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DEXTER SINISTER
A SHORT ACCOUNT OF THE LIBRARY
(p. 9)


The first part of this book comprises texts we've previously published in the following order: first, online as PDFs in the Library at www.dextersinister.org; second, as loose eight-page signatures intended to be bound and reintroduced into library collections, commissioned by the Art Libraries Society of New York for a conference on contemporary artists' books produced in collaboration with Printed Matter's NY Art Book Fair, 2008, printed by Duncan Hamilton on a RISO RP3700 stencil printer in an edition of 400 copies, and co-ordinated by David Senior, Museum of Modern Art; and third, as bound editions of these loose signatures, commissioned by Transmission Gallery (Glasgow) for the exhibition Moot Points (Exercises in Self-Organization, Discourse and Collaboration), 2008, each in one of the forty hardback cloth colors available at a local library bindery. EVERY DAY THE URGE GROWS STRONGER TO GET HOLD OF AN OBJECT AT VERY CLOSE RANGE BY WAY OF ITS LIKENESS, ITS REPRODUCTION. The second part of this book comprises a portfolio of ten images, collectively titled W.A.S.T.E. Proof Prints, along with their accompanying extended captions. With two exceptions, the images were originally produced as B1 (1000 × 707 mm) lithographs by Linnetts Proofing Ltd. (London), and the captions output as laser prints on U.S. Legal format paper (216 × 356 mm). Each print was produced in an edition of one, along with a working minimum of twenty-four waste sheets. Like this page, the W.A.S.T.E. captions were produced using TEX, an automated typesetting program written by Donald Knuth in 1979 to facilitate professional typographic production by a wide range of users, particularly in the mathematic and scientific communities. As opposed to industry-standard page-layout softwares that implement a “What You See Is What You Get” (WYSIWYG) paradigm, TEX produces “What You See Is What You Mean” (WYSIWYM) by using plain text files and a semantic mark-up language compiled on-the-fly to produce final pages. This book, produced and published by Sternberg Press in an edition of 1000, is the inaugral publication of The Serving Library (www.servinglibrary.org).
HOSPITIUM AD INFINITUM.

DEXter Sinister


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