Brian Dettmer takes discarded books, sculpting and carving them into "remixes," and explains how he does it in a newly shared TED Talk.

First given at TEDYouth in November 2014 but posted to the educational forum's main website on February 6, "Old books reborn as intricate art" sees Dettmer explore his own approach to an unusual form of literary art.

"I think one of the reasons people are disturbed by destroying books is that we think about books as living things," he said, accompanied by an image of his remake of a biological encyclopaedia.

"I think of a book as a body, a technology, a tool, a machine, a landscape," he continued.

"I think of my work as almost an archaeology -- I'm excavating and trying to maximise the potential and expose it within my own work."

Clamps and clips, levers and weights are part of his process as he holds books in place before the careful application of blade and varnish.

"But at the same time, I'm thinking about this idea of erasure: what's happening now is that most of our information is intangible [within computers], and has to be updated," the New York-based artist explained.

He sees a parallel with the way painting has evolved in contemporary times.

"Just like people said painting would die when photography and printmaking became everyday materials, what it really allowed painting to do was quit its day job. It was allowed to tell its own story, modernism emerged, and painting went into different branches."

Watch the video here:  

 

 

(Source: AFP Relax News) 

 

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