BOOK AS OBJECT

Often, the 'objectness' of a book is understood to be a means to an end - the collection of printed pages is seen merely as a convenient vessel through which content is conveyed.

This view is challenged by the fact that the book has become a kind of cultural unit (rather like the 'album' in both photography and music) - that is to say that the physical qualities of the book - its colour, smell, size, shape etc. contribute, in quite complex ways, to the overall reading of the text it makes available.

The fact that we now have alternative means of providing text through digital media - illuminated screens rather than pages - throws into sharp relief the edges of the experience of book use, and opens up questions about which form should be ascendent. The loss of physicality that 'the digital' manifests is perhaps a legitimate source of some concern -the commercial impulse towards new forms of digital material may lead to a loss of, rather than increase in, richness of culture.

However, like the gramophone record (and perhaps even more so) Alembic Books believes that the printed book will coexist, to mutual advantage, with the new forms of digital writing we will enjoy.

In any event, let's be playful...