Alongside the fetishists and anti-fetishists, Internet literary culture has also seen the flourishing of a third group, one that celebrates books neither as precious physical objects nor as utilitarian vessels but uses them as the raw materials for works of art. The forms are varied—some are sculptures made from individual books, others use books as the building blocks for larger structures, while still others make books the canvas for paintings or drawings—but these projects have in common a way of playing off the near-spiritual aura that many of us associate with physical books, both augmenting books’ specialness by using them to make something beautiful, and undercutting it by ignoring their original purpose.
Michael Sauers is currently the Director of Technology for Do Space in Omaha, NE. Michael has been training librarians in technology for the past twenty years and has also been a public library trustee, a bookstore manager for a library friends group, a reference librarian, serials cataloger, technology consultant, and bookseller since earning his MLS in 1995 from the University at Albany’s School of Information Science and Policy. Michael has also written dozens of articles for various journals and magazines and his fourteenth book, Emerging Technologies: A Primer for Librarians (w/ Jennifer Koerber) was published in May 2015 and more books are on the way. In his spare time he blogs at travelinlibrarian.info, runs The Collector’s Guide to Dean Koontz Web site, takes many, many photos, and typically reads more than 100 books a year.
View all posts by Michael Sauers
Alongside the fetishists and anti-fetishists, Internet literary culture has also seen the flourishing of a third group, one that celebrates books neither as precious physical objects nor as utilitarian vessels but uses them as the raw materials for works of art. The forms are varied—some are sculptures made from individual books, others use books as the building blocks for larger structures, while still others make books the canvas for paintings or drawings—but these projects have in common a way of playing off the near-spiritual aura that many of us associate with physical books, both augmenting books’ specialness by using them to make something beautiful, and undercutting it by ignoring their original purpose.
