Jessy took the lead on today’s class, which was mostly about form and meaning. We looked at online works and artists books where it is difficult to separate the text from the way the text is presented.

We asked students to sample at least five online works from Jessy’s page on Netcessary literature and then we looked at a handful in class, mostly chosen by students who had something to say about them. Our group was pretty well split on Felix Jung’s First Snow with some people finding it gimmicky–using multimedia to dress up a weak text–while others found it at least intriguing or successful on its own terms. The class was more complimentary about Jessy’s own work, A Letter from Henry. (And I should mention that the students mentioned Jessy’s work first–she didn’t bring it up.)

Back in special collections, we looked at dozens of examples of artists’ books and fine press books, from fairly straightforward (if beautiful and lavish) books, such as Stuart Klipper’s A City as Once Seen, recently published by the Press at Colorado College, to Soap Story, an artists’ book by Angela Lorenz where the pages of the book are printed on cloth and encased in soap.

Now I need to make my own thoughts about manuscript and early printed books more coherent so I can talk about them tomorrow.