Significant Objects

Stories, things, and other matters relevant to the book and literary/economic online experiment, Significant Objects. ---- Significant Objects, a literary and anthropological experiment whose first two phases ran from July 2009 through October 2010, demonstrated that the effect of narrative on any given object’s subjective value can be measured objectively. The project auctioned off thrift-store objects via eBay; for item descriptions, short stories purpose-written by over 200 contributing writers, including Meg Cabot, William Gibson, Ben Greenman, Sheila Heti, Neil LaBute, Jonathan Lethem, Tom McCarthy, Lydia Millet, Jenny Offill, Bruce Sterling, Scarlett Thomas, and Colson Whitehead, were substituted. The objects, purchased for $1.25 apiece on average, sold for nearly $8,000.00 in total. (Proceeds were distributed to the contributors, and to nonprofit creative writing organizations.) Most recently, a book collection of some of our finest stories has been published by Fantagraphics.

[significobs]

This Artist Transformed the New Museum into a Swap Meet | The Creators Project

Pia Camil's new installation creates a gift exchange for visitors.

As a part of her upcoming first solo museum show in New York, Pia Camil is turning the New Museum into a swap meet.

Last Thursday, the Mexico City-based artist invited guests to bring objects “of power, of aesthetic interest, and of poignancy,” to the museum, where they were exchanged for a limited edition sweatshirt she designed. The visitors’ possessions will be used in a new piece called a “A Pot for a Latch,” which has been specifically designed for the New Museum lobby.

Inspired by vendors, Camil has transformed the lobby with hooks and shelves like those for commercial shops. Items collected during Thursday's exchange will play an integral role in the exhibit once it opens in January, for on specific days throught its run, participants will again be invited to exchange their belongings for ones previous attendees had brought.

This, according to New Museum Associate Curator Margot Norton, renders the composition in flux, constantly altered by its visitors.

[significobs]

Donna Seager’s book collection doesn’t look like most people’s. Instead of being lined up neatly on shelves, many of her books have been hacked to pieces, folded and warped like origami, transformed into chess sets, oversized flowers, men’s loafers, and abstract sculptures. They’ve all been used by book artists, who approach printed books the way other sculptors might approach slabs of marble.

(via Looking Back at 10 Years of Art Made from Printed Books)

[significobs]

Paula Zuccotti travelled around the world and asked everyone from a cowboy in Tucson to a toddler in Tokyo to list every single thing they touched in a day – then she photographed them. The items tell surprisingly intimate tales of the people who picked them up • Every Thing We Touch: A 24-Hour Inventory of Our Lives is out now

(via This is your life! 24 hours, and every object you touched – in pictures | Art and design | The Guardian)

[significobs]

(via Clickety-clack: Design Observer)

[significobs]

Melding the Beauty of Books with the Strength of Steel | The Creators Project

Pages meet metal in these arresting sculptures.

For those of us who love books not just as information receptacles, but as objects, Andrew Hayes sculpture series, Altered Books, will be a delight.

By deconstructing and reconstructing books, Hayes strips them of the meanings their authors imbued them with and replaces the author’s intent with his own. ...

Formerly a professional welder, Hayes incorporates steel into his work, adding an unyielding strength not present in the books’ original form. "Bound together, the pages and steel become something new and unified,” writes Hayes. "No longer a book on a shelf, but a unique object with its own strength and story."

[wtbw]

(via Fancy - Oversized Paperclip)

[significobs]

With a bit too much time on my hands and a subscription to Adobe Photoshop I have been playing with an idea: what will happen to traditional still life paintings when elements from contemporary life are grafted into them?

(via Some Doritos with Your Goya? Old Master Still Lifes Get an Update)

[austinkleon]

How to graciously say no to anyone

“There is no money in answering letters.”  —Groucho Marx

A couple of years ago, I was getting sent this article, “Creative People Say No,” at least twice a day. The idea was that creative geniuses say “no” to a lot of requests (like, a psychology professor researching processes of creative genius) in order to get their work done, so if you want to be a creative genius, you have to say no a lot so you can get your work done.

