<nettime-ann> [pub] THE AGRIPPA FILES SITE [u]

["Geert Lovink [c]" <geert@xs4all.nl>]

.

From: ayliu@english.ucsb.edu

Dear friends,

	The Agrippa Files site that a group of graduate students and I have
been working on was unlocked and publicly announced today:
http://agrippa.english.ucsb.edu  Please share the URL or the following
announcement with anyone you think might be interested.

--Alan Liu

--------------------------------

ANNOUNCING: ~ THE AGRIPPA FILES SITE ~
Launch Date: Dec. 9, 2005
http://agrippa.english.ucsb.edu

AGRIPPA (A BOOK OF THE DEAD) appeared in 1992 as a collaboration between
artist Dennis Ashbaugh, author William Gibson, and publisher Kevin 
Begos,
Jr.

THE AGRIPPA FILES is a scholarly site that presents selected pages from 
the
original art book (with the permission of the publisher); a unique 
archive
of materials dating from the book's creation and early reception; a
simulation of what the book's intended "fading images" might have looked
like; a video of the 1992 "transmission" of the work; a "virtual 
lightbox"
for comparing and studying pages from the book; commentary by the book's
publisher and scholars; an annotated bibliography of scholarship, press
coverage, interviews, and other material; a detailed bibliographic
description of the book; and a discussion forum.

BACKGROUND: Originally published in 1992, AGRIPPA (A BOOK OF THE DEAD) 
was a
limited edition art book that contained double-column pages of DNA code 
laid
out to allude to the Gutenberg Bible, copperplate aquatint etchings by
Dennis Ashbaugh alluding to DNA gel patterns (some overprinted with 
antique
newspaper advertisements of technological artifacts), and a 
"disappearing"
poem about memory, family, youth, and mechanisms by William Gibson (on a
read-once-only, self-encrypting diskette).  During the rise of the 
Internet
and Web in the early 1990s, the poem and book were read as marking a
symbolic transition from the codex book to digital media.  But in all 
this
time, the physical book itself has rarely been seen.

THE AGRIPPA FILES was developed for the Transcriptions Project at the
University of California, Santa Barbara, by a team from the English and
Comparative Literature departments: Alan Liu, Paxton Heymeyer, James 
Hodge,
Kimberly Knight, David Roh, and Lisa Swanstrom.

The launch of THE AGRIPPA FILES coincides with the anniversary of the 
Dec.
9, 1992, simulcast ("The Transmission") of images and readings from the
original work at The Kitchen in New York City and other locations.





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