The Experimental Book Object: Materiality, Media, Design

The Experimental Book Object shows why and how books matter in the 21st century. Digital and audio platforms are commonplace, and other fields of art beyond literature have increasingly embraced books and publication as their medium of choice. Nevertheless, the manifold book object persists and continues to inspire various types of experimentation. This volume sets forth an unprecedented approach where literary and media theory are entangled with design practitioners’ artistic research and process descriptions. By probing the paradigm of the codex, this collection of essays focuses on historical and contemporary experimentation that has challenged what books are and could be from the perspectives of materiality, mediation, and visual and typographic design. Investigations into less-studied areas and cases of performativity demonstrate what experimental books do by interacting with their systemic and cultural environments. The volume offers a multifaceted and multidisciplinary view of the book object, the book design and publishing processes, and their significance in the digital age.

Sami Sjöberg is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. His research focuses on avant-garde and experimental literature, especially in relation to science and epistemology. He is an Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Avant-Garde Studies and the author of The Vanguard Messiah: Lettrism between Jewish Mysticism and the Avant-Garde (2015).

Mikko Keskinen is Professor of Comparative Literature (University of Jyväskylä, Finland). His main research interests include narrative theory, sound studies, experimental literature, and intermediality. Keskinen is the author of Response, Resistance, Deconstruction (1998) and Audio Book: Essays on Sound Technologies in Narrative Fiction (2008). He has co-edited a book on the collage novel (2018) and two journal issues on “the ubique and unique book” (Image & Narrative, 2019).

Arja Karhumaa is a graphic designer, text artist, and Associate Professor in Visual Communication Design at Aalto University, Finland. Their work spans across experimental writing, visual poetry, typography, and publishing. Karhumaa is the author and designer of the artistic research Epä/igenesis (2021) featuring the artist book Epägenesis: Katalogi X, a catalogue of their experimental writing.