me studio

good morning, and now for something completelty different: here are some garden fences that your local terrorists might not like very much…

there aren’t many things that i find appealing about celebrating my birthday, but this beautiful book which my mother-in-law gave me this weekend is a pretty good start, as the title of this post suggests, it is a rather special book, written as a series of inter-changeable sonnets by writer ‘raymond queneau’ better known for his ‘exercises de style’ book

i quote from wikipedia:
… Cent Mille Milliards de Poèmes is inspired by children’s picture books in which each page is cut into horizontal strips which can be turned independently, allowing different pictures (usually of people) to be combined in many ways. Queneau applies this technique to poetry: the book contains 10 sonnets, each on a page. Each page is split into 14 strips, one for each line. The author estimates in the introductory explanation that it would take approximately 200 million years to read all possible combinations…

the book has been reissued recently with a fascinating technique whereby the pages are divided/die cut into long strips (the whole thing has been produced on high quality thick stock to very exacting standards) queneau, as i discovered this afternoon, was part of a writer’s collective called ouilpo, which operated under very particular rules (a bit like the ‘dogma’ filmmakers) this book is one of the results of their endeavours, another is the lipogram which i am definitely going to look into… starting with george perec’s novel ‘a void’ written entirely without the letter ‘e’

‘You seem to have a computer in your model, sir.
Or a pizza box.’

R: It’s a computer.
G: You don’t have a computer, sir.
R: But I have a ticket.
G: No you don?t.

amusing little conundrum over at space collective

some interesting projects by new york-based german designer felix von der weppen, the business cards (below) are maybe not the most amazing idea ever, but it looks effective and nice and ‘lo-tech’, the images for the piece on chocolate slavery (above) however, are great if you ask me…

the brilliant posters by lernert & sander are currently hanging around town…