Welcome

Welcome to my blog, if you've come here after reading about me in the Otago Daily Times. (That's a direct link to the article.)



This is the personal section of Ampersand Duck, and you'll find a mixture of things, ranging from printing adventures through to things that might be a bit hard to read, and even further down to absolute fluff, like this:



The 'real' or more formal writing about my work is at my website. I quite often direct people there if they have more refined sensibilities.

Otherwise, enjoy, hang around, leave a comment or two.

Postscript: and my goodness, I've been made into an instructional video by some earnest Bibliography students!

we can be happy underground

Very exciting to get the latest issue of Artlink in my mailbox, complete with an article I wrote at the invitation of Big Fag Press man Lucas.



It's a very handsome issue, with all the articles & their images rendered just in black, white & red for that Bauhaus, print culture, newspaper, in fact incunable feel (did you know that red was once used in the same way that italics are now used?).

Apart from a couple of weird removing-too-many-footnote glitches in my text, I'm very happy with the way it turned out, and they chose the two funniest images from the plethora that I provided.

It's also an extremely funky issue, complete with lots of quirky articles, excellent excerpts from comics and zines, and a complete re-issue of one famous zine, Valet of the Dolls, which is most hilarious.

Highly recommended. Pooter and Padge give it five stars. Padge just stepped on my stomach while I was reading it to confirm his vote.


PS. Thanks to all who came to my workshop in Tuggeranong yesterday! I enjoyed myself, hope you did too.

the book, is thinking about it

Yes, me again. While I'm dismantling my last computer (waiting for things to copy/trash), I'm gathering my thoughts over the next few weeks for the talk I'm giving about 'The Limits of the Book' in Mackay at Focus on Books V. Bear with me: I've had the pancakes, so I'm not too tired yet, but the braincells are still a bit shattered by my early morning.



Ostensibly my paper starts as a run-down of the BSANZ conference I attended last year in Brisbane by the same name. I thought it would be useful to report that the scholars and the book artists are debating the same issues: what is a book, does it have limits, what is the future of the book, and does taking it online change everything?

At the Mackay conference, there is a space at the end of the conference where people get to stand up and do a little update about what they've been up to or what's been happening around the traps. Last conference I did one of those, and I sort of expected to be in the same timeslot, not being a major player (or so I thought) and not having a very big topic, just a conference report-back kinda-thing.

But OMFCC,* they've given me a 45-minute slot right smack in the centre of proceedings. I figure this gives me a chance to bang on a bit about books and what I think about them.

But first I have to really crystallise what I do think. Because I change my mind, quite a lot. In a nutshell, I think that books will survive anything the internet can throw at them. I think that books are physical objects that can't be taken on-line because then they become text. I think there is a substantial difference between books and information, which is what the internet presents to us. And I think that there are booky things on the internet, but we should all start working out new names for them, to be imaginative about new terms for new things. I like the way Kindle doesn't pretend to be anything but a Kindle. If it's a successful enough product, all e-readers will be called Kindles whether their genuine brand-names like it or not, and that's the way new names generate.

I was just reading an article from The Times Online about the (yawn) Death of Books, and pondering my favourite thought, which is: when peak oil runs out, if we haven't got our shit together with alternative energies, the internet really will be only for those who Have. If books are dead, and information is only accessible online, then we really will have Haves and Have-nots, everywhere. This is my post-apocalyptic extension of 'how does the information contained in books survive the constant shifting of software that leaves much behind and only translates what is deemed relevant?'. As someone who has worked in desktop publishing pretty much from the moment it went onto computers (I just felt a grey hair go PING), I have witnessed many incarnations of books fall by the wayside, trapped on disks, drives, sticks, all holding files that are now impenetrable. One particular project I'm still involved with (on a very sideline level) has spent the last 20 years (PING) trying to perfect a way to strip down their carefully researched and formatted scholarly editions into some holy grail of simple code that can coast along the surface of a very rough software (and hardware) ocean. I don't know how successful they've been, but it's been a long journey in a very leaky boat.

I do think about this stuff a lot; I have a recurrent daydream/nightmare (depending how busy I am) where the internet crashes and people come knocking at my studio door wanting me to handset and print the newspaper for them (PING).

