Archive
“The French Revolution aroused and then disappointed Wordsworth, causing him to seek consolation in universal nature; it made Byron a rebel, and Southey a laureate; but it gave birth to Shelley. And the chief effect of the revolution on English life and thought is to be sought in literature rather than in politics. The great […]
In September, I’ll be speaking at dConstruct, in Brighton. The theme of the day is design, which I don’t know very much about, and I wouldn’t put much stock by my talk description. Nevertheless, I will be talking about books, I expect, and attempting to close the circle on recent explorations of the book as […]
This post is going to talk about sex quite a lot. I’m going to assume you’re all OK with that. For me, technology, literature and sex are all bound up together, and this entanglement can be traced back to a single book: JC Herz’s Surfing on the Internet (Little, Brown; 1994). An exploration of the […]
The Museum of Obsessions accepts donations on loan from collectors, enthusiasts and the sentimental. The things that enthral us, but which we cannot give a home to; our treasured possessions from which we cannot bear to be parted, yet cannot keep: these are the contents of the Museum. If you have no more room in […]
I’ve written about Metronome Press before, in a series of articles at the old STML Litblog in 2005 – 2006. If you recall, the Metronome series commissioned contemporary artists to write novels, presented as much as art pieces or artefacts as well as traditionally published books. At least one of the authors, Tom McCarthy, has […]
I’ve been having a lot of conversations with people recently about how they bookmark stuff. It seems to be on a lot of peoples’ minds as more and more of our reading moves onto screens. So I thought I’d share a few things, and ask for some feedback. Firstly, here’s what I do: I dog-ear […]
A few weeks ago, while filming Battersea Power Station from the roof of a pub, I got chatting to Katie Bonham, a ceramics artist whose recent work includes pieces fired from the mud of the Thames itself. As a result of this encounter, I’ll be showing a short film at a pop-up exhibition this weekend, […]
This morning, on as wet and dismal a Tuesday as London has to offer, I had the pleasure of meeting Bibi Bakare-Yusuf and Jeremy Weate from Cassava Republic. Cassava Republic was founded four years ago in Abuja, Nigeria, with the intention of introducing African readers to local writers too often celebrated only in Europe and […]
Yesterday I spoke at Words In Progress, an event convened by Hannah Gregory, of Vertigo of the Modern, and Monster Emporium Press. There was much goodness there, from such fine folk as Ambit, CB Editions, antepress, Strange Attractor and Zero Books—the latter represented by Nina Power of Infinite Thought, whose book One Dimensional Woman is […]
Fernando Báez is the director of Venezuela’s National Library and the author of, among other things, a history of the lost library of Alexandria. In 2003 he was sent to Baghdad as part of a cultural commission to evaluate the damage down to Iraq’s—and the world’s—cultural heritage, having previously performed a similar, and similarly devastating, […]
It was the second Gamecamp on Saturday, and by all accounts it was a huge success. I couldn’t attend, but I was asked to contribute something to the one-off newspaper produced for the day. The result is above, with the text below. During the proceedings of the Fourth Situationist International Conference in London in December […]
On Friday I met Elinor Jansz & Richard Embray from Four Corners Books. With backgrounds in publishing and the art world they came together to create one of the most beautiful small presses around. Four Corners publish art books, with their first serious success being Come Alive!, the examining the work of Sister Corita, Catholic […]
So it’s started again: the planes rumble overhead. The first I’ve heard is right above me now—for a few moments it drowns out the birdsong and childrens’ voices rising from the gardens below my window. I grew up beneath the flight path of Heathrow. From my bedroom window I could read the flight numbers of […]
I was recently asked by the good people at Proboscis to undertake a virtual residency, exploring their Bookleteer suite of tools. Bookleteer is described as “a platform for public authoring and cultures of listening—creating and sharing knowledge, stories, ideas and information”, and also as a form of samizdat for the twentieth century. I’ll be further […]
I should have mentioned this earlier, but I am joining the shadowy forces behind CoverSpyLondon for one week only. If you have any tube book sightings, please follow @coverspylondon and send us a direct message. I thank you.
I’m very pleased to announce two new Artists’ eBooks: Niven Govinden’s L’histoire de Bexhill Baudelaire and Kenji Siratori’s Guerilla Sex Generation. L’histoire de Bexhill Baudelaire includes links to YouTube videos which comprise the book’s soundtrack. I’ve been a fan of Niven’s work for some time, and he approached me to see if there was something […]
Ten days ago, at South by South-West Interactive in Austin, Texas, I took part in a panel discussion entitled Maps, Books, Spimes, Paper: Post-Digital Media Design (#mbsp). It was good. One peculiarity of SXSW is that the panels are picked months in advance, long before the participants have come together to actually discuss what they’ll […]
Recently returned from Mexico, and still too jetlagged to write up my experiences and talk at SXSW, I present instead some rambling recollections made up from my notes on Mexico City, where I walked a lot (in one very small area of the central city), went to bookshops, and, in one of those out-of-place experiences […]
I’m at Austin airport, about to leave Texas after five days at SXSW Interactive. Yesterday, I spoke on a panel about the post-digital world. I did the books bit. It was a lot of fun, and I’m very grateful to my co-panellists Chris Heathcote, Mike Migurski of Stamen, Ben Terrett of Newspaper Club, and our […]
So, I’m off to the SXSW Interactive festival in a couple of days, where I’ll be going to lots of talks, meeting people, and appearing on a panel. You should come to that if you’re around on Tuesday. It should be fun. The panel’s about post-digital design, or what we could and should be thinking […]
For Hire
Booktwo.org is the blog of James Bridle, a book and technology specialist with specific expertise in planning and producing web and new media projects for clients in publishing and the arts. If you'd like to hire me, have a look at my CV and portfolio, and feel free to get in touch.
I am also a member of the Really Interesting Group.
You can follow me on Twitter.
Speaking Engagements:
I am available for conferences and other events. For examples, see my talks at Interesting, Playful, South by Southwest, dConstruct and Tools of Change Frankfurt.
A complete list of talks, with links, is available.