I’ve designed 3 new books for The Museum of Soho in time for their Museums at Night event, A Pot To Wishin’, at the House of St Barnabas in Soho.
Printed copies of one of the books will be available at the event (tickets here).
Category: news
More workshops are being held next week in Islington & Wembley Libraries as part of the Librarypress project. Below is the presentation I’ll be using to illustrate my talk on bookleteer to participants and explore the kinds of things they can do with it.
This month I am running 6 pop up publishing sessions across three libraries in London : Hounslow Library; Islington Central Library (First Steps Learning Centre) and Wembley Library. All the sessions are free and last for about 3 hours in the evening. The sessions are part of the Librarypress project which aims to get more people publishing.
The aim is to introduce bookleteer.com as a simple way to create and share publications that can be both physical (paper) and digital (readable online). Everyone is welcome, no technical/computer experience required or previous publishing experience. Bring stories, pictures, ideas and we’ll help you turn them into simple publications you can make and share.
We are hoping that some gems will emerge over the sessions – we have arranged with Librarypress to select up to 12 books by participants for inclusion in the Periodical, to be printed professionally and posted out to subscribers.
The sessions are :
- Hounslow Library : Tuesday 6th & Thursday 8th May 5-8pm
- Islington Central Library : Monday 19th & Thursday 22nd May 4.30-7.45pm
- Wembley Library : Tuesday 20th & Friday 23rd May 5-7.45pm
To book a place at one of these sessions, email Librarypress : news@librarypress.org.uk
Categories
Soho Memoirs
I’m very excited to announce that we are collaborating with the Museum of Soho to produce a series of Soho Memoirs from materials in their archive. The three initial books are by people who grew up or worked in Soho during the first part of the twentieth century and were recorded or written during the 1980s and early 2000s. As personal remembrances and stories they are steeped in the texture and fabric of the social life of old Soho – something tenuous and precious, yet at the same time time hard and unremitting. What makes these accounts special is not a nostalgia for what has disappeared so much as the living connection they establish to how much continues even now within the community of people who live and work there or whose children attend the last remaining school there.
The three books will be distributed via the Periodical starting in May 2014 – subscribe now to get your copies as well as other treats through your letterbox each month. We will have copies too at a special event at the House of St Barnabas in May organised by MoSoho.
We are introducing a revised pricing structure for custom StoryCubes ordered via bookleteer’s Short Run printing service.
The new minimum order will be 500 StoryCubes (reduced from 1,000), which can be made up of different designs each printed in multiples of 50 copies (there is a small set-up charge for each design). We now have three price bands based on total quantity ordered : 500-550 cubes; 600 to 950 cubes; and 1000 or more. Shipping rates are indicated as approximations only (please contact us to confirm costs).
Short Run StoryCube Prices 2014 |
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Quantity |
Cost Per Cube |
Cost Per Cube |
Set Up Per |
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|
500-550 |
£0.80 |
£1.25 |
£7.00 |
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600-950 |
£0.70 |
£1.10 |
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1000 or more |
£0.60 |
£0.95 |
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Shipping Costs (Approximate for 500 cubes) |
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UK |
EU |
North America |
Rest of World |
|
| Original (A4) |
£15.00 |
£35.00 |
£50.00 |
£70.00 |
| Medium (A3) |
£25.00 |
£70.00 |
£100.00 |
£140.00 |
|
please contact us to confirm estimate |
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Categories
the Periodical 1st Anniversary
It’s hard to believe that its been a year since we sent out the first issue of the Periodical, but here we are thirteen months later already planning our 14th issue. In that time we’ve sent out selections from 36 different publications made and shared on bookleteer to our subscribers, as well as special gifts from our own back catalogue of bookworks and other ephemera.
We’re still trying hard to reach 100 subscriptions – the break even point to cover the costs of printing and posting (the latter having risen dramatically this last year), so if you like the idea of receiving beautifully designed and printed books coming through your letterbox each month, the subscribe here.
Meanwhile here’s a little film we made to celebrate the Periodical’s first anniversary.
Categories
Outside The Box PlayCubes
We’re now just over halfway through our kickstarter campaign for Outside The Box : a “game engine for your imagination” designed to inspire storytelling and improvise play. We’re trying to raise £4k to manufacture a 1st edition of the complete set to get it into people’s hands and see what they do with it. Its had a slow start but we’re hoping we still may pick up momentum.
Outside The Box has no rules, nothing to win or lose, it simply provides a framework for you to imagine stories and make up your own games. It’s made up of 27 cubes, 3 layers of 9 cubes, each layer being a distinct game : Animal Match, Mission Improbable and StoryMaker. Check out the whole OTB collection of cubes and books on bookleteer.
Animal Match starts out as a puzzle – match up the animal halves to complete the pattern. From there you can make it much more fun : mix the cubes up to invent strange creatures; what would you call them? What would they sound like? How might they move?
Mission Improbable is for role-playing. There are 6 characters: Adventurer, Detective, Scientist, Spy, Storyteller and Superhero, each with 9 tasks. Use them to invent your own games, record your successes in the mission log books or take it to another level by designing your own costumes and props.
StoryMaker incites the telling of fantastical tales : Roll the 3 control cubes to decide how to tell your story, what kind it should be and where to set it. Then use the word cubes as your cue to invent a story on the spot.
Outside The Box began as a side project when illustrator Mandy Tang joined Proboscis. Inspired by the Love Outdoor Play campaign to get more children playing outside, we came up with the idea of using our StoryCube format and our bookleteer self-publishing platform to make a set of cubes that would inspire playfulness. We think its a lovely thing worth getting out into the world – we hope you agree.
