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Wordly Obsessions

~ … the occasional ramblings of a book addict …

Wordly Obsessions

Category Archives: Art

The Book That Cannot Be Read – The Mysterious Voynich Manuscript

20 Wednesday Feb 2013

Posted by mywordlyobsessions in Art, Book News, Education, Writing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Anomalies and Alternative Science, National Geographic Society, Voynich manuscript, Wilfrid Michael Voynich, World War I, World War II


National Geographic explores the mystery of the Voynich Manuscript – an ancient tome discovered by chance in 1912 by the book dealer Wilfrid Voynich. This documentary explores the great lengths that have gone into trying to decipher the manuscript, which was written in cipher during the 17th century.

The book itself has many illustrations of plants and seems to be a scientific study into herbology. However, further research has shown that certain illustrations can be made to ‘move’ by spinning the book around, thus giving researchers the impression that it could have been an attempt to record alchemical knowledge. This, along with the astronomical, cosmological and pharmaceutical images has led many to associate the text with many ancient European doctors who were famed throughout history to have worked ‘miracles’ with their potions.

Many codebreakers and cryptographers have tried to crack the ciphers used in the book, including those from WWI and WWII; however the Voynich manuscript still remains one of the most mysterious books of all time.

Is the Voynich manuscript real, or a hoax? I guess we won’t know for a long time yet!

Related articles
  • Voynich Manuscript Carbon Dated to Early 1400s – About a Century Older Than Previously Though (izabael.com)
  • 6 Discoveries That Have Scientist Baffled (secretsofthefed.com)
  • Seven Codes You’ll Never Ever Break (wired.com)
  • Mystery Tome (nowiknow.com)
  • The tantalizing mysteries of antiquity (ernietheattorney.net)
  • 4 Most Impressive and Mysterious Discoveries (talesfromthelou.wordpress.com)
  • Professional Manuscript Reviews (briankeene.com)

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So you think you know what a book is?

23 Thursday Feb 2012

Posted by mywordlyobsessions in Art, Book News

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

angela carter, Bloody Chamber, book art, public library, Shawnee County Kansas, Topeka Kansas


For most of us books are usually made of paper and ink. We concentrate on enjoying the story and don’t really give much thought to alternative ways in which a story can be told. However all parts of the book can actually contribute towards the telling of the story; the cover, the binding, even the words on the page and the way they are positioned. Sometimes a series of images can tell a story more vividly than words. This video illuminates the many different kinds of books out there in the world and challenges our understanding of books and the various functions it may serve.

This has highlighted how mainstream books are missing that all important tactile element. We should enjoy looking at and touching these ‘vessels’ of thought.

So what do you think? Are they books or something else? I’d dearly like to know how the last ‘book art’ opens up. It reminds me of Angela Carter‘s ‘The Bloody Chamber‘! Anyway, if you are ever around Kansas, then you might want to drop by the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library to see all these artefacts in real life. I know I’d like to some day.

Related articles
  • 2013 Book Bingo Reading Challenge (thebookishsideofme.wordpress.com)

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Cool Book Art | Step into a World Made Entirely of Books…

22 Wednesday Feb 2012

Posted by mywordlyobsessions in Art, Book News

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

book art


I have recently found some inspiring book art, the first of which belongs to Tom Bendsten, a Canadian visual artist who uses books to build architectural structures. The tower below consists of 12’000 books, stands 16 feet high and took 4 years to complete. It is part of a series of structures called the ‘Argument’. The best bit is when you get inside it. The cloud scenery made up of the spines of all the books stacked one on top of the other is quite breathtaking!

Outside of 'The Tower'

Inside view. See all the clouds!

House of books...

The image above is particularly striking because it reminds me of a scene from ‘The Paper House: A Novel’ by Carlos María Domínguez. A book so beautiful, so wonderful, that I haven’t the courage to write a review of it yet!

More book art, this time from Brian Dettmer who is another artist who sculpts using antiquated books on a much smaller level. His detailed work seems to strip away at the barriers of language, to bring out the soul of a book. There have been many times when I wished I could dive into a book headlong. Dettmer’s work partially fulfils that desire.

Climb into a book... walk through one of it's "passage's"

The Borgian Nightmare - The endless labyrinth of meanings...

And finally, some exquisite book art from Kaspen for Anagram Bookshop in Prague. I wish I could actually BUY one of these. Would make a lovely present for a bookish person!

OK, anyone for the game 'Guess the Book?' Hmm... could it be 'Pirates of the Caribbean'?

"King Arthur and the Knight's of the Round Table!"

And finally... 'In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote. Yay!

Do you know any cool book art? Wanna share?

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Writer’s Journal | Notes About a Small Island, The Novel as Seedling (1)

12 Thursday May 2011

Posted by mywordlyobsessions in Art, Authors, Quotes, Writing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

cyprus conflict, notes about a small island, novel, once upon a time in cyprus, poltical, short story, writers journal, writing


 … How the story fell upon my mind, and refused to leave…
… And grew into a thorny briar patch…
… Demanding to be told…

Years ago I had an idea for a novel. It struck me one day when I was doing something quite normal. Maybe I was washing the dishes, maybe I was taking a walk, but it was during one of those moments when your body is in autodrive and your mind elsewhere.

The story began with: ‘Why hasn’t anyone written about this before?’ At first, the question was small, a pin-prick in the brain. But later I realised it was in fact an old, dull ache born from an event of systematic racial intolerance that subsided and was later left to stew slowly in a stagnant mire of political and personal gain. It’s a well known fact that people get used to things they shouldn’t, things like pain, hunger and even death. Of course, this had nothing to do with those things, but harboured within it the traces of such suffering and was seeking justice to its burnt pride. It offered me its tangled skein of problems and asked me to listen to the voices therein.  

