FROM BOOK FORM TO ARCHITECTURES OF READING: A DESIGN-LED STUDY OF ARTISTS' BOOKS WITHIN THE SPACES OF THE COLLECTION

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At the time when media historians and critics debate the demise of printed page and physical book and studies of book history proliferate, key voices in digital humanities (Hayles, Schnapp, Drucker) speak for necessity of media-specific enquiry and the impact of changing paradigms of reading and handling of book objects on publishing, education and cognition. Hayles explicitly points to the material and conceptual terrain of artists' books as a critical source of theoretical orientation in navigating new knowledges. Learning from artists' books, and deploying innovative methodologies of design research, this study will investigate relationships between the book form and gestures, spaces and architectures of reading. It will be framed theoretically by Mallarme's vision of 'book as an intellectual instrument, predetermined and architectural' and Genette's elaboration of paratextuality mobilized in examination of material, spatial and sensorial aspects of book space and reading in relation to specific sites of experience. While references to Mallarmé's experimental poem are ubiquitous in scholarship, and there is a growing interest in Genette's work on paratext, the architectural potentials of both have not been considered in research that links the book's form to physical spaces of its reading. Extending the research on the anatomy of the Architectural Book (Tavares) to exploration of the Artists' Books, this study will operate from the premise that the space of reading a complex sensorial book object (with its textures, surfaces, structure, rhythm and scale) is informed by the book itself, engaging the book's sensorial attributes through reading gestures and material practices.Recognising research potentials of the book as a critical object of knowledge, this research will develop from close examination of the multiplicity of forms of Artists' Books in the Modern & Contemporary Art Archive of NGS. Beginning with a selection of most challenging sensorial works from the collection, it will proceed through a series of research-driven curatorial events and material outputs that will examine spaces and surfaces of reading, modes of storing and handling, practices of archiving and cataloguing, reading gestures and display conventions. It will consider specific needs of the collection together with practices and experiences across various spaces, media and technologies of interaction, storage and display. This research will take place whilst NGS acts as client for a new National Collections Facility sited at Granton to be designed by professionally situated architects. The Research By Design mode of this study will run in parallel with the design work and will productively contribute to the development of public consultation and research spaces of the new facility. The research will result in three interconnected tangible outputs: the written and illustrated thesis in the form of an experimental book object, an exhibition that includes the collection-based display of selected book forms, and designs for reading/display and research spaces for the collection. From examining theories, material practices, typologies and technologies of book art, it will develop bespoke research methodologies and architectural designs/scenarios for engaging with book form that will investigate the historical and contemporary paradigms of reading and modes of experiencing image-text and book space. Complementing existing practices observed and examined in the collection, the project will extend and challenge existing scholarship on book form and conventions of sensorial engagement with books in conceptual, physical and digital spaces of collections, archives, reading, teaching and research.