TARARTRAT has posted an audio clip from John Chris Jones' talk about the Internet and Everyone at café ck on 2 October, with a brief introduction by me. John Chris is poised, self-possessed, articulate; I, on the other hand, seem to have entered the 2-minute 'you know I mean' babble competition. (Just how many times is it possible to say 'you know' in a single sentence? Hard to say, but I think Caroline Kennedy's record has been beaten handily.)
So this is, of course, horribly embarrassing - I need to take lessons, clearly, from the pro - but John Chris is worth hearing.
Showing posts with label John Chris Jones. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Chris Jones. Show all posts
Friday, October 16, 2009
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
the internet and everyone
Freitakt #5 ::: i + e _ v e r n i s s a g e ::: john chris jones on Friday, October 2 at 8:00pm.
Event: Freitakt #5 ::: i + e _ v e r n i s s a g e ::: john chris jones
"Take a Penny, Leave a Penny."
What: Opening
Start Time: Friday, October 2 at 8:00pm
End Time: Saturday, October 3 at 1:00am
Where: Café CK
rabbit: eats only the tasty bits
sheep: grazes only on cultivated pasture for which it has developed
tastes and habits
goat: can eat anything but refuses what is not sensible or of poor quality
Animal reading paths from John Chris Jones' The Internet and Everyone, a
book like nothing you've ever seen.
A show dedicated to this undeservedly obscure object of desire will be
opening at Café CK on
Friday October 2
8pm / 20 Uhr
Marienburgerstr. 49
Berlin
Copies of the book will be available for sale or barter : if you have a
work of your own creation you can exchange it on the spot for a copy of
i+e. Whatever is traded will remain on the walls of the cafe for others
to encounter and enjoy for the duration of the show.
The show will open with a rare appearance by John Chris Jones, author of
the pioneering Design Methods and Designing Designing, who has come to
Berlin for the occasion. JCJ will be reading from i+e, with audience
participation from rabbits, goats, and the odd sheep that has decided to
break the habits of a lifetime and be a devil.
Hope to see you there!
Event: Freitakt #5 ::: i + e _ v e r n i s s a g e ::: john chris jones
"Take a Penny, Leave a Penny."
What: Opening
Start Time: Friday, October 2 at 8:00pm
End Time: Saturday, October 3 at 1:00am
Where: Café CK
rabbit: eats only the tasty bits
sheep: grazes only on cultivated pasture for which it has developed
tastes and habits
goat: can eat anything but refuses what is not sensible or of poor quality
Animal reading paths from John Chris Jones' The Internet and Everyone, a
book like nothing you've ever seen.
A show dedicated to this undeservedly obscure object of desire will be
opening at Café CK on
Friday October 2
8pm / 20 Uhr
Marienburgerstr. 49
Berlin
Copies of the book will be available for sale or barter : if you have a
work of your own creation you can exchange it on the spot for a copy of
i+e. Whatever is traded will remain on the walls of the cafe for others
to encounter and enjoy for the duration of the show.
The show will open with a rare appearance by John Chris Jones, author of
the pioneering Design Methods and Designing Designing, who has come to
Berlin for the occasion. JCJ will be reading from i+e, with audience
participation from rabbits, goats, and the odd sheep that has decided to
break the habits of a lifetime and be a devil.
Hope to see you there!
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
John Chris Jones
TARARTRAT is organizing an installation centering on John Chris Jones' the internet and everyone, which will kick off on, I think, October 2. John Chris has generously agreed to come to Berlin for the opening; he describes his ideas as follows:
[to the last I say NO, NO - but in fact I am in New York and may not be able to get back in time]
Cory, who is hosting the installation, told me his space was across the street from St George's (which is at Worther Strasse 27). It would be better to post with more accurate information, but I'm somewhat exhausted. Still, if anyone would like to participate in the reading of an animal reading path, drop me a line and I will pass it on. Go on, be a devil.
When i read a book in public i like to make it a shared reading with the audience... i have often done this with the help of a video projector, as follows:
...i sit facing a video projection screen (or wall) with a lectern or music stand to hold the book while someone with a video camera (both on tripod and hand held) focuses on the words as i read them from the screen (which can also show views of any of us now and then)... this turns the private act of reading a printed book into a shared activity (as when one reads a story book to a child who is also looking at the words while you speak them)...
...of course if you do not want to use a video projector i can just as easily read from the printed book without electronics!
...as Helen is keen on the 'animal reading paths' (pages 12 to15) i might ask you or others to read from the sheep and goat paths while i read some of the rabbit path (using a random number table to select pages and paragraphs)...
