The Never Ending Story (or document)

Child borrows a book that opens up a Never Ending Story.

In reality, all stories are built around a similar structure. The beginning, middle and end are statutory chapters when telling anything.

*the project.

A collaborative book that never ends.

The cover will contain a brief that will start off the whole project. After each studio, writer, poet, illustrator completes the brief they will pass it on to someone they know, or admire, or have just met (anyone really). Collaborative essay's, stories, collective chapters. (DRAFT).

The story builds,

projectile learnings

Child tries to extract knowledge from book by sheer brute force.

Kids literally try to hurl knowledge into brains

Here the Dictionary acts rather like an oldschool teacher, disciplining the student before he manages to do something silly.

Without realising here children, scolars, transform the book from a learning tool, to weapon, missile, and in some instances are just completely confused by the form knowledge is taking.

*Outcome, a series of educational books, that require the reader to extract their knowledge within, in a number of different ways.

- Triggered is the childs story when they throw the book away from them.

- Shouted are quotes about respect, dignity and other such things for the children that chose to see the book as a weapon.

- And for those that see the dictionary as a disciplinary tool as well as a projectile, I propose 'duck or get diction-ed'. A soft dictionary that declaims it's dictionary content, and their meanings upon impact. "that'll teach you!"

Print is Dead

encapsulating absolutely every, clip, quote and video, from unknowing movies, to technology guru's talking about the death of print. Publish as a series of zines.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/88mxm/

11 minutes 30

Jeff Gomez - 'Print is Dead, Books in a Digital Age' _ 2007 (Macmillan)

The Gutenberg Parenthesis: Oral Tradition and Digital Technologies

http://bigthink.com/ideas/15259

Shelf Life

An obsession it's true.

I've never considered books to have a shelf life, a sell by date, a best before date. But Seinfeld questions the use of books in just 8 seconds. Commercial shelf life is possibly the only sell by date that can be placed upon books.

An interesting notion to place upon literature though.

Jerry also manages to take away the objectivity of the book by simply saying,

"you read them? What do you need them for?"

Placing complete emphasis on a book as a capsule for content, knowledge, a story that, once taken in, has fulfilled it's purpose.

* Outcomes

A series of books that have a physical shelf life. Pages that decay, text that degenerates.

Books that question the objectivity of a book, a book as a trophy.

Books with an afterlife, once reading it, what is gained? How does the use of the book change? How does the readers relationship to the book change?

Ref.#1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieter_Roth

layered pages

Many people talk about themselves sharing a characterful personality resemblence with that of, an onion. Comparing their human architype to that of a complex vegtable.

Shrek 2001

“Life is like an onion: You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep.”
(Carl Sandburg)

-

I rather like this onion simily that has constantly cropped up through lives, in films and will no doubt be present, in many more explantions, break-ups, and teenagers coming to understand their own inner angst.

Pair this similied idea with that of reading, the understanding of a persons make up, with the transparent open-ness and ease of a book.

We read a book from cover to cover. However we read a person from outside to inside. digging deeper, but never finding an end, but an inner. The form of a human has no front and back, no beginning and end, but just an outside and an inside. This is probably the reason for is comparable relationship with an onion.


Outcome* The book will read like an onion, in layers. Each new leaf (page)/layer will ammit to a paragraph, chapter or next part of this story. The story will be told in the performance of pass the parcel. With each person breaking off one layer at a time, in turn shedding a layer of themselves, opening up to the group, and slowly getting to the core/answer, understanding of what they've been reading.