Navigating the Bookscape: Artists’ Books and the Digital Interface

In this paper I argue that many of the conventions of digitally-based work or the electronic screen have been presupposed, suggested or, in fact, achieved in the ‘phenomenal’ or Artist’s Book and that the book, in the hands of the artist, becomes infused with interpretive acts. I attempt to unpack the suggestive ways in which selected examples of South African Artists’ Books are already virtual; where the codex is an interactive and dynamic form and in which the idea of a book is grounded in what it does rather than what it is. The belief that the codex embodies fundamental ‘limitations’ and ‘drawbacks’ when compared with digital forms is premised on the book as a supposedly static, fixed and finite form. That these supposed ‘limitations’ and ‘drawbacks’ can only be overcome through the interactive features of the digital is a position I wish to contests. Introduction: This paper is based upon the catalogue essays which accompanied my curated exhibition Navigating the Bookscape: Artists’ Books and the Digital Interface.1 The exhibition picked up threads left tantalisingly at the end of the 1 The exhibition opened at the Aardklop Arts Festival, Potchefstroom, 25-30 September 2006 and at the FADA Gallery, Faculty of Art Design and Architecture, University of Johannesburg, 5-13 October 2006.