1. The Universal Library (KEVIN KELLY)

    July 21, 2010
    by Jeanne-Salome Rochat
    discussion, magazine talk, media, reality, writing/litterature

    In several dozen nondescript office buildings around the world, thousands of hourly workers bend over tabletop scanners and haul dusty books into high-tech scanning booths. They are assembling the universal library page by page.

    The dream is an old one: to have in one place all knowledge, past and present. All books, all documents, all conceptual works, in all languages. It is a familiar hope, in part because long ago we briefly built such a library. The great library at Alexandria, constructed around 300 B.C., was designed to hold all the scrolls circulating in the known world. At one time or another, the library held about half a million scrolls, estimated to have been between 30 and 70 percent of all books in existence then. But even before this great library was lost, the moment when all knowledge could be housed in a single building had passed. Since then, the constant expansion of information has overwhelmed our capacity to contain it. For 2,000 years, the universal library, together with other perennial longings like invisibility cloaks, antigravity shoes and paperless offices, has been a mythical dream that kept receding further into the infinite future.

    Until now.

    HERE, download “Scan This Book!” by Kevin Kelley in New York Times Magazine (May 14th, 2006)

    The essay is divided into 9 rather appetizing sections.

    1. Scanning the Library of Libraries
    2. What Happens When Books Connect
    3. Books: The Liquid Version
    4. The Triumph of the Copy
    5. The Moral Imperative to Scan
    6. The Case Against Google
    7. When Business Models Collide
    8. Search Changes Everything

    Kevin Kelly is the “senior maverick” at Wired magazine and author of “Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World” and other books. He last wrote for the magazine about digital music.


    Above: woodcut from Swift’s Battle of the Books.

  2. The Manipulator: NEW ISSUE 2010

    July 6, 2010
    by Jeanne-Salome Rochat
    discussion, inspiration, magazine talk, travelling

    THE MANIPULATOR magazine was born in 1984 into a world almost unimaginable today: no cell-phones, no internet, no Adobe Photoshop, no digital cameras. In those quondam times, it was the cordless phone, the fax machine, the colour-copier and the Apple IIc that defined the technologically savvy.
    Johnno du Plessis

    THE MANIPULATOR’s WEBSITE

  3. Save the date! Novembre Magazine—Paris cocktail launch.

    July 5, 2010
    by Florence Tetier
    magazine talk

    see the facebook event

  4. when tattoo magazines used to be good

    If I lived those days, I’d be missing them.

  5. Girls Like Us

    Nice little surprise while flipping through the pages of the infamous Girls Like Us magazine’s last issue: a paper on our friend Jessica Silverman, and on her desktop: Sang Bleu issue 3-4! (And subtly appearing at the edge of the images, Fuzi’s “Only Girls Can Judge Me” tattoo flash (that I happen to have tattooed on my left foot!). I love that!

  6. Novembre Magazine—Geneva Launch

    We are proud to announce the launch of
    Novembre, a magazine about Fashion & Contemporary Art for Switzerland.
    Published by Sang Bleu éditeurs, Florence Tétier & Florian Joye,
    it features (amongst over 130 contributors):

    Aaron Schuster
    Adeena Mey
    Adrian Wilson
    Angelo Cirimele
    Ariana Reines
    Catherine Baba
    Damián Navarro
    Daniel Baumann
    Denis Pernet
    Diane Pernet
    Elisabeth Llach
    Emmanuelle Antille
    Estelle Hanania
    Frédéric Chapon
    Graham Tabor
    Guillaume Pilet
    Henrik Vibskov
    Koudlam
    Kris van Assche
    Luc Andrié
    Matthieu Lavanchy
    Mauricio Nardi
    Olaf Breuning
    Paloma Presents
    Piers Atkinson
    Sybille Walter
    Théo Mercier
    Vikash Dhorasoo

    (see the facebook event)

  7. Kunstverein’s Brunch Lunch Launch presents Ginger&Piss #1

    June 17, 2010
    by Jeanne-Salome Rochat
    SB people, art, magazine talk, performance, writing/litterature

    With contributions by Elvira Belafonte, Hula Capellinni, Billy Male and G. Alonso Oeuf !!!

    27 June 2010, 2–5 pm
    Performance by Matthew Lutz-Kinoy starting at 3.30 pm

    Ginger&Piss is Kunstverein’s in-house magazine – a cross between an academic journal and a darts club newsletter. Ginger&Piss (the name a misquotation of Lawrence Weiner) is published twice yearly, with the first edition appearing in a short run. Each issue contains a maximum of five or six contributions of varying length, appropriate to the individual subject matter.

    The remit of Ginger&Piss is simple; to offer an outlet for authors to say what they feel is vital (and not necessarily at all related to the art world) but were unable, unwilling or too afraid to publish previously. The concept dictates that each contributor writes under a pseudonym. The editors guarantee full anonymity.

    The use of pseudonyms can be considered an answer to the cowardice of the art world, albeit a somewhat hypocritical one. By providing a platform for candid critique but at the same time allowing the author to hide behind a pseudonym, Ginger&Pisss recognizes its own complicit cowardice. In fact, Ginger&Piss fully embraces its somewhat misleading bravery, but maintains that it makes sense for now, for the current cultural climate­.

    Loud is the subject of the first issue and it is a broad – probably far too broad – theme (if a theme at all). In fact Quiet might have been more appropriate. But perhaps a clear, ‘honest’ voice is better suggested by volume than whispering.

    Krist Gruijthuijsen & Maxine Kopsa

    Kunstverein’s website, for more information: http://kunstverein.nl