This was created alongside cartoonist Seth‘s model city installation, “Dominion”, shown at the Dundas Museum & Archives in Ontario, Canada. Seth constructed a scale cardboard city, inspired by the aesthetic of Canadian cities and towns like Hamilton and Dundas, infused with a detailed fictional narrative and history. The eBook showcases a selection of buildings from Dominion, alongside exhibition notes and a biography of the artist. It’s main purpose however, was to encourage visitors to recount their own tales and memories of Dundas, record them in the book, and leave it with the Museum to be read and shared. Sparking the imagination of readers, by relating the fictional Dominion to their experiences, this eBook allows the Museum to enrich it’s knowledge of Dundas and it’s inhabitants.
Instead of a Zine Highlight, I thought I’d give a shout out to a Zine which hasn’t even been created yet. Young Blood is “a UK based zine dedicated to showcasing work by young creatives from around the world under the age of 25; covering art, photography, music and literature.” They are currently asking for submissions for the debut issue, which will hopefully be published in late March. I think it’s a great way for young uns’ like myself to showcase their work, and am considering doing a similar zine with bookleteer, so for anyone interested, drop me an e-mail at: haztag@msn.com. It’s likely this would take the form of a literary / short story / poetry zine, but I’m open to input.
Here at Proboscis, we’ve just recently finished a prototype of “Outside The Box”, created by Many Tang. The project was conceived back in September, spurred by the Love Outdoor Play campaign, and we’ve been constructing and tinkering with it since. Last week blazed past in a frenzy of activity, with everyone pitching in to get a working set finished. On Saturday, Alice took a set to “Re-Thinking Space”, a day-long discussion in Nottingham organised by Learning Space, to play around with.
A set of 27 Storycubes to inspire children’s play, indoors or out, alone or with others, this cube of cubes has 3 layers of games which can be used in endless variations. We’re currently thinking about different ways to play, and producing an eBook of game suggestions, so we’ll soon be having fun testing them on ourselves and with kids. See more photos here.
Next in the Songs trend is “Sea Shanties” – two volumes of songs sung at sea, selected and introduced by Francis McKee. He states “Beyond society’s canons of literature there are the outlaws – songs and stories that survive in the wild.” It seems these songs are memorised and passed on through their performance alone, rarely being recorded on paper, so it’s unlikely they would be heard outside of sailing circles. Shanties are work songs, the rhythms in time with sailors hauling, and barely sung today due to modern rigging changes. This compilation ensures these tales are not lost to time; these eBooks can be downloaded and reproduced anywhere – perhaps even on deck!
I’ve just ordered “The Gentleman Caller” by Andrea Kearney, but can’t wait for it to arrive, so I’ll highlight it instead. This caught my eye whilst browsing the Zines page on Facebook and seems to be a piece you need to appreciate in physical form, so I might post a few more photos of it when it’s in my mitts.
Its a beautifully surreal and cinematic illustrative zine, making use of double spreads to convey an amazing and disorientating sense of perspective. I love the bizarre imagery and the shading – it’s like a dream (or nightmare) rendered in a book.
Continuing the theme of songs and music, I’m looking at the “New Worker’s Songbook – Song Writing Work Book for New Songs” (phew). In collaboration with the Worker’s Arts and Heritage centre in Hamilton, Ontario, Dodolab and Tiny Bill Cody (Tor Lukasik-Foss) created this eBook to inspire songs that reflect the current realities for workers in Hamilton. It asks the reader about their working experiences, both positive and negative, as well as their identity and responsibilities, to form verse and chorus for their own personal chant. The songbook also provides techniques to memorise lyrics, and how to sing with emotion and purpose, complete with iconic stick figure illustrations.
“Who ate all the pies?” is an A5 illustrated zine by Mark Long, detailing some of the more amusing chants sang by football supporters in the UK. Though composed entirely with a red and blue palette, hes still managed to create depth with shading and contrast, and I love the multitude of faces – the seemingly simplistic lines belie some great characters. The chants themselves are hilarious, I wonder how many of the crowd are Sun headline pundits. It’s available here.
Our final Pitch In & Publish: City As Material event, Sonic Geographies, was held last Friday. A shortage of participants (probably due to the icy weather and weekday timing) meant that myself and Giles were alone in our wander though London, resulting in a slightly different walk then usual. Equipped with Audioboo, we set off to record the different sound properties of the city, in a far more leisurely and exploratory mode then previous events.
We had decided that rather than strain to produce a typical eBook with original work and concepts, which would be limited under the circumstances, we would instead purely document the day’s trip and link to audio recordings made during it. After capturing some of the ambient and wildlife sounds in Hyde Park (mingled with the hum of construction work and a talking animatronic tree), we entered the bustle of Mayfair and Soho. Surprisingly, in this sprawl the sound landscape was remarkably similar, and sometimes indistinguishable, when we were in enclosed courtyards and winding alleys, the geography creating immersive sound bubbles. Lastly, we managed to record the faint notes of a church organ, in the undercroft of the chapel at Lincoln’s Inn.
Back at the studio we created the eBook, lifting the images and GPS located maps of the recordings from Audioboo, and using a QR code to easily link to the relevant page. For the last few pages, we used images from “The Cries Of London” and “The Beggar’s Opera” playing cards sets, then a page consisting purely of a visualisation of white noise, to illustrate the change of the sound landscape in recent years – the cries of market traders promoting their wares has given way to a homogenised hubbub of engines and vehicles.
You can listen to the recordings made on Audioboo, and download the Sonic Geographies eBook on Diffusion here. Keep track of the discussion online with the #cityasmaterial hash tag on Twitter.
I’ve just noticed a handful of eBooks and Storycubes in the Diffusion Archive that relate to songs and sound, particularly relevant with our last Pitch In & Publish: City As Material event – “Sonic Geographies”, being held this Friday (which you can book a place for here).
Bird Song was created to accompany a sound installation at the Chiswell Walled Garden in Dorset, for this years b-side festival in September. Each side of the Storycube portrays a silhouette of a different bird in its natural setting, with its particular call represented in onomatopoeic text. It must have been a great visual piece when paired with the sound, especially with the three dimensional form of the Storycube, as the silhouettes start to resemble the shadows of actual birds.
I’ll be looking at the other song themed items soon, and starting to pick up on other collective trends when delving through the archive.
If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you’ll know I was a tad disappointed by the apparent shortage of literature and poetry zines. Thanks to the Zines page on Facebook, I’ve just found SNAP zine, an international short story and literature zine, complete with illustrations and photographs to accompany the text (and a free badge or two). Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find any photos of the inside, but from the cover it looks like a joyous marriage of aesthetics and intelligent text. Might have to buy this to see for myself. It’s available here.
