i am currently in process of trying to engage with a difficult text—one that is making me rethink my claim of preferring not (when alternatives exist to do otherwise) to engage with texts online. so. after settling back on my couch and reading a few of the essays in essays on the blurring of art and life, i thought i’d run up to campus and get a copy of kaprow’s assemblage, environments and happenings. that the text was housed in the folio section was, i suppose, my first clue that assemblage might afford as comfortable or familiar of a read as blurring or any of the other texts i had decided to work with over the weekend.
“imagine,” wysocki writes referring to her own text, “that this book now before you were bound in leather or in large fish-like scales. imagine that you were reading this online. . .imagine that this book were 2’ on each side and printed with letters 1” high, facing you on a lectern in a dark wood-paneled room. imagine that this chapter were appearing paragraph by paragraph in an instant messager window. each of those changes in the material instantiation of my words would change your attitude toward this text, certainly, but would also (i think) do more than that.”
word. cause the (physical) problem i’m having with assemblage is that it’s big (approximately 11’’ high and 22-23’’ across when opened) and it’s heavy (approximately 6 pounds). too big and too heavy for me to interact with it in the way i typically engage with smaller, lighter texts. (i.e., sitting on my couch, holding the book up in front of me as i read. or, if my feet happen to be up on the coffee table, resting the text against my thighs as i read. or if i happen to be feeling especially lazy, holding the book up in front of me as i recline on the couch.) not for nothing: if assemblage were bigger and/or heavier, i might be able to stand it up on the floor, design a contraption for turning pages at a distance and still be able to read it comfortably while sitting on the couch. as it is, the text on the page is not big enough to read from across the room. bracketing off for the moment that library books that appear to have been around kinda skeeze me out (read: i don’t often like touching them, bringing them into my house, preferring instead to xerox the chapters, parts and passages i find most useful and bringing them into my house), the book is just way too heavy to experience in the ways i am used to interacting with printed-on-paper-and-bound texts. as an alternative: i considered placing the text on the coffee table, sitting in front of the table and reading the text from that position. this might have been the wisest choice. unfortunately the thought of doing so made me weary as i would have to make enough room on the coffee table for the text to open and this was something i wasn’t especially willing to do. as an alternative: i considered placing the book on the floor and reading it there but carpeting in not-so-new rental units tends to skeeze me out as much as (if not more than) library books do. additionally, i figured that reading the book in this way would end up doing more harm then good given the way the arms, neck, back needs be positioned to afford this kind of a read. as an alternative: i considered (although not really, not seriously or not for long) xeroxing the parts i was most interested in reading. unfortunately, the size of the pages and the weight of the book makes xeroxing (given that there were 50-some pages in particular i wanted to xerox and read) a difficult task. yet another not-for-long considered alternative: taking photos of all the pages i would have xeroxed had size and weight not been an issue.
this all said, i’m determined to get through the book. it’s just going to be really slow going. a page or ten of this text at a time, switching things up and dealing with something smaller, lighter and preferably my own then back again to a page or ten more of assemblage.
“imagine,” wysocki writes referring to her own text, “that this book now before you were bound in leather or in large fish-like scales. imagine that you were reading this online. . .imagine that this book were 2’ on each side and printed with letters 1” high, facing you on a lectern in a dark wood-paneled room. imagine that this chapter were appearing paragraph by paragraph in an instant messager window. each of those changes in the material instantiation of my words would change your attitude toward this text, certainly, but would also (i think) do more than that.”
word. cause the (physical) problem i’m having with assemblage is that it’s big (approximately 11’’ high and 22-23’’ across when opened) and it’s heavy (approximately 6 pounds). too big and too heavy for me to interact with it in the way i typically engage with smaller, lighter texts. (i.e., sitting on my couch, holding the book up in front of me as i read. or, if my feet happen to be up on the coffee table, resting the text against my thighs as i read. or if i happen to be feeling especially lazy, holding the book up in front of me as i recline on the couch.) not for nothing: if assemblage were bigger and/or heavier, i might be able to stand it up on the floor, design a contraption for turning pages at a distance and still be able to read it comfortably while sitting on the couch. as it is, the text on the page is not big enough to read from across the room. bracketing off for the moment that library books that appear to have been around kinda skeeze me out (read: i don’t often like touching them, bringing them into my house, preferring instead to xerox the chapters, parts and passages i find most useful and bringing them into my house), the book is just way too heavy to experience in the ways i am used to interacting with printed-on-paper-and-bound texts. as an alternative: i considered placing the text on the coffee table, sitting in front of the table and reading the text from that position. this might have been the wisest choice. unfortunately the thought of doing so made me weary as i would have to make enough room on the coffee table for the text to open and this was something i wasn’t especially willing to do. as an alternative: i considered placing the book on the floor and reading it there but carpeting in not-so-new rental units tends to skeeze me out as much as (if not more than) library books do. additionally, i figured that reading the book in this way would end up doing more harm then good given the way the arms, neck, back needs be positioned to afford this kind of a read. as an alternative: i considered (although not really, not seriously or not for long) xeroxing the parts i was most interested in reading. unfortunately, the size of the pages and the weight of the book makes xeroxing (given that there were 50-some pages in particular i wanted to xerox and read) a difficult task. yet another not-for-long considered alternative: taking photos of all the pages i would have xeroxed had size and weight not been an issue.
this all said, i’m determined to get through the book. it’s just going to be really slow going. a page or ten of this text at a time, switching things up and dealing with something smaller, lighter and preferably my own then back again to a page or ten more of assemblage.
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