Swiss artists Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs — also known as Tonk, have revealed their latest piece: a camera made from old photography books. It is crafted with care from a stack of hollowed out tomes with a clever design that also finds a creative use for vintage texts. In experimenting with the body of the camera, the artists have literally framed a new angle in the building of the object.

 (via Vintage Camera Made Out Of Recycled Photography Books - PSFK)

Sorted Books project

The Sorted Books project began in 1993 … and is ongoing. The project has taken place in many different places over the years, ranging form private homes to specialized public book collections. The process is the same in every case: culling through a collection of books, pulling particular titles, and eventually grouping the books into clusters so that the titles can be read in sequence, from top to bottom. The final results are shown either as photographs of the book clusters or as the actual stacks themselves, shown on the shelves of the library they were drawn from. Taken as a whole, the clusters from each sorting aim to examine that particular library’s focus, idiosyncrasies, and inconsistencies — a cross-section of that library’s holdings. At present, the Sorted Books project comprises more than 130 book clusters.

 (via Nina Katchadourian)

I can’t tell if book spine poems are suddenly becoming a thing? But if they are, this person Nina Katchadourian (who I don’t know, obviously, or I wouldn’t refer to her as “this person”) did some pretty great work on those lines that I hope gets attention as a result, if there’s going to be a meme here. So I thought I’d throw the example above into the mix, as it is one I liked quite a bit. More here.

(Incredibly dedicated readers may recall my mention of same in March 2010 on the old Murketing.com site.)

junkculture:

Book Totems

flasd:

“A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called “leaves”) imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic.”

— Carl Sagan ( via: ieve )

unconsumption:

Bugs on book covers

Bristol, England-based artist Rose Sanderson repurposes worn book covers as canvases for her “bugs on book covers” paintings. Really beautiful work.

junkculture:

Thomas Allen: New Cut Book Illustrations

unconsumption:

Books from a “defunct U.S. Navy base library” form Colombian artist Miler Lagos’s impressive, self-supporting igloo-like sculpture. (via A Dome of Books | Colossal)

See also: Earlier Unconsumption book-related posts here.

P.S. Remember it’s National Library Week!

“Documenting designs of the bookshelf revolution.”

That’s right: the “bookshelf revolution.”

(via Bookshelf)

junkculture:

 Books made from brick

unconsumption:

DIY project du jour: Turn a discarded book into a clock.

For tutorial, see Shealynn’s Faerie Shoppe.

Spotted on Candoodles blog.

More uses for unwanted books here.

unconsumption:

Continuing the new uses for old books theme:

A book bathtub.

(via Boing Boing)

Perhaps paired with this “book floor” piece, or this book chair?! 

unconsumption:

utnereader:

Phone booths re-purposed as micro-libraries in New York City. (via Designboom)

I love urban interventions, especially when books are involved. (Check out this newspaper stand converted into a community lending library, if you haven’t already seen it.)

Anyway, this NYC phone-booth-turned-book-swap is a great addition to the group of repurposed phone booths featured previously on Unconsumption (here), which includes other micro-libraries in various cities.

Are there other repurposed phone booths that we — your friendly Unconsumption hosts — haven’t yet come across? 

Typewriter Boneyard does a sweet line of reading lamps made from drilled-out old books, fitted with replica Edison bulbs.

(via Reading lamps made from drilled-out books - Boing Boing)

Probably I’ve linked to this before. But just in case.

(via Book Planters @Craftzine.com blog)

unconsumption:

nevver:

Fictional Landscapes

Another good altered-book art entry to add to Unconsumption’s library of book-related posts.