Categories
the Periodical issues 11 and 12
After our holiday break in August the Periodical bounces back with issues 11 and 12. I am really proud to present two books made as part of a pilot project I took part in last year in Papua New Guinea:
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An Experiment in the Recording, Presentation and Circulation of Traditional Ecological Knowledge by Giles Lane and James Leach
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Reite and Sarangama: Bodies and Healing by Boston Porer, Pinbin Sisau, Kambuing Pulumaming, Gayap Makon & Maria Teteti
I was invited by anthropologist James Leach to work with villagers from Reite and Sarangama on PNG’s Rai Coast to test our Diffusion eBook format (using waterproof paper) to devise a simple method for recording and sharing local knowledge in the rainforest. One book is a collection of scanned notebooks made by the villagers, with additional English translations; the other is an overview of the experiment in both Tok Pisin (PNG’s pidgeon lingua franca) and English. Two other books of scanned notebooks by villagers are also available online and to download in the TEK Notebooks Collection
As the overview book explains, our project is to devise a cheap and easy to use toolkit that village people can use to record and share (where desired) not just their Traditional Ecological Knowledge, but their Cultural Knowledge too. A toolkit designed to accommodate the exigencies of the jungle and the rainforest and that, as far as possible, is technology agnostic. These books demonstrate how sheets of widely available waterproof paper can be made into simple booklets that can be written or drawn on as well as having pictures or photos stuck on and can then be scanned and shared online via a platform like bookleteer. Where the hand of a local person is often lost in the recording and transcribing of traditional knowledge, these books show an alternative strategy that can be used to assist people document and share knowledge in their own style and way – not requiring complex technologies on the ground that can fail or get broken because of environment conditions.
SUBSCRIBE TO THE PERIODICAL HERE
Treat yourself to something lovely – an enigmatic, eclectic package arriving through your letterbox each month. Get inspired to create and share your own publications on bookleteer to take part too. We need 28 more subscribers to surpass the ‘break even goal’ of 100 subscriptions – with free copies of artists bookworks created by Proboscis for every new annual subscriber from our back catalogue of projects.
Each month we select something special from our back catalogue of projects and publications to giveaway as a special extra for new (annual) subscribers to the Periodical. This month we have unearthed an audio CD made by Bob and Roberta Smith for our 2004 project, Navigating History – “Before the TV There Was the Piano” – 20 songs written and performed by Bob. From the back cover,
“Bob Smith sings songs upon the piano in the manner of an absurdist Victorian seaside entertainer then attends the funeral of ‘Lord Charlie Banks’. Can you do ‘The Shepway Shag’?”
We have just 24 copies to give away – on a first come, first served basis. Subscribe now and get your hands on this fabulous and rare collection of ditties.
Open Studio Days at Proboscis
On Friday 21st and Saturday 22nd between 12noon-8pm we are hosting an open studio for people to visit us at Proboscis. There will be works for sale (such as drawing and artworks from various projects) as well as special offers on many of our publications, freebies (for braving our infamous stairs to the 4th floor garret) and extra special gifts for people subscribing to the Periodical on the day (complete sets of the RCA CRD Research Studio publications or complete sets of COIL journal of the moving image). Everyone is welcome (N.B. the studio is not wheelchair accessible) – please drop us a line if you would like to come and visit.
Categories
Subscriptions Success + New Goal
April was a fantastic month for the Periodical – we’re very happy to report that we exceeded our goal of reaching 60 subscriptions (we actually reached 61) and are delighted to welcome 23 new subscribers into this growing community.
Our new goal for May is to reach at least 80 subscribers and we have a very exciting special extra to give to new annual subscribers. As you may know, Proboscis is leaving its studio space in a couple of months and we are undertaking a major review of our archive and back catalogue of projects built up over 19 years. We frequently make things as part of our creative process that don’t come to light for a while, or are never made public. In opening one of the archive boxes I came across some special things which had been planned to form part of a larger special edition artists publication which didn’t in the end come to pass. However, they make a fabulous set on their own and we are pleased to offer them as this month’s special extra inducement to take out an annual subscription to the Periodical.
Between 2008-2011 I commissioned a series of eBooks and StoryCubes by a diverse range of writers, artists, performers, thinkers and makers to respond to two questions from different perspectives, “Why are we who we are?” and, “What do we want to become?” – Diffusion Transformations. I had hoped from the beginning to publish a limited edition containing all the books and cubes, but funds weren’t available to do so, however I did manage to print several of the contributor’s pieces.
We have a small number (around 20 or so) which will be sent out on a ‘first come-first served’ basis to any new annual subscribers. Subscribe now for your chance to have this rare set.
Pharmaceutical Cubes by Kenneth Goldsmith
Legendary concrete poet and founder of UbuWeb, Kenneth Goldsmith created these 6 StoryCubes as a form of writing as texture.
3 Cubic Conundrums by Raqs Media Collective
Delhi-based Raqs Media Collective (Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula & Shuddhabrata Sengupta), co-founders of Sarai, created these 3 StoryCubes for the series : “The Curse of Invariable Good Fortune”, “Door to Door to Door” and “The Fugitive Never Escapes Himself”.
The Octuplet: Story of Our Lives by Babette Wagenvoort
Babbette Wagenvoort’s beautifully illuutrated cubes tell “tells the strange story of eight human-beings living inside their mother, while they prepare for their future. One of the octuplets seems better equipped for life than the others…”
A Sort of Autobiography by Warren Craghead
Described by comics reviewer, Matthew Brady, as “three-dimensional comic strips”, veteran comic artist, Warren Craghead created a set of 10 StoryCubes as a “possible autobiography”.