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Philip N. Cronenwett, a Dartmouth librarian, spent years trying to track down Liber Passionis Domini Nostri Jesu Christi, cum Characteribus Nulla Materia Compositis, a book that was described in this way: "This book is neither written nor printed! The whole letters of the text are cut out of each folio upon the finest vellum; and, being interleaved with blue paper, it is read as easily as the best print." Though Cronenwett was unsuccessful in finding this book, he did find a similar book in the Dartmouth collection, a masterpiece of cut lettering. [via the Athanasius Kircher Society's blog]
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The Hamilton Wood Type Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, is the only museum of wood type in the country. With over 1.5 million pieces of wood type, ranging in size from 1/4-inch to 48-inches, this is a must-see for typophiles.
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A rainy afternoon in the middle of Germany marked an informational seminar on Documenta Magazine, the publication of the Documenta 12 art exhibition in Kassel that takes place every five years. Documenta 12’s overarching themes are education and outreach, and the three back-to-back issues hold hundreds of articles of selected by the editors of over 100 international publications. The theme of each issue, selected by the Documenta Magazine editors, centers upon the three questions posed by the exhibition’s curators as the show’s guiding concerns: Is modernity our antiquity? What is bare life? What is to be done?
The three issues of Documenta Magazine, “Modernity?”, “Life!”, and “Education,” use a sparse, white-and-gray modernist layout, with text and color photographs on fine matte paper. The cover of each is a un-magazine-like 80 lb. Munken Polar, a paper weight rarely seen in magazines. Inside, every article was translated into English and German and set into two typefaces—Mercury and Akkurat—developed specifically for the magazine by Viennese graphic designer and typographer Martha Stutteregger. She also designed the Documenta catalogue, a hefty 414-page chronicle of every exhibiting artist, with bios and descriptions of each artwork found at the exhibition. “For me, design is translation, so the overlay of linguistic translation into a solid design almost made itself apparent.” A perfectionist at heart, Stutteregger was worried on this rainy afternoon, the ink that was chosen for the catalogue was already starting to rub off. “That’s a problem,” she says, “but otherwise we’re all pretty pleased.” Both the magazines and the catalogues were produced by Taschen and printed in Spain. R. JAY MAGILL and TANJA MAKA
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Block internet ads with art? AddArt is a program-in-progress that replaces advertisements with images from a database of art. Though not yet ready to download, a prototype has been developed at Eyebeam Open Lab.
Read more about Eyebeam and other galleries and museums that display digital art in Jeremy Lehrer's piece "Please Touch," in our October issue, on stands now.
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Did you know you can rent Frank Lloyd Wright's Duncan House? Located fifteen miles from Fallingwater, the house opened a few months ago and is a rare opportunity to stay in a modern masterpiece.
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