About three years ago I did a post on the introduction of Short Édition short story dispensing machines in France. These brilliant kiosks provide users with one, three, or five minute reads on slim receipt-like paper strips for free. Last week, the Free Library of Philadelphia announced that it has received a grant from the James L. knight Foundation to bring three of the story machines to Philadelphia. The kiosk locations haven’t been settled yet, but one spot is likely to be the Philadelphia International Airport.
The Short Édition dispensers are currently in more than 150 locations around the world. Libraries in at least four other U.S. states are also planning to roll-out their own machines this year. Writers interested in sharing original work for the project can submit stories to the home website Short Édition.
The Drolatic Dreams of Pantagruel (Les songes drolatiques de Panatgruel) is a bizarre, Brueghel-esque volume of humorous and grotesque woodcuts published in Paris in 1565. Based on the satirical Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel by François Rabelais, the book appears to have been a clever rip-off by the bookseller and publisher Richard Breton, who wrote in the book’s preface,“The great familiarity I had with the late François Rabelais has moved and even compelled me to bring to light the last of his work, the drolatic dreams of the very excellent and wonderful Patagruel”.
Despite those claims, the book’s amazing images are not likely to be the work of Rabelais himself, but a slick 16th century marketing gimmick by the publisher. It’s more likely that the artist who made the 120 woodcuts is François Desprez, a prolific French engraver and illustrator.These versions of the book’s images are from an 1869 reproduction printed by Louis Perrin of Lyon.
Yesterday I had the privilege of participating in the March for Our Lives organized by young people in the U.S. to protest the plague of gun violence in our schools and communities. It was inspiring and heartening to see these young women and men step up and confront the lack of leadership and political action on gun control. During the march, I saw hundreds of moving homemade signs, as well as many artist designed placards. Quite a few of the professional protest signs were downloaded from the website created by Amplifier.The design studio, which is “dedicated to amplifying voices of the social change movement through art and engagement”, solicited artist created posters for the march and made them available for high resolution downloads. Here a few great examples:
Many years ago, I tried my hand at paper making. I think that I still have files of homemade paper stashed away somewhere. I wasn’t very good at papermaking, but I developed a real appreciation for the skill involved in the process. The wonderful short documentary (below) titled “The Papermaker” is about Berlin-based artist Gangolf Ulbricht. It’s a terrific look at an ancient process.
CPH-Ø1 is a 215 square-foot handmade floating platform with a tree planted in the center. The min-island represents the first piece in a new project from local design studio Fokstrot. The “Parkipelago” is an innovative concept in public spaces coming to Copenhagen’s inner harbor this year. Built in local boat yards using traditional wooden construction techniques, the floating islands will all be hand-built from locally sourced sustainable or recycled materials.
The little islets will float around the harbor, free for anyone to use. They’re designed to also be clustered together for special events or projects. The coming islands will include a floating sauna, a sail-up café, mini-garden, mussel farm, fishing platform, and stage.
If you’re in town, the first piece of the “Parkipelago” is now in the harbor at Sluseløt.
This Monday, Bill Murray popped-up at SXSW in Austin, Texas for an impromptu street poetry reading of the great Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s short work “Dog”. The reading was not spontaneous, but part of a national promotional campaign for director Wes Anderson’s new animated film Isle of Dogs. Still, Bill fucking Murray reading Ferlinghetti, how cool is that.
It seems that Banksy is not done with NYC yet. This weekend more works attributed to the notorious British street artist appeared in Manhattan and in the Borough of Brooklyn. “Free Zehra Dogan” surfaced on the famous Bowery art wall to raise awareness about the plight of the imprisoned Turkish-Kurdish journalist who was jailed for adding images of Turkish flags to a painting of the destroyed Kurdish city of Nasyabin. Banksy’s tribute depicts hash marks representing the 272 days that she’s been jailed. At night, the wall at Houston Street and the Bowery, also has a projection of the painting that got Dogan her prison sentence.
Another purported Banksy work surfaced in Midwood, Brooklyn showing a suited business type cracking a whip over a group of escaping people. The “whip” in the mural looks like a graph from a business graph.
Look out Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island, Banksy may be heading your way this week.
Chinese bookstore chain Xinhua has opened the nation’s first employee-less, 24-hour bookstore, in Tongzhou, a district in southeast Beijing, and plans to open another 19 similar stores in the city before the end of the year. The bookshops, which are part of the “Xinhua Lifestyle Store” brand, will be placed close to universities, government offices and shopping malls.
To access the fully automated bookshops customers must register with their real names through WeChat, a messaging and social media app developed by Chinese software company Tencent, and also have their faces scanned before entering the store. Instead of having staff members in place to recommend books, the stores will offer “precise and humanized” book suggestions based on customers’ purchasing history and also have a robot consultant on hand.
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