I'm a big believer of books as physical objects: I have a very broad concept of what can be a book, from sculptural objects to conceptual ideas of bookiness... I can see that the computer can conceptually 'be' a book, but I'm starting to be a firm believer in the internet being a provider of information rather than a holder of books.

I also think, and I'm hoping this will go down well at a conference of artist's book makers, that we are really well placed in time to be working with books. Now that books have pretty much ceased to be the dominant provider of information and moved into a more specialised sector of the market (I really doubt that pulp novels will ever stop being made, unless people come up with a e-reader that can cope with steam and sand), there is no better time to be pushing it as a symbol, even a relic, of a time that people are or will be highly nostalgic about. Making beautiful books -- or making undervalued books valuable again by altering or reworking them -- will ensure that the physicality of books survives and is nurtured.

Any thoughts? Remember that this is me thinking aloud and completely unstructured; I'm very happy to be slapped down on any points or pulled up to the mark regarding generalisations or research. Any pointers as to places I should be looking at will be appreciated and fully acknowledged in my paper.





*Ceiling Cat being the main deity in this household, with a small subsection being a Jedi follower. I was once married to someone from the Bureau of Stats. I take the Census seriously.

Coping

You're all wonderful. I can't say this enough.

As BB and B watch odd bits from South Park, I have managed to find every page of my website, beautifully cached, and save them (thanks so much, Zoe and SCB). I heart having a laptop. I can pretend to be doing things with the boys but actually be multi-tasking more than usual. As long as I laugh in the right bits, they think I'm there with them. Super.

So now I have the technology, I can rebuild. Bionic website!

But first I have to write my next exhibition submission (I'm in a ANCA show about music, coinciding deliberately with the National Folk Festival) and a paper to say at Mackay, as well as finish my upcoming paper for Artlink. Then I can rebuild.

Blues song day

There are many different ways to start the day, aren't there? There are two distinct ways among the many that I always take note of:

1. Balloon Days
You wake with no sense of anything special, just a normal day, and on the way to school/work/the shops you see a hot air balloon in the sky. The sight of it is so uplifting (see what I did?), that you just know the day is going to be a good one. This only works if you live in a city that has hot air balloon freaks in it. I suppose the balloon can be substituted by a special bird or car or something personally symbolic.

2. Blues Song days
This name is a bit misleading; it sounds as though the day is going to be miserable and bluesy. But no! It just means that you 'woke up this morning' (classic start to a blues song) knowing that it's a special day, for good or bad or indifferent reasons.

Today I had a Blues Song start to the day. I woke up this morning from a bad weird dream; just before I woke I was sitting in a weird little Datsun-type car, full of honey cornflake biscuits, with bamboo blinds on every window. A lot had happened before that point. I opened my eyes, and couldn't close them again.

Sunday is sleep-in day, sacred in the house, because there's no work, no school, and no markets. I love sleeping in, because all other days I am woken before 6.30am to eat breakfast with an early-waking man. To wake before seven on a day when you don't have to is tragic. So I lay there, thinking, trying not to think, trying to get dozy, but in such a weird wistful mood from the dream that I couldn't remember, I knew I had to just get up and do something meaningful with the day.

I spent an hour sorting out photos on my computer, which has too much stuff on it and not enough free memory to compete with the cat hair stuffing it has acquired over the years. When I got to the images of our Tasmanian holiday, I knew what the day was going to be for: writing the post I'd been meaning to write all year, about reading whilst travelling and how that affects your travel.

So I did.



And now I feel better.

I am writing from a far-off country

We were meant to hang out with the Aged Poet this morning, but Bumblebee woke up with a deep fruity cough that I thought was best to keep away from her, so we stayed in our pyjamas until lunchtime. He played with the Darth Vader half of his new toy -- he really does love that incarnation of it -- and I tweaked my website a bit more, adding a book that I made as a student about eight years ago called I am writing to you from a far-off country: Experiencing Henri Michaux (I was fond of long book titles as a student).

I've lost this book -- I gave it to an art dealer not long after it was made and I've never seen it or heard from her again -- and I found I had all the files on some old disks. So now it exists again in virtual form, which is great because I put a lot of work and thought into it.



It's a response to a body of writing by French writer Henri Michaux that took my fancy, and also a response to the frustration I feel when I read something in translation, because I always get that sense that I'm missing out on the gravy of the text even though I'm eating the meat. I did this project before I made my Akhmatova book, and it sort of gave me a practice run with this issue, although I quite like the personal touch I gave this particular effort; it's almost a series of blog posts.