Writing a story is hard enough, but giving a story the justice it deserves 
requires phenomenal talent. All I had at my possession was an above average passion for books and an appreciation for the written word. So it was here I began my search, between dusty pages and forgotten tomes, for remnants of the question. I racked my brains, trying to come up with a book, a film, a play, anything that was a half-decent attempt to portray this neglected area of history. I was to my dismay, met by silence and denial.

Art had next to nothing in its vast repertory that was a study of the country, its people or their history. Any accounts were abridged version of events written predominantly by outsiders. I poured over military documents, political correspondence, ‘eyewitness’ accounts, but all were sterile, too neutered to be  a faithful representation of events. The question pulsed its’ red light, ‘Something is missing, something is wrong’. Yes, I could see it now. Something was missing. It was the absence of the hand-over-the-heart, the honesty, the coming-clean. It was the absence of the voices in the skein, those who could still recount the past on the rough-hewn syllables of their mother-tongue.   

This silence, this absence was denial and it issued from a particular political ilk that championed democracy and fairness, but was (as the indelible ink of history would have it) the very demon that fanned the embers of racism. 

For months I thought about this, and an anger welled up inside me. There were so many stories to tell, so many versions; the culmination of which would be the chorus to break this unreasonable silence. These stories weren’t in any 
historical books or anthologies, instead they existed as fables of old did: on the dying breath of story-telling. No one ever thought of recording it in print. My family is one of the rare ones that still talk about that time, talk about it in its ugly glory. Through them I saw what the question really wanted: the grassroots of the problem. It wanted the events as it happened, the series of cause and effect as it unfolded under the relentless glare of the mediterranean sun. It wanted the chorus of voices, each unique yet the same in their own ways to merge with the elements of a small island on that day on June 1974, and sing their deafening cicada song to a world who would rather forget them. 

Men and women now in their eighties had faced the ugly, mindless wrath of war. Some had seen things that had pushed them to murder, madness and suicide. Others did things for country and religion that they carry around with them today like a guilty sin. People went missing, whole villages were razed to the ground. There were the tortured with some still alive to tell the tale. There was an artillery bullet through the hipbone of a five-year old girl, four years in hospital clamped together by metal because of metal and a lifetime (a half-life) confined to wheel-chairs.

Yet after three decades people are trying to build a future for themselves, free from the horror and shame of their near-past. But the skyscrapers and the luxury villas, the five-star hotels and expensive shopping malls are not bringing any comfort. Money is a temporary panacea. It does not fill the strange void, the gaping alienation of a nation. The bones of the dead, the eternally silenced, push at the foundations of these new-fangled buildings. At night, the dreams of the new, forgetful generation are troubled from the tremors of their ancestors shuddering in unmarked graves. It is like the hum of a coming earthquake, a deep guttural unearthly hum. It’s a rule: no one can build a future by burying the past. The truth will out. And it is the charge of a writer to tell the truth, the way it needs to be told.

All the above, in all its straight and flowery language fell upon my mind in a matter of minutes, yet took months to spool out into its full-length. Thought moves fast, and one thought follows another at lightning speed until you have a many-headed hydra; reason upon reason to tell a story, to strengthen the validity of it in the world.

As I said, this idea for a novel happened years ago, and I still wrestle with it. I write almost daily, but there is so much to write. It began with a people and a particular moment in their quiet yet complex history, but has extended to the rocks and the seas and the wind. I used to listen to people recounting the history of their personal lives during that time, but now I find everything in the hum of the earth, and all the silent souls it bears inside it.

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‘Coral Tiger-Lily’ March 2011 | Acrylic On Canvas

14 Monday Mar 2011

Posted by mywordlyobsessions in Art, From Life..., painting

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

georgia o'keefe, painting


Coral Tiger-Lily – Acrylic on Canvas, 16×20
March 2011 

After much cajoling, sweet-talking and at times outright threatening, I have agreed to take up the brush again. This is my first painting of the year which was commissioned by a close friend. She just wanted something to hang on the wall of her new apartment, something that would break up the acres and acres of cream and magnolia that dominates her kitchen/ living room. I hadn’t painted for over a year, so did resist; but she talked me round. She is forever going on about how she really loves the big canvas prints in the shops, but will never shell out £30-40 for something that was spat out of a printer. In my opinion, she is right. Nothing quite beats a hand-made painting. And it’s a lot cheaper (especially if you have a friend who will make one for you for next to nothing!)

When I went to see her apartment I saw the lovely bare walls, which to the artist’s eye looks just like a primed canvas. The smell of fresh paint didn’t help either. I went from complete indifference to ‘hey, can I fresco your house?’ Now I know how Michelangelo felt when he started work on the Sistine Chapel! A project for another time maybe?

But after a chat we decided on something a little more traditional. She wanted strong colours that wouldn’t clash with her furniture (dark, dark brown and cream) so I said why not orange? It’s just a vibrant variant of brown. Next we picked a picture from the internet she liked and I said, ‘ok, see you in a week’s time’. Before I knew it I had the thing finished and now it’s hung up on her wall. It’s gotten quite a few compliments too, thought I think it could have done without the pink swirls.

The only problem now is that she wants more! So I’ve agreed to make this a series of three. I’m currently working on another more orange-hued lily at the moment (in contrast to the pinkish one here). The background is still going to be a nice lemony-green and I’m going to keep the Georgia O’Keefe style that I adore so much.

What do you think? This is the first time I’ve shown any of my artwork outside of friends and family, let alone the internet, so I’d love to hear your views.

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