...this needs a little rehearsal to get the pages in focus etc and i would enjoy collaborating with you and the djs or musicians to relate the reading to their performance, and vice versa... on the friday or earlier in the week perhaps...
...if Helen arrives while we are there i think it is we who should couch surf... or else move to an hotel...
[to the last I say NO, NO - but in fact I am in New York and may not be able to get back in time]
Cory, who is hosting the installation, told me his space was across the street from St George's (which is at Worther Strasse 27). It would be better to post with more accurate information, but I'm somewhat exhausted. Still, if anyone would like to participate in the reading of an animal reading path, drop me a line and I will pass it on. Go on, be a devil.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
The Internet and Everyone
Many years ago I came across a strange book. It was a small, solid object, about 6" x 4" x 3" -- to hold it was to want to keep it. I opened it, and this is what I saw:
KEY
italic = rabbit path
bullet = goat path
sheep reads everything
reading appetite
rabbit: eats only the tasty bits
sheep: grazes only on cultivated pasture for which it has developed tastes and habits
goat: can eat anything but refuses what is not sensible or of poor quality
book-reading style
rabbit: selects books and opens pages by chance (sometimes using numerical patterns or random numbers), seeking literary style or beauty more than content, remembers intrinsic features – e.g. that something was one third of the way down a left-hand page near the middle of the book – does not follow continuous text unless the book accords with its deeper intuitions (but ignores what does not fit these)
sheep: reads every page from first to last, reading every footnote, enjoying and believing everything. Does not realize when it is being misled or manipulated, is grateful for everything and won’t venture into unfamiliar pastures unless assured by fashion or recommended by critics or by word of mouth (but it cannot take in what is original or new, nor can it change its reading habits)
goat: studies the contents list carefully, also the index, tables, and typographic indications of the structure, questioning everything – it reads and understands the book thoroughly or else rejects it quickly if initial scrutiny shows it to be worthless (or is foreign to its own ideas)
...
I began flipping through the book, looking at this page and that; I had to own it, though it cost a heartstopping £20. Years passed. I would quote the animal reading paths to people, urging the book on them, and they would say it sounded great and not buy it. Then I would meet them and bring the book along and they would quietly appropriate it.
2002: Jonathan Safran Foer comes to London, having had an e-mail describing the animal reading paths. I bring the book to our meeting. He holds it.
'Can I keep this?' he says.
'Sure,' I say, and I immediately go to Blackwell's to buy a replacement.
The girl at the till has never heard of it. I go to the back and find it among computer books. I take it back to the till. The girl at the till picks it up; she can hardly bring herself to let it leave the store.
'This is great!' she says.
'I know,' I say. 'Look,' I say, 'it has animal reading paths,' and I open to the page with the animal reading paths and urge her to read. She's laughing, she's saying how great the book is.
The Internet and Everyone is, in fact, the worst possible book to sell over the internet, because the thing that makes people want to own it is holding this 6x4x3 book in their hands. It's a book that belongs in a rack at the front of a store, where people coming in will be unable to resist picking it up and taking it away. Unfortunately it had a very small publisher, ellipsis, with nothing like the clout it takes to get a book in a rack at the front of a store.
I wanted to talk to its author, John Chris Jones, and its designer, Jonathan Moberley. I tracked Jonathan down to the Foundry, a grunge pub in the premises of a former NatWest bank on Old Street. Jonathan was running the pub and also running a radio series on which John Chris appeared. He wasn't talking to people. John Chris was talking to people. John Chris explained that he had taken a few copies into the Art Book Shop across the way and a customer had bought one on the spot. They had stocked a few copies and immediately sold them. We're chitchatting while I hold my own copy of i+e (as it is known to its fans). The girl at the bar asks to see it.
'This is great!' she says. 'It's so compact!'
John Chris has a been-there-bought-the-t-shirt-got-the-buttock-tattoo sort of expression. How can it be that the universal appeal of the book has not translated into universal acclaim?
'Can I keep this?' she says.
'Sure,' I say.
Some time later I got an e-mail from John Chris asking advice. Ellipsis had been acquired by Chrysalis, which had decided to discontinue i+e (presumably no one at Chrysalis had ever got their hands on the undeservedly obscure object of desire). Should he buy up the remainders? I said at once that he must buy them all, or if he did not want to buy them all I would buy 100 or so and he could use my storage unit in London to keep them in. So I picked up 100 of the last 200 copies of i+e, hoping to get the word out -- and instead they sat in my storage unit at Big Yellow while one thing went wrong and another thing went wrong.
I'd like to take i+e out of storage and sell copies to people who would appreciate it. Goats. Rabbits. Non-sheep. But i+e is in London; it seems silly to haul all 100 copies to Berlin.
Sooooooooo, long story short, I wondered if any London-based readers of this blog might be willing to take charge of 10 copies of i+e while we try to find them good homes.
KEY
italic = rabbit path
bullet = goat path
sheep reads everything
reading appetite
rabbit: eats only the tasty bits
sheep: grazes only on cultivated pasture for which it has developed tastes and habits
goat: can eat anything but refuses what is not sensible or of poor quality
book-reading style
rabbit: selects books and opens pages by chance (sometimes using numerical patterns or random numbers), seeking literary style or beauty more than content, remembers intrinsic features – e.g. that something was one third of the way down a left-hand page near the middle of the book – does not follow continuous text unless the book accords with its deeper intuitions (but ignores what does not fit these)
sheep: reads every page from first to last, reading every footnote, enjoying and believing everything. Does not realize when it is being misled or manipulated, is grateful for everything and won’t venture into unfamiliar pastures unless assured by fashion or recommended by critics or by word of mouth (but it cannot take in what is original or new, nor can it change its reading habits)
goat: studies the contents list carefully, also the index, tables, and typographic indications of the structure, questioning everything – it reads and understands the book thoroughly or else rejects it quickly if initial scrutiny shows it to be worthless (or is foreign to its own ideas)
...
I began flipping through the book, looking at this page and that; I had to own it, though it cost a heartstopping £20. Years passed. I would quote the animal reading paths to people, urging the book on them, and they would say it sounded great and not buy it. Then I would meet them and bring the book along and they would quietly appropriate it.
2002: Jonathan Safran Foer comes to London, having had an e-mail describing the animal reading paths. I bring the book to our meeting. He holds it.
'Can I keep this?' he says.
'Sure,' I say, and I immediately go to Blackwell's to buy a replacement.
The girl at the till has never heard of it. I go to the back and find it among computer books. I take it back to the till. The girl at the till picks it up; she can hardly bring herself to let it leave the store.
'This is great!' she says.
'I know,' I say. 'Look,' I say, 'it has animal reading paths,' and I open to the page with the animal reading paths and urge her to read. She's laughing, she's saying how great the book is.
The Internet and Everyone is, in fact, the worst possible book to sell over the internet, because the thing that makes people want to own it is holding this 6x4x3 book in their hands. It's a book that belongs in a rack at the front of a store, where people coming in will be unable to resist picking it up and taking it away. Unfortunately it had a very small publisher, ellipsis, with nothing like the clout it takes to get a book in a rack at the front of a store.
I wanted to talk to its author, John Chris Jones, and its designer, Jonathan Moberley. I tracked Jonathan down to the Foundry, a grunge pub in the premises of a former NatWest bank on Old Street. Jonathan was running the pub and also running a radio series on which John Chris appeared. He wasn't talking to people. John Chris was talking to people. John Chris explained that he had taken a few copies into the Art Book Shop across the way and a customer had bought one on the spot. They had stocked a few copies and immediately sold them. We're chitchatting while I hold my own copy of i+e (as it is known to its fans). The girl at the bar asks to see it.
'This is great!' she says. 'It's so compact!'
John Chris has a been-there-bought-the-t-shirt-got-the-buttock-tattoo sort of expression. How can it be that the universal appeal of the book has not translated into universal acclaim?
'Can I keep this?' she says.
'Sure,' I say.
Some time later I got an e-mail from John Chris asking advice. Ellipsis had been acquired by Chrysalis, which had decided to discontinue i+e (presumably no one at Chrysalis had ever got their hands on the undeservedly obscure object of desire). Should he buy up the remainders? I said at once that he must buy them all, or if he did not want to buy them all I would buy 100 or so and he could use my storage unit in London to keep them in. So I picked up 100 of the last 200 copies of i+e, hoping to get the word out -- and instead they sat in my storage unit at Big Yellow while one thing went wrong and another thing went wrong.
I'd like to take i+e out of storage and sell copies to people who would appreciate it. Goats. Rabbits. Non-sheep. But i+e is in London; it seems silly to haul all 100 copies to Berlin.
Sooooooooo, long story short, I wondered if any London-based readers of this blog might be willing to take charge of 10 copies of i+e while we try to find them good homes.
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