When I read these -- written four years before I started blogging -- I know why I started blogging.





A natural, aren't I?

I don't expect you to go and read all these postcards, but if you're interested, I'm very proud of the way my anecdotes respond to Michaux's whimsical ponderings. Michaux himself used his language very loosely. I remember reading somewhere that he offended many by breaking lots of the very strict rules of writing French, so translating him must have been a task and a half. I think he would have enjoyed what Babelfish did to his words.




(A note for anyone wanting to use that email for spam: it's completely out of date and you'll never get any joy from it.)

Sigh. It's nice to see it again. It's a lovely time-capsule.

today's learning journey

Complaints Department
Hasbro Australia Ltd
570 Blaxland Road
EASTWOOD NSW 2122

17 July 2008



Dear Madam or Sir

I saved up $60 to buy the Darth Vader transformer which turned into the Death Star, and was really happy when I took it home to play with today.

It works well as Darth Vader, and I really like the glowing lightsaber and the sound effects it makes. But when I tried to make it into the Death Star, it wouldn’t work because of its crappy design. We did all the instructions, and tried to make it fit together, it just wouldn’t work and won’t close up properly, even though we have tried everything possible to make it close.

Because of this, I feel really, really, really angry. If I could say lots of swear words right now, I would be shouting them at you. It has broken my heart that I can’t make the Death Star. I feel like I have wasted my money and that really hurts my feelings.

Next time you make something like that, I hope you get a kid to try it out because I don’t think you did this time. I don’t think I will buy another big transformer ever again!


Yours sincerely,

Bumblebee

The classiest of company

Have you seen the latest edition of Meanjin? Just asking, because I'm in it, and I'm completely chuffed about it.

I was nervous at first, because the new editor (Sarsaparillian Sophie Cunningham) has transplanted my blog post about The Lost Dog into hard copy pretty much unchanged, and I wasn't sure about
[a] the informality of the writing in such an esteemed literary arena; and
[b] whether I've flogged a lost dog -- I mean, let's face it, many people do what I did with that book on a daily basis, and get far less attention for it.

But Sophie seems to have her finger on the pulse of things, and she had absolute serendipity with TLD winning a major prize the week before the journal hit the shelves, so I guess my post still has legs after all this time.

And what company I'm in! I wasn't told who else would be in the issue, and I'm so delighted to find myself in the company of people I admire a lot: our own Laura Carroll, writing about Jane Austen (my favorite quote from the whole journal so far: Both films ask the same narrow set of questions about Austen: how did she write as she did about love without being a lover herself? Why didn't she get married? Was she unlovable? Was she sad? (Did she smell?) Was she lonely? Was she ashamed of being single? That bracketed line is pure Lucy Tartan.); Mandy Ord, with a very touching piece of graphic fiction/autobiography about Australian History; Robert Drewe; Geoff Page; Luke Davies; and a terrific piece by Wayne Macauley on independent publishing.

They're only the names I recognise or know; there's plenty more in this issue that I'm working my way through and enjoying thoroughly. And I love the cover of the journal itself, which for my money sits very comfortably in Meanjin's proud lineage of cover art.* It suits the formal yet informal feel of the contents, being hand-drawn and colourful, but utilising a formal gridding of the elements.

So congratulations to Sophie for her first issue, a job well done!


As an Australian Lit graduate, I just can't begin to tell you how chuffed the sight of this issue of the journal makes me feel. There's more on the way, as well, with another favorite literary journal, Heat, for whom I'm substantially changing one of my blog posts to make (I think) a bit more user-friendly. And the latest issue of that journal features Pavlov's Cat... gosh, this all tickles my whiskers immensely. Hooray!




*I'm amused that the version of the cover above (which is on the MUP site) is the older version of the cover, with my real name on it. I chose to change that back to my blog/print/press pseudonym because I made a decision a year or so ago just to do everything under that umbrella. It's not hiding -- it's a refusal to split myself into different parts (high art, low art, online, offline, literary, bloggy). And most people get my real name wrong one way or another (both first and last names), so it's often easier to be Duckie. So the version you'll see on the shelves says Ampersand Duck.