ is part of an ongoing study of words as fact, their omnipresence in human life, and the import of language on the page.
This sketchbook is an album of snapshots, of words and pages culled from history. It provides a glimpse into the progression of recorded language that has given us epics, histories, poetry, novels, records, guidelines and instruction, as well as change-inducing ideas.
BinaReCodings is also a flipbook. The opening phrase of the biblical Book of John has been translated into binary code. This high-tech, yet somehow primitive form is the very language that enabled the inception of computers and our modern inter-networked world. But here “the Word” is, instead, “the word” – the human facility for language – and this phrase, segmented over 16 pages, provides the thread along which key moments from our written past have been strung. Typewritten lines and a reproduced computer card motif (with hand-cut punches) extend the information transfer theme.
b o o k d e t a i l s
Single copy: 5″w x 7″h, 32 pages, mixed media (coloured pencil, archival inks, acrylic paint, etc.) on hand-cut paper; Japanese obonai feather end papers; card cover re-papered with cardstock, Nepalese waxed and Tibetan banded papers; re-bound with waxed linen thread.
Since 2013, this book had been permanently housed at the Brooklyn Art Library in New York City. In 2022, while in transit to a new location, a substantial portion of the library’s collection was destroyed by fire. BinaReCodings was one of those that did not survive.
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