excerpt
DEXTER SINISTER
A SHORT ACCOUNT OF THE LIBRARY
(p. 9)
The first part of this book comprises texts we've previously
published in the following order: first, online as
PDFs in the Library at www.dextersinister.org; second,
as loose eight-page signatures intended to be bound and
reintroduced into library collections, commissioned by
the Art Libraries Society of New York for a conference
on contemporary artists' books produced in collaboration
with Printed Matter's NY Art Book Fair, 2008,
printed by Duncan Hamilton on a RISO RP3700 stencil
printer in an edition of 400 copies, and co-ordinated
by David Senior, Museum of Modern Art; and third, as
bound editions of these loose signatures, commissioned
by Transmission Gallery (Glasgow) for the exhibition
Moot Points (Exercises in Self-Organization, Discourse
and Collaboration), 2008, each in one of the forty hardback
cloth colors available at a local library bindery. EVERY
DAY THE URGE GROWS STRONGER TO GET
HOLD OF AN OBJECT AT VERY CLOSE RANGE
BY WAY OF ITS LIKENESS, ITS REPRODUCTION.
The second part of this book comprises a portfolio of
ten images, collectively titled W.A.S.T.E. Proof Prints,
along with their accompanying extended captions. With
two exceptions, the images were originally produced as
B1 (1000 × 707 mm) lithographs by Linnetts Proofing
Ltd. (London), and the captions output as laser
prints on U.S. Legal format paper (216 × 356 mm).
Each print was produced in an edition of one, along
with a working minimum of twenty-four waste sheets.
Like this page, the W.A.S.T.E. captions were produced
using TEX, an automated typesetting program written
by Donald Knuth in 1979 to facilitate professional typographic
production by a wide range of users, particularly
in the mathematic and scientific communities. As
opposed to industry-standard page-layout softwares that
implement a “What You See Is What You Get” (WYSIWYG) paradigm, TEX produces “What You See Is What
You Mean” (WYSIWYM) by using plain text files and a
semantic mark-up language compiled on-the-fly to produce
final pages. This book, produced and published by
Sternberg Press in an edition of 1000, is the inaugral publication
of The Serving Library (www.servinglibrary.org).
HOSPITIUM AD INFINITUM.
DEXter Sinister
