Book Art The Information Electric Age is a remix of The Electric Information Age Book by Jeffrey T. Schnapp and Adam Michaels, itself an homage to Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore’s The Medium is the Massage. Besides being a lively series of collages, this remix is serves as a critical review of the donor books. The text is completely the original authors’; the remix arranges it into an alternative reading. All snippets of text and images are cited to their sources for scholarly authenticity.
Book Art is the exact same size as the other two mass-produced paperback books, 4.25 x 7″, and is 74 pages in length. It is printed on-demand by Lulu and available for under $5. A PDF of the entire book can be seen here:
http://faculty.design.umn.edu/mccarthy/BookArt-aCriticalRemix-McCarthy.pdf
An academic paper about the project is published in the graphic design journal Visible Language:
http://visiblelanguagejournal.com/issue/172/article/1242
From the paper’s abstract:
“Operating under the theoretical frameworks of ‘remediation,’ ‘recontextualization,’ and ‘critical design,’ this project, titled Book Art The Information Electric Age, proposes an alternative method to standard book reviews and to notions of publishing. It is a critical book review with a supporting essay that includes an in-depth description of the author’s hybrid digital-analog process. Book Art is a critical remix of The Electric Information Age Book: McLuhan/Agel/Fiore and the Experimental Paperback by Jeffrey T. Schnapp and Adam Michaels, with cameo appearances by The Medium is the Massage. Book Art uses collage to reconfigure and re-imagine these books as a commentary on mediation, information, expression, communication, and authorship.”
(Note: in images, all ‘non-photo’ blue guidelines and scanner grit is intentional.)
- Steven McCarthy
Project link
