Matt Kowal, Open Books

Friday November 6th through Monday November 30th, 2009
1st Friday Reception: November 6th, 2009, 6-9pm

The book, its cover, dust jacket, blank pages, and index are parts of the physical container. They ease transportation, standardize features, and encourage production. During digitization, a translation occurs; book-container-words transform into representative format, code, and symbols. The book has been unbound and reformed as a container consisting of information wrapped in computer code. This process pertains to the informatics of electronic literary distribution. The archived digital texts portray an order and flatness that is inherent to the printed word. This transformation streamlines and expands dissemination.

Matt Kowal’s Open Books deals with the perceived flattening of these books into essential file and format. The information and the container become intermixed, resulting in a composite of imagery, literature, and function. The book as an object, becomes free from its boundaries and contextual meanings. It becomes a printed production.

Matt Kowal is an artist living in Portland, Oregon. He was born in Oberlin, Ohio and has a Bachelors of Fine Art in Photography from Ohio State University. He refrains from eating meat, loves physical activity, and is passionate about interdisciplinary technology. View his work at www.kowalabearhugs.com.