A bunch of people asked me what I thought about it, and I said, “It’s good advice for the rich and famous. Creative people say yes until they have enough work that they can say no.”

Ian Bogost explains it nicely, here:

[Y]ou have to say ‘yes’ for a long while before you can earn the right to say ‘no.’ Even then, you usually can’t say 'no’ at whim. By the time you can say 'no’ indiscriminately, then you’re already so super-privileged that being able to say 'no’ is not a prerequisite of success, but a result of it.

There was a little index card in the back of Steal Like An Artist that didn’t make it into the book that sums up my own point of view: “Be as generous as you can, but selfish enough to get your work done.” (I recycled the line later in Show Your Work!)

Of course, sometimes you just have to say no for whatever reason. For that, Alexandra Franzen suggests this format in her piece, “How To Graciously Say No To Anyone”:

Hey [name],

Thanks for your note. I’m so proud of you for ___—and I’m flattered that you’d like to bring my brain into the mix.

I need to say “no,” because ___.

But I would love to support you in a different way. [Offer an alternative form of support here]

Thank you for being such a wonderful ___. I am honored to be part of your world.

[A few closing words of encouragement, if you’d like]

[Your name here]

Images above from The Ransom Center, Tim Ferriss, @maudnewton, and my letters archive.

[significobs]

Used bookstores making a comeback

The death of the bookselling as a big-box business has a positive side-effect: the return of smaller, more specialized retailers.

They operate more efficiently than doomed out-out-town B&Ns and offer a shopping experience Amazon can't compete with, capturing foot traffic and filling nostrils with the delightful scent of biblichor.

[significobs]

Things Arranged Neatly, an exhibition of these curious lightboxes now on view at Winston Wachter Fine Art, compels you to wonder why we have a tendency to collect — or hoard, depending on how you see it — treasures that others may call junk.

(via Illuminating the Contents of Our Junk Drawers)

[incidentalcomics]

[booksdirect]

“Some potential bookmarks.”

[mulhollandbooks]

If I ever tried this with my gato…

[significobs]

(via WPA posters teaching kids how to take care of books.)

Via Coudal.

[significobs]

Hanging Your Books Is a Thing That You Could Do Now For Some Reason

On the spectrum of books-shoved-the-wrong-way-into-a-fireplace to bookshelf-that-stores-a-single-book this Hanging Book Shelving, which design you trust describes as "a simple and unique way to display your book collection," is probably...

[significobs]

(via Juxtapoz Magazine - The Book Collages of Alexander Korzer-Robinson)

[culturenlifestyle]

Adorable and Quirky Bookmarks That Make Tiny Legs Stick Out of Your Book Part II

Kiev-based designer Olena Mysnyk designs cute and unusual bookmarks on her Etsy shop, MyBOOKmark, which are imaginative and humorous. Drawing inspiration from the most famous literary characters such as Dorothy Gale from The Wizard of Oz, Harry Potter and The Hobbit, she pays homage to the love of literature with an ideal conversation starter: a quirky bookmark! Find more of her adorable bookmarks on her Etsy shop here!

View similar posts here!

[significobs]

Between 1951, when Barney Rosset purchased it for $3000, and 1970, Grove Press became a veritable communications center for the counterculture, defined in many ways by the visual sensibility of legendary cover designer Roy Kuhlman.

Rosset shared Kuhlman’s aesthetic taste—which had been formed by Abstract Expressionist pioneers of the post-war era—and their loose collaboration would provide Grove with an instantly identifiable, internationally renowned avant-garde look.

Continued: The Invention of Mid-Century Cool ‹ Literary Hub

[significobs]

While the Significant Objects Project deals in physical objects, the message is the same: information is not enough. Facts tell but stories sell.

More: What Is This Storytelling You Talk Of? | Search Engine People.

We like it when these marketer-professaional fans of our project at least take the time to cite and link to an actual story from the project! (A great one, too.)