Karen Bleitz’s The Mechanical World, a five-volume structure

$4,000.00

(Karen Bleitz) The Mechanical Word (Vol. 1 - 5). Designed and produced by Karen Bleitz with texts by Richard Price. Engineered by Sean Matthews & Andy Armstrong at Redline CNC. Printed at Pikan File Systems. Circle Press. London. U.K. 2005. 4p. each volume. 9.5” x 9.5” x 1.5”. Aluminium and silkscreened polypropylene with silkscreened polypropylene slipcase. Painted metal covers with central panel with moveable parts. Each volume encased in firm semi-transparent plastic with a velcro closure. An edition of 15 signed sets. Fine.

Vol. 1: I AGAINST I (subject)	Vol. 4: HOLD UP (to have)
Vol. 2: WRECKING BALL (to be)	Vol. 5: LONG GONE (to go)
Vol. 3: HARD DONE FROM (to do)

“Aluminium means that the body of the book and the machine parts are made from extruded aluminum. I gave plan drawings of all the parts to an engineering firm who produced them using CNC machinery (like a magic manufacturing box that popped out perfectly turned pieces of metal). The aluminium has been sprayed (painted).
“Silkscreened polypropylene refers to the pages themselves. The pages actually form the binding as they are scored and creased to create built-in hinges to hold the metal covers and metal page hidden in the middle together.” - Bleitz.

For the past ten years Karen Bleitz has been creating interactive book works that explore the changing nature of language and communication. In her latest project, The Mechanical Word, she has collaborated with poet Richard Price (whose book, Lucky Day, was short listed for the 2005 Whitbread Poetry Award) to produce a five volume series of mechanical poetry books. The idea of constructing a form of ‘mechanical’ language began as an exploration of the idea that “language pervades thought - with different languages causing their speakers to construe reality in different ways.” (Stephen Pinker, The Language Instinct, 1994)

Discs, drivers, levers and gears are used in the books to create mechanical metaphors and to give readers a new, physical tool with which to break down and examine the underlying meaning of words. The first half of each volume contains a poem illustrating how the machine acts as a part of speech. In the second half, the ‘machine’ is put to use in the context of a more complex ‘mechanical sentence’. By turning the crank, the reader activates the second poem by Richard Price and is forced to address the changes created on the page.

“I wanted to use machines to look at the dynamic relationships - people and power relationships - that grammatical rules quietly and sometimes noisily suggest.” - Bleitz.

Richard Price was born in 1966 and grew up in Scotland. He trained as a journalist at Napier College, Edinburgh, before studying English at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. The youngest of the Informationist group of poets, he was a founder of the magazines associated with them, Gairfish and Southfields. He also co-founded Vennel Press, the imprint which brought many of the earlier Informationist collections to a wider audience. Richard Price is currently Head of Modern British Collections at the British